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Upon creating this short film, my intention was to demonstrate what I feel are my best attributes, by manifesting them into the narrative of a story. I wanted to construct an impression of who I am instead of voicing what I do, as I believe that it is important to disguise motive so to appear seamless.

The aura that was constructed in my use of cinematography, lighting, and colour correction reflects my personality and illustrates, rightfully or wrongfully, my ongoing confliction with the dictation that industry appears to have on the conditioning of its students.

Af ter post-rationalising my

presentation I felt as though the discussion that was initiated, and lasted just short of 20 minutes, further demonstrates the type of mind I am. This was not a deliberate intention of mine however, I feel still holds a powerful foresight into the type of work I produce.

Through revisiting the recording of my presentation several times, it proves increasingly difficult to pull out examples or clear points discussed as, rightfully so, my feedback was a conversation, and like all conversations they are to be digested as a whole with I very much enjoyed listening to.

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The symbol below overlaying the image, signifies a hyperlink to a film I have submitted.

Finding an appropriate way to portray myself proved an extremely difficult task to solve. There are many ways to be perceived by the general public and this leaves room for misinterpretation. But to also try and define as well as depict the extreme complexities my personality (which is no more complex that the next persons) in the short time given to present (which doesn’t feel short when your presenting!) would only give a shallow impression of myself.

So the way I elected to construct my ‘self portrait’ was to attempt to simplify what I felt made me an individual in my own right. I wanted to ascertain the foundation of what made me feel I am by reflecting back upon my previous years where I had also attempted to explain myself.

In my independent practice in Year One I looked at the sanity or insanity of myself. Something that I believe every adolescent goes through on their journey to becoming a full adult are moments of insecurities and doubt of oneself.

In the below video that I created I try to reflect upon these moments of inner chaos.

In my studio practice in my second we were asked to create a self portrait in any medium. I felt as that because of my continual use of film throughout my practice I wanted to depict my character in a singular image. I created a montage of the actions I was regularly carrying out as a way of defining the type of character that I was.

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p r o j e c tInitially when presented with the

vast space and time of this brief I was left slightly dazed and gradually become stagnant. Based on the broadness of my practice, I found it quite difficult to narrow down a point of focus that I felt as though could lead into a possible Final Major Project.

There were several attempts that failed to gain traction and so were unexplored which through this cycle of starting, unfinishing, begun to deflate my enthusiasm.

As a solution to this obstacle, I found myself heavily researching the medium in which I wanted to explore rather than a concept.

I have increasingly used film and photography throughout my work, so I took several trips to The British Film Institute with my handy coffee flask and spent hours exploring the institutes film library.

This process helped ignite a spark of creativity that got me rolling, leading me to the right mindset to progress my investigation.

And as a result after careful consideration in to what Avenue I wanted to pursue I was led to the question ‘what makes us good enough?’. After the first and second brief that were issued where we investigated and explained who we are and what we do, as well as where do we see yourselves going. It felt only natural that the next question would be ‘what makes is good enough’ to be in these industries?

To which this was my starting point.

Initially, the prospect of being behind a camera whilst live recording, made me feel a lot of anxiety that I would under perform in certain aspects due to my inexperience and therefore ruining the entire operation. However, the equipment that was being used, is not dissimilar to what is provided at UCA’s media store so I felt as though I quickly become accustomed to my role.

One of my passions that has come to light through my education is videography, which I have gradually become more immersed in.

Through this experience I felt as though I gained a real insightful look into the operation of a smaller scale production team which I feel as though would be more suited to myself as each persons role transcends into other disciplines which was said to be “very refreshing, as you never know what role you will be taking on beyond the schedule”. Upon the reevaluating my trip to my

I was fortunate enough to gain a studio visit to a company called MyHairDressers.com which is a small online educational company that offers “Online hairdressing training and education from the world’s best hairdressers”. They have a full production team which consists of three camera men/ editors aswell as a producer and a director. As part of there practice, they capture all of the footage themselves in house using there own film studio

On my visit to the studio I was under the impression that I would just be a runner, getting tea’s and coffees for the team, and to purely shadow the operation. But after talking to the team, I conversed with them about my own practice and my own experiences, and what I wanted to leave with at the end of my day, I was then asked if I would like to operate one of the cameras for there new video tutorial they were shooting.

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hairdressers, I concluded that I was not only taking part in but also documenting a creative process. The hairdresser who was carrying out the style (Hester Wernert), who is renowned for her bold and creative style’s, was creating work directly infront of me. Even though at the time I did not fully realize the position I was in (as I was preoccupied with trying not to mess up) I feel that I can look back now and appreciate the environment I was in.

