The Beauty Of Photos…

The object that I felt most strongly about in this project was illustrating his life through photographs. Although it sounds like a simple task it was a lot of work. Shelley and me took this task up between us and thought of ways in which we can show his life and finding photographs suitable. The photographs that we collected are a combination between photographs that we have taken ourselves and then photographs that a family friend has taken. Originally I wanted us to take all the photographs ourselves so we can construct situations as we like. However when thinking about it, photos of someone’s life aren’t constructed, they are just pictures documenting their lives. Therefore we found three sets of photographs illustrating our character and his family at different stages of his life. To begin with we seeked photographs to show his childhood, therefore I found baby photos of myself and edited them to make them look suitable for the time Luke Johnson was a baby. Then we had to find pictures which resembled the child but also shown his golfing career at the age of 16-17. Therefore Shelley’s friend supplied us with photographs containing his golfing photographs, as he is a keen golfer. Then thirdly we had to find photographs of Luke Johnson in present day with his baby boy. We found these photographs through Shelley’s dad’s friend who resembled the person in the previous two sets of pictures. It was key for us to find three sets of people at different ages that look like each other to make it more real and believable. I feel that we have been extremely successful in doing this. Once we gathered the photographs together I edited them to make them look like the decade they were from and began to create a photo album. I ordered the photos in chronological order of his life to make it easy viewing for the audience. I find that this is  a key element in the process of creating his life as I am a strong believer that a picture says a thousand words. Below are some pictures of the photo album and a slideshow is also on here containing all the photographs in the album.

Evaluation Of The Project…

I feel that as a group I am happy with the way we have pulled together in this project and I am happy with the work that’s been produced. I found that I worked to my strongest advantage producing texts, which was the more creative side of the project. As I created the magazines, edited the pictures and created the photo album, created the logos and the t-shirts and also helped come up with the general story of Luke Johnson’s life. At times I felt like I was the peace maker within the group as naturally people disagreed at some points, however once these points had been passed, I felt that as a group we worked well together. If I were to do this project again I think I would create a person that I could relate to more. This is because on a personal level I can’t relate to a sportsman, as I am probably the least sporty person ever. Although this didn’t hinder my work and the way I contributed to creating his personality I find that if the characters life revolved around something else other that golf I would have had more ideas and drive. However when working in a group I have found It is key to make compromise. But also taking on a character which I am not necessarily relatable to, in a way it kept me on my toes and actually made me have to look into certain aspects of his life which I wasn’t necessarily familiar with, which actually broadened up my knowledge of a specific topic which I was in the dark with beforehand. I found that the strongest elements for the outcome of this project were the physical aspects In which we produced. This is because we all decided that physical aspects were going to be key in this project as it will only emphasise the reality of the character, hopefully allowing the audience to relate to him and to create an empathetic and emotional bond with the troubled life of Luke Johnson.

Researching Existing Sports Magazine and My Final Draft…

As previously mentioned in an earlier blog, I was asked to create the visual media for our group. I wanted to play on our characters professional golfing career as I found this a good place to start to show our audience that he was a professional golfer. Therefore I decided to feature him on the front of a golfing magazine. Although it would have been easier for me to insert a picture of our character into an already made template of an existing golf/sports magazine. I wanted to create the magazine myself to show the creative thought process of our character. To do this I had to do a lot of research into existing golf magazines to gain ideas for layout, content and visual style. Therefore I started looking at magazines such as “Golf monthly”, “Cycle sport” and “Sports illustrated”. I found that researching these kinds of magazines was key for the process mainly because I am they least sporty person ever. But also that through choice I have never read any kind of sports magazine before in my life. After looking through the front covers I found that there was one key element, which stood out through the majority of them. This was the main photo featured on the front page, as the majority of them were actions shots. Such as pictures of golfers mid swing, or cyclists pedaling as fast as they can. I found that this was a very effective visual for the reader but also immediately categorized the magazine into the sport genre. All genres have conventions and I believe action photographs are one of sports magazines conventions. The next element I noticed was the colour scheme, which mainly consisted of blues, reds and greens. These are all colours, which can be associated with men and masculinity. These have been specifically chosen as men are there target audience, therefore they wouldn’t be using colours such as pink and purple as then the target audience would be unclear. I then looked at aspects such as headlines, anchorage text, strap lines and many other elements that make up a front cover to decide what I wanted to use on my own piece. I found that when making the first draft I took different elements from each magazine that I had found and by doing this felt that my front cover didn’t really fit together very well because I was taking ideas from so many different sources. I then presented my first draft to the group, gained feedback off them and then went back and improved the front cover. Also by the time I got to doing the second draft we had gathered the actual photos of our character “Luke Johnson”. Therefore replaced the amateur photo of myself with his picture. Below is the final draft of the magazine cover, along with some of the magazine I researched and gained inspiration from. You will be able to pick up on elements that I “gained inspiration from” and see how I’ve incorporated them in my own piece.

