#spapp

On the 21st of November I was booked for a corporate photography job back near when I originate in Cumbria. This was just a day job and I had scheduled the whole weekend back at home. I rang my grandma after returning from the commission and arranged to shoot the very next morning.

The shooting process was simple and fairly efficient. I ran my grandma through what I was planning on doing and got her to briefly talk about the memories she could think of around the room. For the narration, I didn’t want it to feel forced or scripted so every now and then I had to stop her from continuing the story and tell her to remember it for when I was recording. In hindsight I could have simply set the audio recorder off during these moments to allow these more pure tellings of the stories but I was conscious about having my voice and others in the recording. Although, this could have possibly been for the better, creating a natural dialogue between us both about the memories we both share, but that’s not what I envisioned.

Once I’d got a general feel for the objects being talked about and the key areas of the room, I spent a little while organising the room to hold these objects in a fairly evenly distributed fashion. In doing this, I was channeling the original 360 room tour uses for this kind of photography. It presented the room not as an immediately inhabited state, but more of a piece of art in itself. Similar to Tracy Emin’s bed project, the arrangement of objects, furniture and the general mise en scene plays a huge character in itself. The oddities of seeing how my grandma lines up the remote controls for the TV and her excessive use of picture frames and blankets is something that (although not directly related to my grandmas memory) could bring up ideas of peoples own experiences, relatives and habits.

I set up my tripod in the middle of the room and ensured I used a spirit level to make sure the head was level, I then did the same with my cameras in built spirit level - working using a gyroscope within the body - and span the head a whole 360 to ensure It stayed this was throughout the panorama. The kit I used was My Nikon D7000 with a Tamaron 10-24 at it’s widest setting. I used an ISO of 400, an aperture of f6.3 and a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. This exposed the majority of the room (especially areas near the conservatory and windows) a little on the over exposed side. This was the look I was going for though, retrenching the work of Will Pearson. I shot in RAW and knew I could balance this exposure out better in post by retaining the shadows and bringing down the highlight areas as opposed to exposing for the highlights and having to try and drag detail back in the shadows. This often doesn't work and ends up with washed out shadows and an un natural and often unpleasing contrast. From this I set about shooting my panorama in normal fashion. Shooting wide open with at 10mm meant that I managed to get a lot of the room into each frame, I matched up easily rememberable points in each frame with the last (edge of chair on far right - next frame - far left) I ensured I gave plenty of leeway for this for when blending the images in post. This would hopefully mean that I had maximum coverage per photograph and minimise the amount of work in post. I rotated 6 times to create the complete panorama. I then panned the camera up and repeated the process to get the upper third of the room and once more for the lower. I also shot a single frame looking straight up and straight (or as close as possible) down. Due to the wide angle lens however, I would still manage to get the full coverage. To get this properly, I’d have to invest in a specialist panoramic head for the tripod that allows the camera to be raised above the plate situated on the tripod legs with an extra vertical plate to attach the camera. This allows the lens to point straight up/ down and often has degrees for precise rotation throughout. I’m hoping that the way I am shooting this time would be sufficient but depending on the outcome and my desire to continue the experimentation, I may wish to try one of these out.

After shooting the full panorama, I brought my grandma back into the room and set up two audio recording devices. As a ‘scratch track’ (so to speak) I used my DSLR and simply filmed my grandma traditionally. I also set up a shotgun microphone plugged into my iphone to record more detailed audio. Once I had both of these recording I sat down and asked my grandma to recite the information that she had talked to be about before hand. I often had to prompt her to remember certain things she had discussed but tried to remain silent otherwise and quickly cut myself off when she started talking. Although the microphone I used is directional. There would still be bounced audio and obvious discourse between us two so I wanted to minimise that as much as possible for more seamless editing. I repeated this exact process for both of the rooms I shot.