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other people so you can gradually create better things through the other person’s knowledge and skill base. Through my experience at My Hair Dressers and previous collaborative briefs that I have been a part of, the distribution between colleagues allows each person the time to focus on producing the highest quality of work rather than the overwhelment of taking on one project in its entirety.

After my formative review, an idea was introduced that I would collaborate with another student, Jack Hollands, to produce a short documentive video, capturing the process and craft behind Sign Writing. This fell nicely in my point of investigation, as well as Jacks, and so we chose to pursue this path.

Working with others, we have our own opinions and our own envisionments of what the final outcome might be so its good practice to experience working with

rigs Alderlea systems that will allow you to create the perfect image, And so as a result the only options of camera motions that were available were handheld and also Tripod pans.

Ensure that we had the best quality footage for our controlled shots, we moved in to the university’s studios as our controlled experiment. In this environment, we have the opportunity to spend more time constructing the necessary method to capture the type of video we envisioned As well as having the opportunity to reshoot.

Currently we have no narrative as there has not been in interview carried out with the practitioner as of this moment, but we are currently in the process of setting up a meeting that unfortunately was not able to happen before this submission.

As a result I have segmented the video into two sections the title sequence, then inside of the shop,

Our first call to action was investigating setting that would be ideal to film in for our collaboration. The rarity of the practice we were investigating limited our options of environments to explore.

After we were able to acquire two locations to video in, we wanted to approach each location with full consideration of their generosity. We understood that these people are donating their time in allowing us the opportunity to film in there establishment and so we did not want to overstep that boundary and become an annoyance.

Keeping within that parameter, our time frame on each location is naturally very limited and increases the complexity of trying to leave with the best quality footage. There are no pre conceptions of what will be the best shots when your thrown into the space you need to quickly discern what would create a good image. There is no time to construct

To not show the footage that we attained whilst at each one of these locations would be a great waste as lot of hard work was put into capturing of these images.

The objective of my investigation is to gain insight into what makes a person good enough. I chose to interview Sarah Berry, who is new to the industry, and capture her opinion my investigation. The reason behind me chosing sarah is that I feel she would have more vivid account of the differences between education and working practice as she is in that very transition becoming a junior graphic designer. By using an interview as a narrative, which

grounds and houses the whole video, it becomes less difficult to create a visual narrative. By lifting off an impression of what was discussed in the conversation, it helps construct the direction that I can explore. In some ways it becomes a brief within itself, to find an adequate way to visually reflect her story.

By taking on board what was discussed in the interview, it was apparent that the main theme which was discussed was the importance of exhibitions and being in creative spaces. Upon this basis, I recalled a recent exhibition

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that I went to at the Barbican (The Rain Room) which visually would be a beautiful, but that also Sarah had not experience herself. I thought it would be an interesting process of capturing Sarah’s first experiences of this exhibition so to accurately capture the effects of its experience upon the user.

In my own experience of The Rain

Room I witnessed other people filming and photographing, which gave me the impression that I was permitted to do so also, however it is apparently not acceptable to use the camera with a tripod in the Barbican, which to my surprise I was approached by security when filming and asked to produce a permit for my tripod. I explained that I was unaware that I would need a permit and as a result was asked to put the tripod away or I would be asked to leave.

This setback was not someting that I would have predicted, could be considered as a failure however make me aware that to insure you are fully able, and free to capture the best quality shots you need to prepare and plan, which includes contacting exhibitions you want to be filming in and insuring that you abide by deadfall safety precautions.

For my question, what makes us good enough, I wanted to gain an impression that stretches beyond my own practice, and so I sought out other people that similarly are in the creative industry, but are practitioners in different fields. I felt this would help strengthen the foundation of my opinion by giving it a greater range of experiance to draw from.

I then come across a local Fine Artist, Joe Howgate, who was gracious enough to participate in my investiagtion. I was fortunate enough to be invited into Joe’s home to conduct the interview. As I unpacked my equipment in the kitchen I have noticed that Joe (as well as my other interviewees) become seemingly more anxious at the sight of the large stands, and wide lenses, Out of politness joe offered me a drink to make conversation, to which normally I would decline as I already felt uncomfortable with the fact that I was causing him stress. However in this instance I thought that it may be of benefit for him to take his mind off the interview by some minor manual process, to put it simply I requested a cup of tea. As I stated the reason behind my request was to have Joe carry out the actions to take his mind off the upcoming interview. This was my first real conscious decision of how I can make my interviewee’s more comfortable.

