Today I hung up my photography onto the wall and I was generally pleased with the way it looked. I have had several issues with printing sizes for my photography so i've had to secure my photos using lots of glue. I decided to hang my photos on the wall using double sided tape because I did not want to use a nail which would've ruined the frames of my work. Generally I am happy with my final photo's, however I feel that if I was to improve I would definitely incorporate some sort of lighting onto the photo's to make my piece look more interesting. In addition to this I would've perhaps made each photo A3 rather than A4 size because I feel as if some of the writing on the photo's is a bit small, meaning it might be difficult to see what the writing says.

When I screened the rough cut to Lauren, she suggested editing the audio to decrease the amount of fuzz we were getting from the clips. We experimented and tweaked the audio to get the sound we wanted using 'Parametric Equaliser', which I used to lower the higher frequencies slightly to decrease the high pitch microphone fuzzing. This seem to sound better when we listened to it back. I also changed the overlay of grain to a different vintage looking effect, which gave the film a better feel and gave it an interesting texture. When looking at the effect, we agreed it would be best to use this. We also decided on an ending that would suit the film best, which would for the last clip to glitch out and cut to black, due to their being glitching at the start, means that glitching at the end blends in with the theme of the film and fits with the beginning. After this I send Lauren the final film and overall we are happy with the way it looks.

Overall the unit, 'Reflections' as a whole has been a fun experience where we have been required to produce professional pieces of work. I feel my work has improved and developed through advice and support given to us by Rosie throughout the editing process, the development of our film idea through tutorials, many workshops, for example the creative writing task and screenings, looking into Experimental film and the development of our photography through tutorials. In addition to this, Leah, who helped me learn more about Experimental Film, the ways in which to approach our work and by setting us tasks to get us thinking creatively (re-appropriation film and further reading tasks). In addition to this Anne was very helpful through group tutorials and class workshops to do with Lighting and film. I generally feel I have worked hard during this unit and I feel that the work I have produced is certainly to a higher standard compared to when I started the course.

The screening of our film was successful and I was happy that we received some positive comments on the piece. I feel that we successfully conveyed the message we intended on doing so at the start of the project.

Originally I intended on using photo frames to display my work that had different shapes and designs to match the mood of the images, however I found it virtually impossible after looking around different arts and crafts shops and I eventually came across some plain frames, with a cardboard frame around the edge. This was partly similar to the idea I had in my previous post, where the photo had an interesting border to it. I found this a good opportunity to colour and design these frames the way I wanted to, to suit the mood of the images. I decided I would do a smashed glass design frame for 'DANGER', a cute, childish design for 'FUN', a hypnotic, confusing design for 'NIGHTMARE', a scary, horror-style design for 'FEAR' and a vortex-style design for 'TIME'. I felt this came out well, however the images didn't come out to the size and quality I wanted, however I tried to make them look the best I could and I feel they came out well overall.

For the frame I found images from the internet that would match the theme of each individual photo. Instead of finding a plain photo to put as the border I decided to look into textures and other ways of representing a certain mood and feeling to each individual photo. For example I found a time vortex for my 'TIME' photo because I felt it matched the theme of time well. In addition to this I found a cute, childish photo for the frame of 'FUN' and so forth for each photo. Here's a few of the images I used for the frames:

'FUN' frame

'TIME' frame

So far I have organised all of the clips into the order we wanted them to be, however I have had problems with the clips I have received, for example a lot are filmed from iPhone's, meaning the resolution is completely different to the resolution of our film, meaning some resizing and cropping has had to be done. In addition to this, in after effects I organised each introduction into its on composition so I wouldn't get the introductions mixed up.

Over Skype conversations we decided on the glitch we want for the introduction, ending and credits. I used a website called 'http://www.laptopnoise.com/freeglitch.htm'  to get the glitch sound I wanted. The website had hundreds of glitch sounds, so there was a lot to work with.

We also decided on a piece of music from Audionetwork.com, which I used for my previous documentary piece. I find they have a great variety of sounds. We decided on a track called 'Yarrow', which has a mellow, nostalgic sound to it, which is what we want.

