Tuesday, 18 December 2012

My Final Project

My Final Project
                            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h28lUxTTfc&feature=youtu.be


                                                               Spoken explanation
                                         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3Ivm7zOTkc


My final piece is based on the idea of palm reading which fits in perfectly with the topic of story telling as it involves telling someone else the story of their future. I feel that this is quite a delicate issue as if this news is bad, then the person may be affected badly and feel frightened and anxious if they choose to believe what they have been told. Due to this negative feeling I decided to attempt to make the video feel eerie and as uncomfortable as possible, I did this through the use of uncomfortable music in which I had actually first heard the songs in horror films (this means the songs naturally are likely to be uncomfortable to tie in with the horror). I also made the background very dark by having my only light source as one candle and placed the tripod on a table so the light was only shining on my face which directs most attention on my face and adds as much darkness to the scene as possible whilst still being able to see my face. I got this idea from a film I had seen in which the camera is only on John Malcovich, in which the scene depicts the visual idea I was looking for (link to scene = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE9zhfUpYW0).
 My Version


The story I created for this short film was for it to be about a teenager who had gone to get his future revealed to him with the outcome being that he would find out he was going to be murdered. The main moment in this whole video would be the realisation of the boys future in which the palm reader has a vision ( which palm readers say they sometimes get when palm reading) which reveals all. To make this work I attempted to make the vision seem as dream like as possible so there was no confusion about what was going on. I did this through using countless special effects and by alternating between picture and film by adding flashes of my palm reading experiments into the film as they included the boys hand and the moments of his death which was the key realisation of his future.

 On example of a flash which I used was the picture of the boy dead, in black and white with a hand covering some of the photo, this was to give a hint of what was coming up but so the viewer was still unsure of his future if they noticed it. It also included the story telling art of subliminal messaging in which a story is told to influence a thought or desire.

The vision also includes the boy introducing himself in spanish then changing to english in the space of a second, this is to make it seem less life like and to show it is indeed the boy which will die. After this vision the palm reader then springs up looking shocked, disorientated and scared. After a few seconds realisation kicks in and all he feels he cannot tell the boy and can say is the words "I'm sorry" before ending the palm reading session and blowing out the candle. The dialogue at that point is very quiet as I wanted the audience to interpret it in any way they wanted to. I also didn't want it to sound too cliche and seem like a horror movie in which the very ending is the realisation of the twist which is said out loud with no background noise in which the movie then comes to an end with one sudden sound of an instrument as I feel that could seem quite cheesy. To avoid doing this I kept some backing music to keep up the tension with a growing loudness of a climatic sound effect. I purposely made the film quite short as instead of going into great detail, I wanted there to be a feel of mystery and for people to cast their judgement on what was going on at the end as a story may have a different meaning to everyone who reads it and I also believe everyone has a right to think what they want to think and I'm against there only being one way of seeing something.

Overall I am extremely pleased with my final piece and feel what I set out to do was achieved. I hope it makes the viewer think and maybe even feel uncomfortable with the things being touched upon as although this would be a negative mood, it means that the film achieved something by getting into peoples heads.

Thursday, 25 October 2012

Palm Reading Experiment initial photos to be used in Final Piece

Fight scene and death experiment to be used in Final Piece vision.
Before I do my final piece, I have to gather op some experiments I've done to flash up in my short film to give the effect of death in a palm readers vision. To make it the most obvious to the viewer I decided to go with the moment of death, and the killing. For the fight scene I set up a camera facing the door so it seemed like the fight had already begun and had moved into another room for more space, I also set up stage lights to make sure everything was well lit. I then went in after effects and edited in the hand of the boy who was to die, I did this so the viewer would know which one of the boys were going to die. I did this by going in photoshop and simply masking the background away from the picture of his hand, and place it over the picture as an overlay before using the blur tool to smooth out the edges so it didn't look too out of place.
For the moment of death, I decided to make it seem as real as possible so the tension in the stranglers hand and the expression in the strangled boys face had to be perfect and I think I did a good job of this. This picture is also going to flash up in my short story. I think the colours in the picture contrast well with each other for example the white background contrasts with the boys black hair and the boys white shirt contrasts well with the stranglers navy blazer, this shows evil through the navy, and innocence through the white.