Post processing:

This has been the most difficult (as is often the case) of the whole process. I started off fairly simply by dragging all my images into Adobe Lightroom. From here I started with a fairly neutral image (one containing the most contrasting artefacts such as windows and shadows) I then edited this until the images histogram was a little more spread out and the image took on this HDR esc look so familiar with panoramic work. I then highlighted the rest of the images in the series and used Lightrooms handy ‘sync’ function. This syncs the develop settings with all of the selected images and because I had shot them all at the same settings they would all turn out with a consistent look throughout. It wouldn’t rid the image of its shadows or highlights but flatten them out and retain the detail in these areas. I then exported these images as high quality JPEGs with little sharpening into a separate folder.

I have used the photoshop action merge to panorama in the past to create panoramas and so I didn’t need much introduction to the process. However, upon using the script, it seamed to get a little confused with this level of files and detail. I tried selecting different settings such as the output from automatic to dedicated spherical and even perspective but all seamed to get confused and ended up stitching the photographs incorrectly. The only way I could get the script to work was to only add in one row of the images. I inserted the straight on images from the series and ran the script again and It worked fairly well with little artefacts or corrections. I was uplifted by this but this only left me with a  very tight panorama and would not work for a full 360 VR experience.

I thought that if I could keep doing this as separate photographs (straight on - upwards tilt - down) and then stitch these separate panoramas manually then I’d be onto something (obviously not as efficient as I would have hoped) but this was not the case. Once I deviated from the standard view and introduced frames with less points of interest for the script to stitch with, it fell apart and couldn’t create a cohesive image. It often ended up in a circular form or taking on an S curve shape. It became evident that this program was not going to work for the intensive workload that this project required.

I took to the internet to look for alternatives on image stitching software/ plugins and settled on a program I had tried in 6th form - Autopanno Gigga available through the French company, Kolor. This software is regarded as the industry standard for panoramic image making. It’s been used on countless groundbreaking projects including the worlds largest panoramic image - In2white. http://www.in2white.com/ This image is comprised of over 70,000 images shot over 35 hours using a specially designed motorised head. As a finalised product, the image “weighs in at a staggering 365 gigapixels.” and needed specialist software to host the image online. This is a fully interactive image with the ability to zoom in and see individual climbers and the details of the mountain range almost miles away.

If that alone isn’t testament to the capabilities of the software, then I don’t know what is. I decided to give it a go and upon downloading the software, I was a little intimidated. This is obviously a specialist program that needs time and dedication to perfect. The interface Is very technical, looking like the interface for a CAD 3D program as opposed to image processing software. I started reading a few posts on forums online on how to best use the software but this only confused me more. Being dyslexic, I often find it hard to digest information in this way and see the way this translates to my own application. Instead, I watched a few tutorial videos mainly on YouTube. This ability to see cause and effect of the processes and the situation of different features of the program made a whole lot more sense and made my grasping of the program much quicker. I of course referred back to theses often more in depth articles and forum threads on the software but in connection with this more visual tutorials. This video was probably the most helpful in my understanding - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ntRoV97k9o - very condensed and straight to the point.

Firstly, I loaded the exposure adjusted exports from Lightroom into the program. I then select all of these images and runt hem through a 3rd party application through the Autopanno Gigga program to remove geometric artefacts and adjust the from radius on the images to help the program in finding the stitching points. These are then exported into the same folder as the Lightroom exports for future use and are place into a separate project file within Autopanno. I then adjusted the panorama settings to output as a spherical 360 image and to adjust the amount of control points available for the smoothest output. I also optimised the render settings for best quality and compatibility by rendering as a TIFF format with no compression. I then ran the program’s script. This was an automated process and i selected the files to be automatically rendered and saved during this to save time and my need to be sat at the computer so I could continue with other elements of the project. This took roughly an hour and a half to complete but it was worth it. The finished product was a lot smoother and exact than the outcome of the photoshop script. I was very pleased with the results and although it still took a couple of attempts to get a result as seamless as I’d have wished, it was still a lot less work intensive than the Photoshop rout. I could have used further processing tools within the program to adjust each image layer (similar to working on a photoshop document) to perfect these outcomes but that required hours and hours of work that I simply did not have. Finding time to look at these tools outside of the course is something i’m very much excited about and maybe would wield a better result in the future.

