Now that my Final Major Project is complete
it is time to reflect and evaluate my work from the last few months,
concentrating on my performance and the physical outcome of my project,
discussing what was successful about these factors, and any challenges faced
throughout the project process.
When it came to writing our Major Project
Proposals and deciding what we were going to do for the largest, and most
important part of our degree, I knew I would have to choose something that I
was going to enjoy working on for such a long period of time, and it would have
to be a project that was going to show off my strongest skills. I started to
look back on all of my previous work from the first and second years of my
degree and thought about which projects I had enjoyed the most and performed
best in, these being the Gothic Horror unit and the Interpreting Narrative
unit. I have always seen myself in the television, film and theatre side of the
makeup industry and I clearly excel in character makeup as opposed to fashion
makeup. This made my decision to do my very own ‘Interpreting Narrative’ style
project a lot easier, to create a series of character makeup for my Final Major
Project.
I decided that I wanted to create a book as
my final outcome of the project; the book would be to document my makeup
designs through photo shoots for a series of characters from a novel. The
decision to create a book was heavily influenced by me attending a book launch
party when researching for my dissertation earlier in the year and seeing all
the work that went into it to have something physical to keep forever at the
end of it and give out to friends, family and potential industry contacts.
It took me some time to source a book to
base my project around. Firstly, I thought of finding a wartime story so that I
would have lots of strong background research. But, because of having to make
sure that my project is relevant in today’s industry, I began thinking about
what has been popular in recent times in regards to film adaptations of books,
the most popular have been fantasy stories such as the Harry Potter and Twilight
series and most recently the start of The
Hunger Games series. After many recommendations I came across the book The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It
is a recent book, only published in 2011, and from the reviews, it has proven
to be vastly popular with the Harry
Potter audience, which generally starts with children of around 11 or 12
years old and then becomes loved by their parents and younger or older siblings
as well.
One of my first tasks after setting myself
a brief and beginning the project, was to find out what books already existed
that were similar to the type of book I intended to create. I found many film
visual accompaniment books aimed at either children or film enthusiasts so I
knew there was a place for my project in the industry. I took inspiration from
several books including The Twilight Saga: New Moon The Official Illustrated
Movie Companion by Mark Cotta
Vaz and Moulin Rouge: The Splendid Illustrated
Book That Charts the Journey of Baz Luhrmann's Motion Picture.
One of the
biggest challenges of my project, a prediction I had made in my proposal, was
the sourcing of models, particularly as 3 of my 4 main characters were male. It
was for this reason that with the help of my tutor I had to decide on a
particular focus for my book. I decided I wanted the book to be a platform for
my character makeup skills, so I chose to section my book into chapters on each
of the 4 principle characters from the story, rather than telling the whole
story continuously through imagery. Shooting one character at a time would
eliminate the issue of several models and my photographer not being available
at the same time, this plan proved to be wise as my photographer works most
evenings and does not get her work schedule until the end of each week which
made booking photography studios even more challenging.
The bookings of
the university photography studios, was another challenging aspect of this
project. When I started
needing to book studio space I was unaware that you could only book studios 2
weeks in advance and for several weeks every time I tried to book space every
slot was full with people booking 8 hour studio slots, which was unnecessary
and greedy as half of the time the studios were not being used for the whole
day. I eventually overcame this problem and used studio space that people could
no longer use because of various cancellations of models and photographers, as
well as finding out when the new booking forms were posted in the studio
booking office and ensuring I was there first thing in the morning to book my
own space. The difficulty booking studio space and models lead to the
challenging aspect of the project that I ended up having to shoot my entire
project over the Easter break and in the first week of the summer term, leaving
no time for re-shooting as planned in my original production schedule.
Throughout my
Final Major Project production I have encountered some personal troubles that
were getting in the way of my work at one point, but support from my tutor
helped me to put everything in perspective and remain calm and positive to move
forward with my work successfully.
Discussed in
detail in my reflective journal is the biggest threat to my project.
Unfortunately, the university made a mistake and cancelled studio space I had
booked for Good Friday 2 weeks prior, as the studios were going to be closed
that day. I made every effort to rectify this major set back and planned a
location shoot, so as not to waste the opportunity of having my photographer
and model booked. However, after booking out lighting and hiring costumes my
model let me down on the day of the shoot. There was not a lot else I could do
after failing to find a replacement model at such short notice but to
reschedule the shoot for after the Easter holidays. This worried me as it was
leaving it very late to prepare the content of my book.
Towards the end
of my project I did some work experience at the Barbican in London and although
it took me away from my project work for a week, the skills I learned whilst
there gave me the time management skills and the confidence to perform to the
best of my ability for my 2 rescheduled shoots and all the final processes of
putting together my book.
One of the
biggest factors of this unit is to encourage independent learning and I will
admit that there were some times when I struggled with this, for example, the
bookings of studios, which I had never done until this project, and the
bookings of several models. I regret to say that I did not attend every
tutorial, in hindsight this was obviously a bad decision as when I did go and
receive feedback, particularly in the run up to sending my book off to print,
the advice I received I have taken on board and it has, in my opinion, vastly
improved my work. Up until the Easter break I was struggling with my time
management and had long strayed from my original production schedule. I feel
that this was all due to a lack of confidence in myself and my abilities. After
Easter however, I became more focused and have been working non-stop every day
meeting set daily and weekly targets, and for this I am proud of what I have
managed to achieve in a short space of time.
I went ahead
with the printing company Blurb.com as stated in my proposal, as I already knew
of them and my photographer had used them on many occasions and always been
happy with the result. Sadly when I received my printed books both copies have
a cutting error, a fault of Blurb and not myself as my InDesign file was
checked over several times by several people including I.T technicians. You
could argue that I should have researched other printing companies and had
tests done, but myself and my photographer trusted Blurb and any tests sent to
us could have been perfect and it is simply an error that only occurred on the
day of printing my final copies. Apart from this small error I am extremely
happy with the quality of my book in regards to the size, cover, paper type and
printing quality and it is amazing to see all of my hard work finally put
together it physical form.
I have more or
less stuck to everything I proposed to do when setting myself my brief in my
proposal. I have successfully produced a professional standard book recording
my photo shoots showing my interpretation of the 4 principle characters from
Erin Morgenstern’s 2011 novel The Night
Circus. I feel with anything there is always room from improvement and if I
was to attempt this project again I would definitely be much more organised and
have more confidence in myself. There is the potential to develop my project
further by creating the makeup for more of the characters from the story and
putting a modern, more artistic twist on the looks already created. It has been
a lot of hard work but I feel after much stress it has all been worth it.
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