Originally, I thought of mounting it on foam board like my last piece of work, however I thought id try something different and look into other ways of displaying my work. I decided to look into frames and frames to match the picture, however I found a website which showed interesting ways of framing photos. I looked at this website :'http://www.crookedbrains.net/2012/04/creative-photo-frames-picture-frames.html' which gave a number of interesting frame designs. One I particularly liked was this one:

I like that the colours blend well with the image, which is what I want to do with my frame. I want the image or texture to blend in with my photos. 

So far we have put the clips into Adobe Premiere Pro and we have organised them in a way that will save time when it comes to moving them around into the right position. Lauren and Shahid worked closely with Thomas to ensure we got a professional looking introduction that would introduce the film. The biggest set back we've had so far is that we have found it difficult to lengthen the film, so we needed people to give us additional footage to support the large chunks of audio we had. So far we have completed almost a minute of the film, which we are all pleased with. We've decided to add a filter of some sort to the donated footage to give it an old feel to it.  I am currently experimenting with filters and I found a filter in which I feel would give the donated footage an old feel.

    Title sequence

    Dust particle effect

    Glitching end credits

     Example of the donated videos behind the footage from their interview.

I found an interesting site that had several pictures of ways to mount my work on a wall: 'https://www.pinterest.com/sendmail2angela/creative-ways-to-display-photos/'  I have thought about mounting the photo's within frames that represent the photo, for instance 'Fun' would be inside a childish frame or have a childish border around the image on a piece of paper.

When narrowing down my photo's, I decided to get advice from Rosie and see what she thought of my photo's. Within the tutorial we had, she likes my photo's however two were quite similar and had the same background, so I had 4 photo's I liked. I then decided to go out and shoot several more photo's and see what I could get. I got some interesting results and I looked at all my photo's together and narrowed it down to these final 5 photo's:

Photo 1

Photo 2

Photo 3

Photo 4

Photo 5

After today's meeting with Rosie, I decided to go out this evening and take some more pictures. From the photo's I had, I decided to scrap the photo that read 'Home' due to the background being the same as my 'Danger' photo. I decided to experiment a bit more with the dark and minimal light. I feel some of the photo's came out great and there are a couple that i'm happy with. These are the results of today's shoot with two versions of each:

Originally, I intended on going into London and using light writing to write words in front of historic landmarks, however that idea was quite difficult due to time I had so I decided to take photo's within the Farnham area that had a meaning that everyone could understand. Overall I am relatively pleased with the outcome and I got some interesting shots. Here is a tester shot, followed by various other shots. The camera itself was set to ISO of 100, Shutter speed of 30 and an F stop of 5.

I decided to look into known photographers work who do light writing. I came across a website called 'http://weburbanist.com/2008/07/07/10-amazing-light-graffiti-artists-and-photographers/'  which showed several light writing pieces, created by different photographers. Here are a few pieces I liked the most:

This piece was created by New York painters Ryan Warnberg and Michelle McSwain. They're a group of light painters for hire who generally do light writing work for parties and special events. I like this piece in particular due to the contrast of dark and light and the colours contrasting with the dark, sombre atmosphere given off by the photo. I like that you cannot see the face of the body, hiding the identity and adding to the mysterious feel of the photo.

This piece, produced by German duo Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke, who create imagery that brings a ghostly quality to the beauty of nature that turns dark scenery into brighter atmospheres, through shapes and words. There's almost a sci-fi feel to their work, which I like. I also light the contrast between light and dark and how it makes your attention focus on the only bit of light in the photo, which I would like to do with my work. 

I decided to research into the history of light writing, and some good examples of Light Writing that might influence my work. For example I looked at one of the first pieces of light writing, for example In 1889 Demeny attached incandescent bulbs to the joints of an assistant and created the first known light painting photograph “Pathological Walk From in Front”. I found this interesting as it was one of the first forms of writing using light. I then looked at Frank Gilbreth's light painting photography in 1914, where him and his wife used small lights and the open shutter of a camera to track the motion of manufacturing and clerical workers. 

'Cyclegraph'

I then found an interesting time lapse video involving light writing, however instead of shapes they were writing sentences. The piece itself, called Light Writing Proposal , was created by Derick Childress on Vimeo . Its 00:03:06 long and has over 400,000 plays on Vimeo. The long exposure and making of the film stretched over three nights in Raleigh, North Carolina. The final image was made up of approximately 800 individual 10 second exposures.

