Self Evaluation

I attended all the sessions bar two due to illness. Due to the nature of the module I felt that more would be gained by attending as many workshops as possible. I think in some workshops I could have attempted more. Particularly, in the visual effects workshops, I didn’t do a lot of experimentation with the software. I think if I had, I would have been able to get a better understanding of the software itself but also be more confident in using independently. As it stands, I feel that I would struggle to use After Effects and Mia. In the workshops in the workstation, I’m quite pleased with how things turned out. In the time given. I think Alice and I planned our time well in making all the different elements for the scenes. I think the only thing that didn’t work well is the small liquid latex wound that we made for the actor. I think that we spend so much time trying to work on the fake arm and hand that this had to be made at the last minute. As a lot my time during the workshops was spent making special effects, I didn’t have a lot of involvement with the actual set build and set design. I think that I could have been more proactive in helping out here, when extra hands were needed.

After effects

 This weeks workshop involved using Adobe After Effects to produce some of the visual effects we wanted in the final group project. We looked at how some of the effects could be achieved and then had a go ourselves. These are screen shots from what I did.

Proposal, for a music video..to something like Fatboy Slim

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The sun shines down on a side street in the city. It is lined with restaurants and cafes, filled with consumers sharing stories. Towards the end of the street, two buskers are setting up; they have with them an old cassette player and bongos. The first busker puts in a well used tape. Whirr, click and the tape is in place. Music begins to filter out and approaching the musicans is a couple. They get closer – the beat kicks in tom-tom-tick tom-tom-tick – and they begin to dance to the music. As they do so, their bodies ripple and stretch. As they move it looks like different past of their body become stuck in position, stretching –ly to the next move. The dancers are in sync. A skateboarder goes past and does an air 360. Like the dancers, his body and board are briefly stuck in position making a spiral shape as he twists, and falls to the ground. A boy then approaches- tom-tom-tick- --and he flips over some boxes on the pavement; his body becomes an arch, a human slinky. tom-tom-tick. The music and the buskers still play and the people still dance. In the background, some friends are having coffee. One of the party lifts his mug from the saucer to his mouth. Like the dancers, the bottom of the cup remains on the saucer and stretches up to the mouth, warped. Opposite him, is his friend. He places two sugar cubes into his cup and we see its creates two solid white arches from the bowl to the cup. The coffees ripples in time to the beat.  Music cuts and all returns to normal. Final shot is of the buskers packing up and leaving their mix tape for someone else to experience it.

personal proposal moodboard

2nd proposal inspiration

Li Hongbo - Pure White Paper from Dominik Mersch Gallery on Vimeo.

music i listened to when writing 2nd proposal

Joseph Cornell

Cornell's boxes are self described 'visual poems' depicting things we can not see, we things we can. I quite like Cornell's work.  I think the idea of putting lots of different items in a box and creating mini collages and worlds in something that people can really relate too. A lot of people put their on belongs from an event or moment in their lives into boxes so I think to play on this is really interesting. 

Cindy Sherman

I've been familiar with Cindy Sherman's work for a while and still I am unsure what I think of it. When I first came across it I thought that was really interesting and clever, playing around with stereotypes. However, now I feel tht it is a bit repetatitive. I remember seeing one series she did, in which she dressed up as different characters and photographed herself as these personas sitting in a chair.  For me, the work didnt tell me anything new, nor did seem original and thought-provoking, as I had seen her do something very similar only recently. I think that she cleverly demonstrates that we should look beyond what we immediately see, however much like Damian Hurst's 'Spot' paintings, I think this can only be done so many times. 

Joel Peter Witkin

Joel Peter Witkin is an American photographer whose photographs depict surreal and dreamlike scenes, involving marginalised groups.

 

 

arm wound pt 2

As well as making the fake arm with wound, we also had to make a latex wound that would go on the actors arm, for wider shots. I think that we left this a bit late so when we made it, though it looked good on its own, on the actors arm it didn't really work.

