Personal Project sem B 'Final Piece' - 'the Pass' & supporting work

This is my final piece short film animation for my personal project of semester B at UEL.

I decided to call it 'the Pass'

• Music produced by Andrew Coggins
  
• Visuals produced by myself
  
• Visuals and Audio composed, edited and film produced by myself.
  

These are pictures some just photography and some repainted in photoshop, they are some of which images helped influence the subjects and environment i chose to study and capture in my creative process for the project.

this is a bit of footage which i had captured on my phone which also gave me ideas for the project.

text

This is some text from a book called 'Gender Voices' by David Graddol and Joan Swann that had influenced a major part of my conceptual investigation which in turn informed key focal points of my creative processing. The books main objective is to explore and evaluate issues and differences between human identity, primarily about there gender (male and female). There have been issues involved in the book that have at interconnected at various times within my own interests of investigations, more so on an indirect, secondary platform (regarding my both of my subject practice's of 'animation' and 'graphic arts'). Rather, it was some of the supporting issues of this book that struck points of interest here for me as it helped me understand more in depth about the ideas of investigation and statement's i would have been trying to promote previous work. These 'supporting' issues within the books argument were about versatility, dominance and influences of languages/various forms of communication as too the various effects they can have on one, society and culture. 

Also mentioning, my most previous visual theories subject being on 'Postmodernism' and my essay argument about a response to a Kevin Lynch quote "Cognition is an individual process, but its concepts are social creations" ( forward to environment knowing (1976) - City Sense and City Design) through my own persuasions about two artists work and their representation of space, subjectivity and vision within the postmodern metropolis, I felt a lot of similarities paralleling.

As i was making these connections i soon found that i was trying to piece a common ground or establish a focal point between a variety of ideas and works (some my own, mostly others) on alienation, suppression and hardships, exploring the importance all kinds of communication involved that of the individual, social and cultural. I reflected on these issues and thought about notions that might  infuse my creative making process. I decided that (obviously) different forms of communication and languages were not just very complex and often problematic in translation but can also be very therapeutic and rewarding. It soon became important for my creative investigation to emphasize visually on the 'make-ups', raw material and structures of communication through information taken from what i find and capture, also by way of (which is becoming method of which i am currently working) maybe a collage of, layering and a processing of different techniques employed via my chosen medias. 

These are just a few snippets taken from the book mentioned above "Gender Voices".

Personal Project sem B

This is a animation based project which i had been assigned to do for the second half of my course year.

After coming into the new year with continuos ideas from the last semester this was a chance to explore some individual work in the animation/film field. Also as it was a personal project it was also my chance to develop something completely brand new in idea too. I decided that by this point as a lot of my research work and conceptual narrative building was very much linking and connecting in an interesting and a variety of  ways, some key issues involved which were starting to emerge were almost strong enough to pursue individual to that of another. This was good for my work as a whole because it now ment that as i hoped ultimately for this year my animation work would connect to my graphic art work in concept and narrative although have enough scope to field enough personal ideas interest for each project and to potentially continue development onward into the 3rd year of project course works.

Now taking up on some of the ideas from the previous narrative ideas and conceptual structuring i tried to fuse these issues to captain and give my visual footage development a language of which i assumed to proceed by. Here is a mind map brainstorm with some of these ideas and issues that i composed to tackle as a key starting point for my process...

 After analysing my work and critiquing my progress along with Pia (my tutor) and realised what had and had not been working by this stage. The footage i had been capturing to this point was very interesting and intriguing in the sense of movement, camera angle shots and subject. Although, the visual language had become some what fragmented and appeared to cause a blur within rules of film languages. This was an important factor at this stage and an obstacle to overcome in this process as communication of sorts was one of the key issues i was out to tackle. This lead me to reflect slightly more into my creative decision making and refine my conceptual issues of interest. These interest lie amongst ideas in languages of different entities (personal and social), communication in different forms, non communication (isolated also alienated). My aim was to now capture and try to translate these issues. Where as 'visual' is key to promote my aspirations here, the involvement of 'audio' would play a significant part. Having to translate these issues, the idea within the visual input was becoming quite delicate in mind and raw in subject form. I felt like i had to be careful with my decisive input with audio as it could either be very supportive in informing the conceptual idea or quite destructive having the potential to overpower the rhythm of the 'visual'.

I thought about recording natural sounds in various environments and creating irregular rhythm which seemed to be a complimenting structure to fashion the style of visual pace i had within stop motion footage. I also had the choice to involve music material, a unique and  instrumental piece of music. Having captured, reviewed and reflected on the sound section of this project i decided that as risky as adopting readily composed music could be quite dangerous, by diluting the 'visual' which portrays conceptual strength and in turn causing predominant effects in the overall composition this film. I did choose to involve this piece of work as well as involving the various natural environments recordings as to me this seemed to be other forms of language and communication that i felt best not to rule out. Mirroring the juxtaposition of the whole visual concept, this does seem to promote maybe to many layers of communication and language forms and a general kind of chaos, but in turn could also be successful as it reflects the world we live in today with the chaos of mass communication and loss of individual identity. I had also intended to include text and spoken narrative but my time fell short and needed to proceed with my task at hand.

Trying to explain what this film is about, i would say it is an exploration of the juxtaposition's between natural and industrial, movement and isolation, journeying and observation which in turn informs my exploration of the complex relationship between the social and alienation.