Fashion Constructed Image: Group 6

7/30/2019 Fashion Constructed Image: Group 6

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Fashion Constructed ImageRPHC4004

Summative AssessmentGroup 6

Molly FarmerConor GallowayChrissie KirkGemma Norton


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Early Conceptand Original Aims


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ORIGINAL AIMSFocus on an organic creative process and collaboration

that will encourage a new perception of fashion.

Conceptual experimentation with new forms of fashionrepresentation with an aim to possibly produce a fashionfilm to accompany the stills.

Emphasis on theatricality, abstraction and the avant-garde. The merge of art with fashion.

The production of imagery that comments on a particularnews or culture story currently relevant (e.g The OccupyMovement 99% vs. 1%).

Use of social media to enhance the potential of theproject (Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook) and encouragedemand.

Creation of ambiguous, surreal and even-dream like imagerythat immerses the viewer; they are forced to view the


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TIAL REFERENCES TO ACCOMPANY AIMS

Nick Knight Dark Annie (A/W 2

Ann Mclaren Hodgson

teven Klein (Vogue March 2012)Nick Knight Unbelievable Fash(British Vogue Dec 2008)

Emphasis on abstraction andmovement.

Steven Klein (InterviewSummer 2011)


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CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT: DYSTOPIANVISIONS Initial creation of an elaborate realistic storyline

to achieve a unique and cohesive narrative with eachimage a different event together within the sameuniverse linking to the previous image; decided uponfocusing on the theme of a nuclear blast, fromdetonation to nuclear winter.

Creation of a two-part shoot to achieve asuccessful narrative. First part a focus on the nuclearblast with emphasis on colour, abstraction and movementin which the model appears to take on the form of thebomb; second part more sombre and still to focus on the

aftermath with emphasis on inky colours.

Construction of a minimal small set consisting of awhat appears to be the destroyed foundations of abuilding within a rubble filled wasteland; movement to

take place within separate set consisting of lights andcolourama.


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TIAL REFERENCES TO ACCOMPANY CONCEPTPart One: Nuclear Blast (Day 1 01/05)

Part Two: Nuclear Winter (Day 2 02/05)


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIESConor and Molly: Art Direction and Shoot Co-Ordination(Conor)

Visual ResearchCasting and CollaborationStyling and Dress DesignCamera Master (Molly)

Chrissie and Gemma: Health and Safety (Gemma)Prop SourcingLighting LeadBuilding LeadBudget Controller

(Chrissie)Post-Production Lead

(Chrissie)Di ital Tech Gemma


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY VISUALRESEARCH (NUCLEAR BLAST) The team worked together during the projects initialdevelopment in the creation of moodboards detailing thechosen theme of dystopia and apocalypse.

Conor and Molly then worked together on sourcing visualresearch from various multi-media resources to accompany theprojects more focused development. When it had been decidedto focus solely on nuclear war enough imagery of aftermathhad already been collected for them to be able to concentrate

on the first part of the shoot: the Nuclear Blast.

They concentrated on sourcing historical war imagery, violentnatural events, notable post-war artists, abstract art,theatrical and creative fashion shoots that focused onelaborate styling, movement, and unique post-processing.


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY VISUALRESEARCH (NUCLEAR AFTERMATH)


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY STYLING ANDDRESS DESIGN COLLABORATIONKey to the success of the shoot was collaboration. To carry theshoot we needed a theatrical, powerful and iconic dress thatwould be flexible to look different across both parts of the

shoot; this meant collaborating with a student second-yeardesigner (Alice Partington) from UOB. We decided against usingthe MA garments as we felt that it wouldnt fit the outcome wewanted.

The group established what they thought would work best and

Conor worked closely with the designer throughout to realise ourvision. The initial brief was for a dress to represent anuclear explosion as closely as possible in both colour andsize.


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY STYLING ANDDRESS DESIGN COLLABORATION

A.Ps Initial Sketches onpresentation of brief.

