Week 1
We had this session just before last break, but it was actually part of term 3. Someone of the library gave the session. I have to say I wasn’t interested by what she said, but the fun part came when she showed us different examples of zines. Some of them I loved. Some had interesting colors, layouts or they were hand made. I loved those. They got me inspired. I learnt that zines have content form a specific theme or culture.
I started this term feeling mostly anxious, but not related to the course. i experimented quit lot with myself, taking self-portraits, essentially nude. I really enjoyed the shoot. However, it was quite difficult to take the pictures I wanted because I had to do all by myself. Because I use my camara in manual mode, it is not so simple to have the perfect photo, in terms of focus and lighting. Still, I ended up being happy with the results.
We worked on the concept board in class, I really enjoyed making the layout and the editing part. What was harder was the selection of images, that is always the hard part. Also, Suzanne showed us some two videos, one of the new Harry Style song and one of Pierre Garroudi. We went to The Barbican Centre for the next session. We were there to take pictures. That was my first time there, but what was terrible about it was that I had a bad night, I slept just few hours and couldn’t sleep anymore, so I decided to go running. Running has always helped me to release anxiety and process things. It helped me that day with it. I actually felt happy because I ran 15 km, now the bad thing was that I was extremely tired and started to feel bad at The Barbican. I took a good number of pictures, which a few of them ended up being useful. The whole centre has very interesting point of views. I kept working on myself portraits that weekend. The first shoot of that weekend, I wanted to describe how anxiety can actually be felt on the body. There are many ways in which anxiety is presented, but this one is by abdominal cramps. The second one shows that as much as we would want to hide or suppress emotions, they will still be existing.
To understand what I want to express in the pictures:
- The body represents the emotions and thoughts. We must think of it as volume.
- The black tape is simulating how we, often, want to tight emotions and thoughts.
- The movement of the body is the functioning of emotions. The way they should come and go.
The third shoot shows the idea that we can’t erase everything, sometimes we end up having scars, and become a part of us, so we know what happed, why they appeared and then we can continue being.
Week 2
We did a PR team exercise with zines that were made by previous students. The one we got was actually Mexican, but I didn’t like it at all. It was extremely commercial. I worked with Brooklyn and Lina and the three of us came with different kinds of events to promote the zine at the Barbican Centre. We also created some hashtags. At home I worked on my zine’s PR. I designed five different events and five different names for my zine. Although I found it a little difficult to come up with the ideas of the events, I enjoyed created them, as I had to think of ways to make people interested on my work.
On the second class, I showed Carlyn the pictures I had till that moment. I was happy to hear what she had to say, because she really understood what I was trying to represent on my photography. We talked about the movement of the body and how, although nudity is often sexualized, there are ways to present it in its essence. I tend to show this by playing with its shape, shadows and movement.
I kept working on my editing, to have proper images for intagram and to use on the event, maybe projected on the water at the Barbican?
We also had Sing’s class, he taught how to make our zine flappable. We can achieve that by using tow websites: issuu or Flipsnack. I remember I thought it was easy to make. After we learned this, we focused on how cuts are made on videos or films. We saw how cuts can set the pace of the video and also if you make them longer it may give a feeling of uncomfortableness.
Week 3
I was absent on the first session of the week. Unfortunately, I got confused with my timetable. However, I know it was about experimenting with creating videos. I managed to try this later on in the week. The next session for me, was really about planning shoots. Lina and I talked about collaborating. We came up with four shoots (we ended up doing just three of them):
- Food and weird poses.
- Playing with fabrics so that the image get blury.
- Depression on bed.
- Statue
We though that it would be great to collab with a hair and make-up artist, so we talked with Ann and agree that she would participate in one of the shoots. Lina and I decided to meet the next day and discussed everything needed. The next morning, we prepared the set, which was very chaotic. It was interesting to set up everything together but, as we have different themes for our magazine, the pictures end up having two different meanings. Something that I really liked was that while shooting whole another idea came to my brain, just because I found some gloves. Those images gave like a sinister look, which I found interesting. I think the complete shoot was scary/kind of disgusting, but I liked that, because those were sensations which I never felt before on a shoot. I did some filming here, which I liked, unfortunately, they couldn’t be download to my computer. The negative stuff about it was that it was too exhausting, we worked for eight hours non-stop and the materials used made it kind of difficult. Also, although the shoot was interesting, I wasn’t really convinced by the concept.
For the statue shoot. I told Ann and Lina what I wanted to express on the body paint, and we talked about using Chinese words. I wrote some sentences and words that had to do with my theme and Ann translated them. Lina was going to be the stylist and model. Her idea was to use a suit and cut it halfway, but at the end she brought plastic bag, which was fine because I wanted to use them for a while but never did till now. To visualise the look with the bags, the three of us made some sketches. The words written on Lina’s body were about achieving success and the opposite. Lina and I put together the look and then went to the location I wanted to use. I was stress because Lina came too late, and we took long time to be ready and that meant that we were going to have less sun light. However, everything was great, there was not a single cloud, Lina looked fantastic with the total look and with the poses. Definitely we both got inspired. I enjoyed, as always, playing with the angles. We shoot on the park but used four different locations. When I got home and saw the pictures, I didn’t even wanted to edit them, I really liked the originals.
Week 4
This was my last shoot and I also collaborated with Lina for this one. She did the styling and modelling. What I wanted to show in this shoot was the concept of depression, so when you don’t feel like having the amount of energy needed to keep up with your activities. That was the idea we had in mind. We took her bed out to the street, she was wearing this colourful look, which I love. Sometimes I’m surprise of her ability to set up a look. I was really excited with the concept, but I got disappointed because of the lack of time we had and it was hard to arrange the set by myself, so, for next time I will ask someone to assist me, to do the shoot more productive. I wasn’t really happy with the results, but I knew that by editing the pictures they’ll look much better.
On class we worked on PR package, which I continued later on at home, there I was more able to focus. Next class we had was with Fiona. I got really stressed that day, because I didn’t know how to use MyBlog, I didn’t know I could customise it and turn it into a kind of website. IT for me is not essay, people may think that because of my age it should be easier for me, but it isn’t at all. Two people helped me to understand how it worked. I felt dumb, actually. But I know myself and I know that with this type of things I need to learn step by step and slowly. I just hope I can show all my work done and in a nice way, maybe not in the way I would love to show it, but well… On the final class of this week we learnt how to use SketchUp. I actually enjoyed it, however I’m not sure if it was really useful for the event I designed for my zine launch. But in general, it is a great tool. At my place I continued experimenting on my editing and layout. On this week I also spoke with Carlyn. I showed her the pictures I took last week and I got strong critics which were useful and leaved me thinking about it.
Week 5
This week I experimented using embroidery on paper. I wanted to do part of the layout of my zine hand made, but because of bad time management I wasn’t able to. This whole week I went to the library to concentrate more. I found out that I worked better if I used a chronometer, so I did 15min concentration 5min break, 20min and 5min, 25 min and 5min. I’ve been doing that this last week.
We had Sing’s class in which we created a sticker and a coffee cup. I thought it was going to be hard, but it wasn’t. After that we saw the work in process or finish of the people in class. The last two classes we had were with Suzanne, in which we went through a check list and we had to do an evaluation of our project. I didn’t make that in class because I was trying to find out how to use My Blog. All the work I had was saved on my computer but not on the platform. On the last session I spoke with Suzanne because I was having doubts about collaboration and how they worked. Now I have everything much clearer. I am now putting everything together.