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Since our final major project started becoming more of a reality at the beginning of the year, I've been thinking a little bit of what I do with it. Since then, I've thought about doing a sort of collaboration with an artist from outside the course. A video showcasing their work, perhaps.

Last week, we had a lecture on what exactly we need to do for our FMP, including research, pitches, proposals. I've been trying to get some solid ideas together, which is the easy part, I think. What I'm really struggling with is researching it, and finding ways to make it all feasible.

(My very first idea was to have about twenty or so people throw balloons of acrylic paint at a plain white wall, and get pretty messy themselves, and then have them paint over it all with white again. I don't even know. It's a little silly and probably really over-ambitious, but you've got to start somewhere.)

I think that what I'd prefer to do is make a video with a spoken word performer, preferably one who isn't widely known on the Internet. This stems from videos that I've seen online, such as:

How to be Alone by Tanya Davis. Film by Andrea Dorfman

To This Day by Shane Koyczan

I've also considered doing an artist, or a musician. If I did an artist, I could make a video of them doing the work, plus an interview with them about the piece. If I did a musician, I could interview them and maybe make a music video, too. Or do a live session, or.. The only trouble is is that I don't really know how to get in contact with someone and then pitch the idea to them, and I'd better figure that out pretty soon, too.

If it comes down to it, and I can't find anyone to collaborate with, I might take an historical quote or speech, and make a video surrounding that. I'm thinking that I want to keep using some time-lapse elements, and include some typography also. 

Last Tuesday, about half of the course went down to London for a few days. We left Blackburn at nine, arrived in London just after twelve. That first day that we were there, we sort of just chilled. I went over to China Town with some friends, checked out some shops. Got some really awesome pizza at Pizza Hut. It was an alright time. 

On Wednesday, we all went over to the Tate Modern, which is decidedly the creepiest place that I've been to in a while. I know that I should probably be more open-minded about these things, but even from the outside, the Tate Modern doesn't look entirely inviting, and it's much of the same inside. Dark, cold. It gives off this really uncomfortable vibe, and I won't even be ashamed to admit that the entire time that I was in there, I felt a little anxious. There's some really questionable artwork in there, and I didn't even make it all the way up to the fifth floor, because I left after glancing at a book that included pictures of rubbing a dead animal's entrails all over a naked female. 

It really freaked me out. 

Anyway, I strolled around for a bit outside and then headed back to the hotel for a few hours before we all left to watch Spamalot at the Playhouse Theatre. I've never seen Monty Python & the Holy Grail, which is apparently against the law over here, to not have seen it, and I'd also never been to a live musical before, but I've gotta say, the hour and a half that I spent in that theatre was probably my personal highlight of this trip to London. It was great. A+. I'll actually have to watch Monty Python now.

On Thursday, we got up pretty early and headed out to the Saatchi Gallery, which I also really enjoyed (and was apparently one of the only people who did.)  They have some really awesome Russian exhibitions on at the moment. I could've spent a lot longer in there than we did, really. I took pictures of everything.

Gosha Ostretsov, Sex in the City 

Alexander Kosolapov, Lenin Coca-Cola (1980)

 Francisco Infante, Procession Series (1978)

Erik Bulatov, Entry - No Entry (2006)

After that, we headed back to the hotel to grab our stuff, and then went back to Euston to get our train,

Practice time-lapse, filmed by me, drawn by me. Music by Oliver Tank.

We had another live studio session today in the studio, this time with "local" (exact location unknown) singer-songwriter, Natasha Lea Jones.

I walked in late, and admittedly, I didn't really do much. I was assigned to a so-called B-crew, but the session was over so quickly that we hadn't had the time to switch. So, I'd spent most of the session watching, and occasionally acted as backseat director, making shot suggestions, etc. 

Back in October, at the very beginning of the course, we did a small workshop on scratch film/direct animation. I liked it, and now that we're into a part of the course where we're focusing mostly on our own work, I've been wanting to do it again, but on a bigger scale.

Jadeanne and I had decided, before winter break, that we wanted to do a film together, and last week I suggested that we do this again. I showed her an artist that I'd previously researched, Richard Reeves, and she was all for it. So together, we're going to be working on a three-minute scratch film.

