Assignment 3: Self Portraiture

Brief

Drawing upon the examples in ​Part Three​ and your own research, you can approach your self-portraits however you see fit. You may choose to explore your identity or masquerade as someone else, or use empty locations or objects to speak of your experiences. However you choose to approach it, use yourself – directly or indirectly – as subject matter.

Foreward

Having completed Assignment 2: The Unseen and inadvertently creating a series of self-portraits very much capturing the contents of my day to day life during the diary process, I decided to approach this project from a different angle.

Part of the brief outline mentions the use of a model as a stand in to recreate and capture moments from your diary as ‘film-stills’. This idea combined with my own thoughts on self quite well and along with the research I had completed in preparation for completing this assignment resulted in this finalised concept of representing self.

One past-time that has managed to keep me occupied during the past few months has been the watching and re-watching of new and old favourite films. This reminded me of my early teen years were film was a huge passion of mine, something I now recognise as being a large influence on my creative side and also the only like to an world outside of my small, local, council estate village upbringing.

Concept

The idea of ‘self’ not only as the images we put forward to represent ourselves but the societal expectation of ‘who we are’ through the connotations of those stereotypes. The multifaceted concept of ‘self’ is both a result of our known and unknown influences throughout our lives. The masks we wear for certain roles, expectations and interactions along with the in-grained opinions and knowledge we learn or adopt from a vast array of sources.

This short series titled ‘Flow My Tears…’ is an attempt to capture the duality of perception, what we literally see in the image and what we ‘read’ in the image.

‘Flow My Tears…’ is a reference to the novel ‘Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said’ by Philip K. Dick. The subject of which is the dystopia experience of waking up one day to realise that you entire existence has been erased from history raising the question of sanity and state control much in the vein of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ but very much the work of Dick in that recreational drug use is now a state sanctioned past time designed to appease the masses and mask the loss of autonomy.

Taking influence from Cindy Shermans ongoing photo series ‘Untitled Film Stills’ I have chosen to explore what I feel is the largest influence on my own personal development, both as a source of knowledge, behaviours and artistic vision, cinema.

The images presented in this collection are recreations of scenes from some of my most loved films, selected both for their theme of questioning the human condition and also their impact on my personal beliefs, positive and negative.

Each image is intended to be both pleasing aesthetically, communicating a surface level message about myself, whilst, for those with cinematic knowledge, presenting the themes of these films through the association and recognition of their story. Supplemental to these two attempts at narrative there are further references within each frame to several other influential films, both adding to the depth of narrative but also reflecting how, unbeknownst to me, I had even adopted the ‘taste’ from some of those films art direction.

Execution

For this assignment I chose to shoot all my images with ‘natural’ light, a technique often used by Stanley Kubrick, the only addition to the existing room lighting was the use of a reflector to help bounce and fill some shadows were needed. I used a remote shutter with 2 sec delay so I could adopt the final pose and maintain the camera’s steadiness in low shutter speeds.

For the final edit I chose a 16:9 ratio which was convenient in that it is recognisable as a cinema format but also as my camera has a matting mode to allow for easy blocking of the image. I also used the colour balance tool to give the images a tint towards cyan to more align the images with film stock of the 1970’s and 80’s along with adding a pass of film grain and avoiding any sharpening tools to maintain a minor softness to each image. For the 3rd image I used the warping tools for the effect of the being sucked to the screen.

Research

For this assignment I conducted research both into the film making process and into photographers recognised for their self-portraiture work.

I found that Cindy Sherman’s ‘Untitled Film Stills’ was the key to my choice to pursue this concept. Her use of herself as a stand in for the portrayal of female roles across the noir, thriller and b-movie genres of film really caught my attention as a piece of work that questions stereotypes, perceptions and the meaning of self. Her dedication to the effective realism of her film stills really captured my imagination as they are so effective in alluding to memories of non existent films.

Further to the thematic inspiration found in Sherman’s work, I was very inspired by the book ‘Photography – The Key Concepts’ in which Author David Bate present an overview of photographic theory across the past 150 years. In his writing the ideas of localisation and semiotics was a repeated theme, one which I still have to re-read to truly grasp. The discussion of an image losing and gaining meaning across different time periods and regions is an interesting one, in the time of globalisation we see this more and more as studios and writers adapted and outright change consumable media to suit the region of release.

For the research into film making I watched several documentaries on the making of the selected films and/or their directors. Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Luc Besson, David Cronenberg, Sophia Coppola and Michel Gondry all being favourites of mine and all being featured in this series. Through these ‘making ofs’ I was able to learn about the different aspect ratios, focal lengths, lighting techniques and camera movements that they have adopted as their approach, how they have utilised the traits to communicate different ideas and how they have adapted them to suit different stories or challenges.

Artist Statement

Being an only child growing up with only two or three similarly aged friends, on a street of only 30 houses, stuck 6 miles from the nearest town and coming from a family background of alternative music and lifestyle (in comparison to anyone at school) film played a big part in my understanding of the wider world. With positive and negative outcomes. It inspired me to learn about photography, music, performance and to travel. All positives traits which helped drive me to explore and learn as much as possible about the world. I learnt about communication both directness and humour both skills that helped mean my careers and relationships. But, on the negative side I learnt an idealism only possible in fiction. Whilst the experience was fantastic for developing ambition it wasn’t great at teaching responsibility, acceptance or actualisation. In a way living vicariously through the eyes of a protagonist or director supplanted my own consciousness into that of an observer, constantly looking for the plot and compartmentalising life into different stories each with its own temporal existence.

