What would you do if you only had 15 hours to live?

leading on from the video Forevers not so long i tried to do abit of a survey, which i asked:
What would you do if you only had 15hours to live?'
so here are some of the answers i got:

• 'saying goodbye to friends and family and probably spend some time on the ice'
• 'i would get as drunk as possible, fall asleep and die'
• 'seriously telling people exactly how i feel and trying to summarise what i want people to remember to the people closest and doing something nice'
• 'play monopoly'
• 'don't know...i would first call everyone I cared about and said how much I cared for them and loved them then I would do things I would not have done before'
• 'take out lots of loans and spend lots of money on things ive always wanted'
• 'id probably cry 1st then tell the guy i love that i loved him and gather my friends together and just have fun'
• 'id probably do anything and everything possible to do enjoy the last bit of life i had and not look back on anything i did that day'
• 'perhaps eat drink and do everything I wanted to do for so long but never had the motivation'
• 'drugs and sex, and drink jack daniels for the last 3 hours'
• 'spend it with the best gf in the world'
• 'I have 15 hours to live? Go convince Andy Keogh to marry me (And Stearman!). Blow all my money, spend time with family..'
• 'Id want to find the someone who i thought had made me happiest in the world then be with them and my daughter.'
  

This idea reminds me of a blog style website i found called Before i die i want to...
where 2 americans have taken polaroids of everyday people and asking them, what do you want to do before you die? The Before I die I want to... project was inspired by a combination of factors: (1) the “death” of the Polaroid, (2) a psychologist’s tool called safety contracts, and (3) a passion to get people to think about (and act upon) what is really important in their lives through this simple, straight-forward question. I think this is a really clever idea. and it all makes us think about how precious life is and our own mortality. The most touching of images on that site is that they ask patients in a hospice what they want to do before they die, as well as asking the staff who deal with death on a daily basis.
a few examples from the site:

 

Forevers not so long

http://foreversnotsolong.com/

Forevers not to long is a short film that i found while looking for something else, And it really sturred an emotion for me.
While i cant find the video embedded to put in here if you click the link at the top of the post you can watch it.
I think the main hard hitting thing is that relisation that you are going to die. Its set around a bomb going off in america and a guy who finds out that this bomb is going to kill him and everyone around him. It really does make you think, what would you do if you had 15hours to live? the thing that hits me hard is when the main character, rushin home with food, because there is no way of getting away, invites a complete stranger into his home to stay with him, because he doesnt want to die alone, he asks this woman he meets (and is rather mean to might i add) 'would you spend the rest of your life with me?' a question that is over used in stupid romance flicks, (which i hate) is rather poyant here, when both characters know they are both going to die. It basically shows what they do in there final hours alive.
Its a subtle yet very touching short film. It does really make you think, what would you really do if you only had 15 hours to live? and you know there is no exscaping your death.

tutorials

while in the small group tutorials after discussing work, we also looked at each other blogs and Annie had posted a video which we then watched in the tutorial, i didnt know if i should post it on my blog but because of the way this video made me feel.


From the offstart, the dancer painted all black, it brought me back and reminded me of something nightmareish. i know it will sound stupid, but it reminded me of the orcs from lord of the rings. Which i once had a nightmare in which they were chasing me. (i know its the start of a weird collection of dreams ive had.) The second thing that as it were, made me feel uneasy was the movement. the jitteryness of it, that mixed in with the sound, it is the sound that makes this tense, harsh, it made me feel uneasy and even to some extent freaked out. Just the movement in mix with the sound together. It deffo had the intended reaction from me which annie had and what im guessing the director wanted to create.

Day of the dead photo shoot.

So i managed to get my 'day of the dead' inspired photoshoot up and running.  To start with i planned how i was going to shoot it. I decided that to make this more interesting for me, that it was to be a self portrait, and that i wanted it to be just a close up of my face, So for the perpose of self portraits i got Camera control pro 2 which allowed me to control my camera via my laptop, which ment that using my laptops remote i could change iso,shutter speed, appature. I also wanted to create rather a contrasted image so i adjusted the exposure compensation.  I desided to light it using avalible lighting and a flash gun, which i did move after the first couple of shots. I also desided to make a time lapse video while applying the makeup, just for a bit of fun, i have a feature to do that on my webcam, and now i have found out that camera control pro 2 also allows me to do that.
this is the time lapse of my prep:



