Exhibition

It is finally Exhibtion night!, after a week of working to help each other out with setting up and creating people's work things have finally finished and everything looks really well set up and ready to be presented to the audiance. My piece of film footage was set up in the cinema room were we had cinema seats set up for the showreel the room itself was looking great and we even decided to get popcorn for people to eat while watching the showreel to give the sense of being in an actual cinema.

after all the hard work and effort which was put in by the class I feel that tonight will go well and I hope that people who are visiting enjoy the exhibition and the many media which we have to show to the public.

synopsis

here is my synopsis for the exhibition in order for people to read about my work maybe give them some understanding of what it is about:

"Title: Portraits of fear

A study on self portraits through the works of Francis Bacon,

The piece of moving image shows four acts of distorted self portraits going through various stages of fear.

The various sounds which acompany the self portraits generates an atmosphere for each act to create the sense of fear in the portraits."

Final Edit

My edit was nearly finished all I needed to do was add the 4 seprate audio tracks for each portrait and also add the 4 acts written inbetween each one also with a quote from francis bacon at the start of the edit which reads "It is a miserable state of mind to have a few things to desire and many things to fear." this relates to the portraits and I felt the quote had alot of meaning to it and stood out to represent fear.

After adding the final touches to my edit I needed to render it which took quite a while due to the heavy duty effects which I added to the edits I thought it was quite a painful process to go through but in the end it was worth it to see my footage play. 

The final outcome in order of acts:

Editing Process 2

I have now began to continue with my editing of portraits, so far I created two seprate acts which are both a series of 4 screens with various distorted moving image portraits, I think with the added audio to the images the atmosphere of fear will be created to the short piece of film. I begand ot move on and experiment with more of the footage I had I thought about how getting inside a portraits head when looking at it so I generated an effect to create a head inside a head of the portrait this effect worked really well and also gave a blackness to the face itself, I created another portrait with a normal piece of footage of me sitting there and then slowly morphing into a ghostly figure to which would represent death this took abit of time as i wanted to make sure the fade was just right in order for the effect to take place. I went on to put these pieces in their 4 acts from one leading onto another and another etc Im happy with the experimentions and how they were turning out the portraits of my face disfigured and distorted from its origanel setting really was showing a disturbing sense of fear through my work.

Editing process

With my filming finished it was now time to start the editing process, this would be the most crucial stage of my FMP as this would be were I would introduce the element of fear by generating distorted versions of my portrait using the effects avalible to me on adobe premier pro. The footage of my film was transferd to adobe in a HD format were I would then drag it onto the timeline in order to start editing my footage, I started to slice bits of the footage I had filmed and experiment with the effects which I had avalible I found there was alot more choice on this editing softwear compared to the older version which I worked with during my previous work.

looking at my various experimentations I looked back on francis bacons work were I hit on an idea to have 4 portraits in ones screen to create a small series of distorted images, I figured that minimizing each screen to a scale of 38.1 and making them equal would generate this small series of images into one screen, I also decided to make a second one with diffrent distorted images as a small series. so far the editing is going well only two more acts to create.

Filming

I started my filming today in the college tv studio, I decided to use myself in the portrait as I looked at francis bacon's art work of self portraits which inspired me to do one of myself. I had help from my college friends Dan and Ben to help set the lighting in the studio and also the vison mixer as I could not do it on my own seeing as i was the subject being filmed, The lighting was a probelm as i could not decide on how I wanted the lights to be set for the scene as I wanted some shadow on the side of my face which we evntually managed to do in the end.

Here is a diagram I drew out of the studio to give an idea on how the setting was for the filimng of the portrait.

Using one of the three HD cameras I set up the shot of the postion I wanted to be in for the portrait. The shot was straight down the middle of the cameras view focused on the portrait of myself. I thought the shot looked good and captured 3 - 4 mins of footage which is all I would need for the editing process of my film.

Francis Bacon portraits

Looking through Bacons work I started to take intrest in his self portraits, I looked at how the images were distorted and morpherd giving them a diffrent state of mind making them disturbing showing a diffrent type of emotional state to how they were originally pictured.

