Berlin Fashion Film Festival Competition

Over the Christmas break I have planned to enter the Berlin fashion film festival competition. Over this time I have directed my efforts towards filming, editing and creating a pitch to the BFFF competition.

During the making of this film I wanted to relate to my self-initiated project ideas with the film itself. As my project is aiming to show heat changing through colour in my print designs for  sportswear I came up with the concept of using a moving projection of different coloured prints that changed colour across a dancer’s body as she was moving. With the construction of this film, I decided that I did not want to make it look projection. I want to make it look like the prints are actually changing colour across the white garment.

When editing this fashion film I made two final copies; one that had a lot of editing mirroring of the body and lots of different editing techniques and another which involved a film that had a more natural approach and less editing.

When working with Orson, he led the cinema photography and Ina the dancer was very easy to work with; they both understood my vision in what I wanted to create. It is very important when working with a film crew and your model or performer to have a good business relationship to create a film that has a strong concept. I chose to film the dancer on the floor with the projection on top of her so giving the illusion that there was not a projection at all but that the prints were ingrained into her clothes and her skin, which gave a good advertising print for me as a designer. When shooting the project, Orson was able to get close up shots of the body and different abstract movements that the model was creating. I feel that this gave a good effect when I was editing as you are able to see the print on the body from a close perspective across the skin and the clothing.

Idea for investigation Film

One idea with my film work was to show a woman dancing using a temperature sensitive camera but as these are quite expensive to hire out it was not an option to use one. As a result, it was suggested in my tutorial  that I film someone using a normal camera and then edit it in Final Cut Pro to give an idea that the body is giving off heat and that it is getting hotter and hotter the more body with will react to my thermochromic ink with in my prints . Alternatively, I could try and hire out a heat sensitive camera from the science department in Geoffrey Manton on the MMU campus. I need to start focusing on how I can start making visual processes, showing the ideas of new technology rather than solely researching into them.    

Print design Development

     

Within my colour reference I have taken colours from my Salford Keys architecture photographs and experimented using these colours through paintings using hints of bright yellow and orange.  I have completely left church architecture and focused my drawing on modern geometric and structured shapes. I have chosen to do my drawing structure in a different way; by creating a geometric structure from my photograph and then developing them into a painting. It has helped me to create complex shapes and forms. 

live project- Behind the scenes: Annah Hugh’s Photoshoot

The concept was to capture Annah directing a fashion shoot of her own, documenting the way she organises her garment and directs the model. Her garment was about making the feminine, masculine. The idea was to give the film as crisp and glossy an appearance as possible.

Making the film UV & Projection

For the start of creating the UV & Projection film, I needed to test the UV lights with the other props in my film that will hopefully reflect with the UV light.

UV test

As this picture shows, I tested it using one of my friends who had bleached blonde hair, which is the same as the model I will be using for the shoot. I also tested out the sportswear I had bought from a high street sports shop, with attached white & black ribbon. The tests were successful and the UV picked up the white bold reflective colours within the hair and clothing.

Working with the Crew

During the process of this shoot I had to take great care in thinking about every detail such as lighting, movement, timing, sound and visual interest. In my field of practice, it is important for me to collaborate with people in different courses to help me create my films. I used Megan Elise Halla, a model I worked with on Rianna Phillips Internship. I wanted to work with her again as I know she works well with direction and her body gestures and facial expressions create good visuals to work with. Megan is also has the right look to appeal to my consumer; a young female that is devoted to exercise and has an interest in sustaining an exercise goal. Oisin Baber, a music artist and a friend of mine from Bristol, wants to collaborate and create music for me throughout this 3^rd year. I am interested in his sound as he is very diverse and talented in creating complex beats and alternative music that replicates my vision in my films. Lydia Richards was my makeup artist for a shoot and I had to independently seek her out.  Her ideas and craft makeup ability was outstanding. Another crew member was Orson Ramskill-Pugh who is a friend of mine and studying film.  He was the technical director in the shoot and assisted me to set up and use the equipment. He is very skilled in his knowledge of camera and lighting equipment.

