Evaluation After Exhibition

From seeing my short film up in the exhibition I was happy with myself and the feedback I got from visitors. In all honesty I think the film would have been better as a projection on to a blank wall, played on a loop. As the footage is quite short I would say it is more of a performance piece rather than a short film, however projected onto a wall I think this would make it more of an instillation piece and the message would have been a lot more hard hitting. I think the message I wanted to create was communicated quite well, however, there are a few things I think could have been improved. If I was to produce a piece similar again, then next time I would definetely make it longer and also get the actors to move around a little more. I think the space could have been used better and I would have used close up footage aswell as distant footage to break down the depth of field. One of my initial ideas was to use more than 2 actors, however I think the idea was portrayed how I wanted it to be with just the two. 

Bibliography

Christopher Nolan- Doodlebug. (1997) Short film

Claude Chaun- 'I Extend My Arms' (1931) Photograph. Liverpool Tate Museum

Dan Heys- 'Harmony In Green' (1997) Painting. Walker Art Gallery Liverpool

John Hoyland- Broken Bride 13.6.82. (1982) Painting. Walker Art Gallery Liverpool

Lindsay Anderson- If. (1968) Film

Lucy Gunning- Climbing Around My Room. (1993) Short film. Harris Art Gallery, Preston

Sophie Clements- There, After. 2011 (Instillation and film) Harris Art Gallery, Preston

Film Stills

For my end of year show I am going to use these film stills and sell them in the shop. I may put them in frames or just sell them as prints.

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Setting And Costume

Setting




'Harmony In Green', 1997, Oil On Canvas, Dan Hays



Of the piece the artist has said,  'Monet chose 'Harmony in Green' as a sub-title for a water-lily painting. I was reminded of impressionism as I was filling in the spaces between the bars of the cage. Green is the colour of nature. I wanted to show the cage as a desirable place to occupy. The painted cage is confined within the rectangle of the canvas. I find the notion of harmony interesting. In a classical sense there is discord in the painting. Harmony is to be found in the play between surface and the illusion of depth. There is a feeling of hope that these opposing domains may be united.'

From seeing this piece exhibited in the Walker Art Gallery I found myself thinking about spatial awareness within art works, especially for my final piece. I've realised that with the work I've produced so far this year I have focused alot on the way it is presented and the space around it. I am interested in confined spaces and the sense of control that comes with creating them, no matter how sparse the subject. This gave me the idea for my final piece to film deliberately keeping the backdrop in the frame, creating a specific location and control. Thus exaggerating the idea that the models/actors are placed there with no sense of freedom or self decision. An unescapable cycle and idea. 

I want the setting to be in black and white colours only, juxtaposing the characters from their background and helping them stand out.

Costume

For my short film I have decided I want my actors/models to be wearing all black, tight clothing for a professional finish; tight clothes to define the actors shapes and movements, and black to prevent distractions for the viewer. I want the actors to represent universally, and not just to a single stereotype of person. The colour black will work as a blank canvas in front of the white backdrop from the studio. As I am trying to represent the animalistic chracteristics of both genders I want my actors to be wearing some form of mask to hide their indentities, so we see them for simply just their genders and not who they are as individual people. The idea of wearing a mask also hides the actors emotions and facial expressions. Something that I think is relevant for my work and the idea I want to communicate. It takes the humanity away from the characters and portrays them as a 'species'.

At first I covered the actors masks in newspaper cuttings of the media. Focusing on the idea of them being covered/hidden/represented by the world/locations surrounding them. After a while of thought I realised this wouldn't be the best way of communicating my piece as it takes away the primitave nature of my work and modernises the idea of human communication a bit too much. 

I decided after experimenting with costume that my fmp piece would be more successful if the actors/models, just simply wore animal masks. Relevent to my idea and subtle enough to hide their identities. 

Primary Research- Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

'Broken Bride 13.6.82', 1982, John Hoyland

Hoyland's radiant painting describes an emotional state which the viewer is invited to re-create or share. The harmonious and authoritative mix of shapes, textures and colours upon a flat area of canvas without the support of recognisable imagery is a profound artistic challenge, requiring spontaneity and instinct, but also discipline. Hoyland's use of dates in his titles suggests that a chief aim of his works is to sum up a moment or a period of life; a searching for order and meaning in existence. I like how Hoyland's work leaves the viewer open for interpretation, and I want my work to have a simlar feel. This is a reason why I don't want to title my piece and also I want to edit the film in short quick flashes rather than have the images flowing together. I think this will create a sense of frustration and radical impulse within my short film and will also exaggerate the actors being 'trapped' in a cycle.

Primary Research- TATE, Liverpool

'I Extend My Arms' 1931, Claude Cahun

I Extend My Arms is a black and white photograph showing a dramatically gesturing pair of arms apparently emerging from inside a stone monolith. A tanned female left arm, ornamented with three beaded wooden bangles on its wrist, extends from out of a large hole in the lichen-covered stone. Its partner – wearing a ring on its little finger – emerges from the other side of the monolith, which is of similar dimensions to a human body. The owner of the arms is standing behind the monolith so that her body is completely concealed; this creates the illusion that she is inside the stone or has somehow become fused with it. The simple upright block-like form, softened by many years of weathering, is tightly cropped into the picture frame. Brightly lit by full sun, it stands out starkly against a sepia-coloured blue sky. As the work’s title indicates, the arms extend outwards with spread fingers as though they are reaching out for something – possibly attempting. 

'Doodlebug' By Christopher Nolan

The story consists of a somewhat ratty man, in a much rattier flat. There, he seems intent—and possibly even driven to insanity - with catching the 'doodlebug' of the film's title. However, after over two minutes of cat and mouse chasing, it is revealed that the bug resembles a miniature version of himself. He squashes the bug with his shoe. The audience comes to realise that every move that the doodlebug makes the man reciprocates a second later. Into this Kafkaesque situation enters a large face, that of the man; thereby making the man the doodlebug, and he proceeds to get squashed by this newer being.

This film is what has initially inspired me for my short film, its ideas, and possibly even the way it has been shot. I'm interested in the never ending feeling the short film portrays, a cycle, that can never be stopped. A film within a film, mimicking an inescapable perspective.

Primary Research- Harris Art Gallery, Preston

There, After, (2/3) 2011 - Sophie Clements


'From the fundamental forces that act on the physical world, to the strength of bonds between human beings, it is these invisible forces or bonds that hold us – as people, as families, as atoms and molecules.'

This piece by Sophie Clements caught my eye from the Harris Art gallery, I think maybe because I have a keen interest in instillation and film work at the moment. From just seeing the piece it can be quite challenging to realise what the art work was communicating. I got the idea that she was looking at single moments in time and slowing down the footage. When I got home I decided to look into her work and found that she was looking at the different forces that hold us together, not just the physical world but us as human beings. I liked this idea as I felt she was looking at the world in a more scientific way rather than an emotional one. Similar to what I wanted to portray in my work, taking the emotion and characteristic away from the beings and taking it back to basics, in more primitive times. I like the simplicity of the instillation piece and the idea of taking lots of shots in a short period of time from when the water balloon explodes to when it hits the floor. It's something we know is happening but we probably have never seen up close and as detailed before since the transition happens so quickly.

'Climbing Around My Room' 1993, Lucy Gunning

'A girl is in a bare room. She is moving, slowly and with visible effort, around the space. Her crimson gown, set against the white walls, stands out as a gash of red lipstick on a pale face. With animal agility, she circles the room, her naked feet never once touching the floor. She edges along the skirting-board and reaches an alcove ranked with shelves. She levers herself into the first of these deep crevices, rolling her body in, out, and up, to scale the wall. As impossible as a dream, Lucy Gunning’s videowork Climbing Round My Room (1993) has the intensity of a fantasy born from hours of idle introspection, alone in one’s bedroom. With its elusive goal, its protagonist’s extravagant exertions, her endless, rhythmic circling of the limits of the space, and her thorough exploration of the room’s secret nooks and crannies, it is difficult to resist interpreting the scene as a metaphorically sexual one: the body might be the bedroom, and the act, played by a solitary performer, auto-erotic. This is not to reduce the piece to crude symbolism or to sexual theatre (although, with its emphasis on real time and energy, Climbing Round My Room is related to physical theatre) but to try to account for its strangely arresting effect. Gunning’s scenario describes something precarious and pleasurable, something dangerously yet delicately achieved. It is an image of excess, an enactment of desire in a landscape at once known and unknown. If, for Lacan, Bernini’s enrapt Saint Theresa represented the unrepresentable, a moment of jouissance frozen in stone, then Gunning’s video suggests jouissance not as one (or even many) particular moments, but as a psychic event played out in a cycle of perpetual, physical, motion.'

