Presentation for photography

https://www.slideshare.net/secret/6N1Fz02BW8L5hg

Task 1- Installation Nasties!

A Little Death- Sam Taylor Wood

After watching Sam Taylor Wood's video called A Little Death, where we watch a hare decaying and a peach sitting by it staying healthy, we discussed what we felt about it as a class and it was surprisingly very controversial. Although the video itself was very simple, it was also extremely ambiguous because everybody had different perspectives on what Sam Taylor Wood was trying to portray.
In my opinion after watching the video I felt a slight sense of nausea from watching the hare decay, but after thinking about the video itself and not what was going on, my interpretation on it was that Sam Taylor Wood was trying to portray life and death in the continuous video clip. I don't believe she was actually trying to show a hare decaying, in fact she was trying to show a living thing dying. This made me think further into what she was trying to make people think and I came to a few more conclusions such as the hare represented a poor and deprived human that dies because it doesn't have the nutrients or medicine needed to keep it alive and the peach represented a richer human that has everything needed to keep them alive, and this whole thing represented how looks at the society of today, meaning we look at charities and most people don't give to the needy because they just simply don't care whereas people look at celebrities (The rich) and practically bow down to them for doing irrelevant things such as getting implants, going to jail or even taking drugs. Taking drugs, going to jail, drinking alcohol, etc. are things we all frown upon when it comes to 'poorer' people, for example a lot of people say "I'm not going to give homeless people money because all they'll do is spend it on drugs and alcohol" and continue to leave them on the streets not having a care in the world but another example, Lindsay Lohan took drugs, went to jail and much more but we still let her off, and why's that? Because she's a celebrity with money! Now we come back to the hare and the peach. I strongly believe it represents the way our society thinks and where our priorities lie.


The Clock- Christian Marclay

The Clock is a video installation that is originally twenty-four hours long that is shown in the White Cube. This video installation is extremely simple but is also complete genius and this is because it took the maker of the video, Christian Marclay two whole years to make! The video shows a numerous amount of movie clips that show clocks or somebody checking the time, the genius of the twenty-four hour movie clip is that the time it shows on the video is made to synchronize with the time in real life. This is such a simple idea but takes a serious amount of time and commitment to accomplish it. It almost makes people feel more connected because of the time and once people realise the time in the video installation is the same time as the real world, we begin to feel a hint of anxiety as we continue to watch and understand what is happening. I began to think deeper into the installation and something that stuck out to me was the fact that when watching a movie, it takes us into their world which makes us oblivious to the time but what Christian Marclay did was make us more aware of the time, which I also thought he did to show us what today's society are about. we are constantly checking time, we are time conscious, time obsessed and time has become oppressive to a point that we can't escape it anymore. A saying a lot of people say is "Time is money" and once again, this enhances how time obsessed we have become. I don't believe Christian Marcley made this because he was bored or because he thought it was a cool thing to try out, I think he did it to make people realise just how time conscious we have become after all of these years.

Sterling Silver- (video art installation)

The video installation I found by Sterling Silver was quite similar to the first video installation that I analysed, A little death. The reason I say this is because they are both quite simple but extremely ambiguous throughout. This installation showed a man kneeling on the floor wearing a fox mask with a drum and a woman standing next to the man wearing high end clothes and looked very stylish whilst holding a plain bag that said 'Wishes'. As the music grows louder, the woman begins to pour the bag of 'wishes' above the man whilst he is banging on the drum. Now many people will have very different aspects of the video but in my opinion it's telling us another message about our society. I believe the woman wearing high end clothes represent how our society cares about how we look without thinking about where the clothes, hair or even make up comes from. The woman then poured the red glitter over the man as he banged on the drum and I think the red glitter represents the blood from the animals that die for us to have make up, clothes etc. but to us, we don't think about the death of the animals when we are wearing a fur coat. I then think the bag says wishes on it to show that our society cares about the materialistic things and are basically saying it's okay to kill the animals if that means they can get the items they're 'wishing' for. I then believe the man banging the drum is representing the fact that animals don't have a voice and have no say in what happens to them, their family or they're friends.