Hand 1(Bright)                                                               
I chose this hand picture to be in the fight scene due to it being the best lit photo I took and for it being the sharpest, it was very easy to take as I just had to set up some stage lights and make sure the position of the hand was right, then take the picture.
 These photos unfortunately though did not make the cut due to them either being not lit well enough or not being sharp enough.

 Hand 1 (dark)
 
Hand 2 (Bright)
                                                                     Hand 2 (Dark)
                                                                   Anonymous
                                                                 

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Hand Experiments

                                            Hand Experiments                                           

For this experiment I decided to focus on the signs which can be portrayed through sign language via hands. This ties in to palm reading because the message is received by the palm reader through the clients hands without them having to do anything, whereas in this project, the messages are provided by what the client does with their hands. Either a positive or negative message can be sent by these signs and the messages can sometimes be over looked due to the amount of times these signs and gestures are used in daily life. I have taken two pictures of each gesture in which one is well lit, and one is a mere silhouette. The well lit photo symbolises what we see everyday, whereas the       silhouette symbolises the underlying message of the gesture.
                                                                     
                                                                         Peace

   General Description: The V sign is a hand gesture in which the index and middle fingers are raised and parted, while the other fingers are clenched. It has various meanings, depending on the cultural context and how it is presented. It is most commonly used to represent the letter "V" as in "victory"; as a symbol of peace (usually with palm outward).
                                             
 I will soon mount these for an exhibition and i plan to have some see through paper with the words
Up yours! I’ve worked far to hard fighting for my country for you to sit there and tell me I’m to lose my middle f****** finger, just cause you cowards are to weak to handle us you’re forced to fight dirty.     Where’s your honour for your country? Your passion? We will not forget this, and when this war is over, rest assure that we will make your country look even more pathetic then it does right now.
How did this start? Generations after generations did not go through such hardship for us to still be in a mess like this. We all have our issues with others yes, but this should not bring the innocent trouble. When power takes over a man, he is a puppet, controlled by his ever increasing complex, his need for respect and authority. This is obviously wrong though you see, as the man is going about this the wrong way for true respect is given to those who make the effort to evoke peace, and those who are at war with others, are not at peace with themselves."


                                Giving someone the finger, or the bird                                        
 
General Description: In Western culture, the finger (as in giving someone the finger or the bird), also known as the finger wave, the middle finger, flipping someone off, flipping the bird or the one finger salute is an obscene hand gesture, often meaning the phrases "f*** off" or "f*** you". It is performed by showing the back of a closed fist that has only the middle finger extended upwards, though in some locales the thumb is also extended. Extending the finger is considered a universal symbol of contempt. Many cultures use similar gestures to display their disrespect.
The gesture dates back to Ancient Greece and was also used in Ancient Rome. Historically, it represented the phallus. In some modern cultures, it has gained increasing acceptance as a sign of disrespect, and has been used by music artists, athletes, and politicians. Many still view the gesture as obscene.
                                                               
  -->
I don’t believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn’t matter – it’s only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you. However if you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world. As all human beings are, in my view, creatures of God’s design, we must respect all other beings. That does not mean I have to agree with their choices or agree with their opinions, but indeed I respect them as human beings. Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.



Two Fingered Salute
  
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore [soldiers would] be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew." Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, "See, we can still pluck yew!"
Over the years some "folk etymologies" have grown up around this symbolic gesture. Since "pluck yew" is rather difficult to say, like "pheasant mother plucker," which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows for the longbow, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a fricative "f," and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter.
                                                                         Respect

A fist bump or respect is a gesture similar in meaning to a handshake or high five. A fist bump can also be a symbol of giving respect. It can be followed by various other hand and body gestures and may be part of a dap greeting. It is commonly used in baseball as a form of celebration with teammates, and with opposition players at the end of a game.
The gesture is performed when two participants each form a closed fist with one hand and then lightly tap the front of their fists together. The participant's fists may be either vertically-oriented (perpendicular to the ground) or horizontally-oriented. Unlike the standard handshake, which is typically performed only with each participants' right hand, a fist bump may be performed with participants using either hand.







