Experimental Film - Relative Work (Poppy)

I have been looking into things that a lot of people can agree is physiologically 'creepy' and see the effects it has on people and see how they react when watching something of this calibre. There is a popular girl who is internet famous for standing out for odd reasons by the name of Poppy. Her videos consist of her just explaining random things she is doing but uses very uncomfortable angles, getting very close to the camera at times whilst talking in a soft but sinister voice. There have been lots of speculation with poppy's videos regarding if there is a hidden meaning behind all of them, if she is really as strange as her character portrays or if she is just a hired actress and the whole this is just a scheme to creep people out. I knew what my opinion of Poppy was but I decided to look further into if other people see her how I do and if so, how they felt about her videos. I found a video of a series of children watching her videos and reacting to them and as I expected, even children find her awkwardly disturbing which wasn't really a surprise. I really like the production of her videos though, how she is always just in a blank room and everything about Poppy is very light and pure; She has white hair, pale skin, light coloured clothes, along with a white background. The background is exactly what I want in my film but I may have to settle for something a little less production-wise. 

Poppy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4nHLHDtyVA

Kids React to Poppy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQkYgw52PnE

Experimental Film - Relative Work (Teddy Has An Operation)

Although I have had my heart set on trying to go for a completely phycological thriller, I decided to see if it were possible to still achieve this but on a much more light hearted scale. Through searching for a video like this, I came across a video called 'Teddy Has An Operation'. This video shows the autopsy of a teddy bear and includes a doctors hands performing surgery on the bear with a narrator explaining everything that is happening to the teddy in almost a children show host type of voice. The video begins quite innocent saying that the bear has a 'sweet layer' and reveals a lot of small wrapped candies. The innocence of the video then disappears when the doctor opens a sweet and there are used cigarette butts in it. After fiddling with the bear for a bit longer the doctor removes another layer of the bears insides and we are then met with lots of human organs inside the bears chest to which the doctor proceeds to pick out and mess with. I really like this video as it shows a lot of twisted, sinister things whilst still being able to sugarcoat the entire video in a sense and is something that I would definitely be inclined to try in the future as I think it makes the video very enjoyable to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdYaTa_lOf4

Experimental Film - Relative Work (Dining Room or There is Nothing)

The other video that my brother recommended to me is a very strange video called 'Dining Room or There is Nothing'. In this video is shows a girl sitting at a dining table, with a roaring fire behind her whilst she is staring directly down the lens of the camera with piercing eyes. The girl then opens her mouth and says a cluster of sounds. The camera zooms out and the girl slams her face into a bowl that is just in front of her on the table. The camera zooms out to a certain point and then the whole video goes back in reverse, making the camera zoom towards the girl who then lifts her head from the bowl but this time with the audio reversed she says "There is nothing" and the video ends. This video is relevant to me because it purely just makes no sense and is overall very creepy. I want to make the viewers of my film to feel the same way as I did watching this film. The thing I like about these types of videos is that you always feel that something is going to happen so there is a constant fear of tension leaving the viewer pondering whether or not something is going to scare them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns1SGo3WCF4

Experimental Film - Relative Work (I Feel Fantastic)

I have recently been speaking to my family, explaining my idea to them. Upon doing this my brother told me that he knew of a couple disturbing videos that he thinks would be relative to my work. He recommended a couple videos to me, one of which was called 'I Feel Fantastic'. After watching this video I felt it was essential to include it in my work as it focuses on phycological horror; making the viewer unsettled and on edge whilst watching it. The video consists of a female mannequin/robot standing in a small room singing the words "I Feel Fantastic" in a robotic tune The video will occasionally change shot of the mannequin or the mannequin will change its pose completely. The video has no real meaning and usually leaves the viewer unsure of what they've just seen. Seeing as this video ticks the boxes for everything I want in my video, I definitely feel like it is necessary research and I may even end up using it as second hand footage in my film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLy-AwdCOmI

Experimental Film - Schedule

Seeing as there is going to be a lot going on at once during this production, I have made a schedule to prioritise what I am going to be doing during these upcoming weeks. I feel as though this schedule is definitely going to help me keep all of my work on track. I have also colour coded it as personally I always find that when I colour code things they are a lot easier to follow.

Experimental Film: Storyboards

A few days ago I started planning what I wanted my shots to look like on my experimental film. Below are the sequence of images that I came up with.

These are the first thumbnails of the shots that I want in my film. In the very first shot I want a shot of the open room with the leg of the table slightly in shot and to be the main thing in focus, there will be a rattle of the door handle and the lens will pull and put the rest of the room as the focus. The second shot will be simple enough of a fairly close up shot of the door handle twitching and then the main character opening and walking through the door. The third will be a tracking shot of the main characters feet walking across the room. Because I don't have access to equipment such as a slider, I am creating my own makeshift slider by mounting the camera to a skateboard and pushing it along so it stays steady. The fourth shot will simply be of the characters body in front of a chair before sitting down in it and revealing his face. The next shot will just be of a cable and the subjects hand reaching into shot and grabbing it. The last of the first 6 will be a shot from behind the subject, showing him inserting the cable into the back of his neck from a side on view.

The next shot will show the subject plugged in and waiting gormlessly from the back which will then be followed by a close up of the subjects face, again looking gormless. There will then be a shot of the monitor as it starts to load up saying things such as 'processing'. I will then have a close up of the subjects stitched mouth which will be twitching slightly as he waits for the monitor load. The monitor will then load and/or get to 100% and the subjects eyes will suddenly change to a mesmerising shade of blue.

I am still yet to finish my storyboard but I am happy with how I plan to start my film with regards to how I want it to look. 

Portraits Part 2 - My Final Images

Below are my final photos for this unit.

