Monday 25/1/21 - Final Evaluation

The Altered States project has been a difficult one thanks to the interruptions of the pandemic and lockdown, however, it has been one that has been very interesting to me. Normally my photography and film work looked at the relatively normal, in the previous project I took a step away from that by making use of VFX to create a cybernetic arm in my short film. In this project I initially wanted to continue taking risks especially with the theme of altered states. The first few weeks of doing workshops I felt helped me to find my ideas and develop them, whilst not everything was useful I made a lot of progress thanks to it. The moodboard especially because I like to express my ideas visually and it was a good method of compiling some images of my inspiration and what I was aiming to create in the project. On the other hand, I felt like the brainstorm / mind map work didn’t help me, it was difficult finding inspiration as it felt like I was just writing down a selection of words. Not only this but because I prefer digital to analogue work it ended up being a lesser quality. The workshops also allowed me to practice and hone my technical skills in areas I wasn't too comfortable or well-versed in such as shooting with longer exposures or in low light conditions. Overall, I enjoyed the vast majority of the workshops and I found interest even for the ones that didn’t apply to directly my work. I felt that I could explore them in future work to expand the range of mediums I could use.

Experimentation was one of the biggest aims for this project throughout. One of my favourite outcomes of the project in particular was created whilst experimenting with lighting equipment. I created a series of very atmospheric photos with some inspiration from previous workshops and experiments. It was a really good opportunity not only for developing the project, but it gave me a selection of photos that I felt really showed off my style.

This linked into my filming experiment which initially was going to be the test for my final outcome. I created a miniature landscape based around the ideas and my storyboard, to do this I ended up using a cover I found alongside some small boxes and objects to create what appeared to be dunes of a desert. This was going to be the background of the shot where I would overlay the subject using a green screen. It was my first time using a greenscreen to film something, to keep things simple I only did one short static shot but even there I found difficulties. Due to the lighting of the landscape, I had to match the lighting on the subject. It meant that the greenscreen itself was poorly lit up which made cutting the person out difficult. This was down to poor technical planning and lack of experience, but I still considered it as success as it was another portrayal of my ideas.

The aspect of the project where I particularly struggled was handling with the new lockdown. It meant I unexpectedly had to change my ideas to suit the new conditions and I wasn’t prepared for that. Because I lacked the equipment to film from home it meant drastic changes to my work which left me with different challenges. In the end despite all this I found an idea that I felt worked with all the issues I was facing, I made the decision for my final outcome to be storyboards using my test photography, telling the narrative I was planning on telling if I could have filmed from home. And to not waste my ideas from the storyboards I plan on taking these ideas and using them as a basis for the next project.

If I didn’t have the challenges of lockdown and the pandemic I feel like my ideas would have worked out, before lockdown I was able to research how to get past the different challenges I faced with my film work. However, I feel like I need to better prepare myself for events like this where the working conditions I’m in change drastically. I felt like the work I did from home wasn’t quite up to standard because of the lack of preparation. With the next project I want to plan my work to suit working from home better and make more use of what I have access to.