My project
What I have done:
This is a bit of a shorter notebook post with more writing as I have had a little bit of a break from doing more experimentation and practical things for my IP project this week. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea but I felt like I needed it. There also wasn’t any session or tutorials to write about. I had to focus on getting my other modules finished for the interim assessments in mid-March and I also had to get my Pecha Kucha presentation and the first proposal form ready for the next week which took up a bit of time.
The Pecha Kucha presentation was for the group workshops pitches. I already brainstormed ideas in the last workshop, but I hadn’t come up with anything definite as the idea had to be related to my individual project and I was finding that tricky. Because my project is just about running, I had to think of something that was inclusive and worked as a workshop. After talking to Miranda last week, I did have a seed of an idea related to movement and the body. What I came up with was basically a version of walking and drawing but filming instead of drawing. The plan is for everyone to make short video clips, either of themselves moving or look at the outside and how thinks look when moving. For example, the treetops going past while running.
For the proposal form I hadn’t quite come up with how my project was going to look in the end, as I obviously didn’t want to limit myself by having a clear end goal. I obviously knew it was going to be a film though, so that much was fine. I always find it quite difficult to sum up my project in a few words, so I found it difficult to write something catchy and accurate. I feel like I am more on top of things like the proposal form and the notebooks this semester. The place I want to display my work in the Takeover is the most contentious. The choice between the eye or dance studio obviously changes a lot about how the film feels to watch. I will have to decide next week sometime after talking to Miranda.
What next:
I have got the GoPro on loan now, I am just going through all the settings and seeing how it works. I plan to take it on a couple of runs before I give it back next week. I have got the chest strap, but not one for the head annoyingly. I also need to nail down what and where my final film will be. The task over Easter will be to edit the film and sort out the sound.
These are some more videos that I took the other day.
Research and context
I have done some reading, contextual research and some more thinking and brainstorming of where I am with my project, as it is meant to be ‘reading week’ for this module. I have been reading Sebastian Coe’s book, coming back. He is one of the most well known British 800m and 1500m runners (my favourite distances) and former world record holder. The other book I have been reading is ‘Jog On, how running saved my life’ by Bella Mackie.
Poetry has also kept on inspiring me in this project. I have been quite enjoying that module and I have been using running as a source and theme to write about for that assignment as well. The way in which you make a poem or film interesting, artistic and meaningful have their strong similarities. In poems you have a structure of a question and answer for example, or context then the main subject and some poems have a twist just like a plot in a film. I think the most useful thing I’ve learned that carries over is that in some poems you want to suggest something without specifically saying it, it has a deeper meaning. That is what I want to create in my film, I don’t want it to be obvious as that lacks experimentation, but it will have a deeper meaning.