Project Brief 4 Reflection

Obsession is defined as an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind. The over-arching theme for our Project Brief 4 linked all the students’ work together, as well as allowing us to branch off and explore this particular theme through our own interpretation. Initially it was challenging to think of an individual theme to branch off ‘obsession’, as there were so many different paths to go down. Beginning with the idea of balance, with further brainstorming, I finalised my theme to “Gravity”. With this, I wanted to breakdown the perception of gravity, creating illusions with movement, exploring the freedom that flight and slow motion provide, with use of film and digital effects. Vladimir Frieder’s journal article, “Overcoming Gravity: Pushkin on Freedom and Art” had an interesting perspective on comparing gravity to life as he states “the kind of freedom and ease enjoyed by Pushkin do not come easily; they are the result of overcoming the gravity of earthly life, its injustices.” He relates gravity has a sense of stabilisation in one’s life, and I found that very intriguing, as without gravity, everything on Earth would be crazy, and therefore, challenging gravity would create a form of chaos.

Nake Frieder mentions in his journal article, ‘Spectacular Bodies’ (2002) that “the human body has… been a prominent subject of art through almost all its eras and styles” and to execute the idea of gravity, I incorporated the human body as my main subject and worked with a high level tumbler performing gymnastics skills on a sprung floor and trampoline. I utilised this to enhance the idea of movement especially with flight and rotational actions involved with majority of the skills he would perform as the freedom of movement and expression of the dance and art activities allowed [establishment] of homeostasis between self and world. (Rebecca Burrill, 2010). I filmed landscape shots to portray the flight, and some close up shots and mid-shots to highlight the movements of the body, however majority of the work was done using iMovie and Premiere.

Utilising these programs I was able to manipulate the speed, the angles, and the cropping of the footage. By employing slow motion to certain parts of the footage, it allowed the viewer to distinctly observe the multitude of movements occurring, however, I only utilised this editing skill on some parts of the film to maintain the viewer’s attention. To really accentuate the questioning of gravity, some of the film was reversed, played back to front, and I also placed some of the footage upside down and mirrored it against the other screens, as I had 4 small screens within the “Crossbar template” playing at the same time, as that is not able to occur in real life, all movement is in the same time, and whatever comes up, must come down.

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The main issue was the lighting and colouring of the set. However, I was limited to the choices of places to film, as I required certain equipment for the Project Brief to be produced. Therefore, I placed the gymnast in all white clothes to stand out from the accumulation of colours surrounding him, as well as the colour represents light, and purity, adding a sense of freedom of flight to my work. The colours came across dull through my lens and thus, to enhance the idea of freedom and elevation, I manipulated the colours in iMovie to become more saturated and vibrant. The array of colours also worked well into falling into the theme of challenging the perception gravity, as it enhances an abstract, pop culture aesthetic, to make it look a little unreal, as these particular movements do not occur in reality.

Creating the audio was the most challenging part of this Project. There was already so much occurring in the film that I did not want the sound to distract the viewer from the footage and therefore, I manipulated the same spring sound on repeat. However, utilising the program Garageband, I placed the same three audios over the top, and altered one of them to keep a consistent beat through the entire piece and then I manipulated the flex range in order to create an unusual, abstract edit to the audio to enhance the idea of distorted reality in terms of the perception of gravity.

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There were a few disappointments in the screening of my work at Signal, the footage was grainy, one of them was over-exposed, and one did not match up perfectly on the windows. However, overall, I was content with the finishing work for Project Brief 4, as I believe I conveyed my theme across the four pieces of footage and thirty-second audio. The film worked well with representing my theme, portraying the ideas of gravity, freedom and flight, through abstract colours, being obsessed with movement and the distortion of time and speed within my work.

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References:

1. Burrill, R 2010, ‘The Primacy of Movement in Art Making’. Teaching Artists Journal, vol. 8, no.4, pp. 216-228
2. Frieder, N 2002, ‘Spectacular Bodies’, Leonardo To Now, vol. 35, no.4, pp. 455-457
3. Kantor, V 2000, ‘Overcoming Gravity: Pushkin on Freedom and Art’, Russian Studies in Literature, vol.36, no.1, pp. 50-61