Referencing the imagery sent,A.Ps designs represented areversed nuclear explosion with a

slim top and layered bottom half.This half featured heavy fabricsas a supportive base which werebuilt upon with layers ofchiffron that would be able to belifted by wind machines to createthe chaos we wanted in our


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A.Ps Develo

sketches andfinal design


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The making of the garment

Shaping the dress was easy but colourwas problematic. Too much colour and itwould look out of place, not enough and

the dress would blend into the set. A.Pcarefully dyed all the fabrics a mattsmoky grey before carefully workinginto the layers with the more intensecolours working their way from thebottom of the dress to the top torepresent that reverse explosion.


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY CASTINGThe dress was theatrical and we needed a tall, slim, strong,flexible, powerful and long-haired model to incorporate ourvision of a nuclear blast; an individual that also did not lookcommercial. Finding all our collaborators was very difficult

and took months of searching through Facebook and word of mouth.

Models were particularly difficult to find. All members of thegroup took a proactive effort to search through Facebook whilstConor and Molly worked together to contact modeling agencies andsearch through freelance model websites; unfortunately we

received no reply.

The need to shoot across two days to maximise the potential ofour shoot made narrowed our choice of models to just Chloe; butslim, long haired and six foot tall fulfilled all ourpreferences

We managed to find four potential models:

Georgia Ku Beth Arscott Freddy Fuller Chloe Davis


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY HAIR AND MAKE-UP COLLABORATIONWe also needed a competent hair stylist and make-up artist toachieve the look we desired:

Part One Wild windswept hair and quite minimal make-up(bare face/nymph like with smooth and pale skin and strongcheekbones/jawlines)Part Two Wet sleek back hair and quite minimal make-up(bare face/nymph like with smooth and pale skin and strongcheekbones/jawlines).

Victoria guided us into considering quite a minimalistic lookin order to avoid a clash with the theatre of the dress andthe set.


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE AND GEMMA SET DESIGNAND DEVELOPMENT


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The initial design for our set was to be based on aprojected image that we would then build out from.The model would have a context and place of being,

yet it would still obviously be fake and appear as adistant memory of the character. Although the ideawas strong, we had issues with projection in terms ofthe lighting (see lighting slides). One of the mainissues was that the model would have to stand to theside of the projection unless we wanted it to beplaced upon her; she would also have to stand quitefar away to get a sense of scale, in the images belowshe is standing a foot away. We then looked at usinga printed fabric backdrop: with the pricing for a3mx1.4m around 30max.



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After eliminating the fabric print/projection idea, welooked at keeping a back image, but constructing thedestroyed buildings in front of this image. We decided

on painting a city skyline on canvas for this would adddepth and a sense of place and time to the final images.Having two walls would allow us to have a largershooting area, but for the back image to drop out andnot be so prominent, there needed to be a great distancebetween the building and the back image: so the size of

the space was an issue. We decided to use polyboards as walls as they were

lightweight and easy to assemble into position.



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rge set to alter sense of scale and for the model to appear smallthen found was the sets lack of depth so we tried moving the set

vanishing point and also making the larger sections of the wallse to backdrop to have more of a focal point.


Mock set up of second build idea: two walls, placed at a 90degree

angle.Height in the middle -We measured this as 12x12:


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We pushed the idea of further depth to the set after a meetingwith the set build designer and decided upon adding more layersto the scene; building backwards into a vanishing point. This

allowed separation of the polyboards and places for the modelto interact with the scene. We also discussed the context ofthe set: the types of colours, brick styles and flooring wewould use would create the sense of a place and time within theimage, so this all had to be carefully selected.



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We further developed the set on the day of the build byremoving the obvious vanishing point and widening the canvas,

creating more realistic walls in order to add depth to boththe image and set. The size of the set did mean our shootingspace was limited, but it allowed for us to create the styleof set we wanted in terms of scale.



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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE AND GEMMA LIGHTINGDEVELOPMENTProjection: We discussed the idea of using a projector so wecould use a moving image and create a really abstract feel to

the set. We were unsure on what to project as we all hadslightly different visual ideas for the set. We wanted it tobe abstract and maybe appear to be like a memory, so like theimages would be a flash of the past and that would be how anarrative would appear.

We played around with two different projectors to see whatrange we could get, also trying a a back projection to so thatwe wouldnt get a shadow of the model. The light, scale andshadows from the projector just meant it was not worth thehassle. And we thought up a different idea using a canvasbackdrop.

