A few hours after arriving at the accommodation at FIAP Paris, we took the metro up to the river Seine, where we walked around various iconic landmarks along the river, namely the Louvre museum. Whilst on this walk, I decided to bring my camera with me to do a photoshoot of the landscape and buildings that we passed, as I thought it would be a good chance to develop my skills in night photography. I’ve started looking at how settings such as ISO can impact the quality of an image, especially at night, so I wanted to focus primarily on using a lower ISO to achieve a higher quality image that captures as much as possible in the frame.

I took hundreds of images on the first night, some of which I had to unfortunately delete a lot of to save storage space on my SD card. I still kept a few hundred, which I sorted through and removed the ones with poor focus, low quality, or ones where I felt the composition was extremely weak. Eventually I was left with around 40 images that I believed were good enough to edit for a final image.

These 10 images were my final images from the first night, which I feel all have strong compositions when it comes to leading lines, focal points, and colour palettes. I’m really proud with how they turned out, especially with my experimentation with ISO in low-light settings such as in most of these photographs. Considering the small ISO range that my camera has, and the limitations of this, I think I did the best job I could for this shoot, but I’d like to see how I can improve this in the future without upgrading to something more expensive.

Using Adobe Audition, we learned how to clean up and modify the sounds we recorded at Elizabeth Castle for our short film.

We were taught how to use the parametric EQ tool to remove the sounds that we didn’t want from our audio clips, such as the wind by cutting out the lowest frequencies from the clip, which was done simply by raising the ‘L’ node on the graph shown above, and the reverse could be done for higher frequencies using the ‘H’ node. This became very helpful for the sound designer on our project, as we were able to clean up all the sounds for when we put them into the final edited version of the short film.

We mainly used this tool to clean up our ambient sounds, but we used it for some of our other sound effects too, such as the guns and cannons firing that are prevalent throughout our film. We also plan to have a very basic score to go over our film, which we could edit on Audition too, if we need to, as there could be static or other unwanted sounds in the background of the recording for it.

Archives are an accumulation of historical documents, records, or materials of any medium that are stored for the purposes of providing evidence of the past and of people that have lived and experienced things before us, and for the purpose of knowledge. Archives are repositories (placed where things are or can be stored) of knowledge in this sense, as they hold all kinds of information than can be useful to us in the modern day. In Jersey, there is a large and diverse archive managed by the Société Jersiaise, which is used to store and maintain old information that people today can use to learn from the island’s history, whether it’s for personal use or a larger project. The preservation of this knowledge is essential to keeping track of events that have occurred in the past, and can often be useful for the future, such as for predicting changes in land erosion through old maps and charts, or seeing how past generations dealt with large issues such as epidemics or bad weather that cuts off supplies from the mainland. Even today, most people have their own personal archives, such as photographs documenting events like weddings and parties, or even photos on their mobile phones, which can usually be stored and organised to whatever way the person desires, which can be useful for keeping track of their own life and what they do.

The Société Jersiaise, founded in 1873 by a small group of Jersey’s prominent islanders, has their own large archive, with over 125,000 publicly available photographs in their photographic archives alone, dating back to as early as the mid-1840s, just years after the invention of the daguerreotype; one of the first methods of modern photography. This information is all organised, so much so that they have dedicated sections to the photography of various local photographers, such as Henry Mullins, Claude Cahun, Edwin Dale, Clarence Philip Ouless and several more. The organisation of an archive is imperative to its function, as without it, especially at the size of Société Jersiaise’s archive, it becomes incredibly difficult to find something even slightly relevant to what someone might want to look for. As this archive in particular is digitised, the organisation of it is so much simpler as compared to physical archives, like the National Archives for a specific country, such as the UK. These archives are organised by vague topics in a system that whatever agency thinks suits it best, for example, an archival agency might log blueprints for a building under ‘infrastructure,’ ‘architecture’ or whatever they feel is a relevant title. After this point, some archives might index and catalogue these documents for the purpose of making them easier to access, or put them in there loosely and leave it at that.

This can also help provide context to media stored in archives, as especially with photography, without any topic or place associated with it, an image can become meaningless. Take photographer Walker Evans’ portfolio Beauties of the Common Tool, for example, looking at it from a regular perspective, the portfolio literally features photographs of tools. Without the given context, it can easily be mistaken for something that isn’t a form of contemporary art. With the context provided however, people in hundreds of years’ time can look at it from the perspective of it being art. Additionally, with context we have a better idea of when the material was created, even if there’s only a rough date, it can provide more insight into life for the author at the time of creation, or a statement on the world as a whole.

Photographers such as Henry Mullins had their own photography studios in Jersey in the late 1840s, where he took portraits of important members of Jersey society and others who could afford it for family and group portraits using the medium of cartes de visite – a small photograph that was often kept in wallets, purses and lockets – which is important to look back on now in the modern day, as it gives us an exact rendition of what people wore, how they looked, and even the diversity of people that were present on the island at the time, or wealthy enough to afford the portraits, along with the technology available to the public. This knowledge can be important for a variety of reasons, which is exactly why the information needs to be stored properly and in an organised, easy-to-find manner. Although Mullins’ work does all this, it can also be considered an inaccurate portrayal of Jersey’s history, as the working classes typically were unable to afford to have their photographs taken, which means what we often see from his work weren’t providing an idea of society as a whole at the time.

Take this portrait of Victor Hugo, for example. Also taken by Henry Mullins, it shows the French Senator making a serious and direct mode of address with the viewer, wearing a smart yet tousled suit, which could imply that he works in an esteemed profession, such as a writer, politician, etc. The photograph bears a relatively low contrast, the main focal point being Hugo’s clothing as it holds the darkest tones, contrasting the colour of the card. I find this portrait to be interesting because of the soft blend of the dark tones together, despite the crispness and intense detail on such a small medium. The image is placed on a cartes de visite, and features Mullins’ signature along with the year it was taken. The yellowed background of the cartes de visite creates a warm, nostalgic tone that could bring back memories of older family members or people that have records of their lives taken on similar mediums of photography. The piece itself doesn’t display too much history of the island, but it provides a record of people who were on the island at the time; like Hugo. It also shows that suits and formal attire were more prominently worn in day-to-day life, as most of Mullins’ subjects wore similar clothing in their cartes de visites. The picture doesn’t fit the whole frame however, and feathers off around the edges and in the lightest areas of the composition, which I feel reflects the technology of the time quite well. I find that the use of the cartes de visite as a photographic medium creates a more lifelike feel to the image that modern cameras can’t recreate, which I believe is the most compelling part of this photo.

In conclusion, archives are imperative for remembering and learning about the past, and can inform us on specific social practices that aren’t around, or that are done differently today. Additionally, each element of the archive is useful in its own way, and when put together can help someone build a greater and more accurate perspective of the world, and the island, at the time, and each new piece of information only benefits this. I think that the aesthetic look of older photography would be useful for the nostalgia project, as the tones are quite warm and could remind a viewer of a time they look back on fondly. I could also respond by editing these features into my imagery, as a film camera and the film for it like this would be far too costly for it to be justified.

Sources:

https://www.societe.je

https://education.blogs.archives.gov/2013/04/08/intro-to-national-archives/

https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Henry_Mullins

I uploaded the footage, images and audio that my group and Sam had taken on the Elizabeth Castle trip into Adobe Premiere Pro. My focus for this was on the video editing and the sound editing would be done by someone else in the group

I started to organise the video clips into my timeline, removing the audio and stabilising the footage using the warp stabiliser effect in the editor. To start the film, I used a clip I shot before we set off for the castle that was shot to be an establishing shot, although I plan to reshoot this before I finish editing as the camera is too unstable to achieve a clean look. I had this clip fade in from from black to smoothly start the film.

I put together a sequence of the trip on the amphibious bus travelling through the sea before we arrived at the castle gate, which then moves onto a shot of the coast, one of the peak of the castle and the Union Jack flag raised up on a pole. The next segment features one of the ‘British Army’ soldiers working for the castle giving a demonstration on how to operate a 19th Century musket.

This next part of the timeline shows more of the same as the soldier gives the demonstration, however, I also placed clips of the soldier giving a demonstration with one of the castle’s cannons intersecting with these clips to create a build-up as they prepare to fire, before the tension is released with four clips of the weapons firing on different occasions – two of the cannon and musket firing respectively. I used editing techniques such as speed ramping to slow down and speed up the footage and different moments when the musket fires for the first time – slowing down just as it fires, speeding back up after the smoke has mostly cleared. For the cannon’s first shot, I recorded it using the slow-motion camera on my phone, which ended up sacrificing some of the video quality so I could be a safe distance away from the shockwave zone.