As you can see from this finalised output from Autopanno Gigga, the result  is not without it’s faults. Some of the lines along the walls have been skewed and can not be matched perfectly. This may be due to the fact I used a wide angle lens and the geometric distortion caused by this. This is part of the learning curve however and is something that my tutor discussed in our group tutorials this week. Taking more photographs with smaller increments might have also alleviated this somewhat but also by using a longer focal length such as a 35mm or 50mm which has less distortion attached to it. Of course this would have slowed down the workflow by introducing maybe double or triple the amount of photographs and the time taken to physically take these but could be worth it in the end.

This all being said, I have a panorama that contains 360 degrees of a room and matches up perfectly. These small artefacts can be minimised in photoshop and are a small price to pay for (what I consider) an impressive image already.

I then took this uncompressed TIFF (1.11gb’s in size) back into photoshop and adjusted these issues to the best of my abilities. I also masked over the tripod legs seen in the shots lower half. This created my final image  which I then slightly adjusted the saturation and levels of till I had an image with a little more punch. It took till seeing this finalised image to feel the need to introduce this slight contrast and saturation because viewing all 30 odd images as one is a different experience than viewing them individually. This is what’s exciting about panoramas and VR photography, the sense of scale and grander alters how we read the image even down to a tonal sense. Once I was happy with the image I exported it as another uncompressed TIFF.

I tested the images effectiveness using an app I downloaded for my phone called Looksee. This is a VR app for displaying photographs and allows for control over the image in 3D using the phones gyroscope and the users movement. I made sure that all areas of the photograph matched up and there was no blank or stretched areas. This included the poles of the image.

From here I imported the image into adobe premier where I’d set up a project best for internet usage. due to the fact I wasn’t using moving image in my video, the fps didn’t matter too much. I made sure to set the frame size at 1920x960 for the highest quality output that fits the panoramic shape. I had the audio bit rate set to 44000 for sharp and uncompressed audio giving a good tonal range. As I was rendering out the other panoramas I set about editing the audio files to cut out dead space and unnecessary talking etc. I then exported this as one MP3 track for each video and dropped it into the timeline along with the corresponding panorama. Then it was just a matter of making the time the panorama was on screen match the time of the audio. I then exported the video using the h.264 codec under a preset for YouTube 1080 playback. This added black bars to the top and bottom of the video but this won’t matter once the video is uploaded to youtube and set to the 3D viewer inside the headset.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, VR photography and video is still very much in the hands of the individual and because of this, displaying VR content for a larger audience is a fairly new and unexplored idea. Most of the time content made for VR is simply sent out onto the web via many different hosts in the hope that a media/ arts blog or magazine will pick up on it and give it the mass exposure it deserves. However, there has been one exhibition that allows this tangible and communicative experience of VR.

The Bjork Digital exhibition at Somerset House in London is an art installation conceived for and by Icelandic singer Bjork for her new album. The singer, songwriter and actress is known for explorations into cross media promotion and exhibition. For her previous album she released mini games for mobile devices for each song on the album. These were even introduced by Sir David Attenborough. These games were related to each song and often quite complex in nature but still very visually striking.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dikvJM__zA4 - a collection of the apps in use.

For this latest body of work, Bjork has commissioned a series of VR films to accompany songs. This is a never-been-done body of work because of this. I’ve seen other musical endeavours within 360 video/ VR but it’s usually only a 30 second clip of some electronic DJ playing to a crowd. Instead, Bjork has embraced this new technology and produced more conventional (yet still artistically stunning) videos. One of the videos is set on one of Iceland's idillic beaches with Bjork singing her song Stonemilker. Throughout the video, multiple versions of Bjork join each of the last and continue to sing the song together. It’s quite an intense experience and for lack of a better word is rather ‘trippy’. 