We also tried out using colour gels, this would give more of anatmosphere to the idea of a blast perhaps. But with trying thatit was a clear that it wouldnt work for us, it didn't give theeffect that was evident in the research.

It was back to the drawing board with both of these as neither


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These examples show the different problemswe encountered when trying out theprojection and colour gels. We wanted thescale and distance so that she lookedsmall amongst her surroundings but withoutcompromising light. Unfortunately thiswasnt achievable with this set-up.


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE MATERIAL SOURCING FORSETTwo of the most important features of the set design that hadto be completed prior to construction were polyboard walls andsourcing rubble, both were long and tedious. Polyboards weresourced online at their best price whilst rubble was sourcedfrom residential skips and breakers yard.To add variety tothe rubble and depth to the set we sourced a wooden pallet theuniversity skips.

Smoke and machines were sourced through the university and an

external company, but preoccupation with a perfect image meantthat the smoke machine wasnt used as much as it could havebeen; this meant that the images captured were smoke look outof place as a series. Gravel was sourced to appear like ashwithout compromising H&S, but fell out of use like the smokemachines.


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This wouldbe

cheapesto tion


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE BUDGET SPREADSHEET

The Budget. This was fairly simple to keep track of as we allknew who was buying what.The bottom grid is all about


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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND CHRISSIE -STORYBOARDOur original storyboard consisted of seven shots. We wanted adramatic, cohesive and interesting editorial that incorporatedboth realism and abstraction. Because we were only using onegarment we felt that burning the dress would represent the

entirety of a nuclear explosion whilst appearing to becomeanother garment. To represent a nuclear explosion and nuclearwinter we really needed to shoot across two days instead of thestandard one as the shots would take time to achieve.


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SET PREPRATION AND BUILD


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SET PREPERATION BEFORE BUILD WEEKWe all contributed prep work and painting before buildingthe set. It took several weeks to get all the poly boardscompleted in order for them to appear like brick walls;

this was achieved through careful mapping, cutting andtexturing to make them appear like brick work. The rubblewas prepared at the same time as the walls but giving arealistic layer of paint was difficult due to itstexture. A city skyline was easy to paint onto thecanvas.


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SHOOT WEEK: SET BUILD DEVELOPMENT

This was a very longweek of setting up,playing around andmaking mistakes.

There were a lot of


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IMAGERY: CONTACT SHEET ANDINITIAL CHOICES


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IMAGERY: IMAGES CONSIDERED TO TAKE FORWARD THROUGH TOEDITORIAL


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IMAGERY: EDITORIAL


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EDITORIAL: INITIAL CONCEPT


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EDITORIAL: DISCARDED CHOICES

Constructing an editorial was frustrating as the shoot days didnt goas we had hoped and the storyboard was no longer possible. Weoriginally wanted to go for quite a fine art photographic magazine

inspired presentation which would have allowed us to be more creativewith our selection of imagery and fit our original aim to be abstract,

EDITORIAL: DISCARDED CHOICES


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We needed a cohesive narrative of similar imagery and our choice of asinister opener image and double spread overlay with the models faceobscured meant that are original ideas of including fabric images andportraits of the model looking powerful could not be realised as they

did not fit. We kept the models face hidden throughout and decidedupon a sinister but simple and uncluttered spread with page breaks.


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EDITORIAL: FINAL CHOICE


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EVALUATION


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VALUATION: We underestimated the difficulty of building the set and

selective lighting which meant our ambitions for a twopart editorial could not be realized. We werent able toutilise the entire possibilities of the set.

Decision making was slightly poor during earlier stages ofproduction and when editing; this is something to reflectand improve on.

Because of time management difficulties and constraints

our research as a group is not as strong as it could havebeen and a lot of our original aims were not achievable.However a better portfolio in no way would have improvisedthe resulting imagery.

The group worked very well together: everyone played to

their strengths and adopted equal supportive roles andeveryone endorsed very strong work ethic. A two tier groupsystem allowed efficiency and a partner to rely on

The decision to commission a especially designed garmentexplored our concept further visually and set us apart

f h f h d d ll b i

Documents

Fashion Constructed Image: Group 6