I then segued the narrative toward the small war museum in the courtyard, that displays the various artillery used in WWII and in the castle throughout the years, before moving back to more panning shots of different areas and viewpoints of the castle, including staircases, old living quarters, and a view of the coast before slowly fading back to black.

For the sound design of the film, we plan to compose a relatively basic score that creates a sense of adventure across the entire project, focusing more on the ambient sound and a voiceover to provide more context to the shots of the soldier and the museum. We plan to try and rely more on our own sounds that we recorded whilst at the castle, instead of what’s been given to us through Sam’s sound library.

We went to an ArtHouse Jersey exhibition titled ‘No Place Like Home’ – “An ambitious multi-disciplinary exhibition featuring the work of acclaimed UK, international and Jersey-based artists that explores the concept of ‘home’ in the 21st century.” It was advertised with the placement of a Dissent Module at the Radome site in Les Platons, a piece created by Rachel Ara that was soon moved to the St Helier Town Churchyard just outside where the exhibition was held.

Upon entering the exhibition, we were greeted by a large sign of a house among various objects and Jersey landmarks, reading “HOME IS NOT A PLACE” – immediately launching us into thinking about concepts of home and community. Behind this was some more cardboard cutouts and a large mural of various pieces of furniture mixed with the previously mentioned Jersey landmarks, such as the towers that are scattered about the south coast of the island. This piece appears AI generated, given the way that things blend and merge together like in Will Lakeman’s exhibition surrounding his memories of Fort Regent recreated by AI.

Various art pieces and trinkets that wouldn’t look out of place in a household were spread out and organised around the first part of the room, some hanging from the ceiling, sat on bedside tables, and some hanging on the walls. Each set of objects had their own sense of belonging and personal attachment to them, whether it was something I’d recognised from my parents house, someone else’s house, or just something I’d noticed at some point in my life – nevertheless, there was still some almost nostalgic feeling I took from this part of the room.

The next thing we saw in the exhibition was this small, old-fashioned TV, playing a strange video of a woman in a kitchen, naming every object she picked up before hitting it against something, or using it to make a noise. It was an oddly nostalgic video that reminded me of commercials that I saw on the TV as a child, which I think was only enhanced by the medium of such an old TV, as my family still had something similar in the late 2000’s that I remember sitting in front of most nights.

The next section of the room reminded me of a modern house, with shelving shaped in strong, cubic forms, covered in various abstract artworks. Among them were prints of plants, old portrait photographs, and drawings of various shapes and objects, most notably the large piece that almost looks like a window with a flower-like design on each pane in the corner of the room. With the fake plants and couches placed around this area, it felt quite homely, in particular the chair displayed in the image reminded me of a chair that I used to sit on at my parents’ house when I was young.

On the other side of the room, I noticed a small scrapbook filled with small sketches and art pieces sat on a shelf, with a QR code nearby that lead to an interview of British artist Peter Liversidge. I felt quite an attachment to the book, which I think links back to the sketchbooks I had throughout primary secondary school studying art.

On the other side of the room, there was two tables, both being art pieces featuring images of buildings. On the first table, there were chunks of stone with a flat side, covered in images of various generic buildings. It almost acted as if these were chunks taken from the buildings and the images on them were just vague enough to create a link with a viewer’s own memories of similar buildings. Personally, this reminds me of the large granite Gaspe House buildings near the coast in St Helier, toward the beginning of Victoria Avenue. Although I have no personal link or association to this place, it triggered a memory of them that brings me back to this familiar place. On the second table, these images of buildings were plastered onto these 3D shapes that seem assembled like some sort of puzzle. I think they have quite a crystalline shape, which made me think more about the material these actual buildings were made of, and the crystals inside of stones that I saw when playing with and breaking apart rocks when I was younger.

At the back of the exhibition, a large tapestry of a small canyon in what I presume to be a desert was hung from the wall. I felt extremely connected to this piece, as it brought back memories of my summers in Spain with my Grandfather, where I’d explore the mountains in the surrounding area, and I remember going down to a large creek with one of my friends that I’d met down there, jumping off of large rocks into the water and camping in a place similar to this.