So here is what i achieved doing this photoshoot:

after the first few images i adjusted the flash gun slightly to get better light by adding a diffuser as well as adjusting the location. i also decided to encorperate some small skull heads that i owned to recreate the look of the Mexican Madness shoot that i featured earlier in my blog. While i lke the straight on portraits, i think te images that stand out mainly to me are the photos that are almost extreme close ups and strange crops of the images. i really like the close up of the mouths and the close up of the face. I guess it links to my passion for surrealism and there way of 'cutting' or cropping the photo on just one body part, detacting the audience from the body as a whole. maybe this is something for me to look into? i also like the playfulness of some of the photos.

So i thought i would share a few of my fave images  from the shoot:

Its really strange, i was rather confused that i prefered images of mine that wasnt like the photoshoot of Mexican Madness, but rather my own ones.  I also found it really easy to take the photos, normally with models i find it hard to ask them to do what i would like and i guess by cutting the middle man out i feel alot more at ease. i dont really do alot of portraits as i really dont like my self image, my self esteme is rather low, so maybe this is something i can explore more? self portraiture and experiment with using myself. I do feel that part of me wants to make this more personal to myself and maybe that is one way of doing it.

Days of the dead

I found a good link to a collection of photos an american paper put together between halloween and the days of the dead. some of the photos i really like, but i also like how its a mix of cultures all surrounding the dead.  I like how none of the images are morbid in anyway and theyre all bright and colourful. it just reminded me of this project.
The link is below:

Days of the dead

Some of my fave photos from this link:

I like the use of light and colour in this. while there is no symbolism of death in it, as an image its very powerful. I like the use of silhouette and how it contrasts the colour with a block of black, and how the focus of the jars go from distingishable to just small dotted blurs the further from the camera you go.

This image is another that i really like, The gashia is a symbol of beauty and elegance, and here we see them mutilated and cut up, its a bitter sweet contradiction. i also like how the subject isnt the closest to the camera and the depth of focus is different. 

this image was taken at the halloween celebrations at the white house, and really reminds me of the 'remains of the day' video from the corpse bride. 

Plan of action

Tomorrow i plan on my first mexican day of the dead shoot, I have got a basic design for the makeup, i have also decided that i want to make this a self portrait.
My plan is to set up my tripod agains a plain white wall, however i have a selection of bright coloured card that im going to stick to the wall to create an interesting background.  I have have perchased the softwhere to shoot through my laptop so i will be using this to my advantage and using it to help me frame and shoot the images.
for the makeup idea i want to encorperate jewels so i brought some of those craft gems to stick to my face, i also brought interesting glue on eyelashes, as well as using the facepaint.
I will upload a contact sheet once i am done.

Danse Macabre

While Looking for some exhibitions to go see to do with my current projects one leaflet caught my eye 'DANSE MACABRE 2009' The reason this caught my eye is because danse macabre is the dance of the dead which i looked at while in ASLEVEL and wrote about in a blog post before! I looked at the leaflet and while i couldnt get to the exhibition on the dates it had left, (london) i have since visited the website.
Danse Macabre is a gothic art exhibition that was on in Nottingham and London and included artists, photographers and live performances.
I looked on the websites of some of the artists and photographers and here are the more interesting ones that i found and liked:

michael cowell:

illistrator and artist (some photography but mainly just of areas of interest to him) his main work that interests me is his illistrations. They seem really eeary to me, often looking at isolation, or those with large groups seem even more haunting expesh when you cant see the faces (as in the image below)  The very sketchy and messy approch reminds me of the 30days of night comics. the shading and colourisation also has that 'dark gothic feel' with many of his images using this sort of tea stained colouring rather then pure white.

http://www.michael-cowell.com/

Photographer and illistrator Mark Leary who does a mix of work- some of his manipulations have a very surreal almost Dali feel to them which i do really like. His photography is a mix of different kinds of portrait, being alternative in style, and weird and clever set ups to put his model in. I really like this photo of his work  and its almost fitting that the title of his website is http://www.asylumseventy7.co.uk/ because the subject looks as if he should be put in an asylum. Obviously making a statement about vanity and obsessivness with how we see ourselves and how important it is how other people view us.

