That’s the big question that everyone’s asking; my friends, family, lecturers, employers, and even myself. I’ve never been great at making decisions. I used to be so hesitant of the consequences, and of wasting time on things that didn’t stick to the original plan, so would often end up taking the safest option. I’m still no good at making decisions, that much hasn’t changed. But, I’m no longer afraid of the consequences of making the wrong one as I know there’s always something to be learnt or gained. This mind-set has given me a lot of confidence, and pushed me into approaching a lot more opportunities.
I like making things; documentaries, band promos, photos. I like displaying things; I like putting my work out there and seeing the various reactions, I like finding old things and giving them a new lease of life, I like adding to my collection of antiques, trinkets and artwork. I like saying “I’ll help you with that”, when I have no idea what I’m doing, and then dedicating my energy to finding out. I like making props, and mending and decorating things. I like travelling, and adding to my bank of memories, friendly faces, and fire side stories. I ask ‘why?’ a lot and always hope that the answer’s going to be ‘there doesn’t have to be a reason’.
I have my next year or so planned out, and I’m not sure where I’ll go from there. The work in America will hopefully lead onto further employment, but will as a minimum allow me to better my chances of employment on my return. The fact that I still don’t know exactly what job I want to do for the rest of my life doesn’t bother me in the slightest, the thought of actually staying in one job for my entire life does! I know what I’m good at, what I enjoy, what I want to be better at, and what I don’t enjoy, and for me, that’s a very good state to be graduating in.
Photography Teaching Assistant Job in the US.
In mid June I will be flying to Vermont, to spend a few months teaching analogue photography and dark room skills to 8-13 year olds. This is a professional, paid job. I don’t know exactly what equipment I’ll be using yet, or what the syllabus consists of, but I am so excited. This is going to be a great chance to learn, improve my communication and teaching skills, meet new people and add to my portfolio. I have been out of practice with my 35mm for a couple of years due it’s impracticalities, and haven’t had access to a darkroom since college, so a few months ago I dusted off my camera, got a new one too, bought some film and a membership to a local developing shop. I’ve loved getting back into the habit of using it, and experimenting with things such as double exposure. It’s also been great teaching my boyfriend how to use it too, obviously this is very different from teaching 8 year olds, but it has prompted me to brush up on my own knowledge and think about why I am doing certain things. After my contract has finished, I plan on travelling the east and west coasts of the states; yet more opportunity for me to get experience taking photos in a wide range of environments. There is a possibility at the end of a full time job in the marketing department in London (although there is one position and hundreds of applicants) and a strong chance of me returning to America next year.
Degree Show Board
Please view large, design is for A2.
Camera Op for Not Just A Pretty Race
Charlie Lawrence has produced a documentary about women in the motorsport industry. I helped out as a camera op, with a Z5, on the shoot at LOLA. We had originally hoped for a bigger crew but only Charlie and myself could make it, so I manned one camera while Charlie did the interviewing, recorded sound and kept an eye on another, static, camera that I’d set up. We had a tour of the building and considered different options of filming locations; there were quiet, but boring offices, there was a busy but colourful lobby, an interesting but dark wind tunnel, and a well lit workshop that was quite echoey. None of the locations were ideal, so we settled on the workshop; it was bright, spacious, not in use (at least when we started filming) and was fitting as there were car parts in the background. We were very pushed for time as we were only allocated a very limited time slot to film, so we had to make quick decisions and get the job done. I think I did well on this shoot; I hadn’t worked with Charlie before, I was bought in last minute so didn’t know much about the project, and worked in quite challenging conditions.
Major Kong
I am in the process of producing a range of media for up and coming band; Major Kong. As well as helping design gig posters and fliers, I am creating ‘facebook media’ (promotional cover photos for example) and a promotional video. I have done a photoshoot in the studio, gig photography and video. I am in the process now of editing all of this before it get’s uploaded within the next few weeks.
Showreel 2012
Here is a compilation of some of the work I have done over the past couple of years.
Skills audit
My ability to communicate with a wide variety of people in different situations has always been one of my strongest skills. I’m good at being understanding and empathetic, whilst being professional and efficient. I’m good at explaining tasks, and also at getting good communication going amongst a team or crew. Confidence is key in communication, and I’ve learnt that even if I’m nervous or unsure, acting confident helps a great deal with getting people to listen and understand. It’s often the case that I am patronised or overlooked (excuse the pun) due to being a girl of 5ft-nothing, and I feel like I sometimes have to make an extra effort to make myself heard or respected by people outside of my friendship group and the people I have worked with before. I’ve learnt through experience that people often assume that I’m incapable of a handling a task if it involves something technical or ‘heavy’, so it’s important for me to know that the team I’m working with trust me. I’m usually quite a quiet personal, but I sometimes have to ensure that I am very active in a discussion or decision making process so that people realise that I do know what I’m on about. Working in environments such as this could have done one of two things; completely knocked my confidence and made me doubt my own ability, or forced me to come out of my shell and prove that I can give as good as the rest of them. Luckily, it did the latter. I have also found that my leadership skills have improved greatly over the past couple of years; when I started university the though of taking on a role of Director terrified me, but as I’ve become more confident in my skills and as a person, I would happily do this.
Time management has never been a particularly strong point for me. I always plan my work way in advance, hoping to give myself ample time before the deadline to make tweaks, perfect the edit, check and re-do the exports if necessary and so on. However, I still always seem to struggle at the last hurdle and find myself wishing for more time again. With other peoples projects this hasn’t been a problem at all, but on my FMP this was an issue that I was naïve to think I had under control. I started my FMP very early, and spent a long time doing quite in-depth research. However I didn’t account for being let down my so many contributors, or having quite so many problems with equipment and room bookings. My lesson isn’t that I need to stop leaving things until the last minute, because I never do, but that I need to have many backup plans, so that when things do go wrong, I can make a change and carry straight on. I think that although I am getting better at this I still have a lot of room for improvement and it’s something I really need to focus on in future work as I am determined to convert this into a strength.
Networking is the main skill that’s drummed into any media students mind; ‘it’s not all about what you know, but who you know”. I’m a very inquisitive person by nature, so when I’m on a shoot or at a gig or something I’m always wondering “Who’s that guy? Who’s she working for?” and so on. I make a huge effort to make conversation with people if I think they may be an industry professional or someone that I could work with on a free lance job (such as a band or a charity). Finding and approaching contacts is not a problem for me, but what I need to improve on is staying on their radar. There have been several people (including a radio station producer, and a documentary photographer) who I have been on good terms with in the past, but have let the lines of communication fall silent, and therefore I know they will not remember me. I have definitely learnt my lesson with this as I’m frustrated at how much could have come from them. For example; that radio producer now works for a major network inCanada, and that independent photographer has since been published in National Geographic and The Guardian. I need to make more of an effort to keep in contact; showing an interest in their projects, letting them know I’ve available for work etc, and making an impression on them by sharing work that I think may appeal to them.
I have spoken a lot about my creative and technical skills and flaws already in my work, so I won’t go too in-depth here. The main area that I know I should improve on is editing (and exporting; I can never get that right!). I am fairly proficient at using Adobe Premiere, but I need to expand on this and try to include more After Effects, and get more experience with using Final Cut Pro and Avid too. I also would like to gain more experience with sound recording and editing, as I feel I don’t pay enough attention to this in my work; not because I don’t think it’s important, but because I don’t know enough about it.
Evaluation – personal, process and product
My project has developed quite a lot since my initial idea. As you can see from my proposal (click here to view video and here for text), the message and interest is the same; why people get modifications, what it means to them, how society views this and so on. However, the content, style and structure has changed quite a lot. I did a lot of reading and research into tattoos and their relation to different societies and cultures. There has been a fair amount of academic research into the subject; by psychologists and sociologists, so I found a lot of insightful and interesting journals; reinforcing my thoughts that this is in fact still an issue at all, and that there is still a lot of opposition to modification based on old fashioned stereotyping. I also carried out primary research; I emailed and spoke in person to a wide range of people; people with few or lots of modifications, artists and scholars. I emailed, posted in forums, and directly interviewed people. I got some of the interviews on film too (such as with the staff at Grizzly’s) as a straight forward way of documenting the research. All of this helped me to gain a better understanding of society’s views on modifications at different levels. The overall impression I got was that modification is becoming gradually more acceptable, especially among younger people, as we are becoming desensitized to it, but most people still cast judgement over those who do modify themselves, it is something that is often misunderstood, and those who chose to have ‘extreme’ modifications are still outcast. I also conducted research to help develop my ideas for the visual construction of my piece. I looked into a lot of other artefacts around similar subjects; and was swamped in images of blood and needles. I found hardly anything that portrayed modifications as art, unless pain and gore were considered a part of that. So I decided it might be more useful to me to research artefacts solely on their visual style, regardless of content. I took a lot of inspiration from photographers as their aim is to produce beautiful images that tell a story in themselves, with the use of creative lighting, focusing and so on.
From the beginning I knew I wanted to take on this project myself. I’ve spent the past three years working in groups and crews where I’ve learnt a lot, but also had to compromise on my ideals. I knew from day one that this was going to be a challenge, and that I could walk away with a far better polished product if I took on a crew, but I knew that I wouldn’t learn as much that way. My whole degree has been an opportunity for me to gain experiences and learn, and if I get good grades a long the way then that’s a bonus for me, and I thought if I don’t take on a challenge like this now then I never will have the chance again. My organisation and planning skills were really put on trial in this module. I created a Gantt chart to help me try to stick to a production schedule; however with so many people dropping out and plans being changed this didn’t happen at all. I ended up rushing my edit and my written work is also extremely lacking. I am extremely disappointed that this didn’t go to plan, as I know that if just a few small factors (availability and standard of kit, room cancellations etc) were different then I would have come away with a far more substantial and professional end product, but I didn’t account for these factors well enough. On the day of filming I think I worked very well at efficiently setting up the studio and equipment, playing host to Jill and directing the shoot. It wasn’t a huge task as there was just Jill, Rob and myself, however I did take on the roles of two camera operators as well as doing the lighting, directing, and being the interviewer. When it came to editing I was quite nervous as editing is not one of my strengths anyway, and I was concerned that I wouldn’t have enough material to play with. This was the case to an extent; I would have ideally had more cutaways to stitch together the transitions, and I definitely would have had a wild track. Overall I don’t think I did too badly with the edit though, considering I don’t have much experience doing it.
I don’t want to sound too negative of self critical here, but I really am very disappointed that I wasn’t able to pull off the visual ideas I had hoped for in my mind. Firstly, I didn’t manage to film all of the shots I wanted to (due to room booking problems mentioned in a previous post) so I had to compromise by using a lot of rather boring, uninspired shots, that didn’t have the stylistic look I had imagined. There is a significant shadow in some of the interview shots; there was no room for extra lights or a reflector, or even for Jill to sit further from the wall as at that point we were filming in a corridor but trying to replicate the studio, which is also the reason for the lack of tripod. The main thing that bothers me about the visuals of this is shakiness of some of the shots. I was unable to use a tripod in some shots of the interview, so did my best leaning against a wall. With the close up shots, I simply overestimated my ability to hold a smooth panning shot. I would have reshot these the following day if there hadn’t been a problem with our studio booking. This is also why I had to use the ‘practice’ shot of Jill’s dance, which are not properly composed at all and in places crop at the edges. In hindsight I should have used After Effects Warp Stabilizer to remedy some of the camera shake. I’ve never had the need to use this before but I’ve read reviews and watched tutorials, and it seems pretty effective. I am pleased that I decided to go with a simple and bold style; with black and white backgrounds. This means that the audience’s attention is always on Jill. I’m also very happy with the lighting; although this could be improved in parts (e.g. to get rid of the shadow in the interview) I think that for the most part I achieved a soft, even light.
I think it was a good decision to get Rob to record the interview audio for me, and edit it too. Although there is some mic noise and slight interference, this would have been much worse if I had conducted the interview myself with the equipment available to me. The main problem with the audio is the absence of a wild track! I intended to get one but we didn’t have chance as the building was closing, but I honestly didn’t realise what a big difference it could have made to the end product.
