I stumbled across an artist online whilst looking for some art inspiration which I think in some ways can influence some ideas for my Maps and Networks project with Alice. Kine Andersen is an illustrator and artist based in Bergen, Norway. Instantly I was drawn to his work due to the vibrant color palette and the simplistic but bold illustrations. Even though our piece is going to be moving image, Alice and myself are constantly taking inspiration from everywhere; tabloids, moving image work, photography and illustration. Therefore I looked further into Andersen's work and have included some of his illustrations that display feminist elements.
Whilst watching a documentary series I was interesting on Netflix I came across an interesting erotic director called Erika Lust. The series is called Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On and as I was watching episode one, that's when I came across the director Erika Lust. Whilst being interviewed she spoke about how she thinks porn is mainly aimed at men, and how she wants to break that mould within the industry. Within her movies she mainly focuses on the role of the women, and likes to make erotic films that focus around the women getting pleasure, rather than just being there for the pleasure of men.
Some interesting facts I found out about her:
In December 2014, Lust hosted a TED-talk at TEDxVienna. In the talk, entitled "It's Time For Porn To Change", Lust urges people to question the modern state of porn, its messages and role as a sexual educator.
The TED talk launched the start of her campaign #changeporn, an online campaign intended to challenge and change the porn norm.
She graduated university in 1999 with a specialism in human rights and feminism
Lust is currently producing short pornographic films based on crowd-sourced stories. Viewers can leave anonymous confessions on the project's website. Each month, Lust handpicks two stories and turn them into cinematic short films.
I found it really interesting to learn about her views on women in erotic films through this documentary, and I really like how she is trying to change the future of erotic films. I think this was good research for our project as it shows how women are standing up against just being involved in things for the pleasure of men, and certain industries are changing to empower women.
The piece that Alice and I are constructing has a focus on the bodies of women being hyper sexualized and their voices not being heard so I wanted to look into some women in the media that are campaigning against the consistent sexualization of the female form. Keira Knightley Due to my love of actress Keira Knightley, I knew that she had spoken out about issues with the body before, as she's against the use of photoshop when photographers take photos of her, as she wants her body to be seen as it is and not changed to please others.
Keira Knightley made a stand against the use of photoshop, saying it's turning women's bodies into a 'battleground' and it encourages a damaging attitude towards body image in the media.
‘I’ve had my body manipulated so many different times for so many different reasons, whether it’s paparazzi photographers or for film posters. And that [shoot] was one of the ones where I said: ‘OK, I’m fine doing the topless shot so long as you don’t make them any bigger or retouch.’ Because it does feel important to say it really doesn’t matter what shape you are.”
These articles are really relevant to the messages that Alice and I want to work with in our project, thinking about how women's bodies are displayed for the pleasure of others, and it's all about looking beautiful for the public eye, not about being comfortable in your own skin. By a famous actress such as Keira Knightley speaking out about these issues, it brings more attention towards them in the media, making it a real issue.
I think it's a really positive thing that more and more famous women are coming forward and challenging these ideals that women should fit a perfect mould for the magazines and in order to be in the public eye. It's influential to younger generations of women to feel as though they don't have to fit into these moulds, and to actually have some good role models to look up to.
Emily Bador Emily Bador is a model who is used for a lot of popular clothing companies. Recently she began using her instagram as a platform to talk about body standards for women and how we should love ourselves.
Emily posted some pictures of how she was beginning to become comfortable in her own skin, and she got a lot of hate and people said she didn't look how she usually does in her modeling photos. This prompted her to make a lot of posts about body image and informing people that she is comfortable in her own skin and others should be too.
I think Emily Bador is a really good advocate for self love and the female body in its true form. She has talked a lot before about the pressures of being a model and the pressures to look perfect and keep a toned body all the times just because others will constantly be looking at her. It's interesting that she's expected to keep a perfect toned body, but that was making her unhappy and she didn't feel comfortable in her own skin, even though a lot of females would be longing to look like her.
I think it's really admirable for her to use her personal instagram platform to bring awareness to this idea of the female form having to be perfect, and for models and women in general to have to look certain way.
It's interesting that when she began posting natural photos of herself she got a lot of hate for the way she looked, but that's her natural body that she feels comfortable in.
These two pieces of research are really beneficial to our ideas and how we will progress with our piece. We can look at them for inspiration within our personal lives but also for our project, as they are women making their voices heard.
