Idea

We begin our process of our final assignment by coming up with a few ideas to see what was best to work with and what is the best to come up as an installation. In the beginning, we wanted to go with the idea of how religion separates family members when they are living together under one roof. The idea was very intact and ready to be carried out but was changed due to our visuals being too “little”. We decided to go with something that was a little more narrative but still keeping the concept of being at home, and having distance from each other. Some of the ideas were mother and child not understanding each other, siblings who parents passed, and in the end we went with a couple who is going through a problem in their marriage. Then we had to think of an issue that they were facing, there were a few but the one that we thought was the strongest in terms of narrating and visual was miscarriage. 

We had to think about what room we were going to use since it was an installation. Initially we wanted to use the current 4D classroom as our installation room, but because we had to share it with Brian and Vincent’s group we did not want to do that. We decided to use the crit room in the basement and I came up with a few renderings so we can get a clearer idea on how we were going to lay out the room.

So now that we have our idea we began our filming process and started our lighting test and then eventually film the whole thing.

Filming 

For our filming, we began on Sunday with out lighting test. We wanted to go with the same concept as out project 2 with the bright colours to show different emotions but in the end we went with a black and while film. I think this is what got all of us very excited. We had to recreate a lot of things by ourselves as we don’t have budgets for this film so a lot of things were DIYs. 

Things like curtains, we had to mount them onto a trip-pot and use a fan to blow it. The outcomes look really good because it look realistic. For the flickering, I had to stand in front of the light and kept moving a cellophane paper in and out of the light source to create a nice shadow effect on the actors’ faces. For the fan shot, I had to keep turning on and off, on and off, on and off for a lot of times because we had to read a lot of times. This was really tough but nothing beats the light bulb shot. I had to keep turning on and off the port too but this was harder than the fan because of how hard the switch was and it was very difficult to find the middle point so that the light will look like it’s spoiled. 

Overall, I had such a fun time filming eventhough it took 3 full days to do so! Here are some of out behind the scene for our film: 

(Password: spaces)

Installation

For our installation, like mentioned we use the crit room at the basement. It was a gamble to use that room because we did not know if there were going to be a class happening during our installation and it did happen because right after we finished our installation, the teacher walked in. Thank God we screened it but it was really sad because we spent a really long time setting it up. For our podiums, we used the podiums from the drawing studio, we used it because it was really clean and white and it match with out installation aesthetics.

We created some art pieces to go with our installation and we sticked them onto our podiums as well. We thought it would be a good idea.

Audience

We filmed the beginning of when the audiences were entering our installation. In the beginning, we wanted them to sit around but in the end, due to the limitation, they needed to sit on the floor nearer to the back of the projectors to see the installation. 

Here is a quick video on when they were entering:

Reflection

Honestly I had a wonderful time working with Duane, and Vanessa because they were hard workers. I do not have a lot of backgrounds in filming, they are really talented people and they knew exactly what they were doing and how they were doing it. They taught me a lot on lighting, cameras and filming. This project was really fun to do too because it was an installation, we were able to create things we thought only “real artists” could. I think if I could change anything I would try to be more active during the editing period. I was not presence during the editing but only there at the end. Other than that it was super fun and I had a really fun time doing this project!

Here is the link to out final cut: