Evaluation

Looking at the Self Directed Project unit in hindsight I can say with confidence that it was by far my favorite unit of the past two years.  One of the things I think that struck me as so valuable about this unit was that all of the work was practical and not just theoretical, I have enjoyed our previous units but the theoretical work (while still very valuable) lacks the experience of actually working towards an end product. Practical work teaches the kind of thinking and problem solving that you can only learn by from experiencing it first-hand. Before this unit I was not completely sold on working in film but after this unit I am very much interested in the medium and it’s something I very much look forward to gaining more experience in, hopefully in the grad films as well.  I do think that beginning with the styling project was an excellent introduction to the amount of sourcing we would have to do during our film projects, especially when dealing with interpretations.  There are definitely things I would have done differently the second time around when it came to the styling project like choosing a different period for the painting, I feel I could have done a better recreation out of period but by the time I realized this I had just missed my window of opportunity. I also had difficult time finding information about my actual painting or I anything directly related to its subject matter other than the blurb that is displayed with it in the National Gallery, any books containing analytical texts referencing the painting were academic texts and were either far too expensive or unavailable in the time that I needed it to be.  Time management was definitely a large part of this project for both the painting and filming parts of this and was something that I struggled with however feel that I progressed with that in this unit when it was under my control.  

Working with the Film Course on this project was definitely an eye opener.  My personal experience working on the film that I designed was incredibly frustrating- my director left everything until the very last minute (we didn’t even have an actor until the night before- no measurements, no fittings) and he was incredibly difficult to get a hold of. As frustrating as this was I do appreciate that this was an excellent exercise in staying professional in the face of being incredibly frustrated but as helpful as that was I think it would be an improvement on the project if the Film students next year were given more of a briefing on what costume requires such as our budgets and preparation time (measurements, fittings would be ideal though I know many actors come in from London and have travel expenses to think about) and though we did do our best to explain it to them it would be nice if they had a lecture from tutors beforehand on how to work with us and exactly what our roles are. I don’t think there was any malicious intent in the way that costume was treated by film, but I do think that in some cases there was a bit of honest confusion that added extra strain.

Costume Prop Pro is definitely one of the invaluable parts of this unit, particularly our training time with Clare Collins. As someone who does work well with technology I really enjoyed getting to see they kind of systems that are used professionally as well as getting a chance to gain the ability to use a tool that is specified to and  prevalent in our industry. That being said there were moments that I wanted never to see Costume Prop Pro again but I think that was just to do with the learning curve with all completely unfamiliar programs. It does seem a bit buggy at times as well and currently won’t take any of my .jpeg photos for my supervising file (I got them uploaded on the laptop and then realized I couldn’t print and re-did it on the desktop only to have it not upload my photos and then find out the desktop wasn’t printing either. Not my best  moment with technology) I am definitely looking forward to getting a chance to use it next year on a larger script as our shorter films didn’t give us much of a chance to experience it at its full potential in dealing with managing a larger cast an multiple shots (mine is especially thin being that there was two different scenes and one of them was just nude pants.)

Styling Project: Final Shoot

Final photo-shoot for my Styling Project done and everything went well, I can’t stress enough how much of a breeze it was! It surprised me- and I was expecting it to go well! We started off at 10 a.m. Beth (photographer) ran to get lights while I got Emma into dress option number one-and-only (I discovered that option number two had a giant zip down the back and that wouldn’t work at all) and luckily the dress fit her perfectly, the only minor issue was the hem length since the dress wasn’t intended to be used with a bustle (wrong period) but she would be lying down so it really wasn’t even noticeable.  The other issue we ran into was the sleeves which I wasn’t able to hide or replace for various reasons so we left it as was and changed the period a bit. Overall I’m really happy with the way the photograph turned out and the experience of shooting it was wonderful, everyone was organized and focused the shoot was finished in  about an hour with set up and tear down and we got to spend more time having fun and being ridiculous than we did shooting it (afterwards of course). Just goes to show what being efficient and getting it done right the first time can do!

Final Image

The team!