I was also excited to see that two former DEMONTFORT students were in the lineup, Both photographers:
Hamish Walker (fine arts degree)

 Hamish's photographs attempt to capture the exhilarating and terrifying atmosphere felt when walking through the city alone at night, where all your senses are heightened. Light reveals only details in this landscape, serving to reinforce the shadows.

and the work of Grace Elkin who also has a fine art degree from DMU whos work is a mixture of portrait, glamour and fashion with hints of the gothic and alternative scene with some surreal and some fetish (latex ect) work 

Day of the dead and corpse bride

So while looking at the day of the dead the one thing all the bright garish colours and the candy skulls reminded me off was a scene in TIM BURTONS  corpse bride.
This is the scene it reminds me of:


singing skeletons playing instraments made from each others with garish colours and a mix of floresent coloured lights. If death was really like that most people wouldnt be afraid of it.
The whole premice of the film is that the lead Victor accidently marrys a corpse while practising his wedding vows in the woods and ends up being dragged to the underworld. However  the way Burton shoots and planned this film is that the normal earthly world is dull, unexciting, people do things because they have to not because they enjoy it, infact the characters in the normal world arnt ever seen having fun. Everything is dark, colourless, and to almost some extent greyscale, but the ironic thing is when victor enters the underworld, everyone is drinking, having fun, singing dancing, bright coloured. Almost as if to say that death is more fun then life, and that lifes only the que to get into club death. or never feeling so alive till your dead.

'Real life'

'Death'

This whole premise is very day of the dead, and corpse bride even mocks both the living and the dead.
And this is not the only Tim Burton Film to do so, infact many of his film focus on how maybe death is better then life. Another example of this is Beetlejuice where two resently deceased ghosts are trying to work out the ins and outs of haunting while trying to stop its house being taken over by the new occupents and stopping the psyco dead guy beetlejuice (DONT SAY HIS NAME 3 TIMES!) featuring many scenes which show that the dead do have more fun like in this scene where the two main characters (the ghosts) are trying to scare away the current tennents:

Facepaint day of the dead photoshoot reserch

After looking at the day of the dead, and seeing photos documented by Mary Andrade, I noticed that a common thing to do was to paint faces to look like a skull, which gave me an idea of a fashion style shoot but to include facepaint of a skull.
the first thing i thought was... how the hell do i do that?
so i serched online and looked at a few videos on how to do a skull facepaint, some step by step guides, facepainting books, but the best i found was a guy who has a few posts about SFX style makeup (mainly for halloween!) and came across this video post:



So i grabbed ahold of my makeup kit, which while i do have alot i was limited to the stuff i had for the first experiment.
I did have white face paint from a themed night out, and a few different shades of eye shadow and eye liner that i had to make do with to experiment with.
Just for experimenting i did do it on myself and i did copy the half a face skull look. However for my shoot i am thinkin full faced skull would look better. But while i was settling for the half a face look i did a basic 'mexican day of the dead' style eye makeup on the other side of my face. anywho! this was the results:

Once i perchase the right makeup for this (a dark black facepaint) and next time i attempt this i will design it out first rather then just do it as i go along, from afar it doesnt look to bad, I need to try working on my blending for the shadow and of course as i just said a design ready but i mean for 30mins work it didnt come out terribly bad.

Ideas while looking at the Day of the dead

From the day of the dead reserch i have done so far, i have managed to get two ideas really.

One was from looking at the work of Mary Andrade: My idea was to go to a graveyard just before nightful armed with candles and lay them across graves, Maybe with brightly coloured flowers to almost recreate a day of the dead ritual. I think it would look interesting maybe with a close up of the grave followed by a zoomed out so we can see that it is the only grave decorated like that and that maybe the original photo isnt all it seems (mainly that it wasnt actually taken at the festival!)

I also had an idea of using candles to form a coffin shape on the ground and photographing that, inside and maybe outside, even an idea of placing a photo of a person inside or even maybe (i know i know! health and safety!) but surrounding a person in candles in the shape of a coffin.

My final idea involves facepainting and doing a fashion like photoshoot, almost like that of Steve Neaves, but with the face of the model painted like a skull.

