BARB

http://prezi.com/7l5ulkbhod2y/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

What is a documentary?

1. Above we have the definition of a documentary. 
2. Source: https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=define+documentary
3. 
   
4. 

Source: http://uk.ask.com/question/what-is-a-factual-programme 

Drawings and Designs

Drawings and designs for installation from rifatrahmannn

Storyboard

iDVD

You can choose from a variety of themes for your DVD to whichever one suits you.

This is the menu for my DVD. This was achieved by scrolling down to the bottom left and opening the plus button and scrolling down to "add movie".

This is the storyboard of my DVD and how it is structured.

Task 1 - War and Architectural Photography

Installation Nasties

• Sam Taylor Wood
• Tony Oursler
• Bill Viola 

The people above are all multimedia and installation artists. Video Installation is a temporary art form that combines video technology with installation art, making use of all aspects of the surrounding environment to affect the audience. One of the main strategies used by video installation artists is the incorporation of the space as a key element in a narrative structure.

Sam Taylor wood is an English filmmaker, photographer and visual artist. Sam began exhibiting fine art photography in the early 1990's. She is perhaps best known for her work entitled 'Crying Men' which features many of Hollywood's glitterati crying, including Robin Williams, Sean Pean, Laurence Fishburne and Paul Newman. Tony Oursler was born in New York in 1957. He completed a BA in fine arts at the California institute for the Arts, Valencia California in 1979. His art covers a range of mediums working with video, sculpture, installation, performance and painting. Oursler's work has been exhibited in prestigious institutions including the Walker Art Center and many others.

Bill Viola is internationally recognized as one of today's leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach. For 40 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Viola's video installations, total environments that envelop state of the art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity.

Tony Oursler was born in New York in 1957 he is a multimedia and installation artist, He completed a BA in fine arts at the California Institute for the Arts, Valencia, California in 1979. His art covers a range of mediums working with video, sculpture, installation, performance and painting. A lot of Oursler's work has been exhibited at prestigious institutions including the Walker Art Center, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney museum of American Art and many more. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYka4ouQXqk The First art piece that I viewed was Sam's "A little death", with a narrative of decomposition she showcases to us the gruesome reality of whats it like for something to rot away in front of our own eyes. What puzzled me as part of the audience was the peach which has no movement in the video but just sits there?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJQYSPFo7hk Another video she created "Still Life" which is very similar to "A Little Death" we see the hideous view of fruits rotting away, the music used builds up to the decomposition and slowly starts to fade away we can see that she has used and eerie and scary type of soundtrack to give the audience a scared feeling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTPf6mHKYD0 Here we see a piece of Bill's installation. What we can learn from watching this video is as it clearly says in the title itself "Emergence". We see a male figure emerge from the water like well and is seen being grabbed as he falls. The character on the left seems frustrated/ upset like as he appears from the water the music goes well with narrative and builds up to him coming out. In comparison to Sam Taylor Wood's installation work we can clearly see that Bill mainly likes to focus on ideas of fundamental human experiences whereas Sam likes to use objects, animals and pieces of fruit to bring her installation to life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StwsM_riSf0 This piece of Oursler's ties in with Sam's work the whole theme of having disfigured and disproportional. In particular Oursler uses human faces. He has reconstructed it to make it look strange in a way specifically this piece of his where a continuous blinking of one eye and the eyes moving in two different directions making it look weird. Facial features have been painted in blue to make it seem as if its a alien like character, the model seems to be having muttered speech and speaking a load of non sense making it hard for us as the audience to understand.

Sam has put together something that we don't usually witness, the outcome of death, the process of decomposition and how the peach just sits there with no power over itself. I personally believe that all three of these artists wanted us to have some emotion towards their work with Sam's use of decomposition, this as a viewer would most probably want us to feel sorry for the main subject in the frame such as the frame. Whereas with Bill's installation makes us feel more sad as the figure appears from the water and the two characters in frustration gives us a sense that they are waiting. The disfigured faces that Tony uses gets us confused as to why he has done this. 

As a viewer I'm quite shocked into why Sam would want us to view a hare decay in front of our eyes? The whole idea of decomposition is quite horrible really and makes me feel disgusted to watch it. In comparison to Bill's and Tony's work they differentiate on a whole new level. All in all I think sam wanted us as a viewer to know what its like and face the reality that we don't usually encounter. Her aim is to keep us puzzled and disgusted once we've watched the video. All three artists managed to capture my attention because never in my lifetime have I viewed such work.

Installation

Is the DVD dead?

DVD or Digital Video Disc as some people would like to call it is a digital optic disc storage format, invented and developed by Phillips, Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic in 1995. DVD's cam be played in many different types of players including DVD players. DVD's allow the customer to watch their footage at their comfort of their own location whether it being at home, work or even on the train depending on what type of player is being used, also in complete control from pausing to fast warding and rewind. In this day and age DVD's can now be played on any platform which supports the DVD such as a laptop or a portable DVD player.

Over the years technology has gradually improved to a whole new level with on demand streaming services such as NowTV, Netflix, LoveFilm etc. proving to be a popular hit with customers. Dumping the DVD and switching over to online, so is the DVD really dying out? There are many features that come with DVD such as over 2 hours of high quality digital video, supports widescreen movies on standard or widescreen TV's (4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios) this gives the consumer the advantage to rewind or fast forward to a particular scene they missed or want to replay again. This is one great aspect to owning a DVD keeping consumers happy.

With on demand streaming copyright protection warnings are put into place however this also applies with DVD's. The rise of file sharing and piracy has prompted many copyright holders to display notices on DVD packaging or displayed on screen when the content is played that warn consumers of the illegality of certain uses of the DVD. In the US for example, the right to re-sell, rent or lend out bought DVD's is protected by the first sale doctrine under the Copyright Act of 1976.

