charlievitamB

Honestly, this idea kind of dragged me into a new zone where I barely made my way out. I understand how I thought at the beginning, that the way that mother giving birth to child is the way that human (and all the lives) continue their journey. (Well it kind of sound weird here but I’ve already done it so…) But after all the struggles I had, from struggling to find a point to focus on in this pretty big topic, to how to visualise the idea, I kind of feel like choosing this idea is a little bit too unrealistic for my level of study.

I eventually decided to visualise the idea with a film, just like I always do, firstly because I was really tired of thinking about the fancy ways of visualisation as I did in the beginning, as working on the story had already made me exhausted. And also because the topic itself is pretty complicated, and after talking to my friends and the tutors, I found that things like AR, split screens and interactive story are just not really necessary and would probably make it more difficult and confusing.

Still, it’s a shame that I didn’t get to experiment with more interesting ways of telling this story. But I’m already proud of myself for bringing this idea that I had from the beginning to this far. And next time, (as there’s always be) Charlie is going to really PLAY it. (Does that even make sense???)

My idea – inspired by evolution and motherhood – turned out to be much broader than I expected. Even after talking to my friends and the tutors, I still couldn’t narrow the whole story down to any specific aspect, which really troubled me because at the beginning of the project I made a promise to myself that I’m going to use more workshops than I normally do, and unable to have clear focus made me struggle to decide which way of visualisation I should use.

My little craft which has nothing to do with the theme but it’s still cute..

And the after effect work I’ve done out of a music file!!

 

Despite of my unsettled idea, I went to the screen printing workshop and made one of my drawings for the project into a print It didn’t appear in the final out come but I had fun doing it.

I also planed to make my work anaugmented reality installation using my print, but I failed to develop this idea further because I can’t think of anything interesting to put in the AR.

Split screen, projection mapping and interactive video were in my plan too, and I spent a lot of time on the story that I wanted to fit in, but as I went on, those ways just seems unnecessary for my story.

 

In the end, I decided to just do what I’m best at, a film. I shoot it in POV instead of a normal conversation, which adds a little more fun to my video. But it’s still a shame that I didn’t get to explore different ways of story telling and visualisation.  I like the transition of my video, which I made a big effort on, it smooths the cut between two different scenes (almost random scenes).  But I didn’t get to shoot this in professional way, as I promised to myself in the beginning, which is another pity, and something that I’m looking forward to achieve in the future.

The theme Fast forward actually gave me confusion at the beginning, because it’s not specific enough that can make me think of anything immediately, but it’s not broad enough that I can think of anything without limit.

Some starting points that my friends and I came up with some starting points, time, speed, black holes…

Natural History Museum& White Cube

Seeing the evolution of lives and human being in Natural History museum gave me the sense of Fast forward, because I only spent a few hours seeing the process that took millions of years. And a trip to the White Cube and seeing the work of the artist____’s work about her late mother inspired me of the theme of mother even more.

Blade Runner & Blade Runner 2049

Saatchi Gallery

In Blade Runner 2049, the protagonist was caught in the trouble of finding that the replicant might have the ability of having children and he might be that children being born by replicants. And in the film High Life by Claire Denis, the scientist risks her life and goes on the space ship for her experiment because she “believes in reproduction”. That’s when I realized the decrease of the birth rate has caused concerned and our plan for the future has to not only focus on the technology, the environment, also on ourselves.

Some little experiments I did on the class for the theme evolution.

Let me assume that you’ve already read my previous blogs and got to know how hard my creative journey was and how I was forced to make the final video in two days.

The thing I liked about it is that I managed to put my three collections and the connections between them in it with the main idea of seeing (not sure if it worked well enough though) and I’m quite proud of the idea of using an electric voice (I made this using the speech function of my iPhone). 

I’ve been doing something very narrative in the previous projects, although I know that it’s very good practice for the pathway I choose, I just really wanted to make something different. So this outcome, which is kind of like a monologue is a breakthrough for myself in some way. I didn’t carry on the idea of brainwashing therapist but I didn’t waste all the footages I took with my friend Anna either, so that’s not bad either.

But that doesn’t mean I’m satisfied with this outcome. Actually, I’m not satisfied at all! Because of my bad planning and the waste of time, I had only two days to make a video from the beginning wrong developing a complete idea. I managed to do it but I didn’t mean that is good enough. Even for me there are still a lot of places which doesn’t really make sense!

