I feel as though my research was quick and easy process. This is because we had Shannon O’Donnell, a documentary film maker come in and inspire us with her video surrounding identity politics in the theme of gender fluidity. I fell in love with the elegance of her film’s and the way that she made them; through filming herself in front of the camera and experimenting with different clothing and positions. It is no doubt that she inspired me hugely and influenced the production of my film. We had spent a couple of weeks looking at Culture Wars and Identity Politics of which I looked into and created a blog post about, showing my knowledge and understanding. To me, culture wars and identity politics were hugely important, as they are in society in general, however I felt a personal connection with these certain topics. Things like gender, race, abortion etc are all things that I have a strong opinion on and things that I have wished to explore for a while. This is why I took such a personal approach to my film (body shaming and how women are stereotyped and expected to look a certain way). Not only had I been discriminated for that in the past, but it was something I felt very strongly about. Overall, the research I did and the help of Shannon O’Donnell was extremely helpful, I may have explored Identity Politics further and developed a more rich, in-depth blog post however I fully understood it.
The planning for my video however was quite weak. I didn’t quite know where to start with the whole filming process, on the other hand, again, Shannon O’Donnell inspired me hugely and I know that I wanted to use the same filming technique as her and the concept for my film came to me almost instantly due to personal experiences. My story board though for example, was quite weak as I had very little idea where I wanted to go with it and I wanted to jump straight in – the impulsive decisions that I made however were what created my film. This is similar with the voiceover – there was no real plan and I almost jumped into it and read aloud my stream of consciousness, again though, this is what made my film so excellent.
FILMING
Again, filming came with many impulsive decisions which isn’t necessarily a strong point as there was no real structure to my plan. Again though, it came out brilliantly. The weaknesses of my filming included things like not having the correct equipment – I found it difficult to film on an IPhone due to the portrait format that it had, this made me struggle with angles etc. I also didn’t have a tripod to lay my phone on, that left me scattering around looking for anything and everything I could get my hands on that would be able to balance my phone in the correct position. Another problem was the area in which I was filming, I was struggling for a long time on where I should film that had a plain background yet was also a spacious area – due to my house being quite small there was really no area. So, I decided to hang my grey blanket over my door in order to create a back drop. All of these elements made it hard to film, and thorough planning would’ve cancelled these issues out however, my impulsive quick-thinking allowed me to make a good, aesthetically pleasing movie. Next time, I will most definitely think in depth of how, where, why, what and when I am filming to reduce the stress.
EDITING PROCESS
To begin with, I was quite nervous about working with Premiere as it was a software I hadn’t used before and it appeared to be quite complicated. But, I managed to get the hang of it and after that it was a fairly quick and easy process. I was also worried about the fact that I had filmed on an IPhone, and that it wouldn’t upload efficiently, however there were no issues when it came to importing them and they rendered perfectly. Editing was the most time consuming process, but it usually is, as you have to re-watch it a number of times and make sure it was perfect. The audio was also easier to import than I thought, and fit so perfectly with my movie. The voiceover, again filmed on my IPhone and via camera, this also worried me concerning importation, however all I had to do was delete the footage of my voiceover and separate that from the actual audio – again, easier than I thought it was going to be. Lastly, I thought that the subtitles would be a really time consuming process however I found my own little knack when it came to it. I simply selected each frame and added the subtitles with the text tool – this made it much easier and cut down the work load so much.
OVERALL
Overall, I am extremely happy with how my movie turned out, It looks amazing and it is exactly how I envisioned it to look. The impulsive decision making and lack of equipment may have cut the quality slightly however, it now has a contemporary look to it and I also wanted that atmosphere to be portrayed. So, although my technique and processes weren’t perfect, I feel if they were, my video wouldn’t have turned out the way it did. As mentioned before, if I were to make a film again, I would put more effort into research and planning and not just jump straight into it.
As previously shown in a last blog post, I have already selected a number of still images that came from me selecting specific frames from my movie, and print screening them in order to create a still image. Now I will be presenting these still images in a certain layout that will go on to be published as a newspaper spread.
SEQUENCE
Inspirations for my Sequence design:
Duane Michals
Sequences his image into a story-board type layout
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Sequences their images in a typology layout which means classifying images into a certain category.
MY OWN STORYBOARD/TYPOLOGY LAYOUT
STORY BOARD
In this case, I opened Photoshop, opened a custom canvas and began opening the still images that I had already chosen and edited. I then would crop each of them into a square format and placed the images in the order that they appeared in my movie to create a storyboard.
I feel as though this turned out quite nicely however some of the images for example, the shower still image, appears a little stretched which takes away the aesthetics of the storyboard. I also dislike how the lighting is extremely inconsistent across the story board however this does create some juxtaposition.
TYPOLOGY
For this typology, I collected the different frames that involved a number of different body parts as this is the category I decided on for this typology. Most of them were easy to gather as a lot of my movie involved showing various different body parts, however, specifically for the bottom two photographs, I had to gather a couple of other still images that aren’t explicitly showing body parts and zoom in onto specific areas like my hand. I also leveled each image a little more to my preference and to create an eerie/dark atmosphere among the typology.
Overall, I’m really happy with this typology and wouldn’t change anything.
