This week was a challenge in creativity for me, as I wanted to create a narrative through the clips I’d already filmed with Vish last week. I took inspiration primarily from the Ancient Greek belief that once a deceased person is forgotten by the living, their soul dies. I found this theme pertinent to the location as the Old St. Pancras Church also functions as a graveyard, and despite being a “tourist” attraction, the majority of people who visit the graveyard have no clue who the deceased are.
This inspiration led me to playing with the environment’s spontaneity to craft a story. For example, I’d found the newspaper abandoned on a bench, and used this as the core of the story — I used myself within this edit as a representation for the average park goer, who most likely would ignore a newspaper clipping even if it initially caught their eye. However, despite the assignment not focusing on crafting a narrative, I found myself quite frustrated with lacking the clips I needed to convey a story. For example, I didn’t have a clip of the grave at dusk, which I found slightly frustrating as I had a specific idea that I couldn’t achieve. However, this frustration encouraged me to use this as an opportunity to play with colour grading to try and convey different times and moods. I struggled immensely with the colour grading, as finding the balance between slight tweaks and changing the entire colour scheme seemed to be a fine line I couldn’t walk. Despite this challenge and there being room for improvement, I’m pleased with how the colour grading came out.
This homework, despite being a challenge, has encouraged me to be creative with the shots I’ve captured while simultaneously emphasizing the importance of having a flexible plan of what to shoot before using the camera. Despite that not being the focus of this week’s lesson, I will be remembering it for the future, as it would have saved me from a lot of frustration.