"The living quality is what you have to get. In painting a portrait, the problem is to find a technique by which you can give over all the pulsations of a person ... Most people go to the most academic painters when they want to have their portraits made because for some reason they prefer a kind of coloured photograph of themselves instead of having themselves really trapped and caught. The sitter is someone of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their emanation." - Francis Bacon.

The works of bacon is somthing which I intend to work from for my short film of portraits, I want to combine fear into the portraits so that each of the portraits has an elment of fear in each one of them, I intend to use this to enter ones state of mind and to portray the fear shown through moving images and audio.

Portraits

Looking into the work of francis bacon and his portraits they have given me the insperation to base my short film on portraits which they will be moving images. I intend to film the portraits using the studio in college so I can set up a single HD camera to use for the filming, I will position the portrait in the middle of the studio with the black backdrop so I can frame the position up through the cameras view.

The lighting will be an important part to the portrait, I will need to deicde on what lighting to use on the portrait when in the studio using the lights to set a tone on the person being filmed.

Progress

In recent progress I have been struggling to generate ideas for my film, me and my tutor had a discussion on what diffrent forms of fear there is and how these kind of fears lead peoples lives, I generated a mind map in my sketchbook to help me create ideas around fear and diffrent links.

I was recomended to watch this short film called "Dads dead" the film pieces together moments from the young mans past with his best friend Johnno.



The film's experimental effects caught my attention such as the ghostly figuers and disfigured faces gave great fear to the film, the sound and atmosphere of the film was impressive the quikness of the sound at points gave a sense of paranoia making you think what was that? or were did it go? my intrest in this make me want to look at using simaler ways to experiment with in my film.

Fear

Looking back on my previous project which was based on hope and fear, I looked into how light and darkness represented them both. I went on to see how light could be seen to people as hope and how darkness could be seen as the fear in which people want to avoid in the night and to use the light as comfort for their own saftey. I used these in my film experimentations in which I filmed street lights in the darkness and added sound over the top to give somesort of an atmosphere from which I created high and low key tones on my synthesizer, by matching the tones to the light and darkness i generated an atmosphere for hope and fear.

Looking at this as a refrence helps me to generate an outline of how to go about creating the fear of which I intend on using in my film.

What elements could I look at in fear?

- Death
- Living
- Darkness
- Alone
- Paranoia
- Disturbing
- Shadows
- Structures
- Danger
- Symbols
- Failure
- Psychological
- Nightmares

These are considerd to be part of fear which links to the human condition, looking at what our minds create and how we create fear to ourselves and others. Fear is part of what runs the world and what makes people who they are and how they act making desicions on either living with fear or dieing with fear.

Bacon Painting Insperation

                                Study after Velazquez's Portrait of pope innocent X (1953)

"We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream, and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death. - bacon"

My intrest in this painting is how bacon showed the fear and terror through the scream of the pope, the fear of living and of death is shown through the pope's scream and this could be shown as a symbol of fear to represent both.Bacon was always haunted by velazquez pope he never saw the origanel painting, he imposed a horrific theme onto the pope with dark shades of colour and sharp yellow lines, the figure was distorted and twisted and bacon created a not so innocent pope.

Bacon worked from many images to create a series of screaming pope paintings. he took a still image of the nurse from the film "Battleship potemkin" and morphed that image of her screaming into the face of velazquez's pope.

1:49 - image of the nurse screaming.

The Alphabet

David Lynch - The Alphabet from Ben Barros on Vimeo.

'My wife Peggy's niece was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. That's sort of what started The Alphabet going. The rest of it was just subconscious.' David Lynch - Lynch on Lynch


One of lynch's early short films from which inspired me into developing my 1st idea for my FMP.I found the film to be disturbing and almost nightmarish which made me look into the idea of "fear" and how I could look at ways to disturb the audiance and place them in a diffrent mind set. The combonation of animation and live action in the film inspired me to look at using still images (photographs) and moving images together to be used in my experimental film. I found the sound to be an important aspect to the film as that is what disturbed me the most when watching it, taking note of this has inspired me to create my own sounds for my film and to generate an atmosphere.