Also, the footages I put into the video are not all from me, many of them are from the Internet which I don’t even know if it is OK to use because of the copyright problem. Also, the footage I put into the video are very repetitive because I just didn’t have enough time to think of another way to visualise the idea.

 

(I actually stole the idea of using Google earth from others but it worked well haha)

I actually used the idea that I thought of when having the CTS class on the Thursday before the deadline inspired by Ellsworth Kelly, something I said I will only explore if I have more time. I just finished the storyboard in a hurry and I don’t have enough brain cells to think any further. So let’s just end here and I really wish I can have a better plan and finish my work step by step firmly when it comes to the next project.

(Wish the lovely face of Anna/Manita will make your day XD)

My creative journey of this project is actually the most intense one of the three projects I have done. I started quite smoothly with my three collections and I thought my collections are the best among other students, they are very special, very interesting… However, when I try to build the connection between them I just went totally stuck (OK friendly notice, the word ‘stuck’ Is going to appear in this blog for many times).

In the first few weeks I struggled for creating images out of my three collections, because the three collections are just so different from one another, but I made it by choosing some elements from each collections and put them together in an unexpected way, and that worked quite well,

helping me get the idea of seeing(actually the idea of seeing also came from the show that I was watching, Daredevil)

After that I did some secondary research towards blindness and the idea of other ways of seeing with the help of Trudi, I also managed to came up with three different ideas of my final outcome.

Up to then, the situation was quite positive. But then I just went totally stuck again about how to visualise the three ideas, or at least one of them. I spent several evenings putting all kinds of materials in front of my camera and tried to create unusual images. I made quite a lot of cool videos but they are kind of just the same thing and I didn’t know how to develop from them.

Luckily my great skill of using Premiere helped and I made a very cool video of abstract lights and shadows using the footages I took.

But the problem is although it looked cool, it didn’t say anything or express any idea. So I tried to put the idea of ‘The things you see affects the things you dreamed of’ in this cool video. However it was not that exciting anymore and it was too empty for the two minutes video (when I only had 10 seconds during the first project I was dreaming all day to have a two minutes limits, but when I finally have it I feel it’s so long that I don’t really have enough thing to put in).

After talking to Trudi again, I decided to made this video more narrative With a more complete story line, so I went into the photography studio on the Thursday before the deadline and made a video of a therapist who is trying to brainwash another girl (don’t know how I came up with this idea and how I linked this idea to my three collections!!! I kind of wasted a whole day doing the shooting that didn’t even fit my theme! )

I spend the whole day on the Friday before the deadline trying to put the footages of the girl dreaming and the footages of therapist together but I just looked so weird that I didn’t even have the courage to show it to the teacher and that actually stressed me out.

But then in the evening I just suddenly remembered this song from Oasis which is called She’s electric. I thought since I’ve been exploring the idea of other ways to see, why don’t I just turn myself into another being, What I will see being electric? What I will see with the ability of accessing all the information on the Internet only with an electric mind which is different from human mind?

I spent a lot of time thinking about how people’s sights are limited by their knowing, and how people are deceived by all the commercials and propaganda (which connected to my collections) but I’ve never thought about what it will be like if I can see all the facts, if I can see everything objectively. And that’s what I eventually put into the video.

The three collections that I have are candy boxes for physical objects, drawings of my dreams, and a series of photography of Chinese political propaganda.

What’s funny is that I didn’t make any effort to collect 25 candy boxes. I’ve already had over 50 of them since I am so in love with this kind of candy. In fact, I didn’t even notice that I was collecting them I just don’t want to throw them away because they look so cute. So I am so glad that I can actually make use of them.

For the drawings part I was determined that I want to collect my dreams because a lot of my inspirations came from my dreams. They are sometimes so absurd that I don’t even know why I would have them, and most of the time they surprised me by all those amazing ideas and I feel it’s such a waste that I don’t record them and use them for my future work. But the process of recording them was actually quite hard because sometimes you just can’t remember them after you wake up, or don’t know how to visualize them with drawings. So during the winter holiday I spent a lot of time sitting on my bed trying to remember what I just dreamed of.

I didn’t want to collect political propaganda at the beginning, but it was the anniversary of the establishment of my province so I could see them everywhere when I was back at home so I was thinking, why not just photograph them and use it for my collection project for they are all in the same style which is quite different from the commercials. The funny thing is that I saw them everywhere when I didn’t want to see them but when I needed to photograph them I realised that there’s not that much of them and it’s kind of hard to find 25 different pieces of them!