One day when casually browsing the internet I stumbled across this article on Buzzfeed where a woman conducted a mini project taking pictures of all the men that cat called her in the street, and some of the things they said were quite alarming.
"But most of the time they have their thumbs up, they're happy because they honestly think that they're complimenting me. They really didn't care about me. They never realized that I was unhappy,"
Noa Jansma, a student in the Netherlands, highlights how the men didn't really give any though about their feelings and found it funny when she stopped to take photos of them. In some cases she didn't even take the photos as she feared for her safety. She comments about some men following her around in vans, shouting at her several times whilst others just sniggered at her as she passed them on the street.
She never did anything to provoke the men, not that she would have anyway, but she noted down the amount of times she was cat called over a month. The comments ranged from men shouting "sexy" to alarming ones asking her to get in their vehicles.
If anything I think this project she conducted indicates how women don't necessarily have to do anything to attract negative attention. This young student was just going about her daily life and was harassed for no particular reason other than for the entertainment of the males shouting at her.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/20490/he-took-polaroid-every-day-until-day-he-died Jamie Livingston Took a polaroid photo every day for eighteen years using Polaroid SX-70 Died on October 25th, 1997 - his 41st birthday After his death, two of his friends opened a public exhibition and published his project work on a blog so it can be seen forever. http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com I originally found out about this artist and his work through a video on Facebook. After watching the whole thing I was so amazed by his dedication to his project, taking a photo everyday and making each one different. It was really inspiring to see such beautiful candid photos.
Each of the photos is different, some being self portraits, some of objects and the environment, and Livingston also documented his illness and his journey with his illness up until he died. Although not all his photos are portraits, his work really made me think about my portraits project, and the idea of identity. All of his images are very intimate, similar to the intimacy of the work of Emily Knecht, another artist I looked at. I would love to try and work with polaroids or take some experimental photos on my film camera, just because I love the natural effect you get when you use these sorts of cameras. This could also make a change from my last piece of work, since I relied purely on digital images for that project. The original video I saw: https://www.facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine/videos/10154715318727365/
#girlgaze: a frame of mind is a never-before-seen collection of 150 photographs that illustrate a diverse range of female perspectives while exploring themes of sexuality, objectification, body image, mental illness, and addiction.
I'm so pleased that I stumbled across this creative article when just aimlessly scrolling through twitter one day, because it has really inspired me with my photography project. Although I'm not too sure that the empowerment of women is a specific theme I want to be working with, I think it's still important to recognise this work and I did feel inspired by it in some ways.
The article is mainly explaining what this movement is about, but also features some photographs from female photographers which are relating to this movement and theme.
Purple, by Amaal Said, 20, London, England
This particular photograph that I've attached above was the one that stood out most to me in the article. I love the colour match between the lipstick and the headpiece. It also has slight relation to the backdrop, although the colours aren't exactly the same. The whole photograph mainly features tones of purple, which could have some sort of symbolism for the artist.
Personally, I think colour matching in photographs adds a sense of relation between everything in the image, bringing it all together as one piece. I also love the way a final image can look if everything is colour matched together, it's something I'd like to think about within my own work.
INSPIRATION FROM THIS
The image that I looked at above inspired me to think about the idea of matching colours within my photographs, so I went ahead and found some others that I really liked and felt influenced by.
These three images from above I found on the website tumblr, therefore I cannot credit the artists that made these images. However, I just wanted to look at the colour in the images, and how they subtly link together by the use of the colour within them.
This image above of the male figure in a yellow shirt against a yellow background is something I could easily re-create for experimentation. I like that even though the colours are very similar, the lighting and shadowing on the background doesn't make it difficult to see the figure of the male body.
When looking into these ideas more I found an article on some photographers that work with colour in new and interesting ways, however I wanted to create a completely new post regarding this, as it was more research that was taking a different turn to what I have already covered in this post.
PERSONAL RESEARCH
As I have been thinking about my approach to documentary filming I wanted to do some research on what is considered a successful documentary and if there are guidelines you should follow to achieve this.
I simply googled what makes a successful documentary and decided to expand on some of the results I came across, and the points I thought were most important.
The Story
The key point that I saw on most of the websites I looked at, was the focus on having a good story that engages the audience. The idea of producing something emotional came up a lot, but at the same time as long as you are making something the audience can engage with, you are already on the path to success.
