Its no lie that my work will lean upon the basis of work I've already done this year, as this blog is going to consist of ideas, what I'm doing and my progress, I might as well start with what I've done previously. Plus the initial idea previously posted about Irene Werning.
Recently we were given a unit to do that has to be the most free of the units I've done. It was in our hands what we did, and how we did it as long as we showed some sort of progression in our work and that we experimented and learnt from any mistakes possibly made.
Now I won't lie. Out of the three years that I've been spending doing media pieces, be it audio, video and even photography, I have never struggled with a unit as much as I struggled with this one.
The idea of this unit, was to create 3 pieces or more, obviously these weren't a definate number but it was as solid an amount as we were going to get. All of these pieces had to be based on the theme " Hope", " Fear" , and " Desire" and were to relate to a powerpoint that we had previously done.
My powerpoint was about what inspired my work, and that was the glamourised social realism that we find on our screens or in films, more famously in Danny Boyles film " Trainspotting" about heroine abuse, and a brazilian film entitled " City Of God"
[Ref: 'Trainspotting', Directed By Danny Boyle, 1996]
Because my powerpoint was orientated around this specific style, I was to do something simular for this unit. It was clear I wasn't going to make the new City of God, or Slumdog Millionaire, but you could make something of a much smaller scale that could be considered in the category of social realism.
Two pieces of the unit were film, which I'm hoping to post up once I get a hold of them from the edit suite in college, the other I can show.
I had applied to a film and photography course, as well as a TV course for university, so because there was photography involved in one of my choices, I felt it smart to do something photography orientated, though I'd never really need an excuse to get behind a digital camera in that studio and play around.
Inspired by Trainspotting and its blunt view on addictions, I wanted to portray addictions, at different stages and different types, from my own imagination.
Above is the addiction to sweets, or rather sugar. It's becoming increasingly known that some countries are suffering from obesity. It'd been America mainly for a long period of time, and has now grown to include Britain. There are many articles, posters, tv broadcasts and so forth that are giving people the hard and cold facts about the impact its having on everyone. Starting with adults suffering from obesity on a very dangerous scale, to those of a younger age, and it now spreading to teenagers and kids who are suffering from the same fate and ridicule.The main factor of this obesity will always come from what you eat, and there is nothing worse than orientating your diet around sugar, saturated fats and more. So in my picture I wanted to capture this, how these delicious looking treats, aren't as nice as they appear.I used low key lighting to bring out a darker feel to it, had it been normal lighting the viewer may have been confused by the bright colours and the sweet looking food as to why it could be concieved as a negative view, but I feel this dark background reinforces the severity of the situation I wanted to put across.
Next on my theme of addiction was nicotine. Its a frequent addiction in life that a lot of the population 'suffer' from. It can end up being the cause of death, and creates a huge dint in health budgets.
Again with the low key lighting, I felt it made the image darker, and gave it a more serious feel.
This picture is in the middle of the scale that I attempted to show through the series of 3 photographs. Where the sweets were the beginning of an addiction, hitting at a young age and later people suffering for it. This is one that could attack quicker, and no doubt will. The amount of cigarettes shows the severity of the addiction, where its not just one cigarette at a time, but many. If someone were to smoke like this for any length of time, it would be questioned how long they would survive doing so.
Final was the main " Trainspotting" inspired, with its abuse of heroine that had finally caught up to the abuser and had spiraled so out of control, that the only route was death.
The experimentation for this particular part of the unit had to come with the lighting, as it seemed to take a while to finally get the lighting and the effect that I wanted. Especially with the first style of photograph (the sweets) trying to get the hands and the arms in without getting everything else in and making sure all the surroundings were black, and then finding the right angles with all of them.
When I'd finished taking the photos I felt it could be bettered with photo manipulation in photoshop, which I found enhanced the meaning behind it and almost brought it more to life or made it more clear. More specifically the heroine photograph, enhancing the light around the body to make it resemble spotlights, as well as creating the marks on his arms to show what the story is behind the photo.