Working on set

Whilst on set it took some time setting up and getting the projection to work. I found working on set when guiding my film exciting and successful as everyone worked well together. These are some of the photographs from behind the scenes of the shoot.  I wanted to show the process of Lydia applying the UV sensitive makeup to demonstrate the transition from normal lighting to UV light. During the filming process I found it difficult to multi- task all jobs; filming, directing and controlling the projection. This is a task that will most definitely improve through experience.

Editing

The editing process of these films took a considerable time. It was quite difficult matching the music to the visual movement. To overcome this, I changed the speed of each clip, making them faster to run smoothly with timing of the music. I have decided to create 3 different fashion films. I wanted to work out for my own benefit whether it looked effective with just the projection and one just with the UV or both UV & Projection together. I think the films work better separately as they show their intention of setting sportswear in a visually appealing way.

Final Prints for Bradford/ Print for fashion

These are my final print designs to be used for the presentation. From examining my prints, I feel I may need to focus more on my geometric designs and identify ideas with my modern architecture photographs more. I chose to use bright colours for my print designs as I feel it feeds into my focus of relating back to Stella McCartney Adidas collection. 

                                     

                                               

I have chosen this print design for the Bradford project/ print for fashion, I feel that is my strongest print and it demonstrates my refection of structured sportswear. 

Research & Design

I want my sportswear to be high end so I have been looking at Stella McCartney  and Mary Katrantzou .I have started an early process of digital designing as I think it is important for my work to design digital designs whilst generating new  drawings.  This will give me time to reflect on my print designs as I am creating more visuals. Within my drawings this week I have been focusing more on my floral detailed drawing, which takes considerably more time. For my floral drawings I use a 0.5 black pen, because the flowers are so detailed they work successfully as digital print designs.

After my tutorial, my tutor introduced me to a fashion design company called  theunseen  that uses thermochromics in their high fashion wear. Thermochromics is a type of ink that changes colour either with heat or light. This is beneficial for me and will help me understand how the ink looks visually on a garment and how it can be constructed.

Sports & Flora's Direction

For the third year of my degree, I want to specifically focus on the fashion film element of my studies. This is motivated by the fact that I envisage myself working in this area as a serious career. I also want to create various pieces of sportswear garments aimed at women, which will inform the fashion film making process. I have chosen to do sportswear  as exercise and sports has become  very important for society and the welding of this generation. I want to create a type of wear that will enhance sporting ability. I am particularly interested in creating a type of up and coming trend, which will stand out amongst its competitors by being practical and visually pleasing. I want to look into light sensitive sportswear such as reflective clothing for people who exercise outside at night, UV sensitive sportswear and also sports wear that changes colour with the heat of the body using thermochromics . Sensitive materials will be used to improve safety and will protect the body during over exertion. Certain sportswear materials such as Nike and Adidas provide small holes that help the skin to breathe more effectively and assist in temperature regulation. I will take this into consideration and experiment with different materials used for sporting clothing alongside my developing print designs. My overall long-term aim is to create a collection of sportswear. However. if this is not successful due to other academic demands, I hope to have constructed at least some garments and also a fashion film that could lead into unit X. 

Over the summer I have focused my drawing on church imager and florals . This inspiration has come from my internship I was successful in carrying out at Mirjam Rouden in central London over my time there I took part in doing all sorts of print jobs. One of my jobs was to draw for new print designs, the topic was florals. I found I have skill with drawing detailed flowers and I would like to carry this on into my print designs in this project. After discussions in my tutorial, I decided to investigate and focus my efforts on modern as well as historical architecture. The concepts of heat and light sensitive sportswear was also discussed during the session. I have decided to look into a printing ink that has the capacity to change colour in response of temperature changes in the body. It was also aware that this year is to focus my film making and editing skills with an art direction, Over this Project I plan to develop my filmmaking skills and come up with concepts that reflect my print design and fashion work.