Entertain And Evaluate (lifeline) Evaluation

Evaluation: Entertain And Evaluate.

For this brief, I chose to do the “Lifeline” option as i thought it would be most beneficial to the skills i possess. At this moment in time I have a real love for film noir style film and photography. This is the reason I chose to do this brief as I saw potential for this style to be implemented into it. I perhaps went a little off the brief with the medium i chose to do this module as I chose to do a series of photographs to illustrate a youth attempting to commit suicide through overdose because of depression. I tried to use a number of different techniques including different lighting from spot lights, household lights and some neon lights I have. I used different camera techniques using predominantly the aperture priority setting and the Nikon 50mm lens f1.4. This allowed me to use a very shallow depth of field allowing me to capture really atmospheric and moody shots with the backgrounds really blurred and a small area of focus.
The shots I took included close ups, full length shots and quite wide shots especially considering my lens of choice. With doing this method of capturing the theme I was able to create a scene which wasn’t too dark and adult but showed a real sense of purpose and fulfilling the task. I however think that the intended audience of the piece is that of a more adult age who are understanding and maybe going though similar thoughts. I think the way I portrayed the lifeline issue was direct enough to get the motive across.
I did find a location, which was in an abandoned mill in Blackley. I thought this would be idea for a shoot but on second sighting I released it was far too derelict to be even plausible for a shoot there. To provide realism I then decided to shoot in an actual household rather than somewhere dark and abandoned.
I did have some technical difficulties though, especially with the lighting. Trying to capture a moody sense of lighting similar to the film noir style was really difficult. I had difficulty maintaining image quality as the ISO was often hitting over 1000 making the images really noisy. I’m picky when it comes to photography and I love really high image quality so this made selection really difficult. Eventually I managed to take each shot with a good enough ISO reading below 500. This meant I retained as much quality despite lighting conditions being dark for atmosphere. I didn’t want to use my flashgun (Nikon sb-600) as I thought this would create a really fake and bright image when I’m was going for a moody atmospheric look. Sometimes the noise gained in some of these images benefitted the photo despite my disliking to it usually, but the noise sometimes added that bit more drama to the image sequence. After the crit I have decided to try use so different shots which complimented the idea more and seemed more analytical to the type of medicine people would try commit suicide on rather than lemsip sachets and strepsils. I also thought some of the other pill shots I took were a bit too obvious that they were cold and flu tablets or vitamins. One positive aspect which I think really aided the task was my brothers acting. He kindly volunteered to be the suicide victim whilst being ill himself. I think in some of the photos you can really see that he is unwell and I think this aided some of the photographs. He also helped review the photos with me, picking out which he thought were the better ones and commenting on post work I did on the photos themselves. This was really useful to get another person’s view of the images. After the final crit, he went to work in Scotland for the week. This made things so much more difficult to try and get replacement shots for some which were lacking impact or correct compositional value. This being said I had to reassess any option of having another shoot with him. I then checked back though all my files I took from the original shoot to see if there were any other photos which could replace some of the ones initially used. Luckily I had some which could be used and to be honest I think that they definatly looks better than some of the originals I used. I then took everyone’s advice and cropped a lot of the photos so that they are all of the same height and they look a lot more professional now.
I then took my photos into after effects after I had made my triptych image and animated the photos to almost create a slideshow with an atmospheric soundtrack over the top. This could be used on a website, perhaps a TV commercial but using still images to show to devastation that suicidal thoughts can have on people. Along with the dark, slow music it really hits the spot. Almost feels like a NSPCC advert, using the black and white imagery and moody music.
I could have been better with my time management a little bit more. I planned and photographed the shoot in plenty of time and managed to get them all edited and organised all in good time. However in the final week where we were allowed to edit and modify our work I wasn’t able to reshoot certain photographs and edit content to the content I would have liked to as I was stranded in Wales for 4 days. I still managed to re-do some of the work and edit new photos etc but I would have liked a little more time.

Overall despite me wondering off the brief a little bit I would the module enjoyable and found that my photos really worked well with the style of the brief. I struggled a little with the time towards the end but I found that shooting and editing was really enjoyable. I think post production is my strong point when it comes to my photography. I think I captured the essence of the film noir style photography with strong lighting and monotone images. The soundtrack on the final animation made the piece sound like a charity and helpline advert, which is what was intended, so that worked well. My triptych image, I’m proud of.