Self Portrait - Eleanor Finch

My third video from the series where I have played around with inspiration from Nick Knight's Rick Owen's portrait. I have never shot any type of film in the studio before and although I work in there constantly feeling in my comfort zone I felt somewhat out of it. I missed having the beauty of the flash to soften the light and create the perfect shadows so it ended up taking me a lot longer than usual to set up the lighting. Unfortunately someone had nailed a very large mirror to the wall which I couldn't remove so I just worked with what I had. Using the mirror to record some of the movement rather than just moving away to shoot somewhere else. I used a lot of the same footage over and over again, speeding it up and slowing it down to create a kind of jump from frame to frame. I can't decide whether it has worked well or not but as I am still developing my style and getting used to working with the moving image I decided to share it anyway.

S4LEM
The band Salem have been labelled 'Ghoststep', a new form of Dubstep music that is eerie, atmospheric and almost creepy which I find amazing and perfect to stand aside my videos. Here are a few of the music videos they have put together for a few of their tracks which again are quite eerie, atmospheric and creepy. I like the darkeness of the videos with the figures in the spotlight. There aren't many typical features in the videos which is what makes them so weird to watch. I love this about them because it gets you questioning what it's all about and you watch it over and over to try and figure out what it is you're looking for.

The Karass by Nick Knight.

This video is amazing. It is the perfect video that is exploring the thin line between still photography and the moving image. By shooting in a dark studio and covering parts of the model that he doesn't want the viewer to see he is able to light up the parts of the video which as much colour and he visions to create this beautiful imagery. The way he layers up the videos isn't something that I have seen before and hopefully I will have access to programs where I will be able to go into more depth of video editing and achieve something similar to this.

The lighting in the picture is stunning; the way he changes the colours and the levels to create slightly different ways of looking at the same model reminds us that there are three different depcitions of the imagery. As they are advertising jewellery in this video you can understand the reason behind all the points I have stated above.
It's almost as if he is capturing three different emotions through the three seperate depictions which is a very inetersting way to look at the video. Could this be something I could move into myself? Not only looking at the thin line between still and moving imagery but all looking at the small differences we can capture in emotion.

Rick Owens Portrait by Nick Knight.

Knight is one of my all time favourite fashion photographers and although I've always been such a huge fan I'd never been familiar with his fashion films until I came across this one. As I was surfing SHOWstudio I found this and I fell for it completely. This is exactly how I picture a moving portrait. It captures angles from all over and it just shows the figure is such a magical way. I love the way it's been shot in black and white because you can see all the detail in his face which has been exaggurated by the shadow. I love this video because it treads the line between still portraiture and the moving image which has worked so well in this and creates a fabulous end product.

As I have previously written, this whole concept of the moving image is very new to me but I feel like I'm working my way up to something exciting and new. With powerful inspiration from the artist Irwin Barbe I want to start playing with the footage to create breaks, jumps and an interesting final product. The way his work jumps and repeats makes his work so intriguing to watch and almost puts you into a trance. This is what I want to achieve within my own work. I want to create videos that make people question what they are watching, to create thought and interest.

The clip below is some of the footage that I have put together from shooting in Blackpool. I found this set of imagery much harder and more complicated to work with and put together because none of the work I have ever done has been particulary uplifting which is the emotion I wanted to portray in this video. With much more upbeat music and a lot more colour involved I decided to shoot in Blackpool where the tacky arcades and fish restaurants are endless. Blackpool is the type of place where the history of laughter and fun is slowly fading away through the bad paint jobs and terrible neon signs. Perfect. This location would have worked perfectly had I chosen to put together a melancholy piece but I need to explore many different types of video to decifer what kind of emotion I was going to choose to carry on into the final stages of my project.

I'm not overall happy with what I have put together so far from this footage. I feel like it's lacking something; that special something that makes you think 'wow I love this'. Although this is only the first part of this piece and I need to really work and work on it to be pleased with what I have done for this piece. I need to rework a lot of the footage and put it together differently, maybe by taking more obvious inspiration from Barbe and editting my footage in a much more jumpy fashion; just to add that little bit of an edge. At the end of the video from around 1:23/1:34 I feel like the inspiration I have taken from Barbe for this piece is much more obvious, therefore I feel this part is a much more powerful section of the piece.

When I have finished this video I'm going to move on quickly I need to decide what route I want to follow. Although the two videos I have done so far are so different they also have similar qualities: the hand held filming, the manual focusing and the simple focus on people and their emotions. Those three qualities are things that I definitely want to continue throughout this project but I need to decide which kind of emotion I want to follow through. With more practice and exploration I will hopefully end up in the perfect location with a web of ideas to dive into.

Here's a short clip from some footage I've put together over the past week. We went to Blackpool for a bit of a change and I decided that with this imagery, as it's not been shot in black and white and there's a lot of movement going on, that I would have it as a much more upbeat video. Therefore I fast forwarded most of the footage and had a bit of a play around. It's still in progress but this is what I have done with it so far. 

I need to keep my mind open to different styles of lens based media and so happily I decided to go back into my comfort zone for a mooch when this cover caught my eye. Fashion photographer David Sims who works for the likes of Vogue Hommes Japan etc. has done the most recent set of covers for AnOther Magazine, the special ten year anniversary special. THESE COVERS ARE STUNNING. That's not the only reason I've decided to include them in this unit of work though; there is movement in the images. When you have a closer look at all four images you can see that there is a slight amount of movement in the images, whether Sims caught this whilst shooting or whether he added it in with his editing skills, that movement is what has made these four images so beautiful. If I'm going to dabble in my obsession for still fashion photography these are the kind of images I need to create. The deep powerful colours of the background and the pale features of the women are such a fantastic contrast that you can tell every part of these images have been organised and thought through until they look absolutely perfect. Amazing.