Contextualising my Research Project:
How can you manipulate everyday sights and sounds in a way that makes them strange and unusual? This question became the driving force behind my investigations into the night-time landscape and how one may seek to represent this often surreal environment in a dynamic and intriguing way. However, this idea took a while to materialise, and much of my prior experimentation in the Film3 Studio helped to bring this investigation together.
I had started out with the simple intention of filming various locations at night-time and editing that footage together into some sort of short film. It became clear that this idea was too short-sighted and that perhaps I should aim to walk out of Film3 with more than a pretty short film. The Film3 Studio is all about blurring the lines between pre-production, production, and post-production and with this in mind I decided that I should attempt to explore my own creative thinking processes in new, less linear ways. This prompted (what I consider to be) the first restructure of my research.
From here I made the decision to skip the traditional ‘pre-production’ stage and simply start shooting. In my first tests I captured some compelling images and these compositions began to direct my future shoots. By periodically reviewing and dissecting my footage, I began to find new ideas emerging – I felt like I had begun to think more creatively than I had every done before. Eventually, through the repeated shooting and analysis of footage I reached my final ‘research question’ (which I’ve already mentioned above). This proved to me that it is in fact possible to ‘write’ a project after filming has already begun/been completed.
By starting out in a state of immediate ‘production’ I was able to sit down later and sift through new ideas – igniting numerous concepts which I feel have great potential for the future. I don’t think that these concepts would have emerged through a typical writing/pre-production process and I find this to be an exciting realisation.
I made progress through completing small, yet focused exercises – each testing out different ideas and techniques. These compartmentalised experiments slowly began to come together to form more substantial and coherent ideas. Some of these ideas prompted further writing which I will no doubt return to in the future.
My final few media pieces show some of the directions that these (later-developed) ideas took me. By exploring one concept at a time, and building up momentum from smaller exercises, I think this collection of ‘final work’ has strongly benefited.
Video #1:
Video #2:
Video #3: