Keegan Mew: Behind The Fringe (Project Brief Three)

And now… it is time to reflect…

The most successful aspect of my portrait of my friend Keegan is that I managed to capture his personality in the span of two minutes. His voice over from the few interviews if conducted with him allows for the audience to understand his life aspirations and his thoughts and feelings on his life. Coupling the voice over with clips I collected with him just hanging out with friends allow his quirky, funny side to be showcased which helps to create a complete portrait of him. One of the most problematic parts of this piece was incorporating ‘found footage’ into the piece and I chose the three black and white clips so as to create a small narrative that matched up with what Keegan was saying during the interview. The train is symbolic of moving towards the future, the typewriter is a vessel for creativity and the footage of a large construction crew beginning a skyscraper is symbolic if Keegan’s wish to create something that he will be forever recognised for. The problem with this is that it may not be as clear from an audience’s perspective yet with a time constraint of two minutes it is difficult to communicate every single idea succinctly.

Something I learned during this process is that I need to take in account the audience when sculpting a media project. While editing, I suddenly realised that I was leaving aspects of Keegan’s personality out of the portrait because I have known him for years and I take those aspects for granted. Yet an outside source, a stranger in the audience, has no idea who he is and therefore I made sure to bring those traits to the forefront to assist the audience in viewing Keegan the same way I do.

During the making process, finding found footage which could be utilised correctly was a challenge. The music I used was from Keegan’s own band, Error37, which I purchased from the band’s Band Camp page after receiving permission from him to use. This opened my eyes to the difficult nature of collaboration and copyright law and informed me on the process for any future media projects I develop.