'King'

'Monster'

'Knight'

Portraits Part 2 - Editing My Photos (Knight)

This was probably my favourite photo to edit of all three photos. I really like the background that I chose for this photo as I think that my models hoodie really goes well with the moody wasteland colour scheme of the background. After importing I dropped the shadow to make the edges slightly darker and added the rain effect that I used on my monster photo as I really liked how it set a tone for the image. The image was to intense for me when it was first imported so I lowered the saturation and darkened the highlights so the lighting would fit the backgrounds tones best. I think I am happiest with this photo as the colours are all good and everything in the final printed picture is clear.

Portraits Part 2 - Editing My Photos (Monster)

This picture was a lot more enjoyable to edit than the king photo. I began by looking for different backgrounds that I thought would be suitable. Some were okay but not quite good enough. I then had the idea that because my idea is similar to a child imitating Godzilla, that I would use the streets of New York City as that is the place that gets attacked in the film. After choosing my background I wanted to try and experiment with something I have never tried before which is changing the weather on photoshop. I watched a tutorial online and I was extremely happy with the outcome. I then proceeded to slightly darken the image of my model so that they would suit the background a bit better and I even darkened the edges of my model so the studio lights that reflected off of them wasn't visible anymore. After printing this image I found that it was too dark for my liking which again has proved to me that I need to test print in the future as you can't always rely on what you see on a computer screen.

Portraits Part 2 - Editing My Photos (King)

When editing the pictures for my 'King' photo, there were some things that were fairly simple and others that looking at now, I probably would've changed. I started by importing a picture of a thrown to make it so my model looked as though he was sitting. I decided to add a dropped shadow and increase the size so my models shadow would fall onto the chair behind him. I then decided to try a throne room background but after finding one that I liked the look of it became clear that it was far too bright. I lowered the saturation and added a yellowish tint to it which ended up making the room look quite golden and the outcome was a lot better than the original background image. It was only after exporting and printing this image that I realised that the pixels on the chair and background are quite grainy which I found to be extremely frustrating as they were very clear on my computer screen. This has taught be to test print in the future.

Portraits Part 2 - Relative Work (Sigur Rós - Hoppipolla)

One of the first things that I thought would be relative to my portrait series was a music video for the song 'Hoppípolla' by Sigur Rós. Although I am aware that it isn't another piece of photography I am looking at, I feel like this is extremely influential to what I want to achieve in my photos. The music video follows the narrative of a group of elderly people going around their town acting like young children, e.g. jumping in puddles, making wooden swords and shoplifting. This video really inspired me to think of my portrait idea. I love the idea of holding onto your youth as you grow older and to see how the person who thought of this video concept has gone to extremes to show this. 

Portraits Part 2 - Relative Artist (Chad Moore)

After looking for artists that have similar work to what I want to achieve, I came across a photographer called Chad Moore. 30 year old Chad produced a series of photos called 'June' which was all about capturing the life of the youth of today. I absolutely adore some of the photos in this series, I love how they capture so many emotions and make me really feel warm and content when I see them. When asked about what draws him to portraiture, Moore said "People are just so fascinating to me. The most exciting thing to me is photographing someone. I feel like you can really look deep into someone when taking his or her picture. For me it’s so personal. As far as my generation goes, It’s kind of like I said earlier; it’s interesting for to think about people looking back in 20 years, or even 10 years, and seeing what it was like in NYC, or Paris, or wherever I’m taking these pictures." Another reason why I enjoy these photos so much is because I feel like they are very reminiscent and nostalgic to the older generations who feel like their teenaged years are over and seeing these photos are a beautiful way for them to look back on their youth.

Experimental Sound - Final Sound Piece

This is my final sound piece. This project has definitely been a learning curve for me. I know that there are a lot of things that I could have done better but at the same time there is a lot of things for me to learn with sound so overall I would say that I am happy with what I have produced taking into consideration that I had never been near sound before this project.

Experimental Sound - Process of Making my Soundscape (Editing)

The editing process for this project was an interesting one. There were points where everything just fit very well together but there were other times which required manipulation to pitch, duration and tempo. One sound in particular that needed adjusting was the sound of the body being dragged across the floor. When recording this sound I must have made the mistake of not getting the microphone close enough to the bag so when it came to editing, the audio was quieter than the other sounds. Because of this I had to increase the volume of the whole clip, making it suitable to fit the rest of the track. 

Another problem that occurred was I hadn't read the brief completely and had made my soundscape about 2 minutes long. It wasn't until one of my classmates told me that the clip had to be between 30 seconds and a minute so because of this I had to cut a lot of sound out which was a bit of a pain at times. I had to take out certain clips which sometimes made other clips ping out of place but eventually I managed to fix it. Overall I am fairly happy with the outcome of the soundscape. If I were to do this again I would want to try and be more abstract instead of creating a narrative so I could experiment with more clips and try to distort them.

Experimental Sound - Process of Making my Soundscape (Recording)

When recording the sounds for my project, I didn't exactly know what I wanted to record. I had the idea to see what sound I could record with the resources that were available to me and then come up with a narrative based around the sounds that I gathered. One of the first sounds that I recorded was of 2 knives sharpening against each other. This was the sound that made me think of the narrative for my soundscape. After recording the knives I decided to try and collect sound that would make a soundscape for a murder scene taking place. After deciding to follow the route of a murder scene, I then had to think about the sounds that you would normally hear in a murder scene. I thought about what sort of noises I could use to replicate a body falling on the floor and so I used a packed bag and dropped in on the floor from head hight which created the sound perfectly. Another sound that I created was of the body being dragged across the floor; I got this sound by using the same bag and just dragged it across my bedroom floor and the outcome was exactly what I needed. Overall I really enjoy recording sound , the only problem that I find with it is knowing what materials to use to create the best possible outcome.