Research Task: Week Six Example

I am not necessarily going to go in order here on my blog but as I am writing the course content I am also providing examples where I can.

So in class, we are looking at what is research? and then three forms of research that we should be expanding upon by application in our blogs.

In class, you learnt that research was; “the systematic investigation into, and study of, materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions”

This is how your post should look however please do not copy my post just use this as an EXAMPLE

Research Class Exercise

Name something you have researched in the past for art, design or media.

I have researched the Czech photographer Josef Sudek

Explain how you researched this

I chose three internet sources that were most useful after looking at over 10 internet sources that contained information about the photographer and his work.  I then read the three internet sources that I wanted to use in my post very carefully and I began to write a post with the intention that I could explain how Josef Sudek's photography would inform my own still life/object images that I was taking for my project.

What facts did you discover? 

• Josef Sudek was born in 1896 and died in 1976.
• known as the ‘Poet of Prague’, was drawn to desolate landscapes, simple, solitary objects and the quiet, unpopulated street scenes of Prague, a city to which he dedicated his whole life.
• Sudek was originally a bookbinder but after fighting in the first world war and losing his right arm he studied photography.
• He was expelled from the local camera club for arguing for more progressive photography that moved away from a pictorialist style. He then set up his own group The Progressive Czech Photography Society in 1924. 
• People rarely appear in any of his work and between 1940 to 1954 he photographed The Windows of my Studio which were his best-known work of still lives and objects within his studio.

What NEW conclusions did you establish?

I did not necessarily establish new conclusions about his life however I looked carefully at his photographs and analysed these to inform my own practice. I looked at composition, tone, his methods of capturing the images, the use of windows, light and shadow. I also discussed the idea of time and how moments in time in a photograph.

In the next three sections, I will discuss research examples from a major project. Therefore to begin I will outline an example of a major project so it is clear the context of the research.

My major project is a short film that uses split-screen called 'Conversation with my walls'. I intend to create a script, storyboard, shooting plan and will edit this using Premier Pro. The finished film will be 3 minutes long.

Research into my major project

My project was about the doppelganger therefore I was interested in suing split screen in a film to convey this idea.  I will research into films using the split-screen effect. These will be: Annie Hall By Woody Allen, Snatch by Guy Richie. Back to the Future II. I will also look at the history of the split screen in cinema on how this evolved and how it is still used in cinema today.


I will consider how social and cultural factors have been exposed (such as in Back to the Future II and Annie Hall) by using split-screen. In Back to the Future II culturally how times have changed from when Marty's parents were young to being young in the 1980s. In Annie Hall it is the culturally and social differences of the families and the characters which are exposed through the split-screen techniques and also talking directly to camera - which is another technique that I am hoping to incorporate in my own film.


Here is an example of Split Screen use in Back to the Future II:

Research through my major project

I will be researching and testing Adobe Premier Pro to use as the editing tool on my project however I will also research other online editing tools for the film. I will try Videograbber and Pixiko as well to test these out.

I will also be creating a storyboard and script so I will use Celtx for the script formatting and for storyboarding I will try out Storyboardthat and Canva.

I will experiment with all of these and create posts to show how I have tried and tested these before deciding on the software I will complete my project with.

Research for my major project

For this area, I will be looking much more deeply at the concept of the conversation so I will research Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Shirley Valentine directed by Lewis Gilbert and her conversations with the wall


Please see the trailer here;

I will also look at Daniel Schreber and Memoirs of my Nervous Illness. These three very different sources look at how we talk to ourselves, think about ourselves, and how in the case of Godot it is what are we waiting for, and sometimes it feels that perhaps we are all waiting in some way for something ...


This is the outline of the research I will be carrying out, through this research I will discover new methods of working and I will explore my concept fully so that I can write my own original work.

Welcome to a New Term: Autumn 2020

 Welcome to a New Term: Autumn 2020.  Normally I would introduce the term by saying that I intend to create a project with the students however I have been doing this now over the years and so I am going to retire myself from the project making and concentrate on giving examples throughout the term of how to use your blog, how to research and how to really develop work in art, design and media.

However, I will begin with an inspirational image from the book The Invented Eye: Masterpieces of Photography 1839-1914 by Edward Lucie-Smith.

Notman Studios, Bake-Oven, Chateau de Ramezay, Montreal

This photograph is by the Notman studios founded by William Notman (1826-1891 - Born in England, but active in Canada from the mid-1950s onwards) His studios created a vast amount of images at the time. I chose this image just for its stillness, the beauty of the man alone sitting by the oven, contemplating.  The emptiness and of the place ads to the serenity, there is no clutter or chaos just these vast empty rooms.  The lighting is perfect with the man casting a long shadow across towards the fireplace and the shadow cast across the floor in-between the bright skylights where the sun is shining in.  The composition with the beautiful framing of the door within the door, the rule of thirds with the man sitting perfectly to balance the image.  Beautifully shot and beautifully still I could contemplate this image for hours.  

I am looking forward to seeing your inspiring images and hopefully, this will tell me something about you and what you are interested in.  

References 

Lucie-Smith E. (1975) The Invented Eye: Masterpieces of Photography 1839-1914. Paddington Press Ltd, London.

Reflection

 Over this term, I created a project that incorporated both digital and traditional skills.  I met my objectives for the project and developed skills in using decal and digital design.  I created this final design ..

