Fact: Film project - Research

After watching some of the videos referenced on Moodle, I got a better of idea of what kind of techniques I could use for my film.

I want my video to show a sense of time - a process of buyers/demand for dairy and consumption. I want to then play around with the idea of using an existing '"happy" dairy farm commercial for milk and maybe add flashy images of what really goes on behind the scenes in the industry.

For sound, I want to have dairy industry machine sounds e.g, grinders where male chicks are ground, milking machines for mother cows playing over the commercial. I think this will be a very powerful way to shock the audience and would work well for the message I'm trying to bring with this video.

I was also thinking of starting my video off with different shots of people in supermarkets walking around, purchasing items, walking out with grocery bags, pouring milk to give the video some context without diving directly in to the awful images from the industry.

I was mostly inspired by these videos:

A brief history on John Baldessari

I love how the text on this video follows the narrations in the background. Also, the use of flashy images/shots to emphasise the important details and messages and to make it humerous.

This is a really fun take on a biography full of facts that would be quite boring to watch if it was made in a more conventional way. 

Meat your meat - Samsara food sequence

This is the kind of thing I want to go for in my film. This video shows the sequence of what happens to animals in slaughterhouses and was obviously made to bring awareness. I like the lack of narration and only the music in the background. With videos and images like these, I don't believe much needs to be said anyway. The point of these videos are for people to feel something and make the connection which is what I want my film to do.

This film uses small shots of videos of the process, machinery and the people involved in the factories. I want to make a similar kind of video but play around with pace more (making certain things slow motion and other areas fast/time lapsed)

I want to see how different sounds and noises will affect my film and the message it conveys.

Fact: Film project

For this project, I have to create a short film using photography, sound, found images and drawings presented in a moving image. This film has to be a study of something factual like biological, chemical or physical processes,  electrical and industrial processes, a contemporary news article or a futuristic fact or theory.

Initially, I wanted my film to be on early humans/cavemen because I was reading a book related to that topic and thought it'd keep me motivated. After doing some research on different topics, I decided to stick to another topic I'm passionate about but one that is more contemporary.

I decided to do it on the dairy industry. I knew I wanted it to be short, to the point and shocking and decided to collect some images and notes to form a timeline to organise the process of cow to milk.

These are some of the images I collected:

Typical dairy industry adverts for milk 

The reality

Impregnating mother cow

Hormones & antibiotics given to cows to produce more milk than they would naturally

Mother cow and calf

Mother cow when seperated from baby

Male calves ready for slaughter to be veal

Worn out mother cows killed after multiple impregnations typically over 3-5 years.

And finally sent to the slaughterhouse to be killed for meat.

Echo & Narcissus - Final book

Echo & Narcissus - Experimenting, developing, collaging...

I've started experimenting by collaging together some of the drawings I made over the summer to get an idea of the layout and what things might look like when they're put together.

We also had a mistake making brief where we made booklets that combined different elements of the Echo & Narcissus story. This task helped me to come up with some ideas for my final book.

I wanted to keep it quite simple and draw important elements from the story using symbolism. I decided to develop my drawings from the British Museum and put the characters inside a heart that represents water.

Echo & Narcissus

I wanted to research some book illustrators and designers for some more inspiration for my final book cover. I really liked a few from the reference list on the brief for this project.

One of my favourites was Julie Mehretu who makes these really beautiful large scale designs. She has a really unique style of working with collage, different line weights and colours. I really like how her work almost tells a story and has a sense of pace and time which I think would work really well for a book cover design.

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I also really liked some of the work from the Garden and Cosmos exhibition. I loved how the artist has focused on the detail of the drawings and has placed them on bright coloured or lightly patterned backgrounds. I feel that these designs are more relevant to the style I prefer to work/draw in.

I could maybe create a mood-board of colours that would work for Echo and Narcissus. I'd like to think about this kind of style where I'd have quite a simple background using these colours and focus on the key points in detailed drawings.

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I was also really inspired by Hilma Af Klint's work. Her illustrations are very abstract, using muted shades of various colours and different geometric shapes. Similar to the Garden and Cosmos work, she tends to focus on the different shapes and marks and leaves the background one colour. I prefer this approach because she doesn't necessarily depict a recognisable image but instead focuses on  symbols, shapes and colours to show the viewer what her work is about.

PLAN:

I want my book cover to be quite minimal, focusing on shapes and colours as oppose to more traditional drawings of characters/props from the novel.

- Pick one or two most important parts of the E&N story and jot down some keywords.
- Experiment with different colours to portray different moods/emotions.
- Play around with collage and make some examples of what the final book cover could look like.

Fiction project: Echo & Narcissus

For this project, I'll be making a book illustrating the story of Echo and Narcissus.

I really liked playing around with watercolours and making simple fine liner drawings over them without much detail. I also enjoyed layering and collaging and think I'm going to lean towards this style for my final outcome.