FF5ive Presents...

ANAMNESIS

Evaluation

At the start of the project I imagined fashion film to be a fast paced film with upbeat music, and quick cut editing. Our fashion film is nothing along the lines of this and therefore I have learnt that there are so many different ways a fashion film can be presented. Fashion film is a very broad term.

Problems with our initial designer occurred when she didn't reply and was unprofessional. This was quickly resolved and we were able to get back on track. Although our whole project had changed, as a group we responded much better to Jo's collection/designs than our original collection of menswear clothing. 

Our research began with looking at the film Amour that was another piece of inspiration for Jo’s collection. We chose to reference a scene from the movie in our film. The main character pours a cup of tea but misses her cup as her mind is elsewhere. In our film we used a teapot and teacup as props and got he model to lift the cup as to pour tea. Later in postproduction we were able to show animation of the tea dripping and overflowing as if to illustrate her mind overflowing with memories. To develop our study further, and gain some different inspiration we also looked at some fashion films that were uploaded to the Show Studio website. Although they were not suitable for our style of film, they were still helpful in terms of understanding lighting and specific camera angles that helped to show off the clothes. Once we had distinguished our target audience we were able to agree on a style of film that would be watched by someone in our target audience. The style editing and music were also chosen to link in with our audience.

Something that caused a slight issue was our model. We originally decided on two sisters who were red headed and 5'8. Unfortunately they were not the right clothing size to fit Jo's collection. We then agreed on a model called Zana but at the last minute she became unavailable. At this point we started to stress, as this was the day before we had planned to shoot the film. Thankfully, the agency suggested Jodi Lakin. Having previously worked with her I knew she would be good for the job, however she's only 5'6 as so this was something we were concerned about but it would be something we would have to deal with as we didn't have much time to find another model.  

In terms of working as a group, I think that we worked well together, setting each other tasks and giving feedback where necessary. Everyone understood if people had outside commitments and we would arrange to meet up around these times. We would all have our own tasks to complete and show the next time we met up.

Prior to editing we needed to analyse all the video footage we had shot. Although we had a time limit of 10 minutes we knew we only wanted our video to be a maximum of 6 minutes. Therefore, we had to cut down the amount of footage. Selecting and picking the correct footage was a long process and we based our decisions on what would look good visually and also create a good narrative. Thus, the video footage we didn't include did not fit into this criteria. Having thought about the amount of footage we shot, we decided that if we were to reshoot we would have shot a close up of the teacup and teapot, as they were significant props.

Moreover, I decided to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our film, as I felt confident in using this software having attended useful workshops about it. When starting to edit, we made choices based on what we thought would look good visually. But, as well as this we wanted our editing to fit in with the sound and be relevant to our circular narrative. In order for the audience to understand the circular narrative, we repeated some of the footage at the end that was shown at the beginning. Also, the most intense part of the film is about halfway where the rope maze and close up shots are shown. After this, we aimed to slow down the pace of the film by zooming out and showing long shots so the audience would understand the film was coming to a close.

Furthermore, from having watched other fashion films and music videos I was inspired by Kid Cudi’s video “Make Her Say”, you can see two videos being shown at one time by splitting the screen. This technique was used to show the contrast of the clothes. These clothes are supposed to show the process of the deterioration of the mind. In addition, we added a ‘glitch’ effect to a lot of our footage. We did this as another way of portraying to our audience the uncertainty of the mind during an illness. The made our video slighting jittery and hesitant. In order to produce a wider range of visuals we added in illustrations and animations throughout so that it would look consistent.

Furthermore, we agreed on creating a blog as our group rvj. This was easy for us all to access and post our own work at the same time as each other. We did not need to rely on one person to bring in a sketchbook and therefore this method was much more efficient.

Additionally, it was decided that in order to get our video out to the public we would advertise it on social media. In order to do this I made some spoiler clips that would be used as trailers and posted in the prior week to the film being released.

Overall, we worked well as a team to create a five-minute long fashion film. I am really pleased with the outcome as it shows all of our hard work has paid off. Re-watching the video over and over again enabled us to notice small areas that needed touching up. Each time we did this we were able to rectify something else. Throughout this project, I have gained a lot of knowledge including how to use a Cannon C100 camera, the definition of fashion film and also how to edit using Adobe Premiere Pro. If I were to reshoot the film I would try doing it with two models (i.e. the two sisters we were going to chose originally).

Photography is dead...

Jonathan Day- Lecture

The important task of all art is to destroy the equilibrium.

Mediatisation- individual behaviour is shifting
This relates to the notion that behaviour is shifting to emphasise those things that are photographed over those that are not.

