A narrative is a storytelling technique wherein characters describe the events of a story, experience, or details from their point of view. The term can be used as a noun or an adjective. As a noun, narrative refers to the story being told. It is the account of events, experiences, and details. It also refers to the story-telling process.
How will I tell my story?
I am going to produce a zine documenting the unique characters of St Malo. My story will consist of a series of images presenting the faces and surroundings of St Malo from the point of view of a tourist, each image is captioned by a singular French word relating to the photograph adjacent. The front and back cover will contain a black image adding to the minimalistic style I’m aiming for, the front cover reads ‘Vissages de Saint-Malo’ translating to ‘Faces of Saint Malo’.
3 WORDS:
Faces of St Malo
A SENTENCE:
A photography student explores the unique characters of St Malo
A PARAGRAPH
Photography students had the incredible opportunity to explore the diverse range of people that make up the vibrant city of St Malo. By capturing the unique individuals and their stories, the students delved into the cultural and historical contexts that shape their identities. Showcasing the rich tapestry of humanity, highlighting the agency and individuality contained within each person they encountered.
A zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation. A good photo zine captures the essence of its subject matter through visually compelling and thought provoking images. It should tell a story or evoke emotions through it’s photography.
Mood Board
I have produced a mood board to refer to for the design and layout of my zine. I am going for a more minimalistic style as I feel it compliments the tone and framing of the images. Whilst focusing on the simplicity and cleanliness of the design, allowing the content to stand out, creating a sense of sophistication.
Elizabeth castle was built in 1601, making it 422 years old. Construction was started in the 16th century when the power of the cannon meant that the existing stronghold at Mont Orgueil was insufficient to defend the Island and the port of St. Helier was vulnerable to attack by ships armed with cannons.
The British government withdrew the garrison and relinquished the castle to the States of Jersey in 1923. The States then opened it to the public as a museum. During the Second World War the Germans, who occupied the Channel Islands, modernized the castle with guns, bunkers and battlements.
How was the castle made?
Construction of the earliest parts of the castle, the Upper Ward including the Queen Elizabeth Gate, began in 1594. This work was carried out by the Flemish military engineer Paul Ivy.
The Lower Ward was constructed, between 1626 and 1636, on the site of the ruined Abbey church. This area of the castle became a parade ground, surrounded by a barrack building and officers’ quarters. Wells and cisterns for water existed within this area
In 1651, a windmill was constructed half-way between Fort Charles and the Lower Ward. In the same year, the Parliamentarian forces landed in Jersey and bombarded the castle with mortars. The destruction of the medieval Abbey church in the heart of the castle complex which had been used as the storehouse for ammunition and provisions forced Carteret to surrender on 15 December 1651 after being besieged for seven weeks.[4] Jersey was held by Parliamentarians for the next nine years until the restoration of the monarchy.
A 1651 depiction of the Castle
In 1668, or shortly afterwards, King William’s Gate was constructed, which is located between the Outer Ward, and Lower Ward.
After doing some research and gathering facts about the castle, I want to base our film off the architecture of the castle, including things like the walls, archways, the different layers of the castle and so on. This interests me as although it may just look like basic walls and buildings, they have way more history behind them. I think this will make a good film.
My zine is going to be based off the photos i took and images i made in St Malo. I carefully selected my images and cut them down to what i think are my strongest images. After i did this i edited them using different tools including cropping and changing the angle of some images.
I’ve decided to make all the images in my zine black and white. My strongest images from the shoot are all of inside the walled city; the images are interesting however, they all have the same boring color theme going on of different beige and brown tones. using black and white, i am able to bring out the darker and lighter tones in the images, maybe even exaggerating them, this defines the photos. I want my zine to tell a story in a way that color doesn’t distract the viewer from the images beauty.
When we were in St Malo I was fascinated by the architecture of the walls and the buildings, how it had been made etc. Due to this i decided to take most of my images of the buildings and less of, say, people.
I want my zine to represent the history of the architecture in and around the walled city. This is another reason I’ve chosen to put my images in black and white, to represent that the walls of St Malo are an ancient artifact that have more historical meaning then just a tourist attraction.
