Interdisciplinary 5
A change of pace
In my photography lesson last week, I was reminded of an option of printing photographs from negatives by using the digitisation process. This has made me change my mind on the process of how I have been digitising the photos for this short film/slideshow for the hypothetical. So this week I will be trying to essentially complete the photo aspect of this project as I have a new module starting in week 7 and is a heavy module to be completed in 3 weeks.
So far I have been taking my 35mm film, developing, enlarging and printing into paper. From now on I will be digitising the negatives using a 35mm film scanner in the SOA Mac suite – this will make my photos much clearer and sharper for the film. As so far I have been using the flat bed scanner for the darkroom prints.
Overall this will modernise the project and make the photos much more profound and clear. Especially as the original process I was undertaking was taking far too much time just to digitise my prints.
As I was unwell on Tuesday, I managed to catch Fridays lesson again – we brought some work in progress and gave feedback on each other’s work. This was useful and made me more confident in my project as it was giving the right feeling to the viewers. This feeling being of a nostalgic/relaxing nature but with some liminal aspects.
We then moved onto drawing up a rough pitch/concept for the group proposal presentations for the workshop. Mine Is below. I won’t lie, as I have led two workshops already, It would be good to have someone else take the lead on this one but I will obviously pitch as normal otherwise. Warning, this drawing isn’t coming from an artist.
My idea is to essentially make some musical composition with one microphone in the centre of the room with the group using only their voices and hands, maybe percussion.
I have found success and have digitised all my rolls of film – and my news ones from the past week and this week. This is great as a new technique I have learnt has proven to be successful overall. This allows me more time to get more photos to add to the film and produce a soundtrack, if necessary. Below are all of my shots so far! This also means I have recovered some extra shots for the sounds I already have recorded.
* Please note, these haven’t been edited. Before being added to the film, these may have adjustments. BUT I do quite like the natural eery look these have produced*
A roll of film got ruined in a development process 🙁 so sadly a loss of film today – this is strange for me as it has only happened one in the past two years. But I will just have to continue onward.
During the reading week I have been editing and finalising the shots from home that I digitised – as I am re-editin the ones I had already done but now digitised, this can take a while. But I actually find it relaxing. This consists of remove dust and hairs that may have landed on the lens. There is also a question of contrast and brightness, this is usually what you would achieve using the enlargers in the darkroom but as I do not need prints and this is going to be a film, I only need to digitise and edit on my Mac. Below is the procedure:
More progress within Davinci – after comparing the digitised images against the darkroom prints, there is differences, depending on the print. Some look better, some look worse but overall it’s a much more viable option as I need to spend more time getting more photos and film over the coming weeks to complete this project.
One thing I have discovered is that some prints were literally impossible to expose properly in the darkroom whereas digitising with the film scanner in the Mac suite has essentially saved a lot of shots.
As you can see below, it’s coming together nicely, I have also shifted some sounds around to give a sense of closure to some shots, e.g a door closing.
Another time for reflection – do I feel this project is working? Yes and no.
The quality of the photos is very much influenced by the soft wide lens I had chosen to use in the first place. This isn’t exactly a hindrance but when it comes to blowing these photos up on a projector, I’m not sure as to how sharp they will be. But the mood is definitely there. So overall its a question of whether either:
A more stylised shot with a wide area of range (16mm ultra wide) This is helpful towards capturing a wide space
or
A more contained shot with not enough range but a sharper focus and depth of field (50mm 2.8 aperture)
Either way, I feel that the project will work when it’s complete. It needs a lot more work though and I will have enough time before proposal forms are due for presentation. Compared to my last project, this is much more focused and has a charm to it that has only come from my personal development at university so far. It’s nice to have feedback as some shots are found to be really interesting to people I know e.g the teddy bear, Wetherspoons, the staircase, windowsill etc. It makes me feel that even though these shots are random, they are stylised to the point that they work together as a themed release.