Kirsten Thorpe

C3312139

Today I am submitting my final project, which was focused on UK Independent Professional Wrestling.

All of the work can be seen at; KirstenThorpePhotography.co.uk

MY WORK

The work that I am submitting includes;

•One, 6 and a half minute long video•23 Photographs

•2,000 Words of copy

• Introduction seen on website

• Photograph captions (around 50 words each)

MY WORK

When I started third year, I almost came in with a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my work. For the past few years I

have focused on events and gig photography, which has really been great but I wanted to get away from just a little bit.

SOME INFORMATION

Through knowing Daniel Chapman I knew about his passion for professional wrestling and the fact that he wanted to start his own promotion in Leeds. Wrestling is something that not many people

know a lot about, so I thought it would be interesting subject matter to cover.

The aim of this project is to inform the readers about a now small subculture within England.

This specific subculture - independent professional wrestling, was once largely watched on television and attended

regularly by many families between the 1960’s and 1980’s.

AIM

•To investigate the reasoning’s behind the decline of British wrestling starting in the 1980’s.

•To explore whether people would attend a local wrestling show in 2014 and how much they are willing to spend whilst

they are there.

•To see how British wrestling could be promoted in order to make it a popular sport once more.

OBJECTIVES

Working with Dan over the course of this year has been a lot of fun.

We have been able to collaborate on a lot of work, which has benefitted both him and myself.

Dan has worked on creating films for his character Danny O’Doherty and I have been following Daniel Chapman – the

guy behind the character.

WORKING WITH DANIEL CHAPMAN

As stated in my week 8 progress presentation, I originally planned to focus on R.I.S.E. Wrestling, which is the company

that Daniel Chapman is starting.

As time drew closer to the event Dan realised that it was not going to be a show that he would be happy putting on, and decided to change the date to after I will (hopefully) have

graduated university.

This put a spanner in my project and got me to focus more on Dan and not R.I.S.E.

CHANGES TO MY WORK

This also meant that I had to rethink my delivery.

I don’t think people would understand the project if they didn’t have some accompanying pieces like a video that tells you

about Daniel Chapman.

A video can’t be delivered in a book, hence why I switched to a page on my website.

In the future, when I have all of the content from this part of the project and the show that will happen, I would still like to create the coffee table book, and possibly continue with the

video footage to make a longer documentary.

CHANGE OF DELIVERY

ARE PEOPLE INTERESTED IN THIS PRODUCT?

Why VICE?

VICE creates content that is completely different than other publications,

and target the younger audience – under 30’s.

PUBLICATION

Link to blog

MY BLOG

GANTT CHART

Cost wise on this project my main money has gone into travel and petrol. I have been very lucky that I was able to stay with friends

and family when traveling quite far away so had no need for hotels or Bed and breakfasts.

I paid myself £10 p/h with an overtime rate of £15I also paid £7 p/h for both Daniel Chapman and Michael Caden

The costs of my project were minimal to me, but if this were to go to a client it may cost them about £650 – variables being hotels, petrol,

equipment hire, and pay for people such as Daniel Chapman.

COST OF THE PROJECT

•Stay Calm – Don’t sweat the small stuff•Project Planning Works

•Brainstorming with Other People•Don’t Rely On Emails

•Give Promoters a Reason to Respond•Working on Projects with Another Person Makes Things go

Smoother

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED

Yes.

If I were to do this project again, I would have looked into getting better access to the world of professional wrestling.

I think by offering my services (free promotional photographs for wrestlers & in ring promotional photographs) for the trade of me being able to use them in my final project would have probably given megood leverage to go to some of these wrestling shows. The wrestling world is a tight knit community of people and will research you straight away when you talk to them.

WOULD I HAVE DONE ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY?

Yes and no.

I honestly enjoyed this project as it is about something that I do really like, I just wish that I got better access to the world

of Professional wrestling.

If I were to redo a project of this size again, I would probably not do it on professional wrestling, and find something that I

am just as passionate about somewhere else.

WOULD I DO THIS PROJECT AGAIN?

In an ideal world I would have loved to have been able to travel throughout my time at university and take a lot of photographs that would incorporate well into a project like this. (Ie. Road-trip to Coachella, Seeing the Northern Lights, Backpacking

Europe)

I hope that in the next few years I can save enough to go on a big trip and to visit places I haven’t been able to whilst at

university. (Australia, Japan, Finland, Canada)