My first few shots..

I had previously shot a project where I had a similar idea. It was an experimental video. I though I could re-shoot the idea and add it into my video. I have tried to shoot the scene from different angles which will allow me to do better things during the post-production process. Following are the few unedited videos that I have shot:

Risk Assessment

There is no big risks that go with the kind of project I am doing. The only things that I should be careful about is that I might be shooting some stuff outdoor, I will have to make sure it is not raining on those days. Another thing that I have to be careful about are the candles that I am using for this project. The last thing that might go wrong is when I will be working with water and my camera really closely. I have to make sure that I do not spill any water on my lighting and my camera. 

Equipment needed & location release

For this project I will need my DSLR, tripod and the editing software that I will be using to edit the video. I will use Adobe Premier Pro to edit this video. I do not need to worry about any location release because I will be editing at home and to shoot my video will not need any other place where I would require permission to shoot.

My treatment

I will start off with a scene of a table with a book a few small candles and maybe a glass of water. after that I will show a starting shot of a long white candle (like the one I have previously posted). This will merge into a white world with colors. Those colors will be of the idea that I have described before of colors dissolving into water. I will also include a clock that will keep on ticking until the video is finished. I will try to merge it into loads of scenes to make the audience feel like time matters and something will happen soon. On the clock I want the time to be near 12 O'clock in the morning. This is simply because of the thought that something will happen at 12 O'clock even though it hasn't been mentioned anywhere in the video. I will carry on showing all the scenes over and over again but obviously they will be different because the candle will get smaller, the time will keep on ticking and the colors will start to dissolve in the water because time is passing. 

I will post a story board soon. 

Regulations and codes of conduct

I will make sure that I do not add anything in the video that I am not allowed to. This means that I cannot add anything that I have no permission for. If I need to copy an image or anything from the internet, I will make sure that I have full permission for it. I do not think that I will need anything of anyone else anyway except the sound though.

The sounds that I will add, I am not going to download them illegally from the internet. Instead of that I have found a website from where I can download sounds for free and some of them are meant to be paid for but the prices are reasonable. I have put the link below.

www.royaltyfreekings.com

Purpose, style and inital idea of my video

The purpose of my video is to try to combine time laps and another video into one piece that makes sense. It will be something that might be seen in a dream and not make much sense. I always like to add narratives in my work which is what I am planning to do this time as well. I will shoot different sequences and combine them with a video. 

I will try to keep the style of my video simple but obviously there will be a lot of stuff going on in the video. I will mostly try to work with the 'time' aspect of this assignment. I have never done time lapses before so it is something totally new for me and I will have to do a lot of research in order to know how everything goes and what exactly I want to achieve out of my work. 

I do not exactly know how long my final video will be but I will try not to make it too long because I obviously do not want to bore the viewer to death. 

Candle

As I have mentioned before in one of my previous posts, I wanted to use a candle for one of my sequences, This is a rough idea of how I want it to look like and what speed that it should be. Mine will obviously be slightly different because I will be using a different kind of candle and it will be shot in low key. I only want the candle to be visible in the shot.

Time laps video example..

This is another video that I have found on the internet that I really liked. It is an example for time lap video that has been taken on a really long period of time. I like the effect of the colorful city lighting and the car lights. This one has also been shot with a slower shutter speed which is why you can see that the moving light have turned out a bit blurry.

Time laps video example..

This is a video that I have found on the internet as an example of a video made through time laps. I think it is beautifully done. I love the locations that it has been shot on and I have also learnt a few more things about this technique of photography as it is a totally new area that I am exploring. I like the fact that slow shutter speeds were also used in a few of the sequences that included water. It gave a really nice effect of the moving aspects within the frame. I would love to try a sequence like that also on a place that include moving water. 

Time laps

A sequence of still images that when you play back at 24 frames a second or 30 frames a second speed up the real world and it allows you to see the world in a way that you wouldn't usually see it.

A series of pictures need to be taken for example a picture after every 5 seconds. That can be adjusted according to how fast the movement is on the scene or how slow the movement is on the scene.