Louise showing the glamorous side of assisting on a photo shoot

Portrait of Dolly

For the supervising assistant part of our project I worked on Portrait of Dolly which was designed by Charlie Bestwick. From the very beginning Dolly was an entirely different filming experience from Crouching Figures being that Crouching Figures was a very small studio based shoot and Dolly was a massive on location production involving three actors (Crouching had two and one of them really just lay on the ground and stuck his hand up from time to time). We began our morning by meeting in the Lidl car park at 7:30 from there we headed off to the location- I hadn't seen the location yet but I had heard about it we were rumoured to be filming in an absolutely gorgeous house in Sandbanks, and despite the fact that it really didn't look like much as you pulled up to it once you got inside it was a completely different story. The house must have been built around the late twenties or early thirties and all of the fixtures, flooring, and some of the furniture were all originals, though it was in a state of disrepair the house was beautiful beyond words! Loading in wasn't a very difficult process for costume, we had one car full of stuff and that was tackled between the two of us in two trips. Charlie (like all of us, I think) hadn't had a chance to fit her actors before the shooting and had only had measurements to go off of so we started fitting the male lead right away- Luckily the beautiful grey suit that Charlie had pulled from the costume store fit him perfectly! After that gigantic sigh of relief we moved on to fitting Dolly's mother, Charlie had hired a beautiful eggplant (Aubergine I think it's called in the UK?) coloured dress from Hierarchy and pulled two others from the costume store at AUCB. Quite graciously Charlie allowed the actress to pick which of the dresses she like the most and the actress chose a wonderful emerald green lace dress from AUCB which she fit in perfectly (sadly this wasn't Charlie's first choice). With the two of them on to hair and make-up Charlie ran out to get black socks for the actor (it seems there always needs to be one mad dash errand) and during that time Hattie (the little girl playing Dolly. Also possibly one of the most adorable children in existence and this is coming from someone with a severe aversion to children) Hattie's mother had brought a selection of tights and ballet shoes with her to pick from so I phoned Charlie asked which style tights she preferred and got Hattie into her costume so she could head off to hair and make-up. Once they were all dressed and made up shooting got underway and from then on out it was the legendary filming game of "Hurry up. Now wait. Hurry up. Now wait." Charlie was an absolute gem on set and had a quick eye for continuity and for the most part everyone was good about not touching clothing or moving anything (jewelry, etc.) unless the shot required it which was a major help. Filming lasted from about 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. quite a long day compared to our 7 hour shoot for Crouching Figures however this film did involve much, much more. This film was definitely a much better experience and really piqued my interest to work on the Grad films in third year, the general vibe on set for this film was much lighter and friendlier, the film students treated costume with respect and everyone seemed to have their act together.

Costumes corner!

Crouching Figure: Shoot Day

Shoot day has come and gone! The week between having the films assigned and our shooting date was an absolute whirlwind, and even though things were touch and go for a bit it all came together quite beautifully in the end. 

Wednesday night before shooting I was starting to really feel the pressure, we hadn't had an actor the entire time and we had only just booked one for sure in the early evening. We  were scheduled to shoot the next day and I had no measurements, the only kind of solid information I really had to go off of was the actors published height and weight on his Spotlight profile, but I had already pulled as many options as I possibly could in variety of sizes and hired the Ringleaders jacket from Hierarchy so there really wasn't anything I could do with out more information. I was just going to have to make it work, and make it work we did!

My lovely life saving assistant Grace and I began our day at 10 a.m. (quite a luxurious call time compared to the other shoots) to fit our actor as we didn't begin shooting until 2 p.m. (A piece of our filming equipment (a jib arm) wasn't available until 2:30) in a stroke of luck most of my first choice options fit or were just a little bit big and big is better than too small. It worked out so that we didn't even have to try on most of the other options I had pulled. 

Option 1: This was the first outfit we tried on, everything worked out pretty well, we needed to swap the shirt out for one with a smaller chest size and larger neck, and the director wanted to see what the outfit would look like with a cream waistcoat, so off we ran to pull a cream waistcoat and swap out shirts.

Option 2: Tried the outfit again only this time with a cream waistcoat instead of a black one. Every one agreed that the black helped break up the color a bit and add a bit of definition. I worried that on camera the cream trousers and waistcoat would be too similar in color and would look very flat on camera as neither were really patterned fabrics. We switched back to black.

After we had settled on the ringleaders outfit we headed back to the costume workroom to take care of a few repairs and source a pair of black cotton boxers the director had added in our 10 a.m. meeting, we split up and Grace The Lifesaver ran into town to buy the boxers while I stayed behind and did repairs, Natalie also hopped in and gave me a massive hand with pressing our new shirt from the costume store.

Two thirty finally rolled around and filming began! It was very well organized and went pretty smoothly. Final checks were going well and the only real costume problem we had we were able to solve relatively quickly; the problem were the breeches that kept untucking from the boots, since they were missing the two bottom buttons on both legs they kept rising off and falling open over the tops of the boots. We fixed this by pinning elastic to the hems of the trousers and looping in down around the foot and that immediately solved our problem.