Palm Reading Research

                                                                 Palm Reading   
 
I believe palm reading is a well justified form of story telling which i find interesting as it details an idea about somebodies future and personal information about themselves. I have chosen to do some experiments based on what type of stories that may be predicted by palm readings. I plan on having a full picture in which shows what is planned to happen in the persons future but the persons hand will be plastered at the very front of the photo to see whether the reader as any inclination of who the person who's palm is being read could be. The hand will block out some key details of the story so the reader has the chance to put pieces of story together themselves and make their own decision about what they think is going on. It interests me as although i personally believe it is all just a combination of showmanship, myth and simply conning money out of people which is very similar to other peoples views but there is no way of telling whether there is some truth behind the tales of people futures which have been predicted being true.

                                                      Technique
Palmistry consists of the practice of evaluating a person's character or future life by "reading" the palm of that person's hand. Various "lines" ("heart line", "life line", etc.) and "mounts" (or bumps), purportedly suggest interpretations by their relative sizes, qualities, and intersections. In some traditions, readers also examine characteristics of the fingers, fingernails, fingerprints and palmar skin patterns (dermatoglyphics), skin texture and color, shape of the palm, and flexibility of the hand.
A reader usually begins by reading the person's 'dominant hand' (the hand he or she writes with or uses the most)(sometimes considered to represent the conscious mind, whereas the other hand is subconscious). In some traditions of palmistry, the other hand is believed to carry hereditary or family traits, or, depending on the palmist's cosmological beliefs, to convey information about past-life or karmic conditions.
The basic framework for "Classical" palmistry (the most widely taught and practiced tradition) is rooted in Greek mythology. Each area of the palm and fingers is related to a god or goddess, and the features of that area indicate the nature of the corresponding aspect of the subject. For example, the ring finger is associated with the Greek god Apollo; characteristics of the ring finger are tied to the subject's dealings with art, music, aesthetics, fame, wealth, and harmony.
                                                          The History Of Palm Reading
Palmistry is a practice originating in the Far East. The practice of palmistry has been used in the cultures of India, Tibet, China, Persia, and some countries in Europe. Studies show that most ancient communities like the Hindus, Sumerians, Tibetans, Hebrews, Babylonians, and Persians were greatly interested in the study and practice of palmistry.
It is believed that Palmistry originated in India with its roots in (Hindu) Astrology (known in Sanskrit as Jyotish), Chinese Yijing (I Ching), and Roma (Gypsy) fortune tellers. The Hindu sage Valmiki is thought to have written a book several thousand years ago, whose title translates in English as "The Teachings of Valmiki Maharshi on Male Palmistry", comprising 567 stanzas. Renowned palmist Cheiro learnt palmistry in India where he is believed to have read ancient scriptures on palmistry. From India, the art of palmistry spread to China, Tibet, Egypt, Persia and to other countries in Europe From China, palmistry progressed to Greece where Anaxagoras practiced it. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) discovered a treatise on the subject of palmistry on an altar of Hermes, which he then presented to Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.), who took great interest in examining the character of his officers by analyzing the lines on their hands. Aristotle stated that "Lines are not written into the human hand without reason. They emanate from heavenly influences and man's own individuality." Accordingly, Aristotle, Hippocrates and Alexander the Great popularized the laws and practice of palmistry. Hippocrates sought to use palmistry to aid his clinical procedures. Modern palmists often combine traditional predictive techniques with psychology, holistic healing, as well as alternative methods of divination.

Thursday, 18 October 2012

The Life Of a Water Droplet

Stage One : Birth
Stage Two : Growing Up
Stage Three : Forming Bonds
Final Stage : Death


In this experiment I decided to focus on using inanimate objects to portray life, I decided to do this in different stages. The first stage represents birth which involves the water droplet being created from the action of turning on the tap. The second stage is growing up which involves the water droplet traveling further and further away from the tap which is a metaphor of progressing through life. The third stage is called forming bonds which resembles the creation of a family and in the picture you can clearly see multiple droplets which are touching to form one line of water. The final stage resembles the death of the droplet as the water droplet hits the wall and cannot progress any further through the cycle and is wiped out from it's journey.