The Process of creating “Luke Johnson”…

When beginning to create our character we began with brainstorming ideas to find what kind of person we could create that would have an interesting and intriguing life. Ideas were thrown around such as drug-addicted rockstars, a homeless person and many others. However as a group we all found them a bit cliché. While we were having a group meeting in the food court in town. There was a man sitting at the table next to us on his own feeding his newborn child. A couple of group members noticed this such as myself and it inspired us to come up with the idea of a single father. In society single mothers are a lot more common than single fathers and when watching him it made us ask ourselves all kinds of questions such as, why is he on his own? Where’s the babies mother? Is he happy with the life he’s got? All these questions began to create the format of our character as we found that we could come up with an interesting story for this person. We found all these ideas exciting, however we felt that something was missing. Could the father have given something up to take full time care of this new born baby? One group member suggested that he had some kind of sporting career that he had to give up, partly because he had to take care of his child, but partly he could associate the sport with something bad that happened in his life. Our group liked this idea and ideas were passed round about what kind of sport it was, we found that the obvious answers such as football and rugby were a bit obvious; we wanted to create someone unique. That’s when Matt came up with the idea of a golfer; we liked it, as it wasn’t an obvious idea. So then we came onto the topic of why did he give it up and we decided that unfortunately he needed some tragedy in his life so the people viewing our character can build an emotional connection with the character. Therefore we had decided he was a single father because his wife had sadly passed away during childbirth because there were complications with the baby and mother as it was premature.

When we got onto his relationship with the child we decided the child would be a baby girl. The reason for this was that a father and daughters relationship stereotypically is seen as a stronger emotional bond. However when working out the technicalities of what kinds of physical objects we would produce from his life, such as photos, we found that we didn’t have access to a baby girl, but in fact a baby boy. After discussing the issue we decided that in fact a baby boy would be more effective as we could show through the means of photos that the child at the age of three is playing with golf clubs, therefore he could possibly be going to follow in his fathers footsteps.

Originally we planned the audience to meet the character at the age of 45. However when we were working out the timeline in his life we found that the age of 45 didn’t really fit in, as he would have had his child at the age of 45. Although people do have children later in life, we wanted to illustrate a more conventional man and focus on the down points in his life, rather than his family life taking shape In his mid forties.

After creating and deciding on the back story of his life the group decided we should make and find many physical objects of his life to convince the audience that he is a real person.

T-shirt Design…

To emphasise the reality of our character “Luke Johnson” we decided to all wear t-shirts for the presentation day sporting his logo. This was one of the tasks in the group I was given. We all went into town and purchased our own plain white polo t-shirts to wear. I was given the role of designing the logo and putting the logo onto the t-shirts. What I found was that the process was a difficult one, as I have to use low budget t-shirt transfers which didn’t make the t-shirts look the best quality, however after looking at the finished product I was more than happy with the outcome.

I began with designing the logo, I created five different logos all with slightly alternate designs, so I could present them to the group, gain feedback and allow everyone to vote for their favourite one. From day one of the project we had a base logo, of a man golfing. I then took it upon myself to add certain elements such as golf clubs and name badges to customize it and to make it our own. After presenting them to the group everyone had ideas to add certain elements, take away others and to change the scale of them. I then sized these ideas up with were on the t-shirt the logo was going to be placed and began to put the transfers on the t-shirts. After two hours they were finally done, however as previously mentioned the transfer paper was the best quality and some of the designs hadn’t worked well as others, however overall I was happy with the outcome.

The idea for us to all wear the t-shirts was to represent our group as “Luke Johnsons” supporters and fans and to highlight to our audience that he was a worthy professional golfer in his own right.  It also represents just another physical aspect of his life, which as a group we decided that the physical aspects were what was going to make the character more believable. This is because anyone can have a bio and a life history however the items that he owns and the events he has been involved with in his life, makes he a more real person. The images below show the various logo’s that I created and the final design can be seen on the pictures of the finished T-shirts.

 

 

Comparing Editing…

http://vimeo.com/9573920 – Sign Language

The videos that I am looking at are “Porcelain Unicorn” and “Sign Language”. Both the editing styles of the films are completely different.

Porcelain unicorn uses very simple, but yet intriguing cuts as the pace and length of them becomes relevant to represent the emotion or action that takes place on screen. The scene with the energetic young German children cuts very quickly representing their mischievous and curious sides, however when the film cuts back to the older gentleman the shots become a lot more slow paced illustrating to the audience that he is cautious when approaching the house and is weary about what he’s going to find on the other side of the door. The flashback are cut in well with the present day footage as it cuts back at the appropriate times when the audience need to know the next step of both narratives. The way these have been placed during editing is key, as if they were in a slightly different order the audience would know one story before the other and the audience wouldn’t be able to have the same emotional connection with the characters as they have not gone on their life experiences with them at the appropriate times. During editing it appears that a filter has been put on the scenes when flashbacks take place, to show the audience that this sequence is not taking day in present day. I liked the way the filter worked with the colours on the screen as it made it look duller and repressed which could represent Germanys society during the Second World War. However I do think that even though it didn’t look out of place, the text appearing saying “Germany 1943” weren’t completely necessary as the audience probably would have been able to figure it out. Although it may have been used so the audience didn’t have to spend time figuring out where the scene was taking place, therefore allowing them to focus on what is actually happening within the scene.

The film Sign Language was not only shot differently to “Porcelain Unicorn” but was edited very differently too. The film seemed to appear as a more documentary style piece, and as the film went on I realsied that it was meant to. The cuts were put together slightly more erratically however this was probably a conscious decision to represent the characters personality as it becomes quite apparent in the beginning, that the character isn’t the full shilling.  In opposition to “Porcelain Unicorn” non-diegetic sound is used in this piece as a song is played in the background. The song seemed to be quite a slow and emotional song which in my opinion was used to make the audience feel the characters apparent loneliness at the beginning. However when he gets the courage to approach the girl on the other side of the street the music immediately picks up pace and represent the characters ambition.

In contrast these two pieces are very different, however both pieces have been put together well to represent the emotions of the characters and the visual actions taking place on screen. As films I much preferred “Porcelain Unicorn” to “Sign Language” purely because I couldn’t relate to the character in sign language and found his slightly irritating, however the storyline is very clever.