The most outstanding thing I’ve observed is the amount of positivity and passion everyone manifests. There is a high level of skill and creative potential in each member, I could not have asked for a better team.
WEEK 1 - production meetings and getting to know each other. The first thing we did when we first met was state everyone’s interests, strengths and weaknesses. I thought the weakness part was extremely important, to bring help in times of need. This of course worked well because we were all able to get a better understanding of the situation when one of us asked for help (at least in my case). We had our first production meeting, where we brainstormed ideas with excitement after our Tate visit, and set up a blog in Wordpress, a platform we later abandoned for blogger, as we thought the latter was easier. We started doing tests and research immediately, we pictured paint, colours and the human brain (there was a discussion about getting an actual animal’s brain and squishing it with paint, spoiler: that didn’t happen). We had an idea.
WEEK 2 - tutorial with Julie and research After our tutorial, we were startled with the idea that it was too soon to make an actual decision on the final piece of work, and that it was time to do some enlightening research, I mean, do we know what synesthesia even feels like? No. We needed to look into it, read some books recommended by Julie, and maybe try to find some synesthetes, an idea we found remote and highly unlikely. But after Facebook posts and requests (Kieran even emailed the actual real life synesthesia association!) we incredibly found synesthetes: Millie, Timothy (from the association), Marin (sadly, across the globe in the States) and my own ten year old brother, who had it but never knew what it was until I talked to him about it (and is sadly across Europe in Spain). So we asked questions and read books, found references and made the blog a little prettier, Shantel even discovered that Rémi from Ratatouille had synesthesia!. We were all very pleased with our research but were still anxious about the fact that we needed to get an idea across, storyboard it, do it!.
WEEK 3 - planning and action! A lot more production meetings in between our research resulted in us finally having an idea of what to do: We get our synesthetes (luckily two of them were available and artists!) brought them in and had them react to a song, live! Then an interview happened, we used this as our voice over for our footage of them painting and voilá. Very organized Sunny created call sheets and a clean plan of what we needed to do to execute this successfully. We got our location, the equipment we needed and even built the canvases! (yes). Taking advantage of our day off on Wednesday, we brought Millie in and proceeded to do our magic. The day was fun, intense and exhausting. But everyone was happy about how it turned out. One of the things I liked most about this group is the fact that we did everything together: Took turns to handle the cameras and gave advice and comments on the shots like lighting and framing, and were not afraid to get dirty pushing the dolly! As a result, we got amazing shots, and the experience of seeing someone with synesthesia react to a song and execute an incredible painting listening to it was magical. Halfway through the painting, we talked to Millie and found out even more about the matter. It was really fascinating. Tomorrow we have our second tutorial, so I’m going to finish this post with a quote: “I’m certain, as we filed down the great staircase, that I appear the same as ever, a moping twelve year old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not” Patti Smith-'Just Kids’ To be continued…
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