This means that of your taking a photograph after every 5 seconds you will have 12 pictures in a minute and 24 pictures in two minutes. This also means that 2 minutes of the real world will become 1 second in the video.

Anything can be photographed with really slow movement. For example the sky. It looks still when you're just standing there but when you will see it in the time lapse sequence you will see that it is actually moving.

The photographs can be taken through a intervalometer. This is useful because the photographer does not need to press the shutter themselves after every 5 seconds for hours in order to take the sequence of photographs. A tripod is also really important for this process in order to get the exactly same framing in every shot taken.

Manual camera setting is essential. F9 and ISO 100. The white balance needs to be fixed because we obviously do not want it to get changed in every single shot that we take. Manual focusing as well because we don't want the camera to start focusing itself on different things in the frame during the process. If you're shooting on RAW, the memory card will most probably get full really fast and the photographs will not actually be printed on paper. They will get turned into a full HD high definition video which is why we do not actually need the full 10 million pixels that a camera can produce. It is better to set the camera on the 'S RAW' option which is enough to produce a good quality video.

After that, those photographs can be processed on Lightroom. After importing all of the photographs we can go to the develop option and start editing one photograph. First thing that you can start with is cropping the frame because obviously it is meant to be for a video. If you go on the crop option on Lightroom and click on the 'original' option a drop down list will appear where 'Enter custom' needs to be clicked. The aspect ratio that needs to be put in for a video is 16.000 x 9. All other essential changed can be changed in the way you like the photograph.

Following are a few things that can be adjusted on Lightroom if needed to:

Straighten the image - Angle: this can be used for example when a landscape is being photographed and the straight line that you usually see in it is missing.
The exposure - Increase or decrease the way you like it.
Recovery option - This is usually nice to bring the sky back.
Fill light - To open up the shadows.
Contrast - Can be changed if the photograph looks flat.

Vibrance - For the colours in a photograph.
Saturation - Can be changed if needed.
White Balance - This can be used when there is a drift of colours because of the white balance not being set right. (Daylight for a landscape looks more realistic)
The graduated filter can be used to adjust parts of the photograph when not the whole image needs to be adjusted, just a part.

To do the same adjustments on all of the photographs that have been done on one, you first need to press 'control A' or 'command A' on a Mac and all of the photographs will be selected. Than you need to click on the 'Sync' button and clock on 'Check all' and Synchronise. All the photos will have the same settings as the first one.

Than next to make the video you need to go to slideshow. When looking through the presents of Lightroom you will not find any that will say time lapse video. But what you can do is go to the overlays option and selecting the minimum time that can be set on Lightroom (0.1). This will make a video that shows 10 frames per second. But it is always better to do 24 frames a second.

Another way that I would usually do it is adding the photographs on Final Cut Pro or on Adobe Premier Pro and just speed the time.

Robert Doisneau – The kiss, 1950

Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville (The Kiss) was one of the most famous photographs by Robert Doisneau. It does still fit in the subject of ‘The Fake’ because of the story it has behind it. It is a photograph that he has taken in the streets of Paris. After a few years a couple called Jean and Denise claimed that it was them two in the photograph and they had been photographed without thei permission which is why they brought Robert Doisneau to the court. When they said that in front of the photographer, he didn’t say anything because he said that he did not want to ‘crush their dream’ so he stayed quiet. Later on in court, the couple lost the case. The couple in the photograph was Francoise Delbart and Jaques Carteaud. They said that they were kissing on the streets when Robert saw them and he has asked them to kiss again and they did it for the photograph because they were used to kissing a lot and they were not shy.

Alien autopsy – Roswell – New Mexico – 1947

This is an incident that has occurred in 1947 in the US where it is claimed that an flying object was crashed. People started believing that the object was a spacecraft but it was actually a crash that was qualified to be a secret US military Air force surveillance balloon. People that saw it also started believing that the aircraft contained a life that did not belong to this Earth. A lot of different theories were given to the incident since the 1970s. I personally do not believe in aliens but I also do not know how to explain the ‘alien’ in the video. Following is a video that was made of the ‘life’ or what they might have called an alien. 