Contact Sheets

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Final Images

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Reflection

Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills

Having reviewed each image individually I feel that they represent possible 85% of the intended outcome.

The positives within the images are;

The framing, aspects of the use of existing light, the balance of colour and light and dark and also the placement of props in non-intrusive but significant locations within the frame.

The points I feel I could have improved are;

The lighting of the scene creating interest and emotion,I feel that due to the relatively low power of the lights there is quite a significant lack of impactful lighting of the subject, leaving the subject quite flat looking and not distinct from the background were needed.
Also, the lack of dynamic range from shooting digital in comparison to film leaves the images lacking the ‘richness’ of the source material which was shot on film, some of this could be achieved with batter lighting as mentioned.
Two other changes I feel that would benefit the images would be the use of a wider focal length, I only have a 28mm, and a more traditional unmatted aspect ratio, whilst film is often displayed at 16:9 it is most commonly ‘matted’ to this ratio from 1.33:1 or 1.85:1. Both of these changes would have given the image more of a cinematic feel, the wider focal length giving the content room to breathe and enabling more room to work with lighting etc whilst the aspect ratio would have heightened the ‘feel’ of cinema whilst also giving more usable work space for lighting etc.

Quality of Outcome

I would say that the quality of outcome is on par with the Visual skills outlined above, 85%. I feel that whilst everything is as intended, tilts and angles included, I also believe that if I had introduced higher powered and/or studio lighting to replace the existing ‘natural’ lighting it would have resulted in not only more engaging imagery but also the ability to use a faster shutter, higher f.stop and lower iso both resulting in lower digital noise and a greater depth of field were needed.

Demonstration of Creativity

This assignment is more of a progression on my previous assignment rather than a completely new endeavour. For this reason I believe the creativity could possibly have been demonstrated more with a new approach to the subject. However, I do feel that the development of the idea has added to the narrative of the image and the concept of three layers of understanding within the image is better than my previous work. Whether the concept works is another question as I have inherent knowledge of the septic information with the frame which many may not recognise.

Outcome

Overall I feel this assignment is so close to being good that the fact it seems to just miss the mark results in my feeling that it falls heavily. I feel that everything is there but it is missing an element that just pulls the images together. I thought the photography would be relatively easy idea to execute but it was in that process that I discovered the limits of my equipment and possibly current skills. If I was to re-shoot this series I would look to either invest in a wider lens or, in an ideal world, recreate the whole scenes in a studio where I would have the space to step back and let the image breathe, as well as be able to manage and manipulate the light in more satisfying ways.

Bibliography

Cindy Sherman (2020) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cindy_Sherman&oldid=969808206 (Accessed 10/08/2020).Cindy Sherman | artnet (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/cindy-sherman/ (Accessed 10/08/2020).Cindy Sherman | MoMA (s.d.) At: https://www.moma.org/artists/5392 (Accessed 10/08/2020).Cindy Sherman – Bio | The Broad (s.d.) At: https://www.thebroad.org/art/cindy-sherman (Accessed 10/08/2020).Cindy Sherman – National Portrait Gallery (s.d.) At: https://www.npg.org.uk/blog/cindy-sherman (Accessed 10/08/2020).Tate (s.d.) Cindy Sherman born 1954. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/cindy-sherman-1938 (Accessed 10/08/2020).Untitled Film Still #21 | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time (s.d.) At: http://100photos.time.com/photos/cindy-sherman-untitled-film-still-21 (Accessed 10/08/2020).

Dunham, B. (2020) Watch: Why We’re Obsessed with Stanley Kubrick — Directing Styles Explained. At: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/stanley-kubrick-directing-style/ (Accessed 16/08/2020).Lost in Translation (film) (2020) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lost_in_Translation_(film)&oldid=973291860 (Accessed 16/08/2020).Michel Gondry (2020) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michel_Gondry&oldid=973271452 (Accessed 16/08/2020).Ridley Scott (2020) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ridley_Scott&oldid=971671418 (Accessed 16/08/2020).Sofia Coppola (2020) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sofia_Coppola&oldid=972783377 (Accessed 16/08/2020).Spike Jonze (2020) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spike_Jonze&oldid=973285162 (Accessed 16/08/2020).Stanley Kubrick (2020) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stanley_Kubrick&oldid=973024905 (Accessed 16/08/2020).

6 Filmmaking Tips from Michel Gondry (s.d.) At: https://filmschoolrejects.com/filmmaking-tips-michel-gondry/ (Accessed 16/08/2020).Michel Gondry (s.d.) At: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0327273/ (Accessed 16/08/2020).Ridley Scott (s.d.) At: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000631/ (Accessed 16/08/2020).Sofia Coppola (s.d.) At: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001068/ (Accessed 16/08/2020).Sofia Coppola | Biography, Films, & Facts (s.d.) At: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sofia-Coppola (Accessed 16/08/2020).Stanley Kubrick (s.d.) At: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000040/ (Accessed 16/08/2020).Top 10 Signature Elements in Ridley Scott Movies | JoBlo.com (s.d.) At: https://www.joblo.com/movie-news/lists-top-10-signature-elements-in-ridley-scott-movies/item (Accessed 16/08/2020).Where to begin with Sofia Coppola (s.d.) At: https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/where-begin-sofia-coppola (Accessed 16/08/2020).