Interdisciplinary began with learning about what the course entailed. It’s about learning skills that from other disciplines that we can use to our benefit in our own field of study.
One of the first lessons we undertook in this was to learn how to make a cinemagraph. This was something that was fun, however I have not yet used the skills learned from this in my own work. Despite this though, it enabled me to learn that very simple and basic alterations to film can be performed on Photoshop. My cinemagraph took around two lessons to be completed, however I am extremely happy with the results, it looks professional and loops almost perfectly.
The next tasks and challenges we faced were learning how to effectively operate the cameras and microphone equipment. This task did not go exactly to plan, as the group and myself were unfocused and we found it difficult to come up with questions and answers for filming. They resulted in us not having strong footage, however, we were able to used the equipment and understand how the microphones worked. Despite this however, I felt that further induction on the cameras were needed before put to professional work.
Our task for promoting our course was to create two different types of photography set ups – Film Noir and Fashion. These were achieved by researching the types of lighting and set ups that were required for such shoots. Our Film Noir research was evident we wanted low key lighting, the use of props and the use of only one light, where as the Fashion shoot research told us we needed high key lighting, so around four lights, two for the back drop and two for the model. We wanted the Fashion shoot to have a lot of colour and props for people to have fun with, we were given a budget and allowed to get anything we felt best for both of the shoots. I had many props at home that needed no money to buy for the Film Noir shoot, however many people brought in enough for the Fashion shoot. We set up all the equipment a few days prior to ensure that all of it worked and we were able to achieve the images we so desired. This helped us to position the lighting where we wanted it and were able to ensure we had a good idea where to get people to stand. On the day of the final shoot including everyone from other courses it was a major success. Everyone was loving the props and getting into the mood. It was fun for everyone involved. It really helped me in a multitude of ways – setting up both genres of shoots, working with people from other courses and talking about my own course, and the use of props.
From here we went on to undertake our first of the two experiences; for my first experience I chose Experimental Jewellery, a course that I thought might be something fun to break up my photographic projects, and also something tactile to keep my mind working in different ways. This proved to be an extremely enjoyable experience for me, as I felt I was able to be a little more creative that I could with my photographic project at that point in time. I created multiple items of jewellery ranging from a flower crown, a shoulder piece through to a flower based broach. The three weeks went incredibly fast and I felt that I really achieved a sense of fulfilment from the course. I would definitely recommend anyone who loves to create to take on this as an experience. From this, I learned how to use different methods of producing an outcome; using a hot glue gun was new for me, however I feel I picked it up extremely quickly and it will prove useful should I need to fix/ make something for a shoot of my own. I also learned how different materials reacted with other materials, again, useful for if I need to produce something for a shoot of my own or while assisting. It overall helped me to really push to think outside the box.
Once we had completed this experience, we went back to our regular lesson, and began by being given new tasks. Our first of the tasks was to get into groups of four, get out equipment and go out to the city. We were challenged to find the alphabet in what we see around us without using any form of letter or numeral. Myself in a group with Tara, Laura and Sandra worked extremely coherently as a team. We split off into two smaller groups; Laura and Sandra went off to photograph the first half of the alphabet and Tara and I went to discover the latter half. It took us around an hour to an hour and a half to produce all the letters in our half groups, we then rejoined in the college to enhance and combine all of the imagery together. I feel we did this as efficiently as we did for discovering all of the letters, and I am extremely proud of the group I was in.
The next group work we took on was to, once again, get into groups of four. We then were each allocated a colour that was from the colour spectrum, the options were Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Purple, Indigo, Magenta or Grey. The group I was in were allocated Magenta. In said group were Emily, Tara, Stuart and myself. We decided on a tone (the colour of a Walker’s Prawn Cocktail Flavour Crisps packet) and went out to photograph items and objects of that colour and tone. We shot loads of different items such as shoes, a hairbrush, people’s bags and make up. It was extremely fun and a challenging test for us all to try and register the same hue and tone of a colour, nonetheless it was undoubtedly the most useful challenge yet; forcing us to all really focus on colour matching and management. From there we went back to the college to (like the previous challenge) stitch the images together after cropping down to size. I took on this task thanks to my increasing confidence using Photoshop. I managed to combine every image and it proved how closely the colours matched and how well we had worked in finding the same tones around the city in different environments and lightings. Once the entire class and produced their imagery we were asked if someone could compile them all into one image, again thanks to doing these tasks and working on Photoshop, I felt confident enough to take on this task. I even had to alter a couple groups images as they had not placed their imagery in lineal form. The outcome looks very professional and it really put into perspective how hard people in the class had worked to find the same tone, notably the ‘Orange Group’ and the ‘Grey Group’.
After this workshop it was time to do the next, and final, alternative course experience. For this I took Fashion Media and Marketing. I found that this may have been a little less useful that originally anticipated, however I did take on every lecture with an open mind. The first lesson was getting to know what the course is about and what aspect we will be focusing on. The section we were learning was Fashion Forecasting. I thought that this might be quite useful in terms of my fashion brief (having to find the Spring Summer Style of 2017) though I felt that the genre we chose to look at – Blurred realities – was a little farfetched. Nevertheless, I keep on with the course. In the second lesson we looked at researching imagery that related the the topic ‘Blurred Realities’ which became a very futuristic and dystopian genre of fashion. The final lesson was compiling all of our imagery and putting it into a coherent order with four small subsections of the fashion. We then had to finalise and decide on a theme song for the video we were to create and my suggestion ‘Muse – Isolated System’ was chosen. After creating the slides on Photoshop for the project I helped a girl to create the video on PremierPro.
Our final outcome surpassed all my expectations, looking remarkably professional and eye-catching. Considering my initial feelings towards the subject to be that of boredom and lack of enthusiasm, seeing the final piece made me rather pleased it was this course that I chose for my second experience.
My final challenge that Interdisciplinary Studies was to film my editorial. I interviewed the owner of Really Good Records, Mike Offen. I asked a series of questions and he responded accordingly. I filmed him answering and also filmed around the shop. This was then edited by myself on PremierPro and I included snippets of film and the images I had taken from the editorial. I felt that this was extremely useful and I was able to achieve a three minute video of him talking about his shop. It was the first time I had filmed formally and edited using PremierPro, meaning that I learned how to edit and how to include different elements to the video. Overall this was extremely useful in terms of knowing how to include other elements in the video. From here I was to produce two magazines. These were learning how to use Indesign for print and for web based viewing. I had a basic knowledge of Indesign prior to this project, however I find that this task helped me to further my abilities exponentially.
Overall I was extremely happy with what I learned from Interdisciplinary Studies and feel that the skills and knowledge gained will greatly enhance all future projects.