The rest of the shoot went well for costumes. It was shot in sequence and we rarely did more than one take so continuity was pretty simple. The only continuous problem was the mustache. I adhered the mustache using spirit gum however the actor was not completely clean shaven which proved problematic- if we brought a razor and shaved him completely the spirit gum adhesive would have burned and the process of removing it would have been even more painful as spirit gum is incredibly irritating to skin. The other option was to apply the mustache over the stubble- this wouldn't be very secure however it would hold and would save the actor a great deal of pain. As I predicted the mustache was a constant problem and did need constant re-positioning and re-application, but under the circumstances I think it was the best that could be done- this is a situation that could have been easily avoided by having an actor even 24 hours ahead of time to properly notify them of the requirements of the role.

Other than minor mustache alterations there was little to do other than sit behind the camera crew and stay out of the way. There were a few camera problems but those were resolved quickly by the very capable film students. We finally wrapped around 9:30 and costume had a very quick get-out.

Crouching Figure: Progress part. 2

It's the day before shooting and I still don't have any measurements, in fact at this point! It's really starting to make me nervous! I feel like there' s so much to do but I can't do much of it with out measurements. I've pulled at least three different options in different sizes making sure that they are all pretty interchangeable and won't be too garish with the bright red coat!

Crouching Figure: Progress

Georgia and I made our first very uncertain trip to Hierarchy a local hire house in Boscombe, neither of us had received measurements yet and both of us had to shoot our films on Thursday.  While we were both not entirely sure what size we were looking for we figured that it would be helpful to go and look if just to see what are options were and make sure we didn't need to look somewhere else.  Both of us lucked out, they had the perfect red and black ringleaders jacket and luckily they had it in a variety of sizes so if I received measurements in the next 48 hours there was a good chance that they would have the size I needed. I took photos of the jacket and brought them to the production designer for his color palette.

When Georgia and I went back on Tuesday there wasn't much change in my situation. Still no actor and still no measurements. My director had described the actor as his "height and size, maybe a little shorter" so I went out on a limb and hired the jacket in a 40, hope it fits!

Film Assignment: Crouching Figure

 The day we've all been waiting for! Film assignments! I did get one of the films that I was initially the most excited about, Francis Bacon's Crouching Figure! I'm incredibly exciting to begin work on this piece! I'll also be assisting Charlie on Dolly, another piece I was majorly looking forward to. Very happy all around!

In my initial meeting with the Crouching Figure team I was given my first copy of the script and spoke with the creative team about what they were expecting. At this point it's pretty straight forward, we're looking to create a very iconic Ringleader, red jacket, white trousers, tall boots, top hat and mustache. The things we're looking for the most at this point are very stark and crisp lines to set the Ringleader apart from his very dingy and broken down environment and create a contrast that  adds to the surreal nature of the film.

Painting for Inspiration: Film Pitches

Pitch #2 Francis Bacon's Crouching Figure

Man struggling to escape from confines of dark paranoid mind and back into reality, lost in his own nightmare, POV style filming (similar to: Enter the Void) Characters: Circus Ringleader- nightmarish, Ringleader is the window for audience opinion. Very crisp. Stands out amongst the grunge and grime. Ringleader is representation of the ego. 

Pitch #4 Portrait of Dolly

10 year old girl develops sexual desire for Mum's lover after catching them in the act. In a fit of jealousy applies make-up in an attempt to seduce her mother's lover

Opens with Mum getting ready, Dolly playing with her hat, man arrives, attractive and well dressed, he has brought flowers for Dolly's mother but gives one to Dolly, man and mother retire to the bedroom and shut Dolly out, Dolly waits outside and listens and finally peeks in ("The Idol") Dolly runs to her mother bedroom and carefully applies imitation of her mothers make-up, rushes and waits outside of her mother's door expectantly, the man sees her is surprised and walks away. Flesh tones, pale tones, Darker more passionate lighting in love-making room, bright much more natural lighting everywhere else.  "Pretty Baby", "Jessie at 5, 1987" Sally Mann, Setting it 1910- really address the time period, on location or in studio- it could go either way, Jodi Foster in Taxi Driver.

Pitch #6- Bridge at Courbevoie

An estranged father and daughter forced to spend time together when their car breaks down on their way to drop her off at the train station. Daughter is the dominant personality, calls for the tow, etc. Father stands to lose his daughter again, they wander the shoreline, this forced time together is his last chance. Third character? Artist, the catalyst. Asks to paint/photograph the two of them, they are reluctant but agree and pose for the artist forced to portray the happy father/daughter relationship they both wish they had. Daughter leaves for the train station with the artist.

Pitch #11- The Situation Group

1960's, 12 abstract artists sitting for a portrait, improvised conversation. Studio shoot. 

Pitch #12- Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue

Parallel between freeform and constructed art. Jorgen Lest- Perfect Human pt.1, Experimental freeform jazz music in the background. Sparse white space, all black suits head to toe with their faces covered, one in red, one in yellow, one in blue.

