FINAL MAJOR PROJECT PROPOSAL

10thFebruary2014

Click Here To View My Final Major Project Proposal 

In Unit 7 of the foundation course [Final Major Project Stage] we are expected to bring together all our skills, knowledge and understanding that has been learnt on the course. We are required to manage our own personal learning and development that will support our creative, technical skills by extending our knowledge, experience and understanding of our chosen specialist subject area [in my case - fashion promotion]. This exploration is to be demonstrated through researching and recording insights into aspects of contemporary and historical practice. We are required to identify a series of personal aims and objectives and manage our time and recourses to achieve a final concluded outcome.  

The idea for my FMP was derived from a previous sportswear project, which I would like to explore further. As a starting point, I plan to investigate boxing family connections, boxing films and ads, real events, historical and current, and sportswear trends. Throughout the seven weeks I want to achieve a variety of outcomes that all eventually link into a final film piece, these might include a sporty Look Book, a magazine cover, and an ad campaign. I would like to experiment with Photoshop filters and Image Ready to animate sequences as well as any other software that might be available.

I have already started to contact gyms to arrange visits to capture real-life situations to create strong imagery. I will visit Nike Town in Oxford St and family research should reveal some interesting stories, and I have 

news-paper clippings and boxing memorabilia to collect. Real fights on You-Tube show boxers in the ring and as they make their “grand” entrances. I am also fascinated by the weight factors in boxing and that the lightest is “feather weight” which is only six stone. I believe that small, strong men could generate some strong fashion imagery, especially when I add my creative input. I hope that my creativity and thought processes flow continually but I do anticipate some of my models not turning up, or if I am lucky enough to be invited into a gym, my activity maybe restricted by health and safety regulations. I am resourceful however and will deal with these problems in a pragmatic way. I will set up ‘staged’ photo shoots too. 

Thinking about starting a project from scotch, and creating it entirely myself seems really daunting. I am excited to see what my outcome will be in 7 weeks, Im not entirely sure how I want my final piece to come across and what feeing I want it to evoke, but I do know that It should be conceptual and I aim to challenge peoples pre conceptions of boxing. I think I've started off well with my initial proposal, watching films related to my topic really encouraged me to think outside the "fashion box" and focus more on the subject area [Boxing] rather than the fashion idea of things. I do think the approach I have chose to take with this project can be a difficult way of working, but I like to challenge myself, and exceed expectations. 

12 Days Of Christmas

Over the Christmas holidays we were set a project which was to tell a story of our christmas using 12 images or 12 fifteen second "instagram style" videos. The idea of using 12 different images that represented our Christmas came from the song "12 days of Christmas", I knew that most people would take an obvious approach to this title and invent different ways of recreating each day of the song through imagery, but I thought that doing something like this will come across as too contrived and obvious. I decided it would be a good idea to carry my camera around with me over the Christmas period and just capture things i found interesting. So this is what i did, and on day one i came across a house covered from top to bottom in christmas lights, the lights were extremely cheesy, contrived and  tacky. Although I initially set out to photograph non-cheesy elements of Christmas, I discovered that the fun and fantasy of Christmas  lies in the  bright lights  that celebrate it.

After discovering the brilliance of tacky christmas lights I decided to give my project a point of direction so that it wouldn't wander off pointlessly. I then started looking closely at lighting around this time of year, recognising that everything was lit up brightly and beautifully, whether it be tacky or not. The images grouped together above  show different aspects of lighting that coincide with the theme of Christmas; winters sun, fairy lights, candles, shop displays etc… I tried to vary up the way in which I captured the lighting e.g. shadows, blurred light, close ups etc.. I did this so that each image was completely different from the last, I thought this was an important concept to keep throughout my work, so that each image represented something completely different, capturing my Christmas  experience as realistically as possible .