I found the Narratives of the Unconscious project both challenging and enjoyable. I was pushed out of my comfort zone to create a short film, something that I have very little experience in working in as a format before.
To begin generating ideas for this project, we had a day of taking part in a number of different excersises which could help us to visualise different elements that we could potentially use within our films. One of these involved working in pairs; one person would talk about a journey that they were visualising in their heads which was being guided by a tutor whilst the other member of the pair would be drawing what their partner was explaining to them. For this exercise I found that communication was essential especially as I was working with somebody that I was not very familiar with. It was, however, very interest to see the range of outcomes that everyone got from the same 'storyline'. For example, at one point I saw myself in a tipi with a large old woman with extremely long plaited hair whilst my partner when it was her turn, visualised herself within the walls of a larged stone built castle with a man in a flowing black cape. It was also interesting to learn how different parts of the story linked with our conscious and sub-conscious with out us even knowing about it. Another exercise included making a list of qualities that we felt we each had and the visualising this for ourselves. In my case, I was visualising the word 'Carer' and I visualised a rabbit. All of the exersises could be used as starting points for our films which would need to involve using masks or puppets. Later on in the project we had a workshop day where we were taught different techniques in making puppets, performance and making masks.
Using just masking tape and newspaper, we worked in teams to create a puppet to be used in the Japanese puppetry form 'Bunraku' which involves three or more people working together to move it. We had to find ways of making joints which moved only in the 'right' life like directions as well as finding how to manipulate the paper to create the shapes we wanted. Our 'Mouse-man' puppet came from a story telling exercise we had done earlier that day so we knew roughly what it was going to be based on. Working out the scale of the puppet was one of the hardest aspects as each team member was working on a different part of the head, body or a limb so we had to constantly communicate and work together to make sure that all the parts were the right size and would fit together well. We found that by only lightly 'scrunching' the newspaper, it became much more malleable and easier to achieve the finish we wanted.
Once we had finished making our puppet, we then learnt how to make it move and walk so that it could be used to act out the story from one of the earlier exercises. We assigned one person to move the heads, one person to move the legs and one person for each arm. I acted as the director and helped to coordinate the movements and found which elements need to be improved and changed. Each group then performed their piece using the puppets and recieved feedback from the other groups. We also filmed our performance so that each member of the group could see how to improve and spot what they were doing individually that could be improved or that was working well. mouse man from Chloe Preece on Vimeo.
Following on from this, we went on to make masks out of cardboard and tape. These acted as skeletons or like a base so that they could later be built up using paper mache or something similar to create a character. Because we were each making a mask for ourselves, they were made to fit our own faces as the size, shapes and contours would be specific to each individual person however, I later repeated this task to make another mask for the person I had chosen to act in my film so it would fit him properly.
When it came to filming my film, I found it extremely useful to have a rough storyboard with me so I knew what I wanted to film and how it would fit together whilst being able to have the freedom to change ideas and shots if i needed to. The main problem I encountered was that I lost some of the footage from the first half of the film which helped to introduce and explain the story. Because of this and not having enough time to reshoot these scenes, I had to juggle what footage I had left however due to this, the film appears to be a little confusing to the viewer. I am planning on reshooting the film in the near future so that I'll have the scenes i need for the film to make sense but i'll also have a proper costume for the 'Boris' character by this point which will add to the quality of the overall outcome. Generally I'm very happy with this as a first attempt as I haven't made a film such as this before.
Boris and Maud from Chloe Preece on Vimeo.
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AuthorChloe Preece, 20 Years old. Illustration student currently studying at the University of Brighton. Archives
December 2016
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