Development of Creative Thought & Structure

Overcoming Mindsets

(Relaxing Your Habitual Thinking Patterns)

I find that when i get given a project brief i initially start by brainstorming ideas to then move on to photographing objects/places/people.

I usually tend to always start every project with similar ways of photographing things to get me started on the work as i find it difficult to get motivated otherwise, then progress on those ideas or completely change them in some cases as i work through the project, this is to try and make the work different from other projects. For example, when i was studying at college i focused all my photography on portraiture, we used a lot of image manipulation on the course however my work started to get a bit repetitive.

However, i carried on with portraiture but changed each project by using different materials such as putting tights over someone's head or them pressing their face against materials which weren't completely see through to distort their image.

I then moved onto photographing projections onto the back of someone, then progressed from that to photographing writing onto my back. This work i used for my Final Major which was then exhibited in the Artix Theatre in Bromsgrove.

It seemed to take me a while to come out of my comfort zone and start experimenting with strange but interesting materials, but once i'd produced such different work, which i was proud to say was mine i really enjoyed experimenting.

I think now i need to get back into that habit of trying out different methods of photographing with a variety of materials to carry on creating different types of photographs.

Restating Problems

I always find when i do any project that i come across some sort of problem with the work i'm creating. It is important that we have the confidence to imaginatively and creatively challenge these problems from different angles. Reviewing your approach gives yourself more options on how you could improve on the work and what you could do differently.

Throughout my previous sketchbooks i brainstormed ideas throughout the projects to help me improve on the work i was producing and this helped me a lot to see what i could do differently and why the ideas maybe weren't working.

I found that through most of my work i'd be thinking of the same or a similar idea all the time. To try and improve on my work and maybe create a new idea i would constantly be looking at artists, which would help me come up with different ways of approaching my work. I find that looking at artists work, whether they are contemporary artists or not, you can get great inspiration from some of them. I feel this sometimes helps me create stronger pieces of work.

I also find that visiting galleries helps influence my work, visiting these sort of spaces helps me to interact with what's out there and how it could maybe be shown as a similar approach in my work.

Some examples of photography work i created at college using materials.

(Film Camera) 

Production and Outcomes

Interpretation

Alice in Wonderland

Sir John Tenniel - 1865

"Several of Tenniel's political cartoons expressed strong hostility to Irish Nationalism, with Fenians and Land leagues depicted as monstrous, ape-like brutes, while "Hibernia" - the personification of Ireland - was depicted as a beautiful, helpless young girl threatened by these monsters and turning for protection to "her elder sister", the powerful armoured Britannia."

Creatives use their ideas and spirit of their time to create their artworks, in this case from what is explained above.

Tenniels illustrations are very characature and the characters look quite evil, it seems like quite a dark story.

Tim Burton - 2010

Tim Burtons version of Alice in Wonderland is much more surreal and it is obvious that he has used a lot of digital manipulation on his characters, such as the Queen of Hearts and how small her body is compared to the size of her head.

This film is about Alice returning to "Underland" for the second time.

"She is told that she is the only one who can slay the Jabberwocky, a dragon-like creature controlled by the Red Queen who terrorizes Underland's inhabitants. The film uses a combination of live action and 3D animation in a story that can neither be described as a sequel nor as a re-imagining. Burton developed the story because he never felt an emotional connection to the original book, with its series of events about a girl wandering from one weird character to another."

Lewis Carrolls version of Alice in Wonderland seems quite a dark story, where as Tim Burtons version seems a bit more imaginative and colourful. He seems to use a wide range of bright colours which i feel is more likely to attract a wider audience. Although he uses such colour and medias i felt when i watched the film that parts of it were quite dark and eery. 

Testing Your Work (getting to your audience)

Craig Atkinson

"By accident, I changed the way I worked from painting to drawing. As soon as I did that and put some work online, people started to contact me for commissions. I still class what I do as Fine Art though, as pretentious as that might sound."

I feel it is important to get a variety of opinions on pieces of work we create, even if it just off a friend or someone in the class. 

It helps us to progress our ideas further when others can spot certain aspects of the work such as something that may not work with what the message is that we're trying to portray through out work.

I think that posting our work onto websites or our own blogs would be a lot more helpful as we could get comments from people all over the world about what they think of it. 

What works?

What doesn't work?

What's attractive to the audience?

Bibliography

Sir John Tenniel's political cartoons - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tenniel

Tim Burtons Alice - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland_(2010_film)

Craig Atkinson - http://www.monarkh.com/interviews/craig-atkinson/

Craig Atkinson Umbrella - http://www.craigatkinson.co.uk/category/umbrellas

Development of Ideas & Structure (Moving Image)

Pre-production: Character Design

There are four aspects of a character:

1. Protagonist

2. Antagonist

3. Dialogue

4. Stereotype

Scrubs

"The show follows the lives of several employees of the fictional Sacred Heart, a teaching hospital. It features fast-paced screenplay, slapstick (a type of comedy) and surreal vignettes presented mostly as the daydreams of the main character, Dr. John 'J.D' Dorian."

Appearance:

J.D appears nerdish yet masculine and he has carefully styled hair.

He tends to daydream a lot, when he does this he tilts his head to one side and looks up.

Action:

He is a doctor of internal medicine.

Throughout the series he is also the narrator, he is shown to be a very skilled doctor although he acts quite childish at times.

"He is described as having compassion for his patients, 'very good instincts' and a lot of determination and enthusiasm for his job."

Interaction:

J.D relates with all the other doctors/surgeons in Scrubs. He relates especially to his 'best friend and surrogate brother' Turk. It is suggested that J.D has a "codependent relationship with Turk, regularly going through some stages of depression whenever he can't be with him".

Future Film: Digital Storytelling

A lot of TV series or films use multiple platforms or extended forms to engage more with the audience.

An example of a TV series that uses multi platforms / extended forms could be Hollyoaks.

Hollyoaks is shown every night Monday - Friday and occasionally they show what's called 

'Hollyoaks later', which is described as 'Sexy, Action packed and Late Night'. I feel that the Hollyoaks Later show does make the audience engage with the show more as they show clips of it on adverts, I think by doing this helps to engage more with the audience as they want to know what's going to happen.

For those who watch the Hollyoaks half 6 show i believe that they would definitely be engaged by the extended part of the series as it does relate to the ongoing week night shows. I think that if the people who watch Hollyoaks religiously, they would definitely engage with the 'later' show so they know exactly what's going on, if they missed the later shows they would then watch one the next day and something would have changed, for example maybe someone got killed on the later show yet the audience who didn't watch it wouldn't know how or why.

an example of the effect of multi-platform:

"Of the movie releases tracked by IMMI in 2007, five employed

significantly large multi-platform advertising with enough

exposure to quantify the effects of campaigns. In almost every

case the conversion for multi-platform was higher than

conversion for a single platform…in some cases much higher." 

Bibliography

IMMI - http://www.immi.com/whitepapers/pdfs/IMMI-ImpactOfMultiPlatformAdvertising.pdf

Scrubs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubs_(TV_series)

Scrubs (about J.D) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.D._(Scrubs)

Hollyoaks - http://www.e4.com/hollyoaks/index.html

Hollyoaks Later - http://www.e4.com/hollyoaks/later/2010/