But because I'm also going away next week, I also wanted something else to work on while I'm gone, in addition to the footage that I'm hoping to get while I'm there. So today, I unravelled three-minutes worth of 16mm film (just over 100ft), and another length that's about a minute.

I sent my essay off to Steve on Sunday. I'd written on context and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and because I hadn't been able to write enough on just one film, I'd also compared Shaun of the Dead. Both films were directed by Edgar Wright.

When I emailed it to him, I had pointed out that I was aware that the conclusion was completely terrible. I've never really known how to wrap up academic essays very well, and I pointed that out to him. 

When he responded to me, he confirmed that my conclusion was indeed completely terrible and suggested ways to fix it. He also pointed out that my use of slang (which I thought might be appropriate given the subject of my essay) was sort of on the edge of things that are okay to include in an essay, and that I might have wanted to expand more on a few on my points, but that for the most part, it was fine, it demonstrates my enthusiasm and interest in film, and shows that I can write clearly.

Not entirely sure if this is worth making a post about, but before Christmas break, we were assigned a written essay brief, instructing us to do the following:

1. Explain the term "context", and give a simple example.

2. Select a minimum of one piece of art or design made in the last 150 years. Analyse the artwork, using the following formula:

Describe the piece

Describe the formal aspects of the piece

Interpret and evaluate the artwork (what does it communicate, etc?)

3. State when the artwork was made and tell us something about the time and place in which it was made.

4. If you can, explain the way in which your chosen artwork fits into its context and include some documentation: quotations by the artist or comments by a critic or writer.

Over Christmas break, I broke into Bryan Lee O'Malley's fourth instalment of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series, in which the aforementioned Gets it Together. I was originally intending on doing my essay on the film Tideland, but as I made my way through the book, I thought of Edgar Wright's film adaptation (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), and I figured that I could probably write considerably more about a film like that. So I did.

In other news, on January 21, I'm going to be going to the States for a few weeks. The course has changed slightly now, and the next term is devoted to just making work, really, and Jamie told me that he'd try to hook me up with a semi-decent camera when I go, so I'll be able to do some work while I'm over there. 

I'm sure that I'll probably come up with some real solid ideas while I'm there, but for now, I'm really interested in making a POV video, or maybe a driving-through-the-city sort of video. Kind of like this:

It's a Monday, and I'm not really supposed to be in college today, but a combined force of the stress of upcoming assessment week (starting tomorrow), and the excitement of my film kind of drove me in. SO.

I spent a large majority of Thursday editing my time-lapse. I showed Jamie. It was just under four and a half minutes long, and it really was sort of drawn out, so he sped it up again, by another 100 or 200%. That left it at just over a minute long. He told me to find another student, Aaron, and have him show me something to do with colour correction.

Aaron did that, and I found it pretty informative. He showed me how to mess with the RBG Curves, which I found pretty simple. I don't think I can explain what this does technically just yet, but I played around on it, and it does look a little better.

(Not a representation of my actual video; I didn't mess with the blue)

Aaron then showed me how to edit my audio a little bit using the Pen Tool, so I can cut it down and merge parts together.

I then showed Fozia, who seemed pretty happy with it, although she did complain that the film made her look left-handed. To remedy that, I only had to flip the video, but I also had to render it after that, which I really didn't have time for on Thursday.

Which brings me to today. I just came in to render the film, but after I watched it over, I felt pretty dissatisfied with the speed of the video vs. the audio. Before, it was the entire intro of the song I had chosen (Last Songs by Dntel), plus the ending sort of merged in. The intro of the song is pretty slow, but the song picks up in the middle, so I started again completely on the audio. I kept some of the intro, used more of the mid-part of the song, and then some of the ending. 

This time last week, I wouldn't have know how to do those things.

This is one of two videos created from our shoot at the Tracing the Century exhibition, edited by Anthony Preston.

I suppose that this project really starts long ago when, through my interest in illustration, I discovered dutch artist Teo Skaffa. 

