25/05/2017 - Installation Production Diary

On this day we finished the second half of filming in the studio. This scene was to be the main image of the installation, as it depicts a birds eye view of Jay laying in bed asleep, looking over the memories of his life which we will edit on top of the bed sheets. The large studio was set up with a spotlight above the bed and the lights were turned off so that the only thing you could visibly see was Jay and the bed. We filmed him initially still for one minute or so then we asked him to act more visibly in distress in bed as the memories progress into his adult/elder life. We did two or three takes of this just so we could cut the length or use a different take depending on which ones looked best. We felt that the first take would probably come out best and then we were able to get on with the editing. I'm happy with how the shots came out, especially with the spotlight above the bed working so well to light up just the bed and not the floor around it.

23/05/2017 - Installation Production Diary

After Reece's idea had been picked to go forward, we started to film his first person footage in the park. The idea was to capture Jay's character as a teen so that we could edit a video that followed him growing up from home footage as a kid to him in his adult years. We were going to use this footage in the park and overlay it over the footage we would be filming in the studio. We used the camera to capture first person footage as Jay held the camera, and Reece, Jacob, Ruairi and I were the extras who played his friend's in the memories. We started by filming us walking towards the park and then eventually we played table tennis and messed about around the swings. We felt as though there wouldn't need to be any more than 30 seconds of footage cut between all those stages, considering it would've been contained as part of flickering memories in Jay's character's mind.

15/05/2017 - Installation Production Diary

Today I started work on my pre-production to help me pitch my idea for the video installation. I began my idea development by thinking about the 8 topics we had to chose from and which ones I would be able to develop a realistic idea for. This helped me to find an idea that I would already have prior knowledge or interest in to help further develop the idea. My initial ideas were to use the topic relationships and identity. My first idea was about relationships and how dating apps can cause us to lose focus of what relationships should be like. I made a mindmap for this idea but I felt it wasn't strong enough and I didn't think I could develop it further than making a video. My second idea was about identity and how social media causes us to build up a new persona to adapt and blend into to different social groups. I began drawing up a mindmap that helped me to think about the specific locations and style of the video. I decided that this second idea was a bit more realistic so I developed that further. I made a treatment and pitch proposal form for my identity idea. One of my main focuses was the glorification of relationships on social media and how couples like to “show-off” or aim to draw attention to themselves on Facebook, Instagram etc in an attempt to fit in with other people.