Roland Barthes
Susan Sontag

statistics
-3.5 million images uploaded daily to flickr
-58 images uploaded every second on instagram
-300 million photos uploaded everyday on Facebook

Snapchat - temporary social media

Roland Barthes believes that the photograph is a violent media 


Diane Arbus

400 million snapchats sent daily, statistics show the majority of users are women under the age of 25.

Photographs are moments to record against the entropy of time. 
Photographs are communication
Photographs are imagination

"Camera is a sketchbook, spontaneity" - Henri Cartier Bresson

Social media platforms are used for image harvesting.


"Photography has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject" - Duane Michals

Photographers tend not to photograph what they can't see, therefore we should go beyond that.

Mondrian - the art of destruction

Books:
The Afronauts
A period of juvenile prosperity
Raised by wolves
City Fathers, Robert Frank

Mishka Henner questions what happens to the meaning of an image if we remove information from it. 

Social media satisfies our photographic needs whereas books allow genuine and honest exchange. 

Jonathan concluded by suggesting that..

The archive may be defined to follow the physical image library into a dusty and preserved obscurity, within the digital image library holding virtual representations of all of those archived images.

The gallery becomes a conundrum- the desire for the unique fetching old and wet processed images, this then subsumed by simulacra replications of such images using chromogenic printers, a change necessitated by the convince of technology. 


Having attended this lecture, it is clear to me the impact photography has within social media. I feel as though photography can be taken for granted because of this and not appreciated for the art form that it is. I believe it is important to remember that everything we see on a screen is not always what it looks to be. The screen can deceive what the eye sees as natural beauty.  

Feedback

Having received feedback from Jessica (our fashion stylist) has really helped us to understand what we did correctly and areas we could have improved in. We would definitely take these points into account if we were to ever work as a team to produce another film again. 

How does our audience connect with key points in our film

We wanted to make the connection between the fashion collection and our audience stand out within the film. One outfit in particular emphasises this, the model is wearing a suit which represents the working class. Rope is used as a prop here to make the scene more busy, as well as this we also added animation which enhances the same effect. Thus from this, one can see the representation between our film and a working class woman going about her daily routine which is hectic/chaotic, trying to juggle a million things at once. 

Enterprise

By posting our teaser clips to Facebook and Instagram I aim for our video to be seen by a wide audience and perhaps possible business or companies that may be interested. 

Coming soon...

In order to advertise our film I created some teaser clips :

These videos will be posted on social media to advertise our film to a wide audience. They will be uploaded in the week prior to our hand in date (26 January), when the whole film will be released. 

Title of the film

In order to think about the title of our film, I thought about all the concepts we looked at and included. As well as this, I looked over the research that we did in order to get some inspiration for the title. 

Some ideas that I came up with are shown below:

Grading

Having done some research about grading I came to an understanding that colour grading is the process of altering and enhancing the colour of a motion picture, video or still image either electronically, photo-chemically or digitally.


I found this video which discusses the differences between Colour Correction and Colour grading. 

In terms of colour grading in relation to our film,   we intend for the scenes with an orange background to look vibrant and bold. To contrast against this, those with a blue background need to look more dull and subdued, especially towards the end of the film. 

Editing Choices

One technique we decided to use was to split the screen in half to show two pieces of footage at one time. We did this to show the contrast of the clothes which enhances the narrative that focuses on the deterioration of the mind. The inspiration for the split screen came from researching other music videos. Kid Cudi’s music video “Make Her Say” shows the split screen video technique being used. 

Kid Cudi- Make Her Say

Another technique we chose to repeat throughout the video was the mirror/reflection effect. Once we decided this would be a significant element throughout we wanted to keep repeating this so that the audience would understand it was a key element throughout the film.

To enhance the uncertainty of the mind during an illness we added a ‘giltch’ effect to a lot of our footage. This provided the video with a slight hesitation element. 

To develop our film even further, we decided to include animation and illustrations within the film to provide the audience with a wider range of visuals.

Furthermore, certain clips were chosen because they featured more of the clothing and the movement within Jo's collection.

Lighting ideas

Lighting plays a very important role in our film as it impacts the mood throughout. 

Originally we had planned to use gels to change the hue within the film. We wanted to do this to emphasise the contrast between orange and blue, highliting the contrast of emotions the model is experiencing. After some discussion we decided to use two different colouramas; orange and blue, to portray this intention instead. 

To emphasise the intense points in the film, we used a dedo light and a mirror to reflect light onto the model. 

(show screenshots of this)

Shoot day

^Set up for one of our scenes 

Thats a wrap

The cast and team at the end of the day