Mexican Madness

In addition to my previous post about bizare magazine and its feature on the mexican day of the dead, the halloween issue also featured a photoshoot in a mix between fetish/glamour and to some extent fashion featureing model Kitty Lea By photographer Steve Neaves. The photos all feature Kitty in a latex costume surrounded by garish colours, flowers and flames, candles and images of skulls (figures, jewerly, hair pieces.) These photos are basically more how i would shoot, day of the dead based shoots, with bright colours and symbolism from the traditions. These photos used in an editiorial sence, have had text added to them which are 'Traditional day of the dead poems'  (note obv some of these images are double spreads and with only an A4 scanner the images will be in two parts.

Quote reads:

'On the day of the dead,

spirits rise, the dead walk

abroad tand the bones of

ancestors shake off their

dust and creak into life...'
I think this is one of the stand out images for the editiorial for me, the face, the pose, and the build up of tranditional symbolism, i like the use of the hidden skulls in her hair as well as the layout of the flames surrounding her almost building a 'coffin' of flames

This image is very effective expesh as the text fits in with the image, the flames at the base almost seem to frame Kitty.

I like the use of the flowers in this photo littering the place, as well as the more subtle gestures like the photo in the frame in the background is of rock legend KURT COBAIN who killed himself (one of the premature deaths of a great rock music icon.)

This is my least fave photo from this collection and while it is well compose i think the model looks awkward, She almost looks doll like in this position and i am not sure if that was the desired effect of the photographer.

This will have to be my fave of the photos from this collective. Maybe its just because we can see the detailing on her styling, or the cropped close effect, but the colours looking extreamely vivid witht he contrast of the flowers in her hair to the blue of the background seems to stand out more now then in over photos. The makeup is flawless and the Ringflash is used giving that wonderful effect with the eyes. As well as the traditional aspect, with the skull candy, where it is to represent eating your own death.

Day of the dead in Bizare Magazine

Over the Halloween peird i was lucky because one of the magazines i read had a halloween special on the mexican day of the dead, here i have scanned in the 6 page spread that was included, It also featured a glamour shoot based on the mexican day of the dead which i will upload in my next blog post. 

The Main Thing that stands out in this article, mainly about the history and the tradtions, is in a paragraph on the last page where it states: 

'Contrary to what most people think when they see the festiva's skulls, bones and altars, the Day of the Dwar isn't morbid- in face, it's as much about life as it is death. For those who are missing loved ones who've passed on, Day of the Dead is an opportunity to spend time with people they'll never see again in the flesh. For others, the festival is a time for reflection and to think about the true meaning of life and figure out what they want to achive in their own time on earth.'

I like the fact that no matter how much we think about death, it is always linked to life, and vise virsa, its the whole idea that my project is focused on, life and death as one as a transitional space.

Mary J. Andrade (Day of the dead)

Mary J Andrade has traveled to Mexico every year since 1987 to photograph the mexican day of the dead celebrations. She now has two published bi-lingual books on the subject: Through the Eyes of the Soul and  Day of the Dead in Mexico.
Her work, gives insight into a celebration that some religions may not understand, as well as very well documenting the different traditions that are present in the celebrations.
Her work follows and documents the different areas that go together to form the day of the dead celebrations: (all images by Mary Andrade)
Alters

Flowers

Skull candy and toys

Night Viduls at the cemetry

Andrade is one of the most renound day of the dead photofgraphers and writers.  While i love some of her photos, expesh the close up of the skull candy, the candles in the cemetry at nights with hundreads of candles, and the portraits of the people with the flowers, i also like her photos of the scenes of skeletons in life like situations:

However this year i want to focus more on setup photos, which is helpful as it would be near impossible for me to go to mexico to take documentery style photographs of the day of the dead!

Interview With Mary J Andrade

Mexican Day of the Dead

The first thing that did stand out at me when i looked back at the previous work i had done for AS level was the section on the mexican day of the dead. Maybe because it is a vast contrast to what people think of when they think of death. The people who celebrate have been given the nickname of the 'cult of the dead.' The day of the dead is celebrated every year on ALL SOULS DAY which is celebrated on november second, this is also a celebrated christian holiday, however in latin america and mexico the festival is much more... well festive. The idea is that we celebrate death because it is just a passing from one life to another life, rather then an end.  And there is beliefs that communication between the dead and the living on different levels.  the Indigenous people believed that souls did not die, that they continued living in 'Mictlan', a special place to rest. In this place, the spirits rest until the day they could return to their homes to visit their relatives.
On november 1st the spirits of children and babies are honoured, while adults are honoured on the 2nd. The main difference is that the 1st, children are celebrated by white flowers and specially decorated alters, However on the second honor the loved ones by offering them an ofrenda, the fragrance of the flowers, the light of the candles, the aroma of special foods and the solemnity of prayers.  Mainly of bright and vivid colours.
Its also a time to joke about death! i know it sounds weird because it is such a strange subject to be joking about. People give friends edible skulls with there name on so they can 'eat there own death' 

the main symobolism i can find in the day of the dead celebrations are:

