Lost in daydreams

Finally I managed to put my film together. To be honest, I am not 100% satisfied with it but at the same time I do understand that I had too little time to concentrate on it. I did enjoy the fact that it has the emotions and feelings I intended to have in it, also in my opinion it turned out quite uncertain and dreamy as I expected. In addition, I thought the music I found was very good for it as it reflected also the Cadogan Hall (Mozart - Lacrimosa).
However, I am not sure whether it is documentary enough. I think I did not research enough the documentary genre for it. Still, I am satisfied with how the colours look, I just wish it had maybe a bit more of action, it felt in the end a bit too boring for me.
I believe next time I could do better by allowing myself more preparation and research time for it.

Below are screenshots of my film:

Presentation

Today we finally presented our presentation to the Cadogan Estate. I was happy to finally being able to present our ideas and show our work. Though I was very sad that an artist Jane Kukk that made an illustration inspired by the Cadogan Hall was left out since she sent me it on Tuesday's evening and it was too late to add to presentation. I think her design was my favourite out of everything. In addition, I truly loved the animation my artist friend did for us.
In the end, I felt this whole project thought me a lot about compromising, listening and being patient. I was happy to meet new creatives and work with them. In fact, I became good friends with one of my team mates. It was rewarding to finally say that we did all this and it is done, no matter if it was good enough, we all know how hard we tried as a group.
Of course, I was not as happy about the other Cadogan group, who had to be added to our presentation since they had only one idea and for a separate presentation, it would not be enough. But in the end I do understand why it was necessary.

I am adding here an illustration by Jane Kukk, the artist who is, in fact, pregnant last weeks and living in in Italy.

Fashion stylist, illustrator Jane Kukk:

"I was truly inspired by Cadogan Hall's white facade, which architectural form is very minimalistic and classic. In addition, the colours and details within my designs reflect the motives and tones from the stained window glass."

Changes to the presentation

Today me and Barbara started recreating the presentation as yesterday we had again presentation overview and there were many things yet to change. To be honest, yesterday's group presenting was a disaster as there was a lot miscommunication within the group. A lot of drama again, someone said something, someone did not say anything.. anyways it all made presenting tense and weird. Rosie and Rhys created a film, which was well done but in my opinion did not suit very much aesthetics of the Hall. However, we decided still keep the film in as 'interpretation' of the artists. Tutors told us that we need to change a lot in the presentation, so me and Barbara decided to create a completely new one.

We met up in the library today to work on the presentation. In order to understand the aesthetics the Cadogan Estate has in their presentations, we looked through their previous presentations. We were aiming also to have a similarly classical style, which would look minimalistic, professional and informative. Since we looked through all the templates and nothing was standing out, I decided to create my own. I took a photograph as a start point and through layering it and changing the colour, I created my own template for our presentation. We thought it looks clean, yet with its interesting twist as the patterns are straight from the Cadogan Hall.
In the end of the day, we almost finished the presentation, we needed to add a few things more about the artists but overall it was done. Now, we are looking forward for Monday, so we could see what could we change more in the presentation for it to look professional.

The photo (my own) I used for creating the template:

Testing for personal film

Here are some screenshots of the 'test' footage I took for my documentary. At first I though I am going to have a story how I fall asleep on the tube and then start dreaming about the Cadogan Hall but I did not have anyone to film me, so I could only film some bits and when I started editing, it did not work out the way I expected. Therefore, I decided to have my own dreamy depiction of my feelings, emotions of the Cadogan Hall without having this logical structure.
To be honest, I was satisfied with this decision as it did not give away the point of my film right away but one has to think more before they have the answer for it.

Colours, haziness, low quality

Regarding the colours in my film, I was inspired by Lana Del Rey music video Freak (screenshots are below). I feel like these very fragile and peaceful colours, a little bit pinkish create a dream-like atmosphere, which I intended to display in my documentary.

In addition, I decided to do my documentary in low-quality, I feel the haziness adds something more to the idea of the dream. In a dream I never feel certain and everything is a little blurry and uncertain, so it felt like a good idea in order to reflect the feelings, which one experiences while dreaming.

First presentation

Today we had our first presentation. We decided that it would be clearer if one person would present it. In addition, to be honest I am not the best public speaker due to my introverted nature. Lena was our presenter and I was truly amazed by her presenting skills, she did sound very confident and explained our ideas very well.  So, the presentation went well, though we messed up the times and arrived later than all other groups. I was quite sad that I could not hear other people's ideas.

Our feedback was reasonable, we were told that on Friday we should show more visual side of the things, not only the ideas. However, many things didn't only depend on us. For example I am still waiting for an animator and illustrator to get back to me about their contribution.

To be honest, the last few weeks have been stressful as working in a group can be very hard.  Usually I am working alone and I truly like it, since I can organise my time the way that is suitable for me and also there is no drama. I am quite quiet person and I do hate all dramas, arguments etc. At the moment, my group just only argues and has childish fights, I am trying to stay quiet and not get into that since I have to put my energy into other things than fighting. I feel a little bit like a mediator between people, trying to make everyone relax and get on with work.

I really hope we all can learn from this experience, how to work with one another and how not get offended by every little detail.
I am trying to keep thinking about my personal project too since I do not want it to be forgotten along this group project.

Moodboard for the documentary film

All the images: Anon, (2016). [image] Available at: https://www.pinterest.com/julieannsh/my-film/ [Accessed 11 Feb. 2016].