There's An Ache to this Town, 2011

When I liked his Facebook page, I was happy to see that he's a huge user of it. Not only does he upload regular progress pictures as he's creating each of his pieces, he also records himself doing it.

Little Drop of Poison, by Teo Skaffa

Now, I always get really stoked when he uploads a new video, and since then, I've realized that these time-lapse art videos, they really aren't that uncommon:

Play, mcbess

Terraced City, Amy Shackleton

I've always found these time-lapse videos majorly interesting, not only because it provides an quick insight into how an artist goes about creating their work, but it also just looks really good.

So I thought, yeah, I wanna get in on that. And considering that I have all the resources at my disposal, including friends on the course who are specializing in art, then really, why not?

So today, after admittedly not planning anything other than booking a camera and talking to a few people about it, I got started. My friend Fozia had a few pages she needed to fill in her sketchbook, so she agreed to let me film her.

I used the Canon XA10 for filming. I propped it on a tripod that I stood on the top of a table, tilted it down, and away we went.

I won't really mention what Fozia did to create her art, seeing as how she and the video will be able to explain it much better than me. 

Overall, it all went incredibly well. We spent around four hours on it, on and off while we waited for the paint to dry, and captured about an hour and 25 minutes of footage. I am concerned that I might have overexposed it, although I'm not really sure.  Also, when Fozia began outlining her picture, I took the chance to zoom in on parts of the painting, which I wasn't sure about at first, but it actually turned out really well, and I wish that I'd done it much sooner.

As soon as we finished, we took it over to the edit suite, where Brian helped us speed it up. We first sped it up by 1000%, which gave us an eight-minute clip, and then again by 200%, which gave us just over four minutes. After rendering, the whole video flowed really smoothly, and with a few more tweaks, and a little music, it should be finished.

Sean Dower is a fine artist, but he works in sculpture, photography, film, sound, and performance art.  He's also a lecturer at Central St. Martin's School of Art, the University of Brighton, and Chelsea College of Art and Design.  

During his lecture today, he talked about his academic life and his career. He studied sculpture at Camberwell School of Art and Design, and then attended Rijksakademie van Beeldenden Kunsten in Amsterdam.

Because he works with a variety of things, he showed us a variety of art (which can also be viewed on his website.) I did enjoy quite a few things:

Hot Music, 1994

Sean took a child's music toy and learned all of the pre-programmed patterns that was in it. He created a sort of track with the patterns, and then started playing some air drums in time to it. He recorded this video, and he also performed it live.

Zou Zou'z Mime Reconstruction, 1993

In 1985, a French artist who goes by the name Zou Zou performed a mime in which he describes a space. In 1993, Sean found a recording of the performance, studied it, and then created the space. 

I found this piece particularly helpful in understanding reinterpretation a little more. 

A new exhibition is opening tomorrow at the Tate. A couple of us went to the press meeting to get a few interviews and to view the exhibition. 

Tracing the Century

We arrived at the Tate at around 10:30. We were given press passes, and were able to view the exbition on the fourth floor, as well as Matt Saunder's exhibiton on the ground floor.

All that I knew at this point is that we were there to film a couple interviews. I asked if I could film one of them, Graham agreed. Matt Saunder's exhibition was naturally pretty dark, and we weren't able to set up any lights, so Graham scanned the room, trying to find a good place to set up. He settled for a spot on the right side, just in front of two pieces.

He then started to mess around with the camera, checking the exposure, and using white balance to sort out the colour. I mentioned before that, after the camera workshop that I'd had with him, I didn't really understand white balance. Although I wasn't adjusting it on the camera myself this time, I watched pretty closely as he was doing it, and seeing it in action in a real situation, I'd like to think that I understand it a little more.

So, Graham finished setting up and I filmed an interview (which was conducted by one of the fine arts students that had come with us) with Matt Saunders. It wasn't exactly nerve-wrecking. The camera was on a tripod, and I'm sort of confident that I'm able to zoom/pan/tilt the camera at least decently. That being said, I was really hesitant to do any of these things without Graham's direction. He stood behind me during the shoot, and like that one time when we filmed the Nightingales, I didn't understand that I was allowed to fix the shot without being told. In fact, I was expected to. Matt Saunders moved around a lot, and I was shy about following him. Graham mentioned this towards the end and afterwards, and I've stored it away under things that I'm supposed to do while shooting.