• Skulls- from toys to candy
• candles- lighting the way of the spirits of there loved ones to there family
• brightly coloured flowers
• brightly coloured clothes, costumes and decorations
• imagergy of skeletons in everyday positions
• alters that include: The altar includes four main elements of nature — earth, wind, water, and fire. Earth is represented by crop: The Mexicans believe the souls are fed by the aroma of food.Wind is represented by a moving object: Tissue paper is commonly used to represent wind.Water is placed in a container for the soul to quench its thirst after the long journey to the altar.Fire is represented by a wax candle: Each lit candle represents a soul, and an extra one is placed for the forgotten soul.
  
• Food and offerings.
  
  
  
  
  

Previous Work

Previous to my studies here I did an A-level in Art in which one of my Modules was based around death. Here i wanted to share with you some of my previous work, its also a great base to stand on for this project because I have the start of some practises in the art world which i can look at and use in relation to photography and video:

While this book is focusing more on the art forms (drawing, painting ect.) some of the ideas in here can be brought into my new project to develope upon.

When we Begun our topic for Art, we were told to begin by looking at the structures found in a graveyard, and so forth, which automatically drew my mind back to this project when we were on the Welford Road Cem taking photos for our swap project, the example images on the page to the left were taken at HighGate cemetry, which i was quite lucky to have access to, seems though to visit the cemetry you have to have had a relative who died and is buried there. It is not Open to the public, and hosts some amazing Ruined Graves. It also lies resting places to some famous people.

We then looked at the skeletal structure and almost a black humor approach to it, by placing it in everyday situations in which it appears that someone had just died and decaying in the position they were last in, for some reason this reminded me of Pompey and the mummified remains there, or Some of the ideas surrounding the atom bomb where the skin is litterally burned off the bones and all we are left with are the bones in the same, meaningless position they were in the moment they died.

We then went on to do some (which i hope to continue into this project because i feel it could really progress and lead somewhere) Is the mexican day of the dead. This is where they celebrate the death of the loved ones, with brightly coloured parades, candles, sweets, photos, offereings, its basically a HUGE party based around those who have died.

We also looked into the dance of death, an earlier form of rebellious art, sketches and prints based around a line of skeletons and high ranking political and relious leaders dancing to the grave. In modern day, it would be the same as Gordon Brown, Obama, the pope all hand in hand with skeletons dancing into the grave. Its very black humor.

Discussions on Death as a transitional space

I have chosen to follow down the idea of LIFE AND DEATH as a transitional space, for my project idea.
While we were in the cemetry taking photos for the 'swap project' as a group (Me, Helen and Jan) had a discussion about why we picked it and what made it a trasnitional space which also got me thinking about the subject and the whole concept.

The ideas we come across:

• Life is a transitional space in itself, we are constantly aging, constantly growing, and as the final part of the transition that is life is death.
• Graveyards and cemetrys: Is a transitional space in its self, Its where the spirits of the dead cross over between body and spirit world, its where the ceremonies occor. Its a place of rememberence, a place where family and loved onces come to remember those lost. Its a place of grief and the emotional journeys we all go on when we loose someone.
• Its one of the only places that we go to be connected to the dead, apart from maybe a hospital its the only place to encounter it.

I dont want my project to be all morbidity, I want to look at the relationship between Life and death, not really so much the passing over betwen life and death, but the relationship we have with it.

Here is a basic spider diagram which i did to accompany this post:

edit swap reviews (sorry its late i forgot to post it!)

Here is the opinions and notes and other comments I came up with from viewing the work of the swap edit task.