I really like the music that I had Rob produce for this. I think the style of it fits really well, bringing a lot of atmosphere to the video. Also, as it was specifically made for this piece, it synchronizes perfectly with the mood and pacing of the footage.
The style of both the DVD cover and the poster are very fitting with the film itself. I have used the same fonts for the titles and credits in the video, than the text on these products. I have also stuck to the simple black and white colour palette, but on the DVD cover and poster, upped the contrast hugely to make the images more striking. According to my research into similar products, my designs seem to be very appropriate for the genre and style.
I have quite mixed feelings towards this project on the whole. The end product has a considerable amount of room for improvement, but I know precisely how and why I would make these changes. The film is small; it’s short and it’s simplistic, which some people may receive as being unimpressive; however being to the point is exactly what I wanted. This also gave me the chance to get involved in other projects; working on other student artefacts and several different professional opportunities which have helped to build my portfolio and CV. Considering I did everything myself from start to finish, with the only help being on sound, I am quite proud of what I have achieved. The film may not be perfect by anybody’s standards, it’s not even technically one of the best that I’ve made myself, however I have learnt a great deal by involving myself in every single stage of the planning, production and post-production processes. Only I can claim responsibility for the outcome of the film; for the good points and the bad. I knew this was going to be a challenge from the start, but one that I thought would be valuable for me to tackle and I’m still glad that I did; and the key thing I’ve learnt is that I shouldn’t assume that I won’t need a Plan D, or Z for that matter!
Distribution
After earlier research, I concluded in my proposal that “the internet will be the easiest and cheapest form of distribution, and will probably reach a considerable amount of people this way if uploaded or promoted onto enough platforms. Vimeo and other respected sites can host the video, whilst social networks and interest blogs can be used to promote it. I will also contact online magazines.”
The primary method of distribution for my piece will be via the web. As well as it being free and easy to do, it gives me instant access to millions of people world wide. Once something’s on the web it’s out there in the world, and to a certain extent you lose control over who sees it and what’s done with it. However, you can channel the paths in which the film would be seen by specific tagging, group and channel placing and uploading. This means that realistically, anybody can see it, but you can tailor who is most likely to see and share it. So this is what I’m going to do. I am going to be quite picky about where I upload the full piece, and be very specific with my tagging so that it comes up in particular searches. It will be uploaded onto Vimeo for starters, and from there linked to several online magazines and forums (including those against modification).
DVD cover and poster
I have looked at several examples of documentary DVD covers. The aim of documentary covers and posters is rather different to those of a Hollywood blockbuster; which is to show off a famous cast, a big budget, and flashy CGI or special effects, for example. The purpose of a documentary cover or poster is to be attractive and interesting, yet realistic and informative. There is usually one main image on the front cover for a DVD, set against a plain, often dark background. There are sometimes smaller images on the back of a DVD cover but I don’t think this would be a useful contribution on mine. Posters also have one key image and are very simple in their layout. The standard style for documentary is simple and bold. This fits well with the entire visual style of my piece as the video is also simple and each frame predominantly consists of black or white.
I wanted to keep this very simple and bold. On the poster, I didn’t want to give too much away by the text used, as including words such as ‘tattoo’, ‘piercing’, ‘modification’ and even ‘dance’ would create expectations in the audiences mind; it would probably be quite off putting to many people. Instead I used the words ‘A portrait of Jill Finnigan’ so that the audience wonder what her story is. The font I used for the main text is one I downloaded from Dafont.com. I think the lettering has connotations of piercings (due to the holes in each letter) but it also makes me think of a dressing room mirror, with bulbs around it (which is appropriate because of the relation to dance, beauty, self expression, a ‘picture’ and so on). I chose a black and white colour palette as it is the most clear and bold, without being tacky or garish. The photograph is a still frame taken from the video. I converted it to greyscale, and heavily adjusted the levels and contrast. I also burnt and dodged certain areas to add detail (in the eyes, her piercings etc) and remove detail (her cheeks and hair). I also took the heart that’s below Jill’s left eye, from another shot in the video, and pasted it onto her right side so it’s visible in this image. I like the visual ‘film noir’ feel that the poster and DVD cover both have; suggesting elegance and class.