The main problem was that the colour of the latex wound didn't match the actors skin tone, so it really stood out. It looked really unrealistic. We also had problems trying to secure the wound to the actor - this is something that we overlooked.We ended up using some plasters that someone luckily had on them. This meant that all the shots had to be ECUs.

filming the kitchen scene

We filmed a lot of the different sequences this week. We did the scene in which the blood was falling down the walls and the kitchen section in which the hand was chopped up.

I think the hand chopping scene was really successful. It took a while to cut the actual hand though, as the rubber glove was quite tough. This delayed the smoothness of the sequence but other than that I think that it was very effective. The blood pouring out of the finger looked really gruesome and the use of dog chews in the fingers made the action look really sinister.

Nails

We've added some fake nails to the hand to add to the realism. It was quite hard to get the colour right, as we wanted them to look like they were real but also dirty and almost mouldy.

The arm wound

When we first made the structure for the arm, we used the plaster of paris to try and create the outline of a wound. We then decided that we would be paint this with a lot of layers of liquid latex, so that we could push and mold this to create a dip/lifted skin effect. We then drilled through a hole so as to allow a tube to go through the arm. This would then enable the blood and puss to be easily pumped through using a syringe. 

FAKE BLOOD

Making fake blood out of maple syrup, water and red food colouring

Jake & Dinos Chapman

fake hand

Today we started work on the fake hand that will appear in the kitchen scene. We filled a rubber glove with salt dough and molded it into a life-like shape. We then found an old shirt and cut the sleeve off, to cover the end of the mold, and to hide the end of the rubber glove.

Finding the right colour

Playing round with acrylic paint to find a good skin tone for the hand and arm...

Moodboard for uncanny proposal

This week we had a session on Photoshop. I have use photoshop a little bit but not for a while so it took a while to become familiar with the program again. I think the hardest thing I find about Photoshop, is that there are a lot of little things that you need to do to perform an effect. Often I forget one or two of these (such not pressing a certain setting being in the wrong layer) and so it takes me a really long time to do a small amount. 

This is the mood board I did for the original uncanny proposal. As said before, Francis Bacon was really influential so I included a couple of his paintings. The one in the bottom left corner is the picture I had in mind when writing the proposal. As the piece is set at night, I imagined the general colour scheme and palette to be dark, mood lighting with red undertones. 

fake arm

We started on making the fake arm this week. We cut a shaped a piece of foam into an arm like shape, which was quite difficult. The main problem we had was trying to saw the foam so that one end would be thinner than the other, like the human arm. It was tricky doing this without making one side of the foam more extreme than the other. We used sand paper the smooth and round the foam. We kept one side completely flat though so that the arm could easily be filmed and secured.

tools and flats

This week we had an induction in the workshop. We covered safety of using basic tools and all had the opportunity to use them. We also went over building sets. This know means that we have the ability to get tools from the stores if we need to create or build own set or set pieces. We then went to the studio and began reconstructing the flats into the plan we had thought up last week.

Special effects research

Sandy Skoglund

 

revenge

 

 

Tomoko Shioyasu

Shioyasu's work is made of intricate paper tapestries, which she cuts by hand. Her work evokes some of nature’s most complex creations.

Chiharu Shiota

Shiota is Japanese artist who is working in Berlin. Her own website is filled with images like the one above; shoes, dresses and windows are interwoven with black or red web wire structures. Though her own website does not offer an explanation of her work, the Berlin ARNDT website states 'Central to the artist’s work are the themes of remembrance and oblivion, dreaming and sleeping, traces of the past and childhood, and dealing with anxieties.'

I think she is pretty successful in achieveing this as I find some her installations unsettling.

proposal research

Francis Bacon has always been very influential to me. When the proposal was set, his work immediately came to mind. I think Bacon's work shows real human emotion. He depicts human forms, but twisted as if showing how we feel; like in the about picture, the form morphed and stretched, screaming in pain is really visual representation of the emotion. I think its this honesty thatI find so appealing about his work. Specifically for my proposal, it was his portraits that came to mind and brought forward the idea of peeling skin.