I do agree with this, I think that if you don't have a well thought out story, or how you want to present your ideas then you wouldn't really know where to start. Complimenting this would be knowing what sort of approach you want to take, which really depends on what you intend to feature in your documentary. For example, if you want to question someone about their beliefs or something they feel passionate about, you might want to feature more direct interviews and questionings, however if you're simply focusing on someones life you would want more focus on the things they do, and following them around in their day to day errands.
I also believe that the story is the glue that holds the whole thing together. You can film and edit it really well, but ultimately if your footage isn't engaging then you won't attract an audience.
Methods of Shooting
Personally, I think this can be personal to your own documentary based on the story you are telling. If you are interviewing one specific person throughout, you might want more footage of their personal life, where they live and what they do on a daily basis, to engage the viewer with them personally. However, the method of how you choose to film your documentary can come with personal flare, as everyone will have their own approach to how they want their work to be shot and displayed.
Editing
This is a very important part of making any film, as it's when all the footage really comes together and you have a final look at how your work is going to be presented. All documentaries feature a certain element of editing that makes them stand out as documentaries. For example, you don't tend to have background non diagetic music whilst you're displaying your footage. Also, it's more clean cut and hard hitting, the shots can also be more personal, some seeming to take an interview style. When looking at the documentaries made by Louis Theroux, I noticed that he has his own style of editing that makes his films flow, but also keeps a personal relationship with his audience.
These were the main elements I was interested in when doing some research. I want to make sure I am prepared for when I begin filming, so I can just begin to get on with filming and developing my story. I know that I won't have the perfect footage in the first filming process, so I intend to do a few rough edits first of all to make sure I improve before I submit a final edit.
I also want to develop my ideas further with my group so we can make sure we know exactly what we want to do before we even think about filming.
As I have been brainstorming ideas for my own documentary, also with my group, I decided to take a look at one of the documentary filmmakers I admire, Louis Theroux.
I have watched most of his documentaries, as they are all available on Netflix, and I wanted to do some further research into his original style.
Louis Theroux's documentaries have an original style, as he chooses a rather friendly approach and really delves into the world of those he is interviewing. He doesn't really give much of an opinion on the things they tell him, and chooses to stay as much on the outside as possible, merely capturing the way people choose to live their lives, not giving his own personal input. I feel that this makes people trust him more, as they don't feel like he is judging them or wanting to change them. He has been acknowledged for the friendly approach he takes, and questioned on whether he thinks that the people in his documentaries see him as a friend, and what sort of risks this imposes on him.
I watched an interview with Theroux, where he discusses one of his more recent documentaries, Drinking To Oblivion, and what it was like to film. He also discusses how he likes to approach his films and some other recent projects he has worked on.
Louis Theroux interview on Peston On Sunday
I also read an interview published by The Guardian regarding Theroux himself and some of his work. I found a particular part of the interview, at the end, which I really liked:
"I’m still wondering how he does it, though; like the show he made with a little fascist child who was calling people faggots. I’d want to sit the kid down and try to change him, to intervene. “No, I go in to tell stories, to reveal the truth and to try to understand. Not to set people straight,” he says. “I don’t go into this with the agenda of saving the world.”"
This quote shows how Theroux views his work, explaining that he just wants to reveal the truth. I think this is a really important thing to remember when making a documentary, that you don't want to go in and try and push your opinions onto people as that will make their attitude with you less casual and they might be more reserved. One of the best things about Theroux, in my opinion, is his attitude with the people he speaks to and includes in his documentary. The fact that he is so calm and casual with them, makes them want to speak to him. Even in their body language you can tell they are comfortable inviting him into their lives, meaning you get a more natural and accurate depiction of their lives and what they are like as people.
I know when working on my own documentary, I want to try and capture the natural emotions and opinions of the people I interact with because I think if you give people an impression that you're judging what they're going to say, or that you think their opinion is wrong, then they will be less likely to be honest with you and will come across more reserved or as if they are holding something back.
I also looked at another clip where Theroux discusses some of the problems he has encountered when filming with some extremists, that he might not share the same views as. This was interesting to me because he likes to be neutral and not try and give too many opinions, so watching him talk about how he dealt with it was intriguing.
Louis' Most Memorable Moments - BBC Brit
Louis Theroux is one of my favourite documentary filmmakers, so looking at his style was very influential for me. I want to continue to look to his work for guidance, but still develop my own style.