Francis Bacon Research

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstracted figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. He began painting during his early 20s and worked only sporadically until his mid-30s. Before this time he drifted, earning his living as an interior decorator and designer of furniture and rugs. Later, he admitted that his career was delayed because he had spent too long looking for a subject that would sustain his interest. His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, and it was this work and his heads and figures of the late 1940s through to the mid 1950s that sealed his reputation as a notably bleak chronicler of the human condition.
Personally i find the paintings look quite disturbing, i feel the subjects in the photos are in pain due to the intense orangey red background and due to the fact the faces seem to be screaming. I also feel this as the "bodies" look bent and mutated out of shape.
 From the mid-1960s, Bacon mainly produced portrait heads of friends. He often said in interviews that he saw images "in series", and his artistic output often saw him focus on single themes for sustained periods — including his crucifixion, Papal heads and later single and triptych heads series. He began by painting variations on the Crucifixion and later focused on half-human, half-grotesque portraits, best exemplified by the 1949 "Heads in a Room" series. The colours are very un-naturalistic on the face but the hair and coat seem normal, this also looks violently mutated and disturbing.
 Following the 1971 suicide of his lover George Dyer, Bacon's art became more personal, inward looking and preoccupied with themes and motifs of death. The climax of this late period came with his 1982 "Study for Self-Portrait", and his late masterpiece Study for a Self Portrait -Triptych, 1985-86.
After looking at Francis Bacons work, I decided to give it a go. For my first triptych I stole a picture from google images of some already made photography (the rubber duck with swans) and tried to find a meaning behind to which I found it to be a sort of 'something doesn't fit in' effect in the photos. I then decided for the other two photos to go along with this theme and took a photo of a darts board in which the one that doesn't fit in, is outside of the the double 10 which the others had gone for, but is still inside the ten in the "0". This shows it is different from the others. I used depth of field in this photo in which it is very blurry at the top but slowly becomes very focused at the base, and slowly becomes a bit less focused at the dartboard. This is to show that appearance shouldn't make anyone different, I did this by putting the flights (which are coloured and designed for decoration) out of focus. I showed the message that the person which matters, I did this by making the base of the dart in focus which shows it is the most important bit in the photo. Finally I also showed that our future is unclear by making the dart board out of focus which shows that we don't in all honestly, no exactly where we are going to end up. I also think the photo was well lit and that the red, green, black and white all contrast very well with each other throughout the picture. For the last picture in the triptych I took a well lit, sharp picture of two biscuits. The message of the picture is that no matter what colour or shape people are, we are all the same things and do the same jobs and that it's what's on the inside that counts. To show this message I got two different coloured and shaped kinds of the same type of biscuit and removed the top covering in order to show the inside of the biscuit (person) is what matters and it is practically the same in both biscuits. I feel this triptych worked well over all as the same message throughout symbolising things which didn't fit in but if you look further into the photo (person) you can see that they are in essence, all relatively the same in their own ways.
My next triptych was meant to symbolise the things which I feel are most important in my life. I therefore went with my main interests and the things that make me happy which are Family, Nature and Music. In order to make this triptych effective I made sure that all the photos were well lit and sharp in places. For family I chose to do a  photograph a Christmas tree decoration which I was given as a present a while ago. I feel Christmas symbolises family due to it bringing families together when they might not see each other all the time throughout the rest of the year. Family is important to me as I know in life no matter what happens, I will always have people who care about me and will always have the memories I spent with them. The photo was very well lit with a nice effect of shine on the hat and the photo is extremely sharp overall. For the next photo I decided to show nature through taking a picture of a flower. I feel this photo worked very well as I chose one part of the flower to focus on and made it very sharp whereas the rest of the flower is very blurred and out of focus which therefore creates the effect of it looking far away when in all reality it is extremely close. The colours of what is focused contrasts very well with the angelic white of the petals as well and adds to the depth of field effect. For my final photo, I decided to photograph a guitar as it is my favourite instrument and I wanted to play with the depth of field effect again in this photo. I did this by laying the guitar down and putting focus on only the strings so that everything else was out of focus. This made the neck of the guitar look extremely  far away in which it begins to look like a long stretch of road which is ahead.

Friday, 28 September 2012

Story Telling Book Work

I looked through my book as soon as i was handed it and found a page in which a note with some information was stuck in between two random pages, i began wondering whether it was purposely put on that exact page, whether it was on a page with some meaning to the person who put it here or whether it was a totally random occurrence with no meaning. With this in mind I thought it would be an interesting place to start so i photographed the exact placement of where i found it making sure the detail was crisp and clean.
 