After that, we went around Matt's space and we got some ten-second shots of his artwork. This didn't take longer than ten or fifteen minutes. After that, I thought that I'd be done.

We went up to the fourth floor, which is where the rest of the media students were busy getting shots of the artwork up there. I sat by for a bit, and then Graham approached me and asked me if I wanted to keep going. I jumped up and set up the camera with him. The curator of Tracing the Centry, Gavin Delahunty, then gave a sort of introduction/summary talk about different parts of the exhbition. He didn't move around at all, so I just had to stand by the camera.

It was around 1:30 when we finished, and we left Liverpool at 2.

Cedar Lewisohn was second in the line-up of guest lecturers. He's an artist, a curator, and a writer.

His time spent talking to us was split into two lectures; one about his career, one about street art.

He spent the first hour or so talking about his career. He's a curator at the Tate Modern, and he's worked on several projects, such as Rings of Saturn, Rude Britannia, and Orbitecture.

It might be just me, but listening to him talk for such a long time about nothing other the work that he has done in the last few years was incredibly disengaging. It isn't that I found him entirely pretentious or self-engaged, I just feel that he didn't really offer us any information that we, as students, could really relate to at this time. In contrast, when David Sheppard came in last week, he spoke about how he ended up doing what he was doing, about different opportunities that arise, etc. David talked with us and about us, Cedar talked at us and about himself. I had struggled to keep focus.

Next though, he went on to speak about street art. In 2009, he published Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution, and much to my pleasure, he talked less about his book and more about the content of it.

His book includes work from the following artists, and more:

Barbara Kruger, exhibition at L&M

Barry McGee, Houston St. New York (2010)

Remi/Rough, 3 Kings

After this lecture, we were able to ask him a few questions. The discussion that followed was largely about street art. There was a particularly interesting discussion about how Cedar doesn't consider political murals to be street art exactly, and yet he still included Banksy in his presentation to us because, apparently, Banksy talks about things that people are already well aware of. Does this make it street art? I'm still not entirely sure what separates Banksy from a mural in Northern Ireland, other than a popular, commercialized following.

However much I do disagree with him, it was still a great discussion to listen to.

Today, we met David Sheppard, a musician, critic, biographer, and writer. Never heard of him.

He only talked for about forty or fifty minutes, but what he told us had a pretty profound impact on me, which sounds really lame, but I'm not sure how to describe it any other way. He started off by speaking about how he had set out to be a musician, and he talked about his time spent touring around the States, playing in obscure venues to tiny audiences with his band. At the time, he had been given the task of writing about his time on the road, and when the band had arrived back in New York and spoke to their promoter, he had realized that he could write. So, he started writing.

He transitioned from speaking about his early life to speaking about his professional career so seamlessly. He talked about writing for Q magazine, and how he had met up with a friend, Gemma de Cruz, an art writer who had wanted to create a magazine that catered to both art and music. Together, they came up with the Art & Music magazine, which they had independently published for two issues before it was taken up by Charles Saatchi of the Saatchi Gallery.

But really, David's entire point was that, sometimes people do set out to do something, and something else presents itself. Another path, opportunity, whatever. And just because we all have a (rough) idea of what we want to do, while we're working towards that, we could end up doing something different. And it was actually really reassuring to hear that. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do, but to know that there's a chance that I could end up not doing that, but still doing something creative; or, I could end up doing that, and end up doing something else, and then something else on top of that. There are so many possibilities, really. This isn't a straight course that I'm on, which is exciting and inspiring all on its own.

Anyway, David also talked about the Internet/modern technology and its impact on art, particularly that, due to being so easily accessible (in the form of online galleries, downloads, etc.) it sort of takes away from the "specialness" (direct quote) of it. That totally makes sense, in the way that I download mp3s, but feel that it's necessary to buy the hard copies of my favourite bands' albums, so I can hold them, physically flip through the booklets and touch the disks and whatnot.

