Synopsis & Final Video

Exploratory Design Practise                                                                                                                   Andrew Smith

Synopsis of work completed & projected outcome.

I started off by looking at thing which I have an interest in like hill walking and badminton. I also looked at things which are important to me like, family past and present & friends.

Topics being thought about at the start.

Conversations with the dead! (Came from watching a programme about old people entitled “THE HOME” RTE1). 

 A road divided! (Thinking about community/ family divides)

Behind doors! (A camera angle showing the outside of front doors, but what happens inside them)

Started looking at Photographers such as Bert Hardy, I came across a couple of his photographs of the city in the central library. 

Imogen Cunningham, Bruce Davidson, Walter Chappell and Sharon Lockhart

Looking at album covers, advertisements and print material which interests me.

I took photos when I was out walking and an old ancestral house nearby, trying to generate ideas and thoughts.

The conversations with the dead came back again when I decided to take photographs of headstones particularly the type. I also took rubbings of the stones. I decided to take pictures of a family grave. This in turn led me to an ancestral house where I recorded a few videos. From the photographs I came across the reflections of the graveyard on the stone. This made me reflect and think on the people within the grave although I didn’t know them personally. Recorded some more images and took more photographs, came across letters written by a relative. I decided to combine the letters with photos. Combined the letters with photographs which I took picking out sentences that stood out. Was also looking at christograms and catacombs as influences.

I hope to put together a short video using final cut pro and a series of postcards/posters combining type and graphics.

Final Video

I used Final Cut Pro to combine video clips take. The Video is Called letters, blood & graveyards.

 

Idea generation behind video

Think bubble

Different idea generation and exploration of ideas and linkage of project.

Postcards



Postcards

FRONT

From the poster I took sections to be used for postcard designs.

BACK

The postage stamp mark dates from the 1960's.

Posters

Posters  I created using Photoshop with a combination of photography and type.

The posters represent reflection

Kinetic Typography

Kinetic type, like this idea and design.




Wall Street Riots - Dr King - Typography Motion Graphics Music Video





Nick the Greek





Typography: Thank You For Smoking




Could use this technique with the letters etc like opening credits.

Travels

Interesting!

On my travels I came across what I was told to be the “smallest church in Ireland”, the Moravian Church. I hadn’t heard of this type of reformed Christian faith before although I did find it interesting to read about.

What interested me even more were the actual size and the shape of the building. The door was located on the corner of the building with what appeared to be a chimney with a bell.

It was a pitty the church wasn't open that day, it would have been nice to see the interior.

I don't know what this means.

The seal of the

Moravian Church

The Moravian Church was founded in 1457 in Bohemia - the name Moravian derives from the refugees from Moravia who settled on lands of Count Zinzendorf in the 18th century, thus founding the renewed church.

More information can be found at http://www.moravian.org.uk  

The architecture of this house in Co Antrim was inspired by the Giants Causeway. Some very interesting shapes and layout of windows.

It blends in well with the landscape, but it puts me in mind of Mondrain's work minus the colours.

Experimental

I have tried printing type on to slate using a template and paint, going with the idea of the headstone inscriptions. I have used words that can be associated with my project.

Memories lost and remembered

Questions unanswered   

Possible methods for postcard designs.  

Perhaps this might help me with my postcards.

I decided I would try and carve out a quote from the letters onto slate. Wasn’t very fruitful but it was worth and go!

Friends past & present

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard J. Muybridge

Born 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904) was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.[1]

Muybridge was born Edward James Muggeridge at Kingston upon Thames, London, England on April 9, 1830. He is believed to have changed his first name to match that of King Eadweard as shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which was re-erected in Kingston in 1850. Although he did not change his first name until the 1870s, he changed his surname to Muygridge early in his San Francisco career and then changed it again to Muybridge at the launch of his photographic career or during the years between.

In 1855 Muybridge arrived in San Francisco, starting his career as a publisher's agent and bookseller. He left San Francisco at the end of that decade, and after a stagecoach accident in which he received severe head injuries returned to England for a few years. While recuperating back in England, he seriously took up photography sometime between 1861 and 1866, where he learned the wet-collodion process.[2][3] He reappeared in San Francisco in 1866 with the name Muybridge and rapidly became successful in photography, focusing principally on landscape and architectural subjects, although his business cards also advertised his services for portraiture.[4] His photographs were sold by various photographic entrepreneurs on Montgomery Street (most notably the firm of Bradley & Rulofson), San Francisco's main commercial street, during those years....

Photographing the West

Muybridge began to build his reputation in 1867 with photos of Yosemite and San Francisco (many of the Yosemite photographs reproduced the same scenes taken by Carleton Watkins). Muybridge quickly gained notice for his landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West. The images were published under the pseudonym “Helios.” In the summer of 1868 Muybridge was commissioned to photograph one of the U.S. Army's expeditions.

Tv programme that first drew my attention to this photographer.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wdlkz/Imagine_Winter_2010_The_Weird_Adventures_of_Eadweard_Muybridge/