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My participants have already donated their time, so it is the least I can do to make the process goes smoothly as possible. And by crafting my behavior in such a way that makes my participants feel more comfortable enabled Joe ( as well as the others) to relax which in return gave me a better interview. This is a lesson that I have taken with me to my following interviews.

Joe’s studio is located in his bedroom, which was described to me as ‘Firstly my desk and secondly my bed’. Naturally by being in such a personal space I did feel slightly uncomfortable, the awareness that I am practically a stanger to him, which by his generosity allowed me rummage amongst his belongings seemed very peculiar. But after a short amount of time we both become more conftable the the process

flowed more easily.

Being in such an enclosed space meant the equipment I was able to use was very limited, and as a result I was only able to use a tripod as a source of stability for my footage. I could not possibly have rearranged any of Joes belongings to make my role as cameraman easier. So the only options I had was to fully utilize the pan motion and the craft of handheld video. In addition to the small space having the added pressure of my participant watching me made it is more difficult to construct an image of what I was trying to capture.

I would say that this process has greatly helped me understand in more detail the pressures I have bestowed upon volunteers and I feel has allowed me to relate to them further.

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After my first few interviews I begun to understand what direction I was beginning to take, and through my arrogance tried to get moving too quickly. I constructed a incredibly vivid picture of a interview with the Baker. In some ways I perhaps already envisioned what I wanted document before I’d interviewed the practitioner, which although perhaps blinkered me in some aspects, did greatly increased my enthusiasm. I sort out to attain people who were willing to participate in my interview, however after countless phone calls and two cancelled interviews (on very late notice), I chose to abandon my pursuits on this branch of my investigation, however did not want to abandon the film I envision making.

Without the foundation of an interview I attempted to construct a visual narrative that was purely formed from my imagination. After

my own experiments in this field I begun to create my own impression of what I felt would be an interesting direction to take.

This however fell through as reality of my inadequacy of investigations in this particular area of practice meant that the reality of what I want to create was out with my skill set. This therefore meant I had a half baked video that I felt was unsuccessful. This did however show me that the authoritivness of an interview helped me understand the subjects I am investigating in greater detail very quickly. And through their experience I am creating the visual narrative not through my own experimentations of there field. This has helped me understand more clearly the position I am taking through this investigation, and that by transcending this boundary it can hinder the final outcome.

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c a m e r a s l i d eAfter several occasions where I was

unable to utilize different camera motions through lack of space or through fear of becoming an annoyance, I set out to create a camera slider which I could use in my time when I am not in an awkward situation.

I discovered a simple design that utalised and drawer runner attached to two blocks of wood. I felt it was my best option as it did not involve to much machanical knowlege when it come to filling and adjusting the metal bracers. Naturally the design has been altered to meet my own specifications, but the basis of its designwere built on the foundation of its template.

The slider initially can in very useful

I was able to create different impressions just through the use of camera motion. Having more dynamic shots helps increase the professionalism in the videos I’m trying to create, and also gives an additional tool to help carry my storyteller.

The slider however was not as successful as I had envisioned, even on the smoothest of motions gave slight shaking to the camera. Natuarally i would have prefered to have worked out better but through this experiment I have been looking at digitally creativing these effects which have been giving some great results so far.

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After further exploration of different practitioners that I could interview for my investigation, I was introduced to a tattoo artist named Aaron Gibbs who has only recently come into the profession over the last 2 years. I contacted him regarding my project and he was eager to participate.

I told Aaron that I was looking to get a tattoo without knowing what it looked liked, putting full trust in him as the artist to create something that was ‘good enough’. I did however stipulate that I wanted the tattoo to be on the back of my left leg, and wanted it to be a black rose, however I had no further input into its style, size, or colour. Aaron was very obliging and took on this task, he initially asked me some questions on my personality, which I presume were to create a character profile and and then next time we met was when he tattooed me.

To document this piece I wanted to interview Aaron whilst he was tattooing me, I thought it a way that

would create context to my video and also be an interesting visual. However Aaron’s tattoo studio was away from my university address so I wasn’t able to have another pair of hands work the camera, which meant I had to guess to focus (which was based on the position of the table) and let the camera roll. But unfortunately the camera was unable to capture any usable audio, and so all I managed to record was the buzzing of the tattoo machine and occasional laughter.

After realizing that the audio was unsalvageable, it was paramount that I re-interview Aaron and get the important narrative that this piece needed. I was lucky enough to catch Aaron on a day off he has where he invited me to his home to reshoot the interview. Whilst I was there he was kind enough to bring out some of his original sketches which he let me document alongside his interview. The fact that this process didn’t work the first time round allowed me to

look at what went wrong and what I need to better the overall video. So through that error I inevitably come out with a better result that I previously had hoped.

