MFS124 Major Project Production
& Evaluation
Evaluation
Just before starting
University back in 2012 I met a Psychic Medium from Liverpool called Maire Davies. She is a formidable woman, who introduced me
to Spiritualist Churches. Shortly after
meeting her I enrolled on a Psychic and Mediumistic development course at the
Arthur Findlay College in Stansted. This
was the beginning of my fascination with Spirituality. Since then I have grown more and more
interested in the subject attending many seminars, events and classes to
further my knowledge and feed my interest.
In the summer of 2013 I took a five-week trip to Thailand. Predominantly the Thai people follow
Buddhism, another spiritual belief. Thailand
has so many beautiful things to offer; but I think with my ever-growing
interest in all things spiritual, the thing that captivated me the most were
the Buddhist temples. I visited many
of them whilst touring the islands they are breath-taking and beautiful, it was
such a magical experience. I feel these
encounters were the foundations for what has become my Final Major Project – Spiritual
Awakening. Once I got into level 5 of my
degree I knew that I wanted to base my FMP in some way around spirituality. I wasn’t at this point exactly sure how, so I
just started to take pictures and notes of everything that inspired me on a
spiritual level. Researching and a
genuine interest have been paramount in putting this piece of work
together. When I look back at all the
images and information I have gained over the last two/three years its hard to
see how I got to this point. I think the
key has been that I’ve constantly let my ideas evolve and I’ve not been afraid
to try new things or discard things that simply weren’t working.
I knew at the end of the
second semester on level 5 that I wanted to use Spirituality and Religion as my
subject field for my level 6 studies. With so many aspects to the topic I knew the
only way to do it justice was to base my dissertation and final major project
on the same thing. Writing my
dissertation on spirituality in fashion and popular culture meant that I could
already begin my research before the FMP started. This proved to be of great benefit as it
started to rein my ideas in and make them more substantial. To begin my project I wanted to draw on as
much primary research as possible so that my ideas would be original and
unique. In order to achieve this I
attended exhibitions and visited museums.
The knowledge gained from doing this has given my final outcome much
more meaning and depth. I have been able
to develop ideas that were completely my own inspired by ancient artefact’s,
rather than only imitating other peoples works.
Once I felt I had gained all the necessary information required to begin
my venture I decided the best way to start working towards my goal was to
create a flat plan (See fig.1). This
helped me to have a clear idea of exactly what needed to be done, when it
needed to be done and how I was going to achieve it. The project unfortunately suffered a major
setback at the start; I received some difficult news and had to take extra time
to finish my previous projects. I
panicked as to how I would catch up and achieve my goals. Looking back, I think my calmness about the
situation was down to the depth of research I’d already done prior to starting
the project. If I hadn’t carried this
out things could have been very different.
 |
| Figure 1 |
Carrying out the shoots has
drawn on many mixed emotions. At the
beginning of the project I started to practice different looks and constantly
think of ideas for areas of the book. I
decided that I wanted to look at four aspects of spirituality: Levitation/Auric
fields, Native Americans, Buddhism and Catholicism. Once I had decided this, it was much easier
to think of images that I wanted to fill each section. I’ve liaised constantly throughout the
project with people from my target market to gain views on my ideas for
imagery. This has helped me to keep
focused and on track towards my final outcome.
Sourcing a team and models has proved the most difficult part of the
whole project. Trying to get a group of
people to work with you at the same time can prove almost impossible when
everyone is also working on their own projects. I feel that sometimes having such a clear,
concise vision and being a perfectionist can have both negative and positive facets. I know a lot of the time exactly how I want
something to look and have an exact vision of how I’m going to achieve it. This is problematic when working within a
deadline as a lot of time is spent waiting for people. Towards the end of my shoots I contracted a
sickness bug, this massively affected the end of my project, as I had to cancel
four proposed shoots. It then took me
two weeks to re-schedule everybody.
Thankfully I was able to get an extension on my work. Again down to having such a clear vision I
felt I would have done my project dis-justice had I not been able to complete
my last two planned shoots. Due to this
incident two of my original planned shoots couldn’t be carried out. However I do feel that I managed to get all
the necessary ones completed, giving my book its near-fullest potential.
At the beginning of level 6
studies I had no idea at all how to use Photoshop. Upon completion of my first two photo-shoots
I had to get total assistance in post-production. I knew this was going to cause me problems,
as sourcing the models and team had already wasted too much of my time. During the Easter break I sat with Ken
Stewart and John Whalvin on numerous occasions so that I could learn how to do
everything myself, in order to complete my work without the aid of a
post-production team. Although I don’t
claim to be an expert I now have a much greater understanding of the editing
suites. I feel that the skills I learnt
have improved on a singular basis when editing each consecutive photo. I began to design my book based around my
flat plan (see fig.1) this helped immensely as it gave a clear structure for
page layouts. I knew design and font
would be equally as crucial to the reader as the quality of my images. I decided to go back to my proposal and look
at David LaChapelle’s Heaven to Hell book to gain inspiration for my
layout. I also felt it was important to
look at other books containing imagery with text so I looked at Kevyn Aucoin’s
Face Forward. I particularly liked how
he laid his words in a right hand column.
The book design is very time consuming, as it’s the final part of the
whole process. It’s going to make or
break how the book is perceived so getting it right is of the upmost
importance.
Although I learnt a lot more
about editing than I already knew, I feel this would be something I would like
to improve if I was to continue this venture further. Originally I had planned to do several more
shoots but lack of time made it impossible to include everything I’d originally
desired. Budget has been a particularly
tough aspect to deal with. There are so
many more things that you can achieve if you have enough money to do so. I feel what I did achieve on a minimal budget
was done to the best of my ability; however I would be excited to see how
things would turn out when putting my ideas forward in a professional team with
a professional budget. Overall I’m happy
with my final result, it has come out much better than I first imagined
it. I definitely feel this is a subject
that could be developed to further heights and I would certainly like to do
this in the near future.
