As part of Unit X we were placed in groups across three
different courses, Animation, Film and Photography, and were given 6 different
themes to choose from. We decided to choose the theme of underworld which is
related to the English National Ballet’s production of Giselle. Giselle
features a girl who is betrayed by the man she loves and upon death finds
herself in an underworld where she can make men dance until they die. As part
of the theme we are only to use the plot of Giselle as inspiration rather than
to adapt the story itself, so taking Underworld as our theme we have been
encouraged to think outside of the box, with the link to the ballet coming from
the inclusion of movement.
As part of the unit, we were given the chance to sign up for
workshops to learn new techniques, one of the workshops I signed up for was
Projection Mapping. This is where images are projected onto objects rather than
onto rectangle screens, allowing for the ability to transform the object. I had
originally wanted to sign up to this workshop after seeing an example on a
family trip to Disney World where images are projected onto and morph
Cinderella Castle, however I soon realised that this would have potential for
the group project as being that we are media students, we are very used to
producing screen based work, and so the projection mapping would be away for us
to carry on within our practices whilst being able to try something new and to
make our work look different to the usual flat screen. We were taught in the
workshop with a software called Millumin which is a software on Mac to buy,
however we were told the basics of the software apply to all projection mapping
software, and so I was able to find a free software called VPT which works on a
Windows system. Some further research has also given me ideas of how to go
about different directions with the projections, as well as assuring me that
much can be accomplished with a single projector.
I also attended workshops in Super 8 filmmaking which was
about the type of cameras used in the 1970s and 80s for home videos at the time
as they were a cheap way to film something although as it is less common now it
has grown to be more expensive to buy and develop the film. I wasn’t entirely sure
of how I would be able to relate this to my own project but found the workshop
both interesting and entertaining. I also attended some workshops in Adobe
Flash where I was able to get a feel for the software and saw how I may
possibly be able to apply some techniques into making the projected image for
our projection mapping.
As well as workshops,, I was given the opportunity to attend
archive visits, the one I signed up for was to look around the university
library’s own archives. As interesting as I found many of the things on show, I
did not really find this all that useful towards my group’s project unfortunately,
however I did take note that it is possible to search for further items within
the archive and so I may use this to find something for the project that will
be of use.
Attempting to think outside of the box, I approached the
theme of underworld from more the aspect of a criminal underworld or a city’s
underworld and started to think about what would be considered Manchester’s
underworld. A possible direction to look into was that of secrets, as in what
is going on underneath the Manchester we take at face value. We also found that
Manchester has an actual underground, where all the old caverns underneath the
city run as well as the old sewers. My group will be attempting further
research by going to the underground exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry.
Combining these things together I had the idea to create a miniature
model of Manchester and projection map buildings onto these models and then
have the morph into the Manchester underworld.
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