This final part of the exhibit was much like the first, featuring cardboard cutouts of various objects and some old-fashion furniture, but this one felt different; it reminded me of memories I had at some of my older family members houses in the UK, and partly my Grandmother’s house before it was redecorated.

Overall, I found this exhibit very interesting, and even now, taking the time to reflect and write about it I find myself thinking about my childhood and what I would consider my home and what’s important to me.

We visited the Société Jersiaise photo archives to learn more about the history of Elizabeth Castle, primarily the history with the Occupation and WWII. After this visit, I realised that I had no idea that the castle had so much history with so many different things – I’d always seen it more as just a monument for Queen Elizabeth I, not a place that housed exiled royalty or privateers.

We looked at several different physical copies of old photographs, letters, and drawings of or to do with the castle, and given a talk by photo-archivist Patrick Cahill on the importance of documentation and archiving – it gives people in the present mostly necessary information about the past that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. We also learned about the process of archiving, how they sort everything in their systems, and how they decide what they can and can’t display for public access within the archives.

We were also told about their online archive that is publicly available on the Société Jersiaise website, featuring 8 main sections of different media stored on their databases, including newspapers, annual bulletins, maps/plans, books, albums, photographs, talks and resources.

These resources will all be perfectly useful for the development and production of our short film on Elizabeth Castle, and will help me grasp a better idea of the history of the building and what it means to the island.

Watch La Jetee (1963) – https://youtu.be/nvJzKqdSr-Q

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is a rough storyboard for our short film. The main outline for the film surrounds the architecture and history of the castle itself, discussing the artillery and weapons used throughout its history, which we can then later decide whether to move on from the castle to other landmarks surrounding the war, such as the WWII bunkers around the island or the War Tunnels. Also, as we still aren’t too sure on what equipment we will have on the day, we don’t want our film to rely on shots we won’t be able to get.

I don’t want to plan too much of what we shoot at Elizabeth Castle because I want to explore the area and get shots of places I haven’t thought about, and of whatever may happen while we’re there.

One of the key shots we want for our short film is of Elizabeth’s castles cannons and artillery, showcasing the powerful defenses the fortress had in place against an attack. If possible, I’d like to try to get a slow-motion shot of the cannon or other weapons firing.

I think that a drone shot looking down on Elizabeth Castle would be perfect as an establishing shot for our short film, if we can get our hands on one.

A shot from the peak of the castle would also be fantastic, as we can get high-up establishing shots if we don’t have access to a drone, as we can look down onto the courtyards and other features of the fortress.

We could also attempt to shoot some footage on the amphibious bus that takes us to the castle if the ride is smooth enough, or even just take a shot of it driving up to the castle.

On a clear night, we could go down to the St Aubin’s bay and take some more footage of the castle at night, which might be good for the final sequence of the short film (maybe even during sunset?).

We could also shoot at other sites and fortifications from WWII around the island, such as Noirmont or the Jersey War Tunnels, and link it to the German Occupation of the island, which would help the informative side of our short film. Some of the coastal sites may be difficult to film from the exterior without access to a boat, which we don’t have.

Visual inspirations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xwIZ9GdhPk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtWeqZsuzpE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFRR0zC70-0

We plan to centre our film around the Nazi Occupation of Jersey in WWII, travelling to different historical sites around the island, including the War Tunnels, various important bunkers and larger fortifications such as Mont Orgueil Castle in Gorey.

I want to use this task as an opportunity to improve my skills in techniques such as hyperlapses, which is a form of timelapse shot used to capture motion. We also hope to use Charlie’s drone if we can get it to work, as it would work really well for establishing shots of the castle. As I already take film studies as an extra subject, I think I have leeway when it comes to experimenting with these harder techniques, another one I want to try is the slow-motion feature on my phone’s camera, which has so far given me some smooth, high quality shots when messing around with it.

When we actually go to Elizabeth Castle, we’ll need to bring a tripod, a camera (phone camera should be enough but we might be better off using a proper one), and the drone (if it works). Otherwise, when we do our extra shooting, we should be alright with the same or even maybe less equipment.

For the audio on our short film, we need to bring a sound recorder and maybe make use of the boom arm if we’re shooting at the same time. We need ambient sounds of seagulls, the shore, and we might need to record some footsteps on gravel and stone. If we can’t get these on the day, we can make some sound effects with foley sound.