"Time to choose"

This post is a little delayed but i'm going to try and catch up with what has happened in Unit X over the last couple of weeks.

On the 13th March the name of the main project was revealed as "The Museum of Lost Science". This was then separated into different themes for us to choose from and focus on until the exhibition in May. I was torn between the themes "Biographical" and "Reclamation", but as I thought it would be far too easy for me to settle on a character-based narrative if I chose "Biographical" (which I always do!) I decided to step out of my comfort zone a little and chose "Reclamation".
We were instructed to spend the next week attending lectures and talks from visiting artists and scientists and beginning to conduct our own research into our theme before being divided into groups at the end of the week.    

Some of the visiting Artist lectures were brilliant and were very helpful towards my own research and ideas, especially as they incorporated aspects of science into their own work. They seemed particularly influenced by machines and engineering which I think has encouraged me to do the same. Here are some examples of the Artists' work, I love the contrast between Brendan Dawes and Jim Bonds sculptures/ objects . While Dawes visualises happiness and naivety, I find Bond's is often quite sinister. I like sinister.

                                         Jim Bond's Kinetic eye, below is Dawes's happiness machine.

                                Dawes's happiness machine.

It happened in a frame...

This is the outcome for the first collaborative project of Unit X.  The task was to produce a 90 second to 2 minute film following the life of a real or fictional character. The footage had to conform to the Dogme 95 Manifesto: using only real occurrences (no violence or murder), using only real sound, no props, no filters or lighting, and only simplistic editing. 
I was in one of the smaller teams, as I worked with Alex Davies to devise the narrative, settings and shooting, our friend Sam Whitham acting as"Edward". 

We considered several characters to film including the "homeless hipster" who searches the Northern Quarter for a higher class of rubbish to survive and a "Wild man" who decides to leave his life in normal society and run away to the woods. Eventually we decided to tell the story of Edward, an ex-student who sleeps rough and returns to his halls of residence each night to satisfy his strange fascination with the people who have replaced him. 

The story is quite bizarre and some of the scenes within the film are a little disturbing but it was incredibly fun and rewarding to make. It was the first time I have created a film like this and the project has inspired me to try it again. I think the Dogme 95 Manifesto, whilst restrictive, was a really useful method of making us carefully consider the use of sound and light in a true-to-life environment and resulted in a more interesting aesthetic. After watching the other groups videos I am unsure whether our film was what our tutors expected, but I for one am very pleased with the result.