JUXTAPOSITION
I made a few juxtaposing spreadsheets due to the fact that my still images all quite similar and I wasn’t sure how the images could juxtapose each other therefore I experimented with the images.
I chose the still image of my back a few times as I feel as though this is a really powerful image, I also think the contrast within it is really great and creates a clear, aesthetic photograph. I feel as though my favourite justxaposing images are either the second spread sheet or the last, just above us. This is because in the second one, I feel as though not only do the images juxtapose each other, but the lighting does too. It also shows to sides of different stories, for example, the picture of my back is showing body insecurity, and the other is showing facial insecurity which creates the overall theme of not loving yourself. The last spread sheet is also my favourite because of the strong contrasts between the two. The shadows in the first image have many strong shadows that make it really aesthetically pleasing and the same with the second image. I also like how one image involves clothing while the other doesn’t – representing exposure and not wanting to cover up while the other image is clothes and is almost as though the subject doesn’t want anyone to see her body.
FULL BLEED
This is the image that I’d like to make a full bleed page spread due to the fact that it could have many connotations and meanings. There are a lot of emotions that could be interpreted here for example, fear, disgust, insecurity, anger, guilt etc. I also love the harsh shadows that are created in this image. I took it into Photoshop once more before uploading just to enhance those shadows and to create a darker, more mysterious tone to the image.
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.
fading in clips and writing
cutting up clips
changing volume
colouring effects
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.
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
Documentary photography from artists, such as Chloe Jafe, can give insight and understanding into subcultures that are heavily criticised and regarded with contempt as well as empowering the individuals within these niches.
Chloe Jafe,
Additionally, Claude Cahun’s work is inspirational due to how influential its become in gender politics. Cahun’s rejection of current beauty standards and gender expectations has made her work highly relevant in modern society, as gender binaries are slowly becoming less strict.
Interpreting Love
In my personal investigation of love, I decided to explore the depth of friendships and exhibit the intimacy that can occur between individuals. To capture this, I often asked my subjects to create direct eye contact with the camera, as well as keeping close proximity between the camera and the subject I was photographing. Through experimentation during my shoots I found the importance of making sure the subject is comfortable and confident around the camera, as well as discovering the strong effects of close-up shots.
I also incorporated people who important to my subjects. I wanted to capture the joy and happiness brought about by their presence which is prominent in many of my photos.
Additionally, I incorporated the aspect of family, highlighting that who you consider your family may not necessarily be blood-related to you. I also aimed to capture the playful nature within many familial and platonic relationships, which can be seen through the coy expression on my subject’s face.
A major inspiration to my work within the theme of love was Rita Puig-Serra Costa, whose work focused on the depth of love that can be expressed after undergoing an immense amount of grief. Within her photo-book ‘Where mimosa bloom‘, Costa explored people and places that held significance to her and her relatives throughout her childhood and throughout the experience of her mother’s demise. I was inspired by this and explored both natural and urban landscape photography to link with the portraits of my subjects.
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.
Firstly, this image in particular shows Cahun’s rejection of gender constructs. The presentation of herself within the photo is highly ambiguous. With a lack of distinguishing ‘male’ or ‘female’ features, the gender of the subject is notably difficult to specify. This, in itself, is a clear attempt to destroy the social construct of gender binaries.
In the image, Cahun is making direct eye contact with the camera, her head is shaven and the only visible parts of her body are her hands and her head. Many of her portraits only presented her head and her shoulder, and due to the theatrical nature of her work, Cahun often shaped her body to blur any gender indicators. Cahun would position herself with purpose. This theatre became an important feature of Cahun’s work, as she aimed to avoid displaying any behaviour that could be attached to a specific gender. She does this in an attempt to remain androgynous.
Furthermore, it can be argued that Cahun is criticising the stereotypes of women at the time. Initially through her physical appearance, yet also through the use of props in her image. One of the main focuses of the image is the reflection of Cahun in the mirror. At the time and still in modern art today, mirrors frequently have connotations of vanity. The fact that Cahun is facing away from the mirror, despite being in such close proximity to it, amplifies her rebellion against female beauty standards and ideals of the time, as she is refusing to appear ‘vain’ and refusing to show the audience that she cares about her appearance.
These are all clear indicators that Cahun is distinguishing herself from the rest of society by taking hold of her own identity and not allowing social norms to influence it.
O’donnell’s work also incorporates identity politics. In her series ‘That’s not the way the river flows’, O’donnell has taken inspiration from Cahun in presenting her gender. Many of the images depict O’donnell in both stereotypically ‘male’ clothing and stereotypically ‘female’ clothing. Her work clearly shows her exploration of the social constructs of society, specifically the social construct of gender binary. She aimed to deconstruct it, as well as showing her own conflict as to whether her own identity is entirely defined on her birth sex.
O’donnell also incorporates theatre into her work. Adjusting and mismatching her clothing is just one of the ways she presents her struggle with identity. In this particular image, O’donnell is wearing what appears to be a shirt and blazer, matched with fishnet stockings. These two conflicting items of clothing shows her rebellion against societal norms. Additionally, the use of props pulling her towards opposite sides of the frame represents how society attempts to segregate both genders and categorise what can be worn by each one. Furthermore, the location is fairly abstract, having no context or link towards the rest of the ideas portrayed through the image. This can be interpreted as representing the absurdity of social constructs within our society.
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.
