I’ll admit I wasn’t too keen on this project. The Idea of it being fully abstract is what I think put me off, as I enjoy being narrative in my work, and so I suppose it was just an adjustment that meant working outside of my comfort zone. The song I wanted to use was the second track on the album, Which I nicknamed “Don’t Go” however it originally didn't work as well as I'd hoped so I dabbled around with tracks 1, 5 and 8. In the end I realised that none were quite right, so I tried “Don’t Go” again, and I actually found that, with what I wanted to attempt, I’d made the right choice from the start.
As I was so unfamiliar with this type of project I tried to gather research on what the audience themselves would expect and enjoy. To do this I attended underground Hip-hop shows in and around both Nottingham & certain parts of London, ranging from breakthrough acts around North-west London to bigger events in Elephant and Castle. Recurring motifs I found were the use of graffiti, riot footage and live footage of the audience in the back drops. All of these had various effects ranging between colour correction, image distortion and various mirroring effects to name but a few.
Once I had collected this information I went in search of various local graffiti hotspots around Nottingham. I found Hyson Green was the best area for this, however, that was only one of the three commonly found pieces of footage, and I wasn’t prepared to start a riot purely to gather footage of it. I decided instead to try me hand at some shutter-delay photography, which I’d seen used in the smaller events, such as ones in Nottingham. I hadn’t used this before though, so I made sure to take the camera out for a weekend to play about with the various different functions so that I would know what I was doing when I needed the photos taken.
I decided to start with the shutter-delay work, as it was still getting dark around 5pm in February, so it would be less dangerous than walking around Nottingham with a £110 camera around my neck at 10pm in march. Once that was done I moved onto the graffiti portion of the project. The place I noticed with the most diverse collection of graffiti was the Skatepark in Hyson Green, so I began going there every few days to photograph the work there. I went every few days for a week and over that time a number of new pieces had gone up. The other place I gathered photos from was discovered on accident. I was on my way home from ASDA and stumbled across several different pieces of a different style behind the community centre. I luckily had a camera with me and took some shots of them.
With that done all that was left was the editing process. I’d briefly done a run through of the editing tools in Premiere and decided to see what I could do with them. Before long I’d pieced them together in an order that I think best complemented the music, as well as images to fill the extra two minutes as requested by urban angels. Then I just added the effects to jazz the whole thing up. I started by using mirrors as they were what I had mainly practiced with, but soon found the colour correction tool and that quickly became my favourite.
The only issues I had with the editing was that it was difficult to have each image unique, I didn’t like using the same combination of effects however it got to a point where I had no choice, all I wanted to do was keep the footage fresh. The main problem I encountered, however, was the repetitive clicking, dragging, and rearranging of images, edit tools and keyframes. I think that the final outcome is worth those few minor issues.
The feedback I received was mostly positive too, which, given my first opinions of the project, was a pleasant surprise. One person said that it was “very professional” and a friend told me it “at some points perfectly connected to the music.” So at the end of this project I can happily say that I am pleased with the work I did, that it best reflects my ability when working on an abstract project such as this. It was a tough project at times, but by the end I enjoyed not only working on it, but the work that came out of it. I’d certainly do something like this again, however not for a while, I definitely want to get back to working on narrative projects as I believe that is where I am more talented in general.
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