Another video in the series is more in like with a lot of VR content at the moment being a digitally produced piece. It seams that Bjork has undergone some kind of motion capture process in order to translate this into a 3D digital world which seams to be falling in around her. These videos seam to have a very earthly element to them which is almost counter intuitive to the ideas of VR.

The interesting part about this project however, is the way it’s experienced. As it stands, viewers can still access Stonemilker and teasers for other videos but it’s the touring exhibition that sets this work apart. At the exhibition, there are 3 areas of interest, two conventional cinema screenings of past and present work (featuring other more conventionally shot videos for the album) and the VR work. Audiences are allowed to sit - almost randomly - within the space on stools and don the not so familiar headsets. Once they have done this, a continuous loop of the videos is available to them. A fair majority of people often complain about the headset being cumbersome and distracting from the experience. This has not been the case for me, I find it to be completely immersive. Perhaps viewing content in this very public arena would heighten/ lessen this feeling. 

Name: Sam Price

Working title: Forgotten images

Précis

I aim to explore the popular and emerging virtual reality media subgroup as a medium to explore themes of memory. More specifically, false memory and how the human mind can be ‘tricked’ into creating it’s own memories from experiences the individual may not have experienced themselves. This might also be applicable to exploring work relating to dementia and more therapeutic uses for photography. I want to blur the lines between photography and video, without a focus on one or the other and rather create an immersive visual experience. Portraiture will be the focus of my practical work with an idea of recreating scenes from by-gone eras.

Rationale

I wish to create this body of work for many reasons. Firstly, I find the idea of false memories interesting and the psychology behind memory and how the brain is not a perfect organ and can be jaded and altered, sometimes without reason. Although practically this might not be evident, it’s something that will inspire my research and will be prominent in my mimd when producing the work. Secondly, the medium of virtual reality is a very interesting one for me. I have no prior experience in the field and wish to understand it’s advantages and limitations as a format. This is very much an experimentation for me with the idea of transferring the knowledge and skills into my own personal and professional work. Initially I want to look at more stills and audio based work but with the idea for eventually creating fully immersive video pieces and even more sensory work that combine more of the senses available.

Aims & Objectives

Outline of what you hope to achieve and who the work will be aimed at?

Give the reader some context by outline your approach and intended audience.

I aim for this work to be exhibited in a gallery space as a series of 4-6 realised outcomes. These will (in theory) be displayed on their own virtual reality headset with attached earphones. For presentation immediately I aim to provide one headset that an iPhone can be attached into to view the images in succession. I think ultimately displaying all the images on their own device will give weight to the project and more significance to the idea that these are ‘false memories’ or a ‘alternate universe’ the audience can briefly inhabit. I think, although i am using a very modern and high tech idea, the work will be intended for a slightly older audience. Due to the nature of the subjects (portraits depicting past eras such as 80’s/70’s/60’s etc) the age 35 - 65 market may be the ideal range to have in mind. I feel the fact that these ages may have lived through these eras themselves or have had a more true experience of what they were like (possibly false memories handed down from their parents etc) will mean the work connects on a deeper level. This being said, It will be interesting to see how the younger audience members react to the work with this idea that we create a different idea of the past by how closely we have experienced it. Other media portraying these eras (for the younger audience) may have more of an influence as opposed to actual memories and reliable data from that era.

This was my original draft project proposal. After taking in this proposal to the group tutorials on the friday, I was advised to rethink my project. Firstly, the biggest issue with trying to do the proposed project (although still a solid idea that’s worth re visiting) is the time frame that we have for these projects. Each project only lasts 6 weeks and to achieve even any decent communication with a dementia clinic would take even longer than this, never mind to gain clearance, build a relationship with and interview some of the patients. It just wouldn’t be possible. 

We talked about my idea of using VR as a format to produce these portraits in and how this was originally used as a means for showcasing rooms and homes. During one of my cohort’s discussing their work about their childhood home, this made me recall some memories from my childhood and specifically my grandmas house. I was reminded of this print in my grandmas living room of a Rudyard Kipling poem and how it was my grandad’s favourite poem. I was sure there was many other objects of sentimental value in that room. With discussing this with Lawrence, I decided to merge these ideas and create a 360 degree virtual tour VR experience discovering these sentimental pieces around the room. 