I created my breif which I have set myself to work from for creating my FMP. This will guide me to creating the specific work which I have set myself to do.

The Pitch

On wednesday the 6th april I presented my two final ideas for my FMP. The aim was to decide between the two ideas and pick the one which you thought would be the best and workable. From looking back at my influences and the pieces of work I developed, I decided to continue with my experimentations and lead myself to incorprate the skills and knowledge which I have gained during this course into My FMP.







My 1st idea which I presented was based on creating a short experimental film which would run between 4 - 6 mins long and would be seperated into 4 parts (4 diffrent acts) the film would incorprate the 3 elements of moving image, audio and photography, I would also look to try new techniques and experimentations to incorprate in the film for example "Chroma key" I would look a placing a piece of moving image infront of a photograph as the backdrop. The film would be based around the idea of fear and I would show fear by creating the 3 elements which I talked about in my work. I also looked back at my "fear hope" project were I looked at light and darkness and how they would relate to hope and fear were I could also link them to heaven and hell. The idea for this was from looking at David Lynch's short 1968 film called "the alphabet".

My 2nd idea was to look at at creating various experimentations of moving image which was to be filmed during day and night, I would then look at manipulating the images using/creating effects on adobe premier/final cut, this would be followed by high and low key tones which I would generate on my synth to describe the day turning into the night. These pieces of moving image would be displayed on 4-5 monitors I had the idea of the them to switch between each other when either the high or low key tone was played on the monitors. My insperation for this piece was when I visited the "Nam June Paik" exhibition at the liverpool tate gallery and had displays of various video art using monitors an example would be "The robot family" this is what helped me to develope my idea.

The conclusion

My final conculsion between both of these ideas was to stick with the 1st idea which I thought related more to my previous work and I know somthing which could be achieved, the secound idea however I thought would be a problem due to being able to get hold of the monitors and looking at how to get each tone right on time with the moving image when they switched. I took in feedback from the class and tutors about these potential problems and also to explore more research into artists with a basis of fear in their work which could help me with finding more insperation and influence into my work.

What path am I going down?

Since starting on the foundation course I have been leading myself down the road of Experimental film, This is the right pathway for me because it is what inspires me to create various pieces of my own work, I have created various pieces of work through moving image, audio and photography these 3 elements are what I want to coninute working with and maybe look into using in my FMP.

This is my 3min experimental film which I created, It was inspired by the 1968 drama "Whistle and i'll come to you" their was a certain scene which caught my attention at the time were the professor is having a nightmare and being chased down a beach by the ghost/thing which is haunting him. I decided to incorprate some of the elements from the drama into my experimental film, During this project I also learnt a new technique in editing which is how I got this effect in my film and I may consider using this effect in my FMP. I was very proud of the piece of moving image which I created and its here to view below.




I have looked into experimenting with sound and composing experimental pieces for my short films, I have been inspired from russalo and his noise machines and also I'am inspired through my own experimentations of sound and music which i make as a personal hobbie using synthesizers, household objects and an electric guitar. The audio is an important element to my films and I think it develops an atmosphere to the piece of moving image which you are watching. Below is a piece which i did for my recent project on hope & fear, using my synth and editing on adobe audtion I generated this piece of sound which is supposed to give the
atmosphere for fear leading into the hope, please take a look.

Final hope & fear by oscar douthwaite

I have looked into light photography which inspired me alot from looking at Gjorn mili the farther of electronic flash and pioneer of strobe photography and also looking at other light photography artists such as Lichtfaktor, In my photogrphy class I decided to try out light photogrphy using a cannon SLR camera and a slow shutter speed on the camera I created various pattens using a torch light and experimented with the light to create various effects.

take a look

I am hoping to incorprate moving image, audio and photgraphy and from the skills which I have developed through these projects I hope to ultimatley use in my FMP.

I hope to update you all to my 2 ideas on my next post :)