In the early hours of the morning, as a nightclub winds down somewhere in London, the room is pierced with the extraordinary sounds of high-pitched neighing. The lights go up, but the horse impersonator is gone. Lucy Gunning, haunted by the noise, resolves to find her. She takes out ads in newspapers, pins up notices in colleges, stables, community centres, asks around. The woman is not found. But, unexpectedly, many others come forward. For the horse impersonator is not unique in her passions.

Gunning visits and films these subjects, and compiles a video of their collected impressions. Though their solitary practice might appear comic, a harmless hobby, it quickly becomes apparent that this is no simple enthusiasm.

'If...'

'If...' Is a 1968 British drama film produced and directed by Lindsay Anderson satirizing English public school life. Famous for its depiction of a savage insurrection at a fictitious boys boarding school, the X certificate film was made at the time of the May 1968 protests in France by a director strongly associated with the 1960's counterculture. The film, very suggestive and sometimes confusing, leaves the viewer open to their own interpretation of certain events and scenes which happen in the film. One of the best scenes in the film is the 'café scene', when Mick Travis, played by Malcolm McDowell, and 'The Girl', Played by Christine Noonan, play fight and attack each other in the café acting like lions, which is rather strange to watch seen as though they have only just met. The filming suggestively provokes the idea of the play fighting leading to sex even though nothing physical is shown, just some short clips of nudity. Further into the film Mick Travis finds a dead fetus in a jar and quicky hands it over to 'the girl' dismissing it completely; unsure of how to respond. Thus representing what could have been,something not realised until the end of film when they die together. This film has given me the idea to create a short performance film suggesting the stereotypical primitive nature of both genders, female and male. The idea of 'what could be' if people in the future would possibly go back to interacting with each other the same way they did many centuries ago.

Project Proposal

Candidate Name- Hayley Darbyshire

Pathway- Fine Art

Project Title- 'Untitled' (as of now)

Since repeating my foundation year I have gained a wider aspect and knowledge of what ‘ Fine Art’ can intale. As my previous foundation year consisted of simply just drawing, this year I wanted to challenge myself and widen my horizons to see what I was capable of.  I started the year with a time controlled project ‘ 74 Days of Me’, although it was somewhat different I realised creating work simply just about myself was not something I am interested in. From this I decided to challenge myself not only with the subjects and issues I was looking at within my work but also how my pieces were communicated and exhibited. I created 3D works, took part in a taxidermy class, and created large scale paintings including text. Towards the beginning of the year after watching numerous short british films and watching films weekly at college I realised  film making was something I wanted to try myself and research into.

For my FMP I have decided to make a short film looking into males and females and the way they act with and towards each other. I want my film to represent both genders in an animalistic, and somewhat stereotypical way. My film will exaggerate the primitive characteristics of both male and females and will probably seem somewhat biased since, being a girl myself, I will have my own views from past encounters with the opposite gender, but also the experience from having a girls point of view.

Similar to my previous work from this year, I want the setting of my film (or the way it is going to be shot) to represent a box like atmosphere, suggesting and exaggerating the fact that the actors in it have been placed in a derelict space and I am the one controlling their surroundings, but not their actions. I want my film, similar to Christopher Nolan’s, ‘Doodlebug’, to have a repetitive theme, representing a cycle of gender issue with no escape.

I am currently blogging my work and research to keep track of my progress and experimentation within my FMP. I am, and will, continue to have crits and tutorials with tutors for critical feedback to help my work progress ready for the final exhibition.