Pitch #13- Girl with a Dove

Takes place in a Victorian aviary, two children are playing bouncing a ball back and forth, the boy throws the ball and it hits a birds cage and knocks it over, killing the dove inside. The aviary caretaker comes over and sets the cage upright while the girl picks up the dove and when she looks back her brothers clothes are piled on the floor and there is a new dove in the cage. Currently looking at the Russell Cotes and The Collective as locations. Very Victorian Gothic, Colleen Atwood.

Pitch #14- The Memorial of Kaiser Friedrich

Funeral in the woods, Old world folktales. Young woman asks her mother about a story, mother tells her a story of a strange young woman who heard music in the woods and attempted to find it's source, she asks the villagers to help her but they all say no and pass her by, she disappears and dies in the wood. Portrait is of her funeral. 30 or so people.

Courtauld Gallery Visit!

We began our Painting for Inspiration unit with our visit to the Courtauld Gallery in London, the Courtauld Gallery is the one that the film students will be choosing from for our films. Having never heard of the Courtauld Gallery I wasn't exactly sure what to expect and my god was I blown away when I got in there. It was incredible! In every room their was a painting I recognized or a new one to fall in love with. I had no idea such famous iconic works of art were tucked away in London! This visit has definitely gotten me even more excited about this project, I cannot wait to see what the film students have chosen. I scrawled the names of all of the paintings that stood out to me as I walked through and figured here was as good a place as any to share them!

Young Woman Powdering Herself by Georges Seurat

Jane Avril at the Entrance to the Moulin Rouge by Toulouse Lautrec

Lady with a Parasol by Degas

Portrait of a Woman by Morisot

The Bar at the Follies Berger by Manet

Woman at a Window by Degas

La Loge by Renoir

Cupid and Psyche by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Reclining Nude by Vlaminck

Woman in an Interior by Bonnard

Woman Tying her Shoes by Renoir

SDP Painting for Inspiration: Painting Consideration

After my visit to the National Gallery when I returned to London, I had several paintings for consideration for my styling project. I'm sure I'm even forgetting some, there were just too many incredible works of art to chose from.

My first choice would have to be Aprés la Faute (After the Misdeed) by John Béraud, I absolutely fell in love with this painting, I adore the way the rick colours are used and how they so strongly convey the emotion of the portrait. Also, I love 19th century painting, so that doesn't hurt!

Aprés la Faute (After the Misdeed) by John Béraud

A close second would have to be Gertrude Elizabeth (Blood) by Lady Collin Campbell, again it's another 19th century portrait and I am in love with it!

Gertrude Elizabeth (Blood) by Lady Collin Campbell

More options:

The Two Friends by Tolouse Lautrec

Lady Jane Grey by Delaroche

Head of a Woman by Degas

Salome by Cesare da Sesto

Initial Research for SDP: Part Three

Another fun bit of research! While browsing around looking for more recreations I found this; a shoot done for Harper's Bazaar shot by Peter Lindergbergh of Julianne Moore posing as different famous works of art. As someone who is an admitted fashion editorial addict I have to say I am absolutely in love with the way they did these photos, I appreciate that they kept so close to the original portrait in most of their styling while still being fashion forward, I wonder what other portraits were shot and didn't make it in to the magazine, I would love to see them.

Julianne Moore by Peter Lindbergh as Seated Woman With Bent Knee by Egon Schiele

Julianne Moore by Peter Lindbergh as The Cripple by John Currin

Julianne Moore by Peter Lindbergh as Man Crazy Nurse #3 by Richard Prince

Julianne Moore by Peter Lindbergh as Woman With a Fan by Amedeo Modigliani

Julianne Moore by Peter Lindbergh as Adele Bloch Bauer I by Gustav Klimt

Julianne Moore by Peter Lindbergh as Madame X by John Singer Sargent

Source: Julianne Moore as Famous Works of Art

Initial Research for SDP: Part Two

More recreations I found! Especially love the Picasso!

“Weeping Woman” remake by Frances Adair Mckenzie

“Le Désespéré” remake by Stefano Tellon

 

“The Two Fridas” remake by Claire Ball

“Pot Pourri” remake by Tania Brassesco and Lazlo Passi Norberto
 

“Bedroom in Arles” remake by Joshua Louis Simon

“The Ship” remake by Justin Nunnink

“Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary” remake by Marianna Oboeva

“The Beaneater” remake by Mark Bass

“Orfana al cimitero” remake by Mark Bass

“Lady in a Fur Wrap” remake by Tony Mac

Source: Remake/ Submissions