Creative Essay Evaluation
We were very lucky with the group we were put in. Once we read the brief and started discussing we realised we had very similar interests and ideas. The first time we met we stated our strengths and weaknesses. This was extremely useful because then we knew who would be strongest at most and what areas people would need help in. I think we all had a similar creative vision, once we started bouncing ideas off each other I realised how fun this project was going to be.
After our visit to the Tate we had all decided we definitely wanted to do a piece about colour, something with lots of visuals.
Our project did change from our initial idea. Our first idea was to have someone against a plain white background, dressed in very plain colours, having paint thrown over them. The different coloured paint was to represent the sounds, feelings, shapes etc of the Synaethesia. Throwing the paint at the person was supposed to represent them reacting to the music, as if the colours and sounds were hitting them. We all really liked this idea and were quite set on creating it, but after tutorials, lots of other discussions and further research, we decided against it. The idea could of come across as quite complicated, and perhaps the craziness of it would of lost the meaning of the piece. We wanted to create something simple but effective, something the audience could understand.
Another idea we had was to somehow get our hands on a real brain. We thought we could use some kind of dye or food colouring to highlight parts of the brain as they were being activated by the music, showing which parts of the brain work with Synaethesia. I wasn't too keen on this idea because I don't like the idea of using a real brain, I didn't really want to touch one. We then thought we could use a fake brain and I even found one in a shop called Tiger. We didn't go with this idea and I'm glad. I think the whole process would of been really messy and the video could of come across as a bit gory.
The final idea that we went with was the find some actors to paint us an image as we filmed them. After lots of research we discovered that most Synaesthetes convey their senses/feelings through painting. We weren't planning on having actual Synaethetes to paint for us, but Kieran emailed the UK Synaesthesia Association and they told us they had people who were happy to help. I’m so glad we didn't stick with the original plan of actors because it gives the film more depth, and adds to the authenticity. We picked out a piece of music for them to paint with, making sure they didn't listen to it until we were filming.
A lot of research was put into the piece and I think we have captured our message perfectly. I’m extremely glad we changed our ideas a couple of times, as I think this final product is much better than we’d planned. Our first idea wasn't going to explore Synaethesia enough, it was more about the aesthetics and physical appearance, we hadn't conducted enough research when we came up with it.
We had some issues with audio. It was a last minute decision to do an interview so we didn't plan it well enough. We used a zoom mic to record our audio, but theres quite a lot of background noise, Millie also talks quite fast, but we have slowed it down in post. After we reviewed our audio from Millie’s interview we were a lot more careful with Tim’s audio, we tried to hold the mic further away and not create any background noise. During the edit we tried to remove some of the background noise, we faded clips and played around with the levels. I think looking back, we should have used a boom pole to record our audio and maybe done a few more takes so we had more audio to work with.
Kieran and Shantel used different camera’s for filming so the clips were different colours. Millie’s clips were especially yellow compared to Tim’s. Luckily we were able to colour correct the clips in post, and when we were filming Tim, Kieran and Shantel set their cameras to the same settings so the clips would match. We also had some lighting issues. For our test shots we played around with gels and found some really nice pink lighting that we wanted to use. After further discussion we actually decided against the pink gels, we didn't want it to look to gender associated and we wanted the white of the canvas to stand out as much as possible, in order to emphasise the main focus of the film - the paintings. We had lots of problems with shadows, wherever we placed the lights there seemed to be a shadow from the canvas on the back wall. Sarah (technician) showed us that by pointing the lights towards the ceiling we could remove the shadows. This also created a really nice, natural lighting that fir perfectly with what we wanted. We wanted the painting to be the part that stands out the most, so by use soft, natural looking lighting we could create this.