After taking the photograph i wanted I then decided to mess around with the shutter speed and try merge some what the book gives details of in one picture. I set the shutter speed to 5 seconds (making sure it was dark) and started by turning the page onto a page of interest to me and then closing the book all together. I found on my first attempt that it did not show enough of the book being closed so i attempted it again making sure to leave the camera on the hardback of the book for a longer time. It took me three attempts to get the photograph i wanted with the main problems being motion blur, the picture being too light and the picture not containing enough of each of the three segments but in the end I'm happy with the final result.
                        Attempt 1.
Attempt 2.
Finished product.

 I wanted to take the most crisp, well lighted and clean photo i could showing almost all the details of the parts of the book as I could i one photo so i opened the book to a random page and borrowed another book to put behind it. I thought the photo turned out very well as there is a high contrast of colour between the white and the black with the black being very smooth, shadow creating and partially light reflectant. I thought blur at the start of the page looked good and smoothly became more focus as it reached the hardback.

My main inspiration throughout the experiments were Cara Barer's book photos in which the book is very well lit but the rest is relatively dark. She also makes sure that most all of the book is very sharp, crisp and well in focus which is did for most of the pictures up until the last one in which I experimented with depth of field to show a sense of distance in the photo.


Wednesday, 26 September 2012

Story Telling Brainstorm

    This project is based on story telling and how the way stories are told have changed over the years and generations. Story telling has been around since cavemen days, the reason we know this is due to the discoveries of real drawings back from the cavemen times. Here is an example; at the turn of the 20th century, some French children made an incredible find in the Pyrenees Mountains - drawings of extinct animals in caves. The 35,000-year-old paintings on the walls of the Lascaux Caves are our earliest recorded evidence of storytelling, and since Lascaux we've found dozens of other examples. In class we were told some examples of what to research which included cavemen drawings and the Egyptians invention on frontalism. Personally I found the Nazi book burning to be the most interesting example which was given. This is because I always have found World War 2 to be interesting and the pictures seem very eerie and almost satanic. 


The earliest forms of storytelling were thought to have been primarily oral combined with gestures and expressions. In addition to being part of religious ritual, rock art may have served as a form of storytelling for many ancient cultures. The Australian Aboriginal people painted symbols from stories on cave walls as a means of helping the storyteller remember the story. The story was then told using a combination of oral narrative, music, rock art and dance. People have used the carved trunks of living trees and ephemeral media (such as sand and leaves) to record stories in pictures or with writing. Complex forms of tattooing may also represent stories, with information about genealogy, affiliation and social status for example with this tattoo it is very random and should mean something different to every eye which beholds it.


With the advent of writing and the use of stable, portable media, stories were recorded, transcribed and shared over wide regions of the world. Stories have been carved, scratched, painted, printed or inked onto wood or bamboo, ivory and other bones, pottery, clay tablets, stone, palm-leaf books, skins (parchment), bark cloth, paper, silk, canvas and other textiles, recorded on film, and stored electronically in digital form. Oral stories continue to be committed to memory and passed from generation to generation, despite the increasing popularity of written and televised media in much of the world.

Ofcourse over the years certain ideas from stories have been stolen or changed and the more a story is told, the more the reader changes it therefore making the story change all together so people hear different versions. An example of different versions and copies of original work is that of the character "Athelia" by shakespear



Artist Research



In order of me gaining the inspiration for my work in the future I did some artist research into artists who I think portray storytelling very well through their photos.
Cara Barer

Cara Barer is an amazing photographer who tends to use books in order to tell a story through her photographs. I think it is very effective how all focus is on the book, through the book being well lit and the background being pitch black, and the way it has been manipulated and ripped apart is a different thing we usually don't see, usually a book is very straight and closed up whereas in this, we can tell there is more then meets the eye, personally my view is that the pages of the book look like they're trying to escape the confines of the hard back, I also believe they look like the birds eye view of a stump of a tree. 

Tom Allen

Tom Allen is another photographer who shows story telling through books but in a very different way to Cara Barer. In fact, the only thing that is relatively the same between their work is the fact the books are both well lit and the background is dark. The main change in my eyes is that Tom actually add things to the book whereas Cara just sticks with the book and adds nothing. A few of the main contrasts for me are that Cara Barer's photos seem to all be very sharp with no sign of blur whereas in Tom's pictures he uses blur on his characters which are further away in order to show the view the depth of feel and also to leave some mystery into who the character behind the front of the book is, it also makes it look a lot more realistic.