With the end of semester getting closer I’m getting a little nervous. Penelope has given me so much beautiful material in such a short time and I’m starting to feel that whatever my final outcome is, it needs to be more than just a series of investigations. I’d like to have something at the end of this that both her and I can be proud of. I have been really lucky to work with Penelope because as a subject being documented, she has a natural ability to exist and perform in front of a camera she doesn’t shy away or cover her personality, if anything her abilities and sensitivity becomes heightened and it really is my responsibility to use what is being offered to me and create something personal and meaningful to her but also something that resonates with an audience. Art and music is great subject matter because it is easily accessible to an audience and people love watching musicians and creatives at work. The emotions and connectedness between musicians and their instruments translates for other people so that they can relate these feelings to situations and circumstances in their own lives.

The technical lessons in class on shot construction and lighting have been really helpful to start thinking about how I’m going to technically achieve what I want to in these investigations. But it is getting to a point where the next few shoots need to be planned and shot listed rather than just used for experimentation. Penelope seems to work better in soft light but that being said I want to shoot her doing something other than her music which could take us outdoors or into an environment where hard light would be more appropriate. But I feel like the mood of this piece will be with a play on different kinds of soft lighting. For the next set up I will be using candles and lamps to discover different kinds of moods while Penelope does some kind of activity musical or otherwise. So far we have been indoors. I will have to have a look at what we will be shooting outdoors. After the class on scene deconstruction and bringing our inspirational clips into class, it feels like that time of the semester where the form of the piece needs to be decided. I don’t want to plan too heavily my original aim was to allow Penelope to exist and see what naturally comes from that. What has presented itself so strongly when working with her is her music and that is what we have run with so far.

I got back together with Penelope on Tuesday to record the audio that was lost on Sunday during our shoot. I’ll be listening to that and exploring that with certain footage in the next post, then combining my inspiration clips with my investigations so far to see where I will be taking this project over the next three weeks.