Mood Board

As a part of my research I have collected some images similar to ones that I would like to recreate when it comes to filming my self portrait, I have placed these images into a mood board to create the sort of tone that I would like to portray. The images that I have selected are similar to the type of shots that I want to recreate. Some of the shots a scenic shots, these are there to help me create a certain type of atmosphere and to help get across what type of scene I want to set, these type of shots I will use to help establish what I am filming and lets the audience know exactly where I am. Other shots are the things that I would like to include into my film, they are the things that I enjoy the most, the shots are also to help set what sort of colour tone I would like my film to be, I love the tone of natural light.

For my ending shot I would like to have myself stood at the beach, preferbally at night, or if this does not work then at sunset, stood in the distance with a camera taking a shot of the sky.

Portrait: Artist Research - Cristina Otero

Cristina Otero

Cristina Otero is a Spanish photographer currently living in Madrid, she is known for her work of self portraits. Otero started photography at the age of 13, and by the age of 15 she had her very first solo exhibition at the Kir Royal Gallery. 

Throughout my research I came across Cristina Otero, there were different elements of her work that I found quite inspiring, her work can come across as quite dark but shows realistoc elements of what people could be feeling on the inside, from looking at her work I get the interpretation that she is trying to show us what we wouldnt normally see about someone when we first look at them.

 While Otero's work seems to come off as dark and realistic, there is also vunrebility in the work from what I see, we are shown something that we would not expect to see, we are seeing something way deeper than what we actually see on the surface.

What I think I like most most about Otero's work is that a lot of it comes of as dark and something we would not expect to see, however there are times where she would use bright and vibrant contrasts to showcase something completely different. 

Initial Idea

Initial Ideas Development

Idea 1

One if the first ideas that I first had was to have something to do with the beach, this is because I have always loved the beach and spending time at the beach, I also grew up around the beach. I would of at first liked to have filmed in Scotland where I spent a lot of my childhood, however that was not possible as I would need to be there for about a week and I would have no way of getting myself or my actors there. So I decided any beach would be good enough.

When thinking about the beach, I though how would I be able to fit it into my self portrait, I then thought that I would like to have photos of me from my childhood added in, and then I thought how I like taking walks down the beach.

So the final idea for this was that I would be walking down the beach and I along the way I would find baby photos of myself scattered around, further along the walk the more pictures I found, the older I got in them, the last picture that I would find would be the most recent pictures of myself. 

Idea 2

Another idea that I had was to create a morphing video, I always found this types of videos interesting and to be able to do one of these videos for myself would be fun, I have enough pictures of myself from when I was younger to be able to do this, I would start of from when I was a baby and gradually morph the pictures into who I am today. 

Idea 3

The last Idea that I had is very similar to the first one, I have always been into collages, I thought of having pictures of me hanging around a room from my childhood, however I would have things that I enjoy doing around the room too, things such as photohraphy, having my camera in the room with some of my photography around the room, photos of me with friends together, music, just the general things that I enjoy doing in my spare time. 

Ideas

While researching what I could do with my self portrait film, I was watching many different videos trying to get some inspiration on what I could do, I then came across this video, its a video that shows how a young girl has gown and changed over the years of her life. The technique that had been used was the morphing technique.

Before starting any of my research, I was thinking that I would like to use this technique when creating my self portrait, I think it would be a nice way to show a way of change. I have many photos of me from my childhood so the video would be something that I would be able to create, I also feel this would be a fun way of showing how I have changed and who I have become.

Idea Development

While researching and thinking about what I could do for my self portrait film, I came across this short film on YouTube, I was intrigued to watch it so I could see what other people had created when making self portrait films.

This is a film by a guy named Tom Thompson, I came across this short film randomly, when watching the film I found that the ideas I thought of have some similarities to this film, I want to be able to express who I am through the film that I will be creating.

In my own film I would like to express who I was and who I am now, I though of maybe using some photos from when I was a child to now, this shows who I am and how I have changed. I think this would be a simple but effective way of illustrating change and helps to express who I really am.

Group Portrait Project

Group Portrait

During class we were asked to get into groups of 4/5 and make a 2-4 minute self portrait video, this was to give us different ideas and would allow us to experiment when it came to making our own self portrait videos.

I think this small project went really well, at first I thought it was going to be quite hard, with having four different directional styles and inputs, however we all found a way to work together and we were all able to all get our ideas out. We began to brainstorm all the different ideas and found that we all had similar ideas so this made it easier to come up with our final idea. 

We came up with some ideas based on time and how our personalities portray who we are, when it came to the filming and our end result, it didnt exactly end how our brainstorming was. Instead we just went with the flow while still kind of sticking to our brainstorm. 

When it came to filming, we all took it in turns to film each other, so we each had time to practice what we wanted to do, it was important for everyone to be able to get the shot in focus, to make sure we had all the shots in focus we used the features Zebra and Peaking. I found that the shooting went really well, we had a lot of space in the room and we chose a room with big windows so we had a lot of natural light. 

With the end result I was quite happy with how it actually turned out, even though it was very different to what we had originally planned, I liked the way it turned out, it was something different to anything ive done before, I never knew how to edit the way we did so it was good to learn a new way of editing things. 

I liked the idea that we used when we put different points of our faces together in the edit to make it one face, I think this worked really well and is something that I would like to try again. 

Drama Series Choice

Fringe

Chosen Series: Fringe

Directed by: Joe Chappelle (2009-2012) is one of the only directors to direct this series for a long period of time, he has directed 16 episodes of the series and has also worked on others shows such as CSI: Miami and The Wire. The shows other long standing director is Brad Anderson (2008-2011) he has directed 12 episodes from the series.

Created by: J.J. Abrams

Format: A drama/sci-fi that ran for 5 seasons between 2005 - 2013 and was aired on Fox Broadcasting.

Plot: A female FBI agent who is forced to work with a scientist who used to conduct experiments and his son to investigate weird crimes that are seemingly part of a larger pattern, they may be connected to the scientist and a global company called Massive Dynamic.

I chose this series because I used to watched the show and when we were given this task this show instantly popped into my head, I like the style of writing that has been used within this drama. I really like that this how almost has a supernatural spin to it, when watching this series I can see the way that I would like to have directed different scenes.

I chose the trailer for season 3 because this is one of my favourite seasons from the show and I think that the scene that I do from the series will be from this particular season.