I plan on possibly involving text on the pages of my zine. This will include a title on the front cover and then maybe some information on the background of St Malo.
A zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. The idea behind a zine is that you express your intentions in some sort of “pamphlet-esque” or “book-like” form.
Whats the difference between a zine and a magazine?
Although the word “zine” is derived from “magazine,” the two publications are significantly different. A zine is often made by a single person or a small group of individuals whenever they feel like it, as opposed to a magazine which needs an editorial team and a fixed publishing schedule.
In short, a zine is a Do-It-Yourself pamphlet publication that can be endlessly reproduced. Zines are usually not unique, one-of-a-kind creations. Zines range from seriously reverent political treatises to wildly idiosyncratic personal musings. Many zines are like diaries or letters, and many others are like mini research papers.
Examples of Zines:
Topic of my zine
We are creating a zine on the topic of St Malo. We will be using our images that we took during the St Malo trip that we edited. Also, we used dreamstudio and photoshop to experiment with producing AI images. I used my St Malo images to do this so depending on all my final outcomes, i might use them for my zine.
Chris Marker was a French filmmaker, poet, photography, and multi-media artist who challenged both himself and philosophers with his complex theories on time, memory, and evolution. Marker’s short time travel film, ‘La Jetee’ is one of the most influential science-fiction films ever made, surrounding a slave on a journey through his own memories in the wake of WWIII, told through still images.
– La Jetee (1963)
The film begins with stills of an airport observation deck, before the narrator gives context to the post-apocalyptic setting of Paris in a voiceover, which is prevalent throughout the film’s runtime. The woman on the observation deck is then introduced, before mentioning the climactic event of the film that leaves the protagonist both obsessed and traumatised by the moment. The stills that follow display the ruins of Paris and the voiceover talks about the following war and capture of various slaves as prisoners for the camp directors to experiment on, hiding out in the underground passages beneath Chaillot.
– La Jetee (1963)
We are then properly introduced to the protagonists as we are shown the results of some of the experiments that the camp directors are doing, before the protagonist starts to be experimented on, being told that humanity is doomed – their only hope being to look through time for the answers.
– La Jetee (1963)
The protagonist is then sent through his own memories over the following weeks, portrayed through various stills of people, birds, graves, and lakes, until he is eventually dragged into the past, able to move freely as he wishes. This is where he meets the woman from his memories, whom he begins to speak to, spend time with, and falls in love with her as the experiment goes on, only to vanish before her eyes each time he’s sent back to the present.
– La Jetee (1963)
Eventually, the camp directors deem the experiments a success and attempt to send the protagonist into the future, meaning he will never see the woman again. When he’s sent to the future, he’s met by a small group of people, who offer him a power source that can support and save humanity from extinction. When the protagonist arrives back in the present, he is then left to realise that all that remains for him is his execution, which he waits for in dread. The people from the future contact him in this moment, and offer him a place among them, which he rejects; instead asking to be placed back into his childhood memories again, where he can enjoy the pre-war era with the woman in happiness.
– La Jetee (1963)
He is once again at the observation deck of the airport, where he searches for the woman, wondering if his younger self is there watching the planes. As he runs to the woman, he recognises one of the camp directors, who shoots him in front of the woman. The protagonist realises in this moment that there is no escape from time, and the moment of his obsession that he’d had since he was a child, was the moment of his own death.
I find the techniques used in the making of this film to be quite unique, and I believe that Marker’s use of still imagery as opposed to the moving images that are typically used in film has a philosophical significance, as it gives the audience time to think over what is happening in the emptier moments, and is less distracting to their trains of thought. This also is symbolic of the characters being trapped in time, as the protagonist in particular is stuck in a life-or-death cycle throughout the whole narrative. Marker uses a lot of transitions between his images, primarily fades, which blend the photographs together much like memories, which I find to be quite relevant to the premise and topics in the narrative. The narrative itself is non-linear, which is a common convention of a lot of time travel science-fiction films, as the story moves back and forth from the protagonists memories to the present moment, which works well as a storytelling device to provide context to the audience.
This film has inspired a change in my approach to cinematography, as it has made me realised that a moving image isn’t always necessary to create a powerful, provoking scene, as long as other film elements are there.