'Light Writing Proposal'

When looking back on my original idea, and the comments Rosie had given me on my blog, I felt that I should change my idea and try to come up with something that isn't too common and isn't just personal to myself.

I thought of the idea of Typography and words in photo's expressing the meaning the photographer is trying to convey. I decided to research into typographic, more specifically the 'Light Writing' which I have previously roughly experimented with. (Picture shown below)

When researching into 'Light Writing' I came across an interesting PDF (http://www.cagrimmett.com/illum/lightgraffitiguide.pdf) explaining how to get the best result and it also posted examples of the work and linked several blogs that produced excellent light writing results, such as http://www.flickr.com/groups/lightjunkies/. The techniques however are too advanced for me as I am relatively new to the technique.

My idea was to research into iconic London landmarks/locations and capture light writing spelling out memories/events that occurred there that are important in time, such as The Olympic Stadium, which holds different memories for different people. I want to also ask people on the streets of any memories they may have of a certain location, or my friends and use what they say as inspiration for the words I want to spell out. This makes my project more interactive as I'm not just using my memories, I'm, collecting memories from other people too.

The 5 photo's will be of different locations, such as The Olympic Stadium, The 02 Arena, Camden Market and so forth. Originally I was thinking of making the project more personal by writing out emotions/memories that I had from a certain location such as my student accommodation or my local park at home, however when reading the comments I was given, I was informed to not make my project too personal to myself. I am yet to take tester shots, however I am going to test with the technique and familiarise myself more by testing with my camera. I intend on going home next weekend, so I plan on taking all my shots then, as I live in London.

In today's editing session we managed to organise all of the audio clips and managed to cut to the keywords we wanted. The process itself was very long as we had over an hour of footage to cut down to between 5-10 minutes. Some of the interviewee's also included a lot of 'Um's' which made the process a lot more picky and difficult. Adobe Audition itself is quite an easy program to get used to if you give it the time and effort and we wanted to incorporate what we had learned in Joe's sound lessons into our Reflections work.

                                                                      Finished Timeline of audio clips.

Currently after our first day of editing, we are still cutting up the clips and cutting the audio that we want, which is keywords in the interviews we did. The process however is quite time consuming, and we've spend the first day only managing to collect up some of the sound we want, however when working closely with Lauren and Tom (Thomas has a wider knowledge of sound editing programs than we do), we came across several sounds that we'd like to include in the film, and several ways that we could approach this, for example we've decided we want a low bass frequency at the beginning titles and that can be achieved with programs such as Audacity (shown below).

Shooting began at 9:00am when I met Lauren and Shahid to pick up all the equipment from Lauren's. We then took all the equipment over to the studio, set up and began filming at 10:00am. Our first interviewee, Rosie, arrived around 10:30am followed by Rob. The problem that we faced was that people turned up at different times throughout the day, however by 6:00pm we had filmed everyone and got more than enough footage that we were satisfied with.

On the day, we decided that our first shot of each interviewee would be of them holding a photo that meant something to them such as a time when they were at home with their friends, which seemed to be the most popular kind of photo. There were some interviewees that felt nervous and didn't speak too much, which may be eventually cut out, however there were some that spoke a lot unexpectedly, which was great. After we finished packing up, we took all the equipment back to Lauren's and took all the footage off of the camera, and put it on Lauren's main PC and Hard Drive, so we had a back up in case anything went wrong. Overall the shoot itself I felt was successful.

If I was to do the shoot again I would organise the shoot in a more detailed way, so that we would not have to wait around for some people, which sadly happened at times during the day. In addition to this, I feel that we could've possibly got more out of some of the people that were interviewed due to some being quite shy about opening up to the questions.

Here are some behind the scenes photos:

During this meeting, we checked to make sure that we had our production pack in order. That day we decided to book G27 (Green Screen Studio) however we discovered the only available date was Wednesday the 12th of March, which was the second week that was available for us to film, rather than the previous week. We then decided that we would talk to Rosie on the Monday and explain the situation.

On the Monday we discussed the situation with Rosie and it was okay for us to film the following week. This gave us just over a week to prepare for the next shoot permission tutorial with Rosie, so we went off to the library and made changes to the dates of filming and the risk assessment. Because we had came up with a list ourselves of the people starring in the film, we then went off individually and collected up the donated footage we needed for when it came to the editing process.

I started by collecting footage from Julia and Charlie (shown below).