Recording: When filming the majority of the film we didn’t have a tripod too steady the camera. We tried our best to keep the camera steady where possible and did moving shoots as well where we panned the camera around the area. We filmed in around 5 different locations some of which include: town in the afternoon and at night, St Peters Woods, our friends house, in the classroom etc. We did this to show different parts of the day that repeated most days which we then turned into a montage/time-lapse. We tried to make sure to get different times of the day to try and make sure the viewer knew that time was passing as well as filming the clock with the news in the background to represent the time in lock down. We thought of smaller details also such as the writing on the white board whilst filming the clock e.g. Karens party on the 12th of March and going to the cinema; this is to show that plans got cancelled due to lockdown. We also used some content from the Guardian to make it more clear what was going on during the lock down. At the start and at the end of our film we filmed my Dad with my dog in the woods and at the end we did it in exactly the same location to represent finally having the freedom to see our friends and family.

When it came to recording the audio we used voice memo on our phones to clearly record parts of the film. When recording the audio we didn’t usually film at the same time as the camera didn’t pick up the audio as clearly as voice memo did. We recorded the video of the Queen off of BBC news to create a dramatic affect during our film as we overlapped her voice over the riots in Italy due to lock down lasting too long; the riots noises included sounds such as screaming, bombs and eeriness, creating a sense of fear. The juxtaposition of this and the birds at the birds peacefully singing at the beginning and the end of the film is meant to represent the silence and the noise. The reason we named our movie Silent Noise was because when people were in lockdown by themselves they would have nothing but silence except for the reminders in their head of what was going on in the world around them and how hectic the world was outside. I also recorded and made a piano sequence to fit with our film and tried to link up chord changes with scenery changes as much as possible.

Editing: Whilst editing I put a lot of small clips together to create a lot of effects and montages. Firstly I cut up my longer videos into shorter ones and put effects such as glitching in between to represent everyday life falling apart. I also faded in certain clips such as the beginning of the film and the beginning of lockdown to represent a change of events. Furthermore, I edited the shadows/saturations/contrast etc to make the film more vibrant and dull the places I wanted it to. I linked the more vibrant shots to the photographer Alex Prager who I mentioned in my film manifesto; he links to my film as he filmed colourful crowds in everyday life, just as I filmed everyday life at school as the more colourful part of the film. On the other hand, Theo McIness relates to the beginning of lockdown as he photographs people in masks and social distancing and edited them to be black and white; my way of linking him was making the sections in between the glitching black and white to show that lockdown was taking over. I also edited the sounds and music to make sure they were the right volume for each scene as certain things became louder, such as the clock, as the film went on. I also edited the videos of the clock as they were originally an hour; I managed to speed up the video to make a time lapse and made the clip around 14 seconds all together.

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Evaluation: The filming of certain clips could have gone a lot better as the camera was shaky at times but it added top the effect of how something bad was going to happen. Moreover, some shots were blurry although they didn’t appear blurry until using premier due to having to enlarge the video because it didn’t fit the frame properly. Furthermore, another improvement that could’ve been made is the amount of things we filmed for the life before lock down so the narrative was more clear but we ran out of time. We also went over the time limit of 90 seconds as we already tried to cut the movie down as much as possible but still tried to have a clear narrative at the same time.

Final Movie: https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/151844a6-eaeb-440a-a7fb-1d7a4e089d1c?list=studio

Reflecting on what I’ve learnt:

As a medium, photography has had the biggest impact on me. The production of photo-books, specifically, is inspirational as it requires the photographer to consider how all the photos link together and to consider what order they need to placed to create the strongest emotional impact on the viewer. Photo books are highly versatile and can produce narratives which can be manipulated by both the photographer and the viewer. The use of juxtaposition, black and white, symbolism, etc. may make images ambiguous, leaving the interpretation up to the viewer and sparking their imagination

Interpreting Love

Interpreting Rebellion

To explore the theme of rebellion, I used the medium of film, creating the piece ‘The Pursuit of Social acceptance‘. This proved to be extremely insightful as I had to consider where the focus of the audience would be when the normally-still-images are now moving. Additionally, within the film I felt I had to be completely confident with the one idea as all the footage had to link to each other. I also had to consider how sound can affect how my images (or moving stills) would be interpreted. The production of the film taught me to be highly organised in my planning, shooting and editing of the project.

In what way can the work of Claude Cahun and Shannon O’Donnell be considered political?

Claude Cahun was an androgynous, surrealist photographer, widely known for her enigmatic self-portraits and her activism during the occupation of Jersey in World War Two. In her portraiture, Cahun presented herself as many different ‘characters’ in order to explore gender identity and the subconscious mind. MoMA states that Claude Cahun ‘…made self-portraits that emphasize the fluidity of gender, refusing to adhere to statically masculine or feminine characteristics.’. Shannon O’donnell is a contemporary photographer, whose work is heavily influenced by the likes of Cindy Sherman and Claude Cahun herself. O’donnell’s work focuses on the modern issues of our society, often attempting to deconstruct the idea of gender binary, which she believes is a socially-constructed concept. Both Cahun and O’donnells’ work can be considered highly political in terms of gender and identity politics.

Identity politics is the tendency for people of a particular race, religion or social background to form political alliances that move away from traditional party politics. Both Cahun and O’donnell are argued to have incorporated identity politics within their work, by rejecting social norms surrounding their gender.

