Collection 100...Research proposal

Visual Language; 3.

For this brief we were given something to search for around us, i was given the number three, i could look at this in any way i wanted to wether it be things in groups of three or the literal number three. I took it from a less literal point of view and mainly looked at things grouped in threes. 

Video elective.

Our idea: 
Benji has a personal love for documentary photography and I find documentary video generally quite interesting. This is where we came up with the idea to stalk someone on the way home from university to his or her house. Originally we wanted to create a film where we actually stalked someone without them knowing but due to safety and privacy of a person Benji and myself decided to ask a friend if we could film them and they would act as if we were stalking them.

The music played throughout the video is from the film Pay It Forward. It is called Desert Drive by Thomas Newman. We felt this music went best with the film as it creates a mysterious and voyager feature to the video.

Storyboard:

Treatment:

It's late on a cold wintery evening as Emily leaves university ready to head home. She's unaware that he's been watching for a while now and is sat in the shadows waiting for her. 

As she exits the building he makes sure he's completely out of sight, waiting to make his first move and once there is distance, sets out to follow her. 

He makes himself scarce by hiding behind bins and fitting in with various crowds he comes across in the street. While he waits silently behind a building Emily looks back, although still unaware he is there, this adds an element of excitement for him.

As she walks through the university grounds areas become darker giving him an opportunity to dangerously close. He follows without losing any sight as the night is getting colder and darker. 

He occasionally gets ahead of her through shortcuts but still hiding in the shadows. The journey seems as though there is no end and he becomes restless knowing he's so close. 

Emily turns a final corner and he watches silently as he is unintentionally being led to her home. She climbs the steps up to the house and closes the door. He sits for a while with the intention of returning one day soon...

What if...

For this project we had to come up with a problem that relates to Leeds based on the research we did for 'collection 100'. The problem my group came up with was that Leeds seems to have a lot of graffiti, so we posed the question 'How can we make graffiti more sociably acceptable'

We did a whole body of research to back up the fact that graffiti is seen as a negative in Leeds. On this final sheet we came up with two solutions, a legal wall where graffiti can be seen as self expression or an exhibition that could possibly warm the public to the idea of graffiti actually being art. We preferred the gallery idea because this means more of the public would be able to view it and it hasn't been done before. 

(presentation boards we produced) 

At our interim crit we were informed that setting up a 'fake' exhibition doesn't actually answer the brief so as an alternative it was suggested that we set up an actual gallery online where people can go and interact. 

We set up a website that also linked out to a blog as advised that artists could go to, to share their work, this meant we were therefore answering the 'live' element of the brief as this is actually out there now for people to go and visit online. We produced both posters and flyers to promote our site that we placed in various places to show how they would work. We kept these two elements quite simple because we felt this got our message across better. A very successful element to this is our logo because it fits with the style of the rest of the project and also promotes at the same time. 

Below are all the things we made/designed. 

Set of 5 postcards (designed by myself). 

Our website. 

Blog.

Twitter account. 

Poster. 

Visual language; photography.

In this session we were taught how to use the lighting equipment and digital SLR cameras. The photos below that I took are just exploring the various techniques you can use on the camera.

When the ISO is set to a smaller number it makes the images blurry. 

So when its a higher number the image is more focused because it captures quicker. 

When the aperture number is larger the image is darker because its not allowing so much light to get into the camera lense. 

When the number is smaller more light gets in so the image is then brighter.

Using a slow shutter speed means that if the camera is moved around the image tends to be blurry. 

 Where as, when a fast shutter speed is used to image is much more focused because theres not really any time to capture movement. 

We then used what we were taught and put it into practise by photographing our coloured objects. 

These are my favourite images from photographing my objects so far.