Robert Wilson – Loch Ness Monster

The Loch Ness monster is some kind of creature that a few people have claimed to have seen coming out of water. It is something that no one knows what it is. Some people believe in it and some don’t. It is an unknown animal and it has been ‘seen’ by a few people in the Scottish Highlands. It has grabbed the world’s attention since 1933 and a lot of people have tried to research about it. There is still a big amount of people that still don’t believe in the existence of the Loch Ness monster. I personally also think that something such as the Loch Ness monster does not exist.

Time & Memory

My ideas:

Dreams do not often make much sense which is why I am going to put a few things together that do go well together but do not actually make much sense overall.

Different colors in water. This will be related to the time part of this module because i will dissolve colors into water and towards the end of the video they will slowly mix into each other and fade away or make a mixture of all the colors put together into one.

I want to create a narrative as well along with the actual other video sequences. I have experimented a video a while ago that I am planning to re-do and add between the other sequences that I will shoot that will be time related.

There will be an old book, a candle and a windy, scary and dark environment where something suspicious will take place such as a murder.

I wanted to shoot a fish in a bowl that would be dying towards the end of the video but I do not want to kill a fish just to make a video even though I know it would create an interesting scene.

I can also add an old photograph of an old person on the wall (if I can find any around). This might indicate the audience that the person in the photograph is the one being killed or the one who is killing someone.

For the sound I am planning to add unknown person’s footsteps that will get closer towards the end and be really loud before the murder takes place. I will also try to find some mysterious, scary sounds/music for the background to create suspense and to grab people’s attention and to drag them into the video/short narrative.

I will also shoot a clock ticking which will indicate time passing.

Instead of showing someone getting killed I will just show blood drops falling onto the book.

Cottingley Fairies

Cottingley Fairies are photographs taken in the 1917s by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths. They were two cousins that lives near Bradford in a place called Cottingley. This is also a good example of ‘The Fake’ because when the photographs came out, people actually started believing that they seen the fairies and have taken photographs with them. They were not real but people did believe it for a while. There was also always people that believed that the photographs were faked. I personally also think that the photographs are faked and do not understand how actually people can believe that they are real when you can clearly see that they are fake. But that is just my personal opinion.

Robert Capa – Moment of death

This is a video by Robert Capa that is a really good example of ‘The Fake’. This is because Robert Capa did take that photograph during the Spanish Civil War but the soldier that he has photograph was actually just posing for him. It is not an actual soldier dying. It is taken on the 5^th September in 1836. Until the 1970s people believed that it was an actual documentary photograph but after that they started believing that it was staged outside Spain. When I seen the photograph for the first time I couldn’t actually tell that it was faked so I did also believe that it was real which might be the reason why a lot of people actually thought that it was real and not faked. I got to know that the photograph was staged when I researched more about the photographer and his photograph.

The Fake ..

For this task I am asked to think of an idea that I could photograph individually at first that could relate to the subject ‘The Fake’. Fake is something that looks genuine but is not (deception, forgery, counterfeit, artifice, imposer, hoax, ...)

I am thinking of photographs that include reflection in a mirror. The object used will be a mirror and the fake aspect that is meant to come in is when little details in the mirror/ reflection are different than the original. For example: someone is looking straight to the mirror can appear looking down in the reflection or even something totally different such as an old man looking to the mirror and seeing himself in the reflection a few years younger than he is at the moment.

After that we were put into groups and we were meant to choose one idea of the three individual ones and take it further and make a video. But we were not asked to edit it. My group was asked to make a video and some other groups were asked to shoot photographs. After that we were going to exchange our footage with the group that had stills.

My group decided to put all three ideas into one. My reflection idea became ‘vlogging’. This is when you shoot yourself throughout the day or periods of a day, month or even years and show how your day goes. Basically just documenting what you are doing. The other two people in my group had their ideas related to zombies and alien ships so that’s what we finally decided to shoot.

Following I am posting what the other group made out of our footage after editing it. We shot a lot of footage and I think they have done an amazing job the way they have edited it. We had a totally different story in mind how we actually shot it. It is interesting how they have used the scene that we had shot as last for the ending of the story as the opening scene. Our narrative was different to what they made it look like. But I personally prefer their version simple because it’s more simple and effective with the subtitles and short effective sequences of the footage that we had shot.