Briefing. 

Today we got our briefing document and a more in depth look at the module ideas as a whole. Lawrence started by going through the ILO’s and what was expected of us to gain from within the module. 

Knowledge and Understanding On successful completion of this module students will be able to: LO1: Identify an awareness of key debates associated with contemporary photographic practice and delivery models LO2: Demonstrate an ability to respond to the issues of photographic practice involved in the production, distribution and consumption of images through different modes LO3: Reflect and demonstrate interpretative skills for critical analysis in visual, written and oral forms

Transferable/Key Skills and other attributes (as indicated on MS1): LO4: Understand various forms of advanced photographic practices and delivery models LO5: Critically evaluate and reflect on current digital image creation practices LO6: Apply knowledge and problem-solving skills to inform the delivery of independent projects (visual, written, oral) LO7: Make a self-assessment of learning progress

This highlighted the important aspects of what the module is teaching us in order to focus our work and research.

This module encourages engagement with expanded media, with a particular emphasis on digital, convergent and trans-media modes of dissemination.

This is the key point for this module. Expanded media and modes of dissemination. What we are going to produce and how it’s going to be shown to an audience in a gallery environment. The fact that this module is trans-media is very appealing to me. I take a lot of inspiration from and my practice includes a lot of video and moving image anyway so looking deeper into this is not something that worries me. 

Who’s this work being produced for? How’s best for them to interact with the work? Why? These are very important questions to ask in pre, during and post production. I like the idea that memories on a whole (other than collective or cultural memories) are very individual. I think that whatever the work is that I choose to produce, it will be exhibited in a very intimate setting, not just a large format print on a gallery wall. Possible a darkened room or booths with single monitors and headphones. I’ve seen this mode of exhibition over summer as part of the Liverpool Biannual, where a monitor with a set of two headphones allowed a very intimate viewing of filmic works. This draws you in and makes you forget about the wider space that the work inhabits. Another interesting idea for viewing video is if it was projected, what could the image be projected on? Would it be suitable to look at projecting over top of a more textured / 3D surface? 

But what kind of work would suit this kind of intimate and individual experience? Video would be the obvious answer. This would allow for some interesting things to be experimented with in relation to sound and picture and how these correlate. Another option (and something that I’ve been thinking about for my professional work) is experimenting with virtual reality film making / photography. It’s become very accessible and cheep to produce in the last 2 years and is a very engaging and exciting medium. That begin said, as I am new to the technology, is there enough time to produce the work and create an expansive theme to underpin it? 

As we learnt on the Monday, this is a module about memory so Lawrence gave a talk about certain fundamentals of psychology and the basics of memory. We learnt that Salford is leading research into dementia and that Lawrence is working on a visual aid in the form of a game for people with dementia within the Salford Dementia Society. These would be great contacts to have if following a project based on loss of memory or specifically dementia. 

A couple of things that I thought were interesting was the way we can produce ‘false memories’, an idea first researched by Freud. A common way that this is seen is in peoples memories from childhood. A fake memory can be caused by your parents/ relatives telling you about an episode in your childhood which you take on board and claim as your own. You remember the details they told you but not the memory itself as it happened. False memory is also seen in victims of sexual assault, especially when they are of a young age. They form memories of the events to come to terms with the trauma and especially during therapy can falsify information to please the therapist. This could be seen in conjunction with ‘amnesia’.  Amnesia can present itself in two different ways; retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. Amnesia is caused by a traumatic experience, brain injury or even excessive drug use. Retrograde amnesia is the inability to remember memories from before the incident that caused the amnesia and anterograde amnesia is the inability to form new memories after the incident. 