Supersize me analysis

Supersize me

The documentary I will be analysing and discussing is called Supersize Me. This particular documentary is performative because the filmmaker is making himself the vocal point of this documentary. Performative is considered the most honest kind of documentary, for we see them on their daily life talking about what they've done and exactly how they're feeling at the time. Performative documentaries are often mistaken with reflexive documentaries because the filmmaker sits in front of the camera, but it is not. The documentary America’s Most Hated Family mad by Louis Theroux is a reflexive documentary but he does not always get in front of the camera, he mainly interviews the family and gets their view on things, whereas in Supersize me Morgan Spurlock gives his own opinion on things and also talks to the camera as though it is his diary. Having the filmmaker also being the ‘guinea pig’ can be very complicating but also, as said before, very honest, as we can see him getting others point of view but we know its primary sources for he goes to find this information out himself on the camera.

Supersize me is a documentary about a man named Morgan Spurlock doing an experiment a based on the famous worldwide fast food restaurant; McDonald’s. He understands that McDonald’s isn’t good for us and that in America, obesity is a very big issue. He decides to make a documentary about doing an experiment of himself eating only McDonald’s for thirty days, no exceptions.
The documentary begins with a group of children singing a popular cheesy song “Pizza hut, Pizza hut, Kentucky fried chicken and a Pizza hut...... McDonald’s!!!!...” They cleverly used this clip of the children singing as it undermines the restaurants and shows how the children’s minds have been tainted to believe that McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants are perfectly okay and even fun to be at. They are taught to believe this even before they’re taught simple things in school such as punctuation.
Supersize Me mainly shows real footage. He tends to speak directly to the camera and if he is either speaking to somebody else or showing a clip of something, he normally uses voiceovers which give the audience a sense of comfort and trust. If we hear him speak about what he’s doing then get a load of other people to give facts and opinions, most viewers tend to get bored and not actually believe everything that is being said nevertheless, hearing Morgan speak for himself, being such a normal person that is just like any of us, we can relate and people generally think more about it when seeing somebody that’s not so different to them do an experiment like this. There are also technicalities of realism within the documentary as they things like natural lighting throughout, use of natural sounds such as traffic and other outdoor noise etc.
He also uses footage such as advertisements of McDonald’s when it was first established to its recent days which shows the progression of the restaurant and how much the company have grown. Within the documentary, Morgan visits the doctors to see how his health is coming along since starting this experiment and the doctor give primary information as he informs both Morgan and the viewers that if he continues eating this amount, he could actually die. This again give the documentary a sense of realism. Morgan then goes to visit people that are in fact greatly overweight, obese even, and he asks them how they got to that weight and they then inform Morgan that McDonald’s (as well as other fast food) will make you overweight and eating as much as Morgan was, will not make you overweight, but will make you obese.

Mini Documentray work- OFCOM

Unit 27 task 1

For my documentary will be “Do you think that Marijuana should be legalized?”

Ofcom:

Section 2: Harm and offence:

To ensure that generally accepted standards are applied to the content of television and radio services so as to provide adequate protection for members of the public from the inclusion in such services of harmful and/ or offensive material.

Ofcoms broadcasting rules state that not only are they protecting under-eighteens, but also the rules are also to provide adequate protection for adults. If you use facts, they have to be 100% true and be backed up. The rules are only here to prevent harmful and offensive material being shown to the wrong audience.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/harmoffence/

Section 3: Crime:

To ensure that material likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder is not included in television or radio services.

Ofcoms broadcasting for crime state that footage that might encourage crime is not allowed to be shown on television simply because they don’t want people to try and copy what they see and get arrested. This means because smoking ‘weed’ is illegal as long as we edit our footage to not give any influential ideas we can in fact have people smoking in our documentary.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/crime/

BBC Guidelines:

Section 5: Harm and offence:

The BBC editorial guidelines state that harm and offence, covers a lot more than Ofcoms, with there subheading being “Alcohol, Smoking, Solvent Abuse and Illegal `Drug use”.

The use of illegal drugs, the abuse of drugs, smoking, solvent abuse and the misuse of alcohol:

                  Must not be featured in content made primarily for children unless there is strong editorial justification

                  Must generally be avoided and must not be condoned, encouraged or glamorized in any programmes broadcast pre-watershed or on radio when children are particularly likely to be in our audience, or in online content likely to appeal to a significant proportion of children, unless there is editorial justification

                  Must not be condoned, encouraged or glamorized in other content likely to be widely seen, heard or used by children and young people, unless there is editorial justification.

- After reading the rules and regulations, I understand that although the subject of the documentary is about Marijuana, it’s not illegal to talk about it; it’s just illegal to smoke it on camera. The footage in which I put in the documentary must not be encouraging and must be generally condoning.

Final Images