Working in School (with the laptop)

Tuesday 20th April 2021

Today I brought in my laptop to school so that I can work with it. So far I have worked on my greenscreen stuff and have been updating my blog a bit. I have looked at my action plan and I feel that I am mostly on track with the exception of the interviews (but I have scheduled three for Thursday though I actually have a prior engagement) and the halfway evaluation which is fine because I can do them this week while trying to experiment.

I have gotten my project and progress reviewed by my tutor while we had a one to one tutorial today. He found no problems (at least he didn't point out anything) with where I was so far and what I planned to do. He did however suggest that I read what looked to be an academic paper about how physical mementos had an impact on digital memories (something like that) which sounds quite interesting and relevant. He also suggested that I could potentially use green screening in the introduction of my film. Other than that we just discussed similar things to what has been brought up in previous tutorials. I think that other than having my tutor review my project I should perhaps get outside eyes to look at it as well.

In terms of location sourcing, I have decided that I will have one interview in the store of one of the interviewees because I think it really reflects them as a person and their vision, it is very homey. I think the narrative of my film will be built with the interviews and the interviewees. Though the action plan suggested starting to film next week, I think I will try and start as soon as possible. Speaking of next week, I have a better idea of what I want to do with my presentation. At first I was just thinking about having what I have made of my film play and have sheets for people to fill in but I think that idea is too boring and not really engaging for the viewer. Instead, I think I should take portraits and perhaps childhood pictures of the interviewees (blurring their faces) and frame them in (images of) things like TVs, photobooks, cinema and computer screens, school portraits and perhaps clothes. The images could perhaps be detachable from the various backgrounds (pins/tape) and the idea would sort of be 'You Make Your Identity' or something like that. I think that idea is more fun.

I don't know whether I talked about this before but I didn't go for that Adobe After Effects workshop because I realised that it had to do with animation which I am not interested in and it is not relevant at all. There are more workshops available so this time I should make sure that they are ones I want to do before I sign up.

During this morning's meeting we looked at a video titled 'Photographer Sketchbooks' by The Art of Photography to help us think about presentation and display it was interesting and got me wondering if I should get a sketchbook. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjdBm7dy9D8

We also looked at a video titled 'Rambling Talk about John Cage' by Alec Soth. I found this one more interesting and I really liked this quote from John Cage, "My intention in putting the stories together in an unplanned way was to suggest that all things are related and this complexity is more evident when it is not oversimplified by an idea of relationship in one person's mind."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ThO8YshdM