Group One: ‘craving’ (the ciggy one!) STILLS


The basic video structure was based on stills of cigarette bins and photos of someone’s journey into work/uni. The photos were well shot. The video that was made from it focused around giving up and the cravings that you get while trying to give up. The images were flashed on screen almost subliminally. I don’t know if this was suggesting that it is a subconscious thing to crave cigarettes, or whether the images was edited to the non-diagetic background. The sound used was from a sound program (which I thought it would have been better to have used their own sounds. The backing sound was a heartbeat that gave a pulse to the video. Some words also flashed on screen between the images, the text was basic. Im really unsure whether or not I liked this. It was really good the way it was edited, but I really am not sure if it was intentional or not. I also think the group managed to remove the idea of transitional spaces from it and made it more like a ‘give up smoking video’ which I don’t really see how that fits into the topic.


Group Two: ‘industrial nature’ (jetfighter pigeons) VIDEO


The footage given to this group was of a park, shot pretty well, but with no sound. This is what brought the group to think of focusing on the sound to conclude to a contradiction in the video. The edit of the footage was pretty normal, nothing amazing was achieved, however the idea of using industrial sounds over the top was very good (like our idea for our 30second video!) When I heard it was what they were doing, I thought industrial sounds, LOUD METALLIC HARD SOUNDS. Overpowering. However the video wasn’t as much industrial as a mix of droning tones and a few added ‘impact’ sounds for some objects. I also noticed that some of the sound changed when the image didn’t, which I did find slightly distracting as the audience. The one section I, and everyone else seemed to like was the mix of a fighter jet sound and the visuals of pigeons flying away.


Group Three: ‘experience’ (aliens walk the earth) VIDEO


I really liked the sound scape to this video. The video was edited well, while the ‘backwards’ playing of the video was slightly over used it was still rather interesting piece. The sound for the whole video is just edits of the main word ‘experience’ broken down and sped up, played backwards. It was very disorientating the sound to some extent and was really weird. I like this video. If the sound was different I don’t think it would have been as effective as it is. The only other comment I would make is that it would have been better if they had used there own sound rather than a clip from soundtrack pro. I Know we didn’t have a lot of time for this, but maybe as a future reference!


Group Four: ‘Donald’ (yes we all love Donald!) VIDEO


I really enjoyed this video because it was so unusual in its idea, and completely different from what the original group wanted! The original idea was photos of bridges but the group also took a few other photos around the same area. Using text the edit group managed to make a story about a guy called Donald who loved to cycle around the waterways and bridges who dies. It was very random but I think it is what adds to the video. I also like the music. It was a track running under the video playing backwards and while it’s a commercial song the distortion of playing it backwards help.

waiting for the bus VIDEO



this group didnt really do anything interesting with the edits however they did use text to edit the plot. However i have to say they went for comedy which does seem a little... well naff. Its basically like the narration by the lettering is very sarcastic. Which i dont particually like. theres only background sound until half way through until the pace changes and music starts, and the editing style changes which i think adds pretty well, but still the sarcastic tone does annoy me.


Gone away STILLS


this is the group who we swapped our images with. Its good that they used sound (gone away by the offspring) to forward a narrative that someone had obviously died in a car crash, which is what we were kinda thinking when we shot the photos. there are some good edits in there like when the underpass fades to black and white from colour.


group 7 (epileptic lights) STILLS


this group had the underpass stills and used VERY fast (almost subliminal) edits, which work very well because they act as if the lights are flickering in the underpass which is also reflected by the buzzing noise which also sounds like floresent lights humming and flickering. I like it but it does almost make the audience feel uneasy because of the sound and the very fast moving images.


Mother? VIDEO


i really dont understand the idea behind this peice but yet again maybe that is the idea. I do feel with the editing they overplayed the use of the backward reversed video. the music, classical, almost like a peice from a film noir or a 1920s thriller. Very interesting mix. However the lack of a wind up or meaning does annoy me slightly.


Finding STILLS

 really seems to me like two videos put together, the first talking about train journeys, a man laying waiting for someone or waiting to get up to go somewhere, this is well editied and works well, however the second half appears to me to be a jumble of different images just thrown together for no reason and not alot of logic. it really is surreal that its both just chucked together.


Journey (with a radio)VIDEO

 the sound plays a big part in this edit. its really well constructed. the footage is off just a car journey but it is good because the audio adds to it, starting off as a mixed up radio not tuned in, as the journey continues the words become more clear among the static.