I didn’t think of any connections between my three collections. They are so different from one another and I was looking forward to seeing what kind of links I can build.

One of the comments on the Douban website about Marvel’s TV series Daredevil, says it’s “such a heart-breaking story that the hero is either being beaten or on the way to be beaten.” As a superhero show, Daredevil not only comes with a hero who doesn’t really possess an impressive superpower, but also spends a lot of time on Matt Murdock, the human side of Daredevil. When Matt’s best friend Foggy finds out Matt is the Daredevil, the episode is full of Matt and Foggy’s conversation about how to keep their friendship and their career going. Daredevil, Matt, sits on the couch in pajamas, his blind eyes look so blank and helpless without glasses, filled with tears because he might lose his only friend. This may not sound exciting for a superhero show, but somehow this show is rated 8.7/10 on IMDb, nominated for 5 Emmys, with a lot of comments saying “it’s one of the best superhero shows ever.”

 

We tend to believe the reason why people like superhero stories is that they like to see villains getting beaten by the heroes with their amazing powers, but as we can see, the images of superhero have been evolving after they were first created in the 1930s. From mythological heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman, to nationalist heroes like Captain America, which was deployed by government and western media commentators (Jason Dittmer, 2013), then we welcomed the “silver age” of superhero comics. After Frank Miller, who later created Batman: The Dark Knight Return while Alan Moore was producing Watchmen, became the series writer of Daredevil in 1981, he gave the stories more psychological and dramatic force by depicting a more realistic world than simpler tales of past comics and by giving the readers characters with recognisable flaws (Peter Sanderson, 1996), which heavily influenced the image of Daredevil we see in today’s comics as well as in the TV series. The portrait of Daredevil as a true to life human instead of a god-like hero with a cape floating in the sky in the show built the strong connection between the audiences and the character, and the emotions bursts out at the end of Season 3, when Daredevil finally beat the villain Kingpin to the ground. He shouted at Kingpin, lifting his mask and stared at the villain with his blind eyes that can’t even focus, saying ‘I beat you’, so desperately that as if he’s the one who lost because this battle has cost his lover, his friends and his life. There’s no cool visual effects, no exciting music, he wasn’t even wearing the Daredevil suit, but the scene is way more powerful than most heroic triumphs. Hence, we can see superheroes are not only adolescent wish fulfillment, but also spread beyond comics to be taken up by popular culture more generally as the exemplar of justice, (Jason, Bainbridge, 2009) with the characters being created with more depth and realism in contemporary media.

 

The opportunity of building a complete and authentic character comes from the form of TV series. Stan Lee once said (Lee and Mair, 2003), one of the best rules of thumb was, create the kind of characters that work well in a dramatic television series. And that obviously works in reverse. Without the limit of time, the creators got to put every character in detail as in the original comics, thereby forcing them to struggle against their own flaws and passions as well as external adversaries (Peter Sanderson, 1996). More and more comics are made into TV shows today, not just Daredevil, other shows like Preacher, Marvel’s Legion also stand out as award winning creative works. With the increasing popularity of online TV platforms like Netflix, I believe the chance for us to see more compelling superheroes stories will increase in the future.

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Dittmer, Jason (2013) Captain America and the nationalist superhero: metaphors, narratives, and geopolitics

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press

 

Mazur, Dan and Danner, Alexander (2014) Comics: a global history, 1968 to the present

London: Thames and Hudson

 

Ndalianis, Angela (2009) The contemporary comic book superhero

New York: Routledge

 

Sanderson, Peter (1996) Marvel Universe

London: Virgin

 

 

I started to follow the information of this show before it even started, because of Asa Butterfield, the actor of one of the protagonists Otis, and I watched it as soon as it’s released. It’s been a huge success, as far as I’m concerned, not only because of its funny and thrilling story, but also because how the story connected to our real life.

If you think I’m talking about sex, you’ll be disappointed. Because I reckon that although this show seems to be all about sex, just like what’s said in the title, it’s actually nothing about sex. All those crazy sex scenes and the sex problems are in fact the projection of other problems, like relationship of a couple, of mother and son, friendship, also women and LGBTQ people’s equality and so on. What leaves me very deep impression is the part when Otis meets a couple at a party, who are having an argument because the girl doesn’t want to have sex with the lights on, for she’s ashamed of her body, while the boy actually thinks she’s very beautiful, but a little bit shy to say it. The whole thing is just about the girl’s insecurities, which is something that I know very well. Growing up as a girl, I need to care about my appearance and behaviour much more than boys do, and what’s ridiculous is that a lot of people just think that’s normal.