DVD's offer an ease of access to its menu buttons it allows us to choose a specific chapter of the film or movie that you are watching. On demand has proved to be a major threat to DVD it has clearly taken over the industry, the many advantages that on demand provides is that it is easily accessible on multiple devices so if the consumer owns a smartphone for example they'll be able to view their movie on their phone, but it also has its disadvantages; some people say that DVD has been re invented to blue ray, some people would like to have a physical copy, its proved to be more reliable as consumers get annoyed with the continuous pop ups that appear on screen pausing the film mid way through.

Both sides have shown the pros and cons of their uses. Some people will like to keep a DVD or still use it and see it as a collectible whereas some will just enjoy the fact of not having to physically leave their house to go purchase a copy of a DVD instead just pay for it online and stream. I personally will use on demand streaming as it saves me a lot of time and money the thought of owning a DVD and knowing not being able to look after it properly means it will permanently damage and will not function properly.

Mood Board

Mind Map Installtion

 

Evaluation

For this project we was asked to create our own images appropriate for our chosen magazine. In this case I chose to use the GQ magazine. First I decided it would be a good idea to experiment with a different set of techniques/effects such as; Photography lighting, gel lighting, shallow depth of field and other uses of shadows and various other techniques. This expanded my imagination on photography itself and made me realize and learn how many new things we can do with it, this helped me to develop on my idea. To start off this procedure I produced a mood board somewhat related to my idea. At first i brainstormed every idea which I thought could have been a good idea to use.

My ideas varied to certain things I liked whether it being to music, technology, suit wear, classy look etc. By singling out the ideas which prevented me from moving any further with it due to location, equipment or funds wise, narrowing it down to simple ideas the narrative slowly started to build up in my head to improve my idea I decided to look back on my blog for more inspiration and any ideas which help me put together my photo. What really intrigued me and caught my eye was the soft lighting and gel lighting together this two could really make my photo come to life and stand out. I thought it would be a good idea to take several photos in a model like pose like how it is featured on the GQ magazine. My strengths with the photo I was able to recreate a similar like image which reflected back on the photo itself with the use of various effects I was able to bring the photo to life, in particular the black and white effect made my photo look as if I was blended into the background.

The target audience for my chosen magazine is aimed at an older generation, an audience of early 20's to late 30's as the older generation have an interest towards all the classy look and formal clothing wear. The use of a black and white effect gives it a more of an interesting feel towards the photo. It also sets a relaxed and 'chilled out' kind of atmosphere. The narrative behind my photo was pretty simple just a man dressed in a suit showing off his classy look. I thought by using the more simple look towards my photo it wouldn't bore the audience as much as a more complicated narrative. I thought this went really well. Another point that went well was the organisation of things in terms of planning, preparation etc. Editing the photos was also pretty simple.

I particularly chose to target my pictures to GQ as they print off magazines and specifically specialize in the classy look sector. Majority of the time famous celebrities are seen posing on the front cover with their suits this is mainly because GQ is commonly known for their motto "Look sharp, live smart" this clearly attracts customers/audience and keep the magazine going with many being able to look at their favorite all time celebrities all dressed up. If I were to add some changes into my completed photographs I would probably add a bit more into the photo itself and make it come to life, also use a more close up shot to capture my expression and the suit itself.

Taking in consideration the feedback that I've received from my photographs, mostly positive comments and a majority say it was shot simply and well, however some said that I could have been more creative and imaginative and could of added some props and maybe even used a office like background to make me more blend in with my surrounding. But overall I am quite pleased with my end result, I have learnt a lot during the process of this project, being more imaginative was the main thing for me to work on. Compared to a professional photographer such as Platon Antoniou who captures famous citizens in suits such as the photo of Boris Johnson here. Being simple is what we see here. The mayor of London in a suit sitting down posing? I think Platon wanted to keep his photos to a minimum meaning quite simple classy look.

Mood Board

The feel I would like to create is a 'classy' and formal like theme. With business men like photography. Below are some images which inspired me, most of my ideas came from the GQ magazine.

 

Interesting Framing Techniques

 

In today's lesson we were asked to create interesting ways of framing our images. There are many different ways to do this in this case we used our hands to create a interesting frame around and an empty duct tape cylinder.  

Large Depth Of Field

 

 

 

Large depth of field is a technique used to get a full surrounding in focus. Whereas shallow depth of field just gets a subject/object in focus.

Shallow Depth Of Field

In today's lesson we learnt about shallow depth of field what this is, a subject in focus whilst the background is out of focus giving the object/subject more of an interesting feel towards it. This is simply done by focusing in on the subject. Above are a few images to show this.

Blurred Movement

Blurred movement is an effect where the subject in the photo is completely blurred out and the background is in complete focus in order to achieve this the subject must be moving at a very fast pace.

Photography Lighting

In today's lesson we learnt about soft, hard, clam shell, hard directional and Rim lighting. We put all these lighting's into good use. The pictures above have all been used with soft lighting. By using this light the effect behind it had a softer feel towards it. Whereas the two images below is an example of a rim lighting photography where the camera is focused in on the subject in a dark surrounding where the whole point of the photo is to see the outline around the character.

. 

Photography

As you can see I have commented on another person's blog about their photographic images.

Gel lighting

In today's lesson we were given the opportunity to experiment with gel lighting filters which can have a massive impact on the photo such as having a different feel towards the photo, a change in look and the density of the photo. Variety of different gel colors are available as seen at the examples above. (red, blue, green) combining the colors will create an excellent effects to use whilst taking photographs.