At the time when I was constructing this brief I felt as though by putting full control into the other persons hands, that it would truly be exploring what it takes to be good enough. I felt as though it would give me the opportunity to discuss how I felt whilst experiencing this person working and I would in part understand what it takes to be ‘good enough’. Which at the time I did feel excited, I feel as though was happened was relevant and insightful, However when I look back now at the stupidity of that action I feel as though maybe I shouldn’t have let someone “mark my body for life” without knowing what I’m getting. I think I may have a bit naive.

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My fourth interview investigating what makes us can, interview with Kevin Halley. Throughout this conversation kevin spoke heavily on the importance of making sure that you are prepared for the roll withe the correct reseach and equipment.

He stresses throughout the interview that professionalism is upmost importance.

Documented in this interview and to create a narrative I looked at the tools of the trade which Kevin speaks out and took slow pound shots of their position in his working.

However I do not feel the visual narrative of this storytelling was particularly well demonstrated the shots and the cinematography I felt were very strong. Which with the

slow pace of the footage I feel the visuals Help carry the narrative as simple dynamic Angles that were captured in me feel very unique.

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To c rea te a campa ign fo r the LEGO Brand tha t d i s t ingu ishes LEGO f rom a l l the o the r cons t ruc t ion toys in the toy marke t by h igh l ight ing the benef i ts and po ints of d i f fe rence of LEGO ra the r than the de t r iments o f ou r compet i to r s .

The campa ign shou ld encompass the LEGO brand va lues and take advantage o f LEGO’s he r i t age and s t rong b rand e qu i t y w i th in the UK .

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The reason for starting the competition brief was to create a way of escaping the continual investigating our practice FMP. I use this brief to help me stay fresh so that I could approach what practice fmp with a clear head each time.

Initially we looked and te symplicity of the Existing logo Campaigns and so we chose to take and evolutionary path not revolutionary, so that we knew we would always be within the brand values that Lego have work so hard to establish. We focused on time on taking high-quality photographs which are very time-consuming to take. Although they appeared simple to create a strong clean image takes a lot of preparation for a single photograph.

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Based upon our critique we looked at more exciting ways that would attract the target audience more so than our previous designs. We felt as though a narrative would perhaps be more interesting as a way of engaging with the audience, which we initially looked at a father-son bond. This naturally would progress into other relationships e.g. mother-daughter, grandparents and grandchildren, however due to the lack of Lego pieces that were available to us we were unable to create these visuals to run alongside what we have created.

We focused heavily on an emotional connection between the two characters rather than a playful connection, we both felt so focusing on emotion would create a far deeper bond with our target audience. Similarly to what we both feel towards Lego, . So bearing this in mind we kept our designs just as simplistic as previous, however with the introduce characters that people can become attached with.

We’ve chosen to have each Lego brick appear as though it is a box, and the characters are interacting with each other through his Lego boxes.

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For my final major project I would like to explore the concept of ‘what makes a good enough?’ in greater details. My ambition for this project is to investigate numerous different industries , not specifically design that the nursing, banking. I want to be out to investigate how different fields of work gauge their criteria makes them suitable for their position, and by capturing first-hand accounts through interviews and discussions I hope to create one long documentive piece that can adequate ly unprofessional ly demonstrate my findings.

I feel as though my passion for videography has progressed strongly throughout the last semester and with my experience that I gained at my hairdressers, as well as the research that I have acquired through practical learning I feel that I am more adequately equipped to issue this goal, than when I started at the beginning of this semester.

It has interested me greatly being able to converse with practictions from industry and has gave real insight in the wilds that I’m training to be a part of and hopefully one

day I can affect. Being able to talk to practitioners as was then difficult for me as I’ve always found it extremely hard to find a common interest, and having this point of discussion by Phil will help me so well guys into the world of industry.

Visually I’m looking to continue the style of videography I am currently using, I feel that genre of film reflects more positively on the type of documentation I am producing. I shall look through my experimentation and development of my skills that the last semester I am now capable of confidently saying that I believe I can able to produce this piece of work .

I will also try and see the help of other colleagues that are also exploring industry is away on not only help in their practice that to strengthen my own exploraton. Currently I’m working with Jack hollands to produce a short piece on signwriting, and we will continue to do that also next semester that will run side-by-side as well is inside of my practice.

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MALTZ, W. (1996). Passionate hearts the poetry of sexual love : an anthology. Novato, Calif, New World Library. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=50869.

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