O’donnell addresses multiple political topics throughout her work. In her series ‘Abort Mission’, she covers the culture war between religion and abortion. Her inspiration behind the project stemmed from her experience with anti-abortion protesters who she encountered praying outside of an abortion clinic, claiming that their protesting was relevant and important to their religion. Within the project, O’donnell incorporates visuals of the church and the protesters to highlight this. O’donnell has also been inspired by the suffragette movement, in turn creating her feminist project ‘The cat and the mouse’, which celebrates and informs the audience about the suffragette movement and the history of how women’s rights finally became equal to men in terms of voting. Much of O’donnell’s work focuses on modern, global issues, whereas Cahun focused majorly on her own identity and the socially construed binaries surrounding gender during the time.

Though not presented in her work, Cahun actively protested against the absurdity of warfare. Alongside her partner Marcel Moore, Cahun created a persona referred to as ‘Der Soldat Ohne Namen’ (‘The Soldier Without a Name’) in which she posed herself as an unknown German soldier with the sole intent to incite rebellion within the army. Cahun took a more active approach in comparison to O’donnell with her rebellion against gender and identity politics. Changing her name and appearance to become androgynous were highly valiant and insubordinate acts, as gender stereotypes during the time were enforced and highly normalised (especially towards women). With gender expression being more fluid in modern society, O’donnell’s work is less about rebellion against society but rather about expressing her own identity and pushing the idea that gender identity shouldn’t be confined to two strict binaries.

Overall, both Claude Cahun and Shannon O’donnell’s work is highly political however, you can argue that their work is most influential within their own timelines. For example, if Cahun’s work was released in this era, it may not have had the same impact or have been as shocking to its audience as it was during the 20th century. Much of modern society, especially the younger generations, comfortably and confidently mix male and female stereotyped appearances within their own identity. This, however, wasn’t normalised in Cahun’s time and so her work proved to be highly pivotal in developing identity politics. O’donnell’s work is highly relevant to modern issues and gender politics. She incorporates male and female gender aspects in her work and applies it to her identity, aiding in the modern push to deconstruct gender binaries.

After filming my footage that adhered to my story board, I then had to transfer the clips from an IPhone into the video editing software, Premiere.

I filmed all of my clips on my IPhone, which helped when it came to importing them. I simple connected my phone to my laptop, pressed Import in Premiere and chose the clips that I wanted to use. After choosing, they appear in the box circles in the print screen above. Once they are there, I dragged them into the box on the right of that, where the purple, green and blue horizontal lines are. Doing this means that, that specific clip is now part of the video and that you are able to manipulate it as you wish.

After importing my clips, I decided where I’d like them. The area circled in the image below is where my clips are places (in the V1 area).

This allowed me to make clips shorter if I needed them to be, usually by just right clicking them and dragging the videos to the left, or there is a razor tool to the left of the clips in the tool bar if you’d like to cut off a section of a clip. One important thing to remember when editing is to render your clips so that everything flows nicely. To do this, you go to sequence, render in and out, usually this doesn’t take long. The lines that go diagonal across my clips mean that I have locked the V1 section, this means that I won’t be able to manipulate the clips at all, I usually lock it so that I don’t accidentally move anything or delete anything, I also lock it when adding audio.

After I had all my clips in the correct place and I was happy with the sequencing of my video, I then added audio. I wanted the tone to be sad yet calming at the same time so I decided to go with classical music as my background sound.

The area circled in the image above is where my audio sits (A1, A for audio). I went online to sound.org and found a lengthy piece of classical music that fit perfectly with my video and produced the best vibe. I added this through importing it from my downloads and simply dragged it under the clips. I then trimmed it to about where the clips end however left it a bit over so there was room for my title//credits at the end. I also tried to make the sound fit with certain parts of my film, for example there’s a really dramatic part in the audio that I made line up with quite a dramatic part of the movie. This worked really well. The sound didn’t come with any clips so that took away any difficulty.

After adding the classical music I had to add the voiceover that was filmed on my IPhone via camera.

The area circled is where my voiceover sits (A2). Since my voiceover included footage (it was just a black screen but this still is a clip since I recorded it on camera), therefore I made sure to lock everything else so that the clip doesn’t get mixed up on top of the footage that I had sequenced perfectly. So, I imported the voiceover clip from my phone, placed it in the editing box and deleted the footage separately from the voice over so only the sound stayed. This worked really well and nothing was ruined. The audio, classical music and footage worked really well together.

Additionally, with the audio I had to go to the audio levels ad increase/decrease the sound. I turned down the classical music so that it was a soft background noise and turned my voice over up so that I could be clearly heard but not deafening at the same time.

So, once my audio and footage were done, I decided to add my subtitles to make it suitable for a variety of people to watch and added my title page at the end.

So, as you can see, the pink section within the editing box are my subtitles. I used the text tool and added the subtitles on each frame and where I was speaking. I made the text white and changed the font so that it was a little more rounded. This process was easier than I thought it was going to be. I also made the subtitles central so that they were always in the same place. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to render the subtitles hence the red line above them. However this didn’t effect the quality or the exporting of the video at all. I then added the title page. There was already a blank screen at the ending of my video where the audio ran over the footage (which is what I wanted) so all I had to do was add text to that blank bit of footage. I added the title ‘Dysmorphia’ to the end in a larger, fancier text and my name at the bottom under the title in a smaller font.

After the footage, the audio, the subtitles and my title page, I was finally done and exported the video to my documents. I then uploaded the video and embedded it in the next blog post.