Another part is that when Otis had a sex dream about Meave, he became so annoyed and ashamed, for his brain ‘objectified’ her, which actually surprised me because things like boys rating a girl by her hip or breasts, as she is much more than that, happened too much that it seems like a lot of girls started to think the same way. So it’s kind of comforting to see that, even just in the TV show, that there’s a boy who is not taking girls as sex objects.

And all the other details like Meave getting to know the lady when having the abortion, Eric being beaten for wearing dress, and Otis panicking at bad childhood memory when trying to have sex with Lily, seem crazy but somehow realistic, making me can’t help thinking while laughing and crying hard. I’m always jealous of kids who can have such colourful teenage life, with a lot of troubles of course but they grow up gradually through all the dramas, which is also something I really like that Sex Education shows.

 

www.Fruitsticker.de

“Fruitsticker.de is an independent, private, non-commercial and add-free website for people interested in fruitstickers.

The purpose of this site is to present my collection, to make contact with other collectors and to trade fruitstickers. I’m collecting these small colorful stickers ever since my days in school with only a few minor breaks.

By searching the Internet for fruitsticker-related websites, I realized that there are a lot of people sharing this hobby. Because of that and to learn a little bit about designing and programming of websites, in spring 2006 I decided to create this website and bring it on-line. This site is based on a ready-to-use Image Gallery Management System, which is free of license fees for private usage. Despite of that, it took almost half a year to implement all desired add-on functions and to do the graphic design of the site. I wish to thank all people supporting me doing the job. Speaking for myself all the efforts clearly paid off.

I would like all visitors to have a lot of fun moving around this website and I’m hopefully looking forward to receive a lot of emails with trade-request from other collectors all around the world.” Said on the website.

www.i-ramen.net

 

So what exactly have I done for this project?

This is the fake commercial part of the video, shot in Soho Carnaby Street with my flat mate Tiegan. She did a pretty nice job pretending to have good time there since she just recovered from a quite serious cough, because which I had to put off the plan of shooting to the last week of this project, and returned all the equipment I booked. In the end I did all the shots with my phone. I’m actually not satisfied with the finishing look even I tried my best editing it, it looks bit plain and repetitive. But I don’t think I can blame this on the equipment, I know that there’s film shot with iPhone 5 in the film festival! I feel like I need a more detailed shooting plan, not just thinking “something like that” and see what would happen on the day.

Made the poster for the story happens in my video. Using my bad photoshop skill. Again. But it looks ok.

I borrowed a green screen from school and brought it back to my student hall! This I probably the bravest thing I did for the project. And I did the flashback part in front of the green screen, then replaced the background with ‘old Soho’ view. I was going to use old footage of Soho, and my teachers and librarian helped me a lot with finding footage. However I failed to get any suitable footage as they’re either about weird things like someone giving a speech or unable to download. So I went to Soho and shot something I thought still have the taste of old Soho, and put them in. For the green screen, I certainly had fun using it, but still feel I have a lot to learn about the lighting (see the terrible shadow on the first picture?) and composition.

Adobe Premiere is literary the only program I can use well. And I made the best use of this skill. All the colour correction, effects are all done in using premiere. And I’m pretty happy for the outcome ( just talking about the editing), especially the VHS look like effect I made for the flashback part. But I feel I still have a lot to work on the coherence and clearance of the story (well that of course is not just about editing).

The sound is a DISASTER!!!! I even feel funny when hearing the obvious homemade soundtrack myself. Also because of the copyright, I wasn’t able to use any music from other people, so I sat in the toilet and recorded my guitar playing and also did the narration by myself, with a weird not-very -well American accent. And again, I didn’t make clear plan for the sound recording, so you can hear one person speaks in two different voices, and a lot of things just doesn’t sound to belong together. But I really tried my best. I even made the background music of the fake shampoo commercial using the synth in my phone. (Which is the picture above. Looking pretty badass isn’t it?)

Anyway, I kind of feel I’m doing much better than my last project. Not talking about the outcome, but the whole process. I’m able to direct myself instead of just following what teachers ask me to do, and I made good use of the resource available here, the amazing exhibitions, books and magazines, drew inspiration from other people’s work. I have a lot to learn for operating and realising my idea of course, and I think I still rely on the things I’m familiar with too much, instead of trying to get out of my comfort zone and try something different.

(I can’t think of any conclusion that is not cliche so I’ll just end here. :))