Evaluation

Overall I feel that this unit went fairly well, I was able to focus on an area which interested me most not only in terms of enjoying watching films and viewing the film stills but that it is something I would like to enter into as a career. For this reason I chose to do this particular unit in this way, photographing images in the style of film stills by following a script that was written for my requirements, I think that at the beginning of the unit in my first tutorial I was pushed away from the idea of using video and making a short film which I thought was part of the unit outcome to make a digital piece, this did not help me at all as I felt my ideas were being talked down, I was told “you’re on a photography course not a film course “ I’d never said I wasn't going to take photographs but this angered me in that I didn't feel free to explore what I really wanted to do, for that I decided to change my idea slightly by taking images as film stills and putting them together to create a narrative, this I felt worked well and I wasn't discouraged to do so, because of that I went with my own opinions whilst taking on what others suggested.

When it came to the review mid-way through I was told that maybe it was a little too elaborate and I could have done something simple, but had I done that I would not have felt I was pushing myself to create something I hadn't done before, I was also told that the narrative worked not using models but as you can see on my blog and I my book I went through some trouble to arrange with my models the shoots and after all that I wouldn't want to not go through with my original idea of which I really liked.

In terms of my research I feel this was very relevant to my work, I looked at photographers who used techniques I would need to use myself such as Cindy Sherman’s film stills and Weegee’s dramatic black and white shots, however for this work I do feel my research into films which follow the particular genre I was looking was more helpful as it gave me an idea of the cinematic and how it influences photography and not just film, from films such as L.A. Confidential and Gangster Squad I was able to extract information to help inform my narrative in terms of how I shot the costume and the language looking at older films such as The Singing Detective and Kiss Me Deadly it gave me an idea of dramatics a that was something included in Film Noir crime style and was something I wanted to use in my final pieces.

I found the workshops to be very useful such as the flash workshop which helped me with learning how to use my flash gun properly and how to make the most out of it with my images, this was useful in using my flash for my images as this was something I really wanted to do to try and create more cinematic images which I feel it certainly did and from that I was very happy with my images for my pieces.

In terms of my publication final piece, my idea changed to which I originally wasn't very happy about I had my head set on creating a Graphic Novel as I felt it fitted with a lot of my research into Frank Millers novels and the way he uses images to drive a narrative forward, as it got closer to the deadline I realized my final piece would have told the exact same story as my digital piece, so for this reason I came up with the idea to do a newspaper print, I wasn't sure whether to write the article a film critique judging my digital piece as a film or to do it as an article by a journalist I thought this would work well in conjunction with my digital piece in that it would work as a written piece to fill in the gaps of my open ended digital story giving the audience a little more to go on other than just filling in the gaps. I was slightly annoyed when it came to printing as the first print I did printed very well however I realized it had a spelling mistake so I then decided to print this again but the colour was slightly more sepia than I’d of liked, In terms of the style of my final piece I did do some research into the different types of newspaper which were available, from this I found three main types, I originally didn't want my piece to resemble a tabloid newspaper which are typically quite full of gossip content however after doing my research I found the style newspaper or articles which were covering this style of story fits with the era and style of dialogue and would work well with what I am creating so I think it would have been best to keep it to this style so for this reason I feel my work resembles a Tabloid newspaper, despite this I am still happy with the final piece.

For my digital piece I was very happy with the final result, I wanted the work to be carried by the images at the beginning of the project however to add a little more substance to the work I decided to opt for a voice over narrating what my main character was going through and thinking as he went through the scenes in my film style piece, it was a late decision to add music to an undertone of the work, this I am glad of as the work was a little too quiet for my liking and the music adds more dramatics to the work which helps to inform the story the style of the music is more ambient which I think is best for the work style.

Overall I am very happy with my work as a whole, I feel my research is extremely relevant to the work I have produced some artists/films were looked into more in depth as I felt they may have been more informed with my work. I have been consistent with the research going back through what I already have in order to progress with the work, my final pieces I feel relate well to each other which is something I very much wanted with my work, the digital piece is finished to a high standard which I am very happy with as I felt it would be the thing to let the work down a little. If I could do this again I would be a little more organized and be better with my timing. Other than that I am happy with the volume of work I have created.