Evaluation

Right from the start this project drew a huge amount of interest for me. I believe recycling and sustainability are important issues, which we can all help with. From start to finish I have worked enthusiastically producing relevant idea's and showing improvements in skills such as my organisation.
The initial stages of filtering through many ideas to find something to suit me and my client were very time consuming and thorough. From the word 'go' recycling in my head was all about turning something which would grow old in a landfill to something new. Looking at lots of companies and methods of recycling opened my eyes to the fact that things don’t always need to be recycled but can be reused. This idea intrigued me which was part of the reason I chose Scrapstore.
When exploring ideas around recycling I came up with a lot of ideas and contributed well to discussions and mind maps. It was fairly easy to take these ideas and expand on them however sometimes I found I came to a dead end in that not all of the ideas were possible what with time and budget constrictions.
To help me I researched lots of artists, the one most relevant to my project was Jeff Pigott and Julia Warin, who did a spaceship project involving building a spaceship similar to the one I had planned. I found that through email I could get loads of specific information which could help me in my project.
Before we met with the partners I thought of questions I wasted to ask before and what I wanted to get from the meeting. I used the internet to find background information about the different companies. I found this quite effective and a way to get specific information from the meeting. I found I could use this information later on and taking notes was very effective for brainstorming ideas later in the project.
After writing down lots of idea's I made a decision on who I wanted to work for. I chose Scrapstore as they seemed extremely creative and experimental and I thought I would be able to work well with them. I wrote down all my ideas and after arranging another meeting I presented these idea's to John. I found this very effective as the feedback was extremely helpful in narrowing down my idea's.
The communication between my partner and I, I feel were very good. I think email was the most effective and convenient was for both John and I.
During our time in class I found it very productive to experiment with materials which can and can't be recycled to explore possibilities around what they could be used for. I made objects from card and experimented with techniques of folding paper. I liked the weaving technique the best so decided to use this for something which can't be recycled to create a new material which was flexible and easy to manipulate. I also experimented with origami and found this a charming way to use paper rather than throwing it away. After having an idea that I wanted to use animation I started to experiment with my own animation. I already had a good background knowledge of animation so just needed to experiment. I have already tried 2D animation and so I bought some plastercine to experiment with. Although this was fun I didn't end up using any of this.
Tim Burton is one of the animators I looked at, especially his 'Vincent Price'. I like Tim Burton's animations, poetry and creativity and this was the film I liked the best. It had a narrator reading a poem which I thought was very good as it reminded me of being read to as a child. I expanded from this trying to think of nursery rhymes which work well but I found I preferred to write my own poem. The first draft of my poem was extremely long and ambitious, I found I needed to change it in the end to fit in with the film I shot. If I did this again I would certainly swap this doing the filming first, especially as the children were very unpredictable.
I knew I needed some backgrounds for my film and found inspiration for these from various artists such as Van Gogh. For instance I used his 'Starry night' as inspiration for my sky theme. I used different types of paint to get nice effects and then manipulated the image on Photoshop. I found this fairly easy to do but I didn’t actually use this in the end as the part of the poem it was for was cut. Another artist I took inspiration from was Henri Rosseau, I particularly liked them and tried to mimic his style with my own twist. I found using programs such as Coral Painter and Photoshop fairly easy to use to manipulate my images.
Before shooting my film I needed permission from my friend to borrow her children, this all went smoothly although as I found out on that very difficult day is that children are a handful, unpredictable but charming and I think their personalities shine through on the film. I would definitely need help if I did this again as I struggled with supervising the children as I have not had an awful lot of experience keeping them entertained and happy. At first I had an idea in my head of what I wanted them to do but I found I just had to let them be creative in their own way and how they felt comfortable as this is when they were truly happy and I wanted this to be obvious in my film.
I planned my film well getting everything I needed such as scrap and camera's in plenty of time.
The animation of my backgrounds went quite well but I should have planned my time a little better as I spent more time on some than others and I think this shows. The editing of my film went well and fairly smooth. I felt the sound effects and voice over enhanced it and made an overall nice video.
Feedback from my partner was good. He said that the film I made was very positive and cheerful. He said it was aimed at the right people and the content was very reminiscent and childlike. He liked the artwork included in it and said it gave the film personality and charm. He said that he would liked to have seen some more of the scrap in a before and after way, or actually being made because this would show a deeper meaning of how the scrap is used. John enjoyed the use of sound effects and narration although the narration was a little quiet. And the titles at the end were very clear easy to read and didn’t drag on for too long.
Overall I am very happy with this project and my film and I think I did well considering I possibly bit off more than I could chew. If I worked with children or filming equipment again I would definitely get someone to help me and work alongside someone else so I could get lots more feedback and a combination of skills. I enjoyed working with the children but I definitely could have had some help. I think the research went well although sometimes I was too busy looking at one artist to notice another which was also relevant. I think I learned from this that I should listen to general advice given to me and I should have researched more thoroughly.