(Video will be added soon..)

Following is the edited footage that we had received from the other group. It was really hard editing their work because first of all there were stills and we were asked to produce a two minutes video. It was difficult because we only had about ten images that we had to crop out differently and try to re-use again and again to make the video longer. The other problem that we had was that we couldn’t figure out how to relate the photographs to each other because they we so different and all had different things going on.

Finally we decided to make it look like it was a band on tour and we cropped out the photographs to make them look like audience in a concert and people listening to music. It was difficult relating all the photographs to music but we somehow managed to do that. One thing I personally really liked about the editing of our video is the cutting and the changing of screens with the beat of the music. This is actually how a music video is meant to be shot. We also tried relating the shots with the lyrics of the song. That is why we have also added a shot video from the internet with a soldier on a horse in a war because that’s what it said in the video.

(Video will be added soon..)

Overall I am really happy with the outcome of our video because considering the fact that we did not have much footage at all we still managed to produce a good piece of work. We have spent a lot of time during the post-production process to make to video look good and to make it look like an actual tour video of a music band.

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

Portraits in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Before the Christmas holidays I have been to the Birmingham Art Gallery. Here on the right is a photograph of the gallery itself. I think it looks really artistic and actually shows that the building has something to do with arts. 

Amedeo Modigliani is one of the artists who’s work was exhibited in the museum. He was born in 1884 and he died in 1920. Here below is the photograph that I have seen in the exhibition. It is called Madame Z and it was painted in 1918. I think that the painting is quite funny to be honest. The way Madame Z is looking and especially her neck that goes a little bit wobbly. Her hair does not look that much fashionable for our time but it was in hers. The hairstyle she has got there was called a bob. The only thing I can say about her face expression is that she looks a little miserable to me. She is not smiling at all or should I say it doesn't look like a smile? This painting is fully handmade oil painting on a canvas. Modigliani began his career as a sculpture and then started painting in 1915. He has been drinking and talking to artists most of his time in bars and cafes in Paris. This is mostly the reason why he died. He had a disease called tuberculosis and he died in the hospital wasted away by alcohol. 

This here on the right side is another photograph that was portrait in the exhibition. It is made by Nicholaes Elizsz. He was also called Pickenoy. He was born in 1590 and died in 1653. The painting is called ‘Portrait of a Lady’ and we do not know who it actually is. By looking at this photograph I think that it was actually a rich lady whoever it was because of the way she is dressed up. The kind of jewelry she is wearing on her head and the white thing around her neck. She looks quite posh and another thing that tells me that she was rich is that she is wearing make-up. I can see that from her cheeks, they look pink-ish. Her waist looks quite slim and I think its because she is wearing something really tight underneath her dress. In my opinion I do not think it would be easy and comfortable for the lady to eat. She is holding something in her hand which I think is actually the most important part about this portrait. I think its something she can write with. Apparently this painting was painted to mark a time of change in the lady’s life. I think that time could be that she started writing and became rich? 

Overall I think that it was an interesting exhibition but as portraits so not one of my favorite subjects to look at in photography I was not really surprised or amazed with the paintings/photographs around me. If I had to rate this exhibition out of ten I would give it a six. Not because of the work shown in the exhibition but because of the environment it was put together in. 

Tom Hunter Exhibition

In October 2011 I have been to a Tom Hunter exhibition in Warwick University Art Gallery. Sir Tom Hunter has studied from the London College for Printing in 1994. After that he has done his MA at the Royal College of Art and there he has received an award for his series called ‘Travellers’ by Fuji Film. After this award he has received many other awards for the brilliant work he has produced such as the one that he has received in 1999 for his series of work called ‘Holly street’. The most recent award that he has received is the Honorary Doctorate of the Arts University of East London in 2011.

Tom Hunters work has been exhibited nationally on places such as Krakow, Poland, Madrid and many more. The exhibition I have been to was one of them.

Overall I would say that I do not really like exhibitions but this exhibition did have some bit that attracted me to look at them and interested me as well such as some of the odd images that he has made that make you think.