Presentation

Pecha Kucha presentation

Final Cut

Evaluation 

Street Camera (Short reflective documentary) 

Street photography is a form of modern art that is incredibly attractive in my vision, you can take any common thing you see everyday and once you put it in a frame it has a great story and visual aesthetic; however, the process and experience of practicing this genre of photography are not exposed enough. With a lack of representation, many enjoyers fear getting into this art as they feel overwhelmed by the lack of guidance and expertise to start their journey, therefore with this theory I have begun to ask myself, as a practitioner of street photography, what was my experience in the beginning and current situation, also the problems I came across and how I solved them, this all self-reflection motivated me to turn this theory into a media project which has the purpose of informing fans of street photography who want to start their own art with the hope of supporting their decision. Most of this research about this topic was done through social interaction with enjoyers of street photography for my primary research and guidance on what to do for my project as they are the target audience. 

I am a great enthusiast about filmmaking, especially documentary making, because of its combination of practical creativity vision and non-fictional narrative and texts, which makes a great combination for a moving image medium, in my opinion. Documentaries are also extremely popular and loved by the current generations, who are my target audience, therefore creating already a strong link between my project and the group of people I want to reach and preach to about the process and experience of practicing street photography. The skillset used for this specialism could be incredibly challenging from specialised skills to problem solving, however all of these will reflect heavily on the material you will present as your product; therefore, I would like to use this for my FMP to highlight my filmmaking/creative media skills and knowledge while also starting my journey into filmmaking which I have planned for the big future. 

The secondary research for this project was done by going into reliable blogs and videos that cover what street photography is, for the purpose of expanding my knowledge on the topic of street photography and give me an idea of background, history, and culture I should inform my audience about, I found this essential, as before my audience continues into watching or proceed into their artistic journey, they should know the culture and what defines the conventions of the art they want to practice . 

For example, secondary research was extremely hard to carry out, as many sources (blogs and videos) were very biased which caused misinformation because they were made by artists with different opinions, however I had found strong reliability into Britannica, a secondary research reliable encyclopaedia which is described by higher education faculties such as UCEN as a “trusted resources with balanced, global perspectives and unique insights that you are unlikely to find anywhere else” and displays information in a chronological pattern and simple but formal language which helps me labelling where the place of the information should be, and keeping the research as accurate possible in details.  

Britannica was a source which I have used to form a foundation of research such as chronological periods of street photography and to document initial stages of photography and street photography such as early invention and innovations as there were more academically documented and highly informative on this source rather than other third-party sources (blogs and videos) which are more modern history orientated.  

For further research, I have used ART History to complete the information needed about the evolution of street photography. ART History is company which mission is to protect the online identity of modern artists and strength the community and culture of all sorts of modern forms of arts, therefore labelling this source as specialised art which makes it reliable. From ART History, I have used an article which talks about and breaks down stages of modern street photography from the 30s to 2000s, which corresponds perfectly with the gap I had in my chronological street photography history. 

One of the most interesting parts of researching for this documentary was to socialise with fans of street photography that are scared or thrown off about getting into their favourite art. A huge part of primary research was aimed into documenting my audience's; struggles with the topic, what they would like to see and hear, what is their visual appeal for a documentary, how much they feel attractive to the topic and what is their experience with the topic. This information was used later to develop my project’s narrative, mood, tone, and pace with the aim of satisfying them and connecting them with my project’s mission. Also, I can fully relate to my target audience, because before being a practitioner I had the same problems and experiences as them. 

With the chosen specialisation of film and documentary making, I have carried out deep investigations that assisted my skillset and expanded my knowledge. A notable example of researching skillset for this project could be shown in my practice of colour grading, something that I learned and practiced from scratch just from the beginning of this project. The importance of this skill was high as I felt like if I want to take my work to the highest levels, I had to investigate procedures which professionals do, this led me to colour grading which is the procedure of calibrating the colour and the luminosity values while also adding an artistic look as a signature to their work. I really had an enjoyable time learning this skill as it was difficult to put into practice. However, it was extremely rewarding and gave a big boost to my skillset presented by my work. 

Throughout research on documentary making, I have discovered and identified that for a documentary to be successful, the content inside must show pieces of evidence, for example with mine documentary, art pieces from professional photographers, and that because it's a heavy informational based medium, I must use all types of creative technique, like b-rolls or re-enactments, to deliver an information clearly to my audience. These identified characteristics and conventions helped me and motivated me to step out of my comfort zone to push my creativity to a higher level. 

Away from the research stage, the pre-production planning has gone very well on paper which gave the production a foundation, like a timetable to relay on as organisation, although this influenced the organisation of project into a good approach, unfortunately many plans were declined due to spontaneous conditions changes, such as weather, which slowed down the production flow. As for example The Routine section into the documentary had a good chunk filmed outside, this caused us to be dependent on the weather however we had only scared days of decent weather which caused us to have reshoots very delayed. This annoyed me quite a lot as it was a great threat to my project however I stayed calm and problem solve it by going all out to get the material needed in reshoots days so that we can combat the absents of production in the waiting time.

This project was very fun for me to produce. Filmmaking is a career path I want to go for but I have never stepped out and put in practise any of the skills I learned, however with this project I have made a break through and I exercised my creativity and videography skills. Some part which I really enjoyed of this project was practising my creative shots and visuals, for example, I felt ambitious to go something more complex and dynamic then your average movie still shoot, which lead me to come up with a more interesting shot list which includes: panning shot, in and out focus and match-cut shots which were quite challenging but I am very happy that I have attended and even more exiting was the way it came out. However the biggest milestone of this project, which has personally satisfied me, is the average audience feedback which seems that they enjoy it much more then I expected. Feedback such as 8/10 and "interaction with the camera was really good, the variety of shots you used and angles were interesting and I liked the grading" relay shocked and definitely motivates me to produce more in my future as a progression in my filmmaking career.