It was with this idea that he co-founded a Second Language, an independent record label that produces exclusive albums featuring artists of a variety of genres. The album covers/sleeves are hand-made, usually including more than just a CD.

I have to admit, I swooned pretty hard over this part. I like music, I like hand-made stuff.

He brought a couple of examples with him.

Richard Moult - Yclypt

Richard Moult is a painter, poet, and musician. This album includes four tracks, and it's presented in a sleeve that includes a painting (postcard size) by Moult, a poem by Moult, and some small, plastic leaves.

dollboy - Ghost Stations

Inspired by field recordings that were taken when dollboy, Oliver Cherer, visited a series of abandoned underground stations in London and Berlin.

Inside the case, there are maps of both the London Underground and the Berlin U-bahn, as well as a sort of timetable (I assume, anyway), and a customized ticket.

(To be honest, had I known about this record label at the time that this was released, I would've been all over this album. Not at all surprised but still entirely bummed out to find that it's sold out on the website. )

Music & Migration (Various artists)

This is a compilation about birds, people, and migration. The case was created using recycled materials, and the package contains a sort of transparent migration map.

David gave us a sampler of some upcoming music from the label (which I've been listening to as I've been writing this; it's a collection of ambient tracks and it's amazing.)

I think that it's fair to say that my knowledge of artists/writers/film-makers is pretty dire. I do need to step up the game of researching and learning and finding inspiration (if finding is the right term), but I can say that I'm stoked for the remaining guest lectures this month. The rest of them fall on days that we're in class anyway, so I can't see why I wouldn't be sitting all of them. Massively excited, and it looks like David Sheppard has another follower, of sorts. 

Produce illustrations using a variety of techniques and materials, exploring the theme of grids, layers and reflections. The illustration produced needs to explore the idea of reproducing a primary photograph, drawing, painting, object etc. using processes, techniques and materials in a creative manner. The final outcome can be produced in any format: 2D, a relief panel, collage, stencil, computer etc.

For this assignment, we had to take a drawing or a photograph, and we had to use different methods to transfer it onto something else.

My original piece was a picture that I had taken while I was still on the Level 3 course. Jo printed out a couple of copies for me:

I then traced out one of the main parts of the image: the girl.

Then, I used carbon paper to transfer the traced image onto another piece of paper. Carbon paper was entirely new to me, but it works exactly like a pencil. I placed my blank paper on the bottom, my carbon paper on top, and my traced image on top of that. By going over the image again with a sharp object (a pencil worked fine), it was then reproduced on the blank paper. It was pretty simple. I copied a few of them, and went over one again with a fine-liner.

Then I tried something a little different, suggested by a friend on the Fine Art pathway. I covered the front of one of the copies of the original picture in PVA glue, and then I stuck it, face-down, on some canvas. 

I had to wait a day while the glue dried, and when it did, I poured some water over the top of it and began to rub away the paper. The ink itself doesn't come away from the canvas unless you rub too hard.

I had to do this a few times. The paper would dry and turn white again, so I would pour water on it again and rub away another layer of paper. The image became more visible each time.

Considering that yesterday, I finished the filming of my project, and that I really want to get it out of the way so I can start working on something else, I started editing right away.

At college, we use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our footage. Brian took me into an edit suite, showed me how to transfer and correctly store my files from the camera, and gave me a little workshop on the software. Really, he just showed me how to import my files and set it up, and then he left me to it.

When I was 14 or so, I had this sort of/not really embarrassing hobby of editing anime to music on Windows Movie Maker. Premiere Pro is a little more professional, but it's all the same, and I started to get the hang of it pretty quickly. And even now, I'm starting to realize that I still really like it.

I only spent an hour or two on it today, but I managed to weed out the takes that I don't want, and I've organized the shots into the order that they need to be in. 

Editing the footage has been pretty good too, because now that I can see the footage on a larger screen, I can see that my shots aren't as bad as I'd originally thought. They're not perfect, but you know.

I was also worried that, after editing it all, my film wouldn't be long enough, but now I can see that I'm going to have quite a job cutting it down to three-minutes. I suppose that it's better to have too much than too little.