After the Mondays lesson, thinking back on the task of filming for editing the next week, i was thinking about movies and directors work that inspired me and how this could relate to my work. I started to think about how the new building, new course and new peers made me feel on that first day, Hectic and Daunting. 

The day seamed to be over in a flash without me getting any sense of grounding within the course or the building, I still felt as much of an outsider than I did 7 hours earlier and that was exciting. To mirror this I needed something quick paced and kinetic. Long shot’s wouldn’t work for this as it gives the audience too much time to gather their thoughts and make sense of the images. 

This made me think of the time-bending montage sequences in the films of Edgar Wright - most prominently, Shaun of the Dead. The first in the trillogy (dubbed The Cornetto Trilogy) is probably his most noticeable use of this element of his auteur style, something that has been developed since his early works (again featuring Nick Frost and Simon Pegg) such as the TV hit, Spaced. 

This montage from early on in the film is a mirror to Shaun’s hum-drum lifestyle and the 9-5 grind that most people encounter. Instead of cutting out the mundane actions of getting ready, the director could have simply cut between “Haven’t you got work” to “I’m not saying it was you” and have a visual of the character finishing his breakfast already dressed. The audience would have pieced together that he must have gotten dressed in that time but adding in this montage does that in a much cleverer way. It’s hectic to the point of being comical. 

Later in the film we see this scene of the two protagonists contemplating their plan of escape. Again, this could have been shot simply with a over shoulder - reverse shot set up but that wouldn’t have been as engaging as cutting together visuals to accompany the dialogue. Having the overly comedic acting and rose tinted view of their plan played out provides great comic relief for a film about a zombie apocalypse, whilst still being relevant to the narrative. 

The second instalment in the trilogy (Hot Fuzz) builds on these time bending montages once more. The application in this film is similar but altered to fit the narrative. In the sequence above, we are shown Sgt. Angel’s move from London to his new position in the country. Not only are we shown his physical locations with the wider shots of the train stations, carriages, taxis and hotels but also in the close up inserts of his phone. As he gets further and further away from London, his signal goes down and eventually is lost. This is a clever visual metaphor for the characters story arch. Within this film (and in a wider context) this technique could also be seen as a play on the ‘gearing up’ style montages seen in action films where the characters are arming themselves with guns and gadgets, in this case, peace lilies and arrest forms. Again, this could have been filmed simply as in one scene the Sgt discussing leaving and in the next him stepping off a train / out of a taxi in a new location. This scene only takes a few seconds longer and adds much more dimension, comedy and visual interest in what could be seen as mundane. It’s this comedy in tension that appeals to me in my own work. This new building is daunting and somewhat stressful but it’s playful and an exciting place to be all at the same time. 

The afternoon furthered our look into interactive media. Initially we were tasked with shooting video for the next weeks session. The idea was to introduce us with creating a narrative with moving image and sound and was to be about our new building and workspaces, in whatever style or technicality we wished, it just had to represent our feelings towards the new building. 

For the tutorial we had an introduction to Adobe InDesign. I have used InDesign briefly during my second year to produce a book design to be printed but that was a very brief and simplistic attempt at using the software. We started of basic with selecting our document size to work from. If I chose to use InDesign in the production of my work this will depend on the device I will be displaying on - Ipad, Iphone, 16x9 monitor, 4:3 projector etc - so that there’s no black bars or unnecessary blank space. Ultimately, this will lend to greater engagement in the piece. The idea for this try out was to create a simple document showcasing images from a gallery, similar to that seen on portfolio websites and the such. I chose to use web standard size as that was the most useful and most widely used for this application. 

We then looked at the importance of setting up a master page. Having a master page ensures that once we navigate to a different page (to show another image in this case) that the formatting would stay the same. This meant that the content areas that our photographs, navigation and buttons would be placed into would remain the same throughout the document. We created these content areas and placed our chosen photographs inside them. Each photograph (for displaying in a large window) had to have it’s own page. Once we had done this for all 4/5 of our photographs we added more content areas for the thumbnails. These would be applied on the master page to remain the same in every page.