Today was another day on the group project, it took us a little while to get going but in the end we created some structures and got going with taking the images. We played around with a few different light sources such as studio lights, a light box and natural light. I found it quite difficult carrying out a photography project as a group because only one person had a SLR camera and it was hard to navigate a “photography shoot”. I felt as if I was just stood around watching people take photos and it was quite hard for some of us to put our input in. A few of us had to repeat our ideas a couple of times in order to be heard, which is understandable in a group project, but also it was obvious who the dominant members of the group are. I did leave feeling pretty deflated but happy we were able to get some cool photos taken and decide what we needed to go and do individually and when we were going to regroup.
Here are some of the images I took on my iPhone today:
On the first week of uni we were given the task of “breaking the ice” with our fellow classmates. We were put into groups, half graphic designers and half illustrators, and sent off with the brief. The brief gave us lots of examples of what we could organise in order to break the ice, “synchronise body clocks”, “Schmooze”, “Visit a comedy venue” and “share a fad” being just a few of the long list.
We quite quickly decided to have a cocktail party, as alcohol and breaking the ice seem to mix quite nicely. Part of the brief was to present how we broke the ice to the rest of the groups, so we decided to pick a name out of the hat and document that person throughout the evening. A lot of us chose to document our given person by bringing a sketchbook and filling it throughout the night with things we learn and pick up about them. This was really fun as we didn’t know who had who, so trying to figure this out throughout the evening was interesting. It was also intriguing to see how the rise in alcohol levels effected our entries into our sketchbooks, how messy they became or how random the facts were getting. I found that the more I drank the less particular I became about my illustrations, and even tried some of the materials others had brought with them, e.g. oil pastels. It was a really great way to just get creative and not care about how “pretty” what I was creating was, although I and a couple of others had a bad habit of ripping out sketchbook pages we weren’t happy with, and this became a running joke throughout the evening. Here are my sketchbook pages from the evening and some I did the next day from memory:
We also decided to create a playlist of 5 songs each which we love or have a story attached to it. This was great because it got conversation going and we found common interests if someone had picked a song that someone else liked. Towards the end of the evening though the playlist was ditched and Kanye took over.
Overall it was a fun experience and really did break the ice.
Last week I was ill so couldn’t make it in for the first 2 days of the let there be light project. I wasn’t really sure who was in my group so went in this morning feeling pretty stressed and unorganised as I had no clue how much progress my group had made. After finding my group, and realising that they were all in the same boat as me, and hadn’t made any progress, we started the ball rolling. We made a few mind maps and put down our ideas about what objects would be cool to play around with and what sources of light we could explore. This was really cool as it got our creative juices flowing and got me really excited to just get going and take some photos. But unfortunately actually getting the group to work collaboratively was a bit tricky. We decided we wanted to make a structure that incorporated lots of different aspects that light could play with, so spent a lot of time talking about what that would look like. It got to around lunch time and I felt as if we were just wasting a lot of time talking and not actually being proactive and creating anything. It feels as if our group isn’t really gelling, as there are quite a few quieter characters and a lot of our group hasn’t turned up, so its hard to produce a solid plan that we are all clear on, so some of us decided to leave and continue our personal exploration into the brief and return tomorrow with some solid images and potentially photoshop and play around with laying those images together or seeing how they could work side by side.
On the 10th and 11th of October we carried out a 2 day group project where we were asked to present a certain area of Brighton in a way we found most effective. My group was given London Road to document. A few of us ventured out onto London Road, and this opened up our eyes to the diversity of the road and all the hidden gems that we had not yet discovered, for example the really cheap fruit stall in the open market, the back streets covered in vibrant street art and the tall pubs, also covered in art. The street has a buzz about it, and is full of different characters and random goings on. We thought the best way to capture this atmosphere would be by creating a video. After regrouping and discussing the video, we all decided that the sort of shots we wanted were little still frame snippets of aspects of the characters of London Road, so we went back out and collected these shots. We knew we wanted some sort of background noise or speech to accompany these clips, but it wasn’t until we regrouped once again that we decided what this would be.
We spotted the mix of local, independent shops and large corporation, chain stores such as pound land, costa, aldi and greggs. This raised the idea of gentrification and how that was effecting the people of London Road. We decided to go out and interview shop owners/workers and the public on this theme and came up with a few questions so we could collect some useful sound clips. These questions included things such as “How long have you been living/working on London Road?” “Whats changed since you’ve been here?” “Whats your favourite place on London Road?” “What do you think about the rise in gentrification?”. We went out with the expectation that people would be very negative towards gentrification but the outcome came as quite a shock. Only one or two people had bad things to say about gentrification, most people thought it was a positive thing to be happening and others had no real opinion on it.
The second day of the project consisted of picking the final video snippets and putting that together with the sound clips. At some points it did feel a little bit pointless being there, as having 8/9 people around a screen trying to see and edit a video just wasn’t possible, especially as replaying it to the whole group every time an adjustment was made wasn’t realistic as we only had the morning to complete the project. Looking back I wish I had used this time a lot more wisely, possibly started writing this reflective blog post or even have part of the group create a series of illustrations to go alongside our video.
Overall the group project was a pleasant experience, and had prepared me for group work in the future. I feel our video transports the viewer to London Road and gives them an insight into the atmosphere and characters that inhabit the area.