I have to say that I do not really like it that much even though the geometry of the triangles really works with the photography and it met my criteria.  I just do not feel it had enough to it in terms of depth and it needed more work to really develop this further.  I would be inclined not to use my own face next time and explore the idea of identity in another way here.  If I was going to do this again I would use objects rather than my face and I would not add the names of the elements here - they would be underlying elements embedded into the image. Overall I definitely will not be adding this to my portfolio as this does not meet my own standards of what I was trying to achieve conceptually.  

Peer Review

 Today we were peer-reviewing each other's websites so I picked Angy Ebrahim's site from my class which can be found here: https://angybayoumy20.wixsite.com/website-1

What do you think of the homepage?

Good clean homepage is well designed and easy to understand. 

Is the navigation bar clear and easy to use? 

Very clear and easy to navigate 

What did you think of the galleries/portfolio pages? Consider the design, ease of use, and how well the work is presented? 

Portfolio pages are easy to click into.  The featured article I think I would have preferred to see the title for this or you could have a front image for all your projects and then a button that clicks into these so that this is more visually interesting 

What do you think of the biography?  Is it well written? Are there any spelling or grammatical errors?  Does it give you a good impression of the person?

The biography is well written and clear.  You may wish to update this as you have moved forward in life.  It does give a good impression and I think it represents you well as a person.  I would also update the image making you look more professional 

Is there a contact page? Is this well presented and easy to find?

Yes - clear and easy to find and well presented 

Do all social media links work?

No social media links and think that this needs to be corrected you should have a social media presence of some kind. 

Any other comments?

Good website that with a few adjustments could be excellent

Updating Website & Testing

 I have not updated my site for a while so I am going to do this now to really improve on being found on the internet and trying to gain more connection to my site.  I am going to begin by updating the SEO on my site

This makes the site easier to find and to share on social media.  

I then realised as I had been showing students things on the site many things did not actually belong there!  So I removed all extraneous items and changed the homepage buttons to reflect the correct pages.

I check my copyright was up to date and then checked all my social media links 

These all worked well and everything was up to date.  I then went to my Bio page as I prefered a bio I had used elsewhere so I changed it to this version 

After each of these actions, I republished to ensure that the site was updated live!

I then began checking the mobile view as I had made other changes this could have been affected 

The contact page was fine, but the portfolio pages the writing and buttons appeared in the wrong places so I fixed this in the editor. 

I checked all the pages and then previewed and when I was satisfied I published again

I will admit that I had neglected this site a little and as I had used it for teaching purposes it had got int a bit of a mess!  So I have now given it a bit of love and care and I can now consider how I can further improve this for the future - I think more connections with other social media and work online would bring together my work online and cross-connections will hopefully lead more people to my site. 

Process: Creating the Canvas and Developing on Photoshop

 So now I have the images I have the difficult job of picking the four that will really work together for this magical altarpiece.  So the element should go as follows:

Earth: Lower Left Corner

Air: Upper Right Corner

Fire: Lower Right Corner

Water: Upper Left Corner 

So I began by creating an A3 Canvas as this is the size I will be printing on the decal.  I then started to choose the images and add to the canvas - the images here areas shot in-camera no editing or adjustments made. I used here the resize image and ensured that all images were 300ppi

So here is the four shots together I am not sure if I like this yet but this is the base layer for the work..

Now I am going to add elements to these to see if this will work...these are the copyright free symbols I will be using

I then added these as new layers over the correct image 

This is the final result:

I will now print this onto the Decal paper and add to the wooden board - please see my next post for this process.

References:

The Buena Vida (07/11/18) Four elements to building a sacred altar [Online] Available from: https://www.thebuenavida.net/psilocybin-blog/2018/11/7/four-elements-to-building-a-sacred-altar (Accessed 23/08/20)

Regardie I (1989)The Golden Dawn 6th Edition, Llewellyn Publications, Minnesota.

Process: Taking the Shots

 So the shots I wanted to take seemed initially to be fairly simple.  I wanted four headshots that I could then add the four elements for the final piece.  I realised quickly that four headshots had to be interesting in some way to convey what I wanted in the final images and so I began with some really simple test shots to see if I could discover what I was after as I did not have an exact picture of how this would work. I used my Olympus E3 with a remote shutter release and a tripod. 

So I took the shots using natural light, in my flat, I had the ISO quite high as I wanted to slightly overexpose them so they had ethereal look in the final piece.  I created the contact sheets on Photoshop (File - Automate - Contact Sheet).  I took around 200 images so that I could experiment with the shot. While the contact sheets were processing I had a quick look at a couple of the shots:

ISO 500, F4, FL 15mm, 1/50

Edited on Picasa using Holga-ish filter. 

This is kind of the look I was after to try to get the feeling of transcendence.  The piece itself will be like the casting of a spell using ritual symbols.

ISO 500, F4, FL15mm, 1/40

Cinemascope on Picasa

This one I just wanted to see from a different perspective so I added the cinemascope to have a look!  My contacts are still processing...and finally seven contact sheets so I will just go through these here:

These first shots are just test shots to decide the angle and the light I tried them in different places in the house and looked at composition.  They were shot in black and white here you can see I also shot in RAW.

I continued to experiment with quite 'straight' shots but realised I wanted more movement in them to give them more impact 

I started to move my head a little more but realised it need more violence and spontaneity 

I started to get the look I was after and the images started to really move within the frame - sort of pain contained in the frame!

This is a long post and I think I look like pure evil in the last shot!  The best images here are the ones where my face is obscured or there is movement so now I will choose the four shots I want to represent fire, earth, air and water on the final canvas.