Banksy-A Reflective Review

“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness.”

-Emo Phillips

This is the manifesto of the urban artist Banksy, the elusive street artist renowned for his witty, tongue-in-cheek installations, mainly on the side of buildings.

Personally I think he’s brilliant, and on so many levels. To begin with the humour of his pieces are on my level, the irony and wit are something I appreciate very much. Secondly is his elusiveness. The fact that no-one knows who he is and yet would have seen some of his work shows how powerful anonymity can be.

This has raised an interest in me: The power of the unknown.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/7702995.stm

As the article states, the building on which Banksy drew will have doubled in value just because of what’s on it. It should be said, however, that had any world renowned artist drew a 20ft high piece on the side of the building it would have had the same effect. Yet I can’t help but think that because of Banksys unknown persona it makes the piece seem something more than ‘posh graffiti’. It plays on the romanticised idea of the Superhero, the maverick vigilante.

Its this idea I want to peruse for my next artefact on power. How the unknown produces power.

Memory Artifact-A Reflective Review

There are a number of things I feel that are wrong with this artifact:

1. It doesn’t seem to have a point. I like to give my work a story or purpose, but at a glance these photos just seem irrelevant and pointless.

2. I don’t think I portrayed what I was trying to achieve with these photos in my development process, which directly resulted in point 1.

3. Through my waffling and mind wandering I went off the topic I originally aimed to achieve, which, again, directly resulted in point 2.

I now know not to let myself get carried away with my ideas, and to set myself boundaries and stay within them.

With all that aside, I do actually like these photos as an artifact. Considering photography was never something I had particularly wanted to use before and only went ahead with it because I wanted to try something out of my comfort zone, I think visually they look intriguing. And if at first they might seem a bit unnecessary, at closer inspection they do begin to tell a story. For the gravestones that can be read the audience will think “who is this ‘Mark Smith’? And what made them so important?” thus engaging them, forcing them to collectively remember them and having the desired effect.

Artifact 1-Memory

Here is my developed idea for my first artifact:

Idea 1-Development

After thinking about my first idea and how broad it is I realised that memory isn’t broad at all. In fact memory is very specific to each person. So with that in mind, I took the idea of memorials and condensed it down to a more personel level. And what do we use to remember people by? Thats right gravestone!!

Cinéma Vérité-A Reflective Review

As a way of exploring the styles of Cinéma Vérité I looked in more detail at Jennifer Vendetti’s Billy the Kid.

http://billythekiddocumentary.com/

By only using what seems a simple Handy-cam as the main camera throughout with more emphasis towards the post-production, the film defiantly conforms to the proposed conventions of the ‘Direct Cinema,’ with its ‘naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork’ (thanks wikipedia). This style of film-making not only aids in the subject matter’s deliverance, but the way in which it is delivered. The ‘Handy-cam’ element makes the piece seem real and therefore accessible to the audience, and with the subject matter being so alien to most people, this style helps the audience to relate to the subject matter.

Direct cinéma is the polar opposite of the Dogma 95 movement, both of which strive to portray reality in their forms. And so my view is this: Why must people conform to strict boundries or guidelines in order to produce a peice of real integrity, why not just go with what feels right? For me, these forms can be defined as techniques of portraying reality, and so by taking the most effective methods from each, and create almost a hybrid-genre, you can become even closer to defining reality in as much an objective way as possible, which a documentary should be. Or should it?

Idea 1

Whilst in Berlin I noticed an overwhelming amount of memorials varying from specific memorials for the Romany Gypsy victims of WWII to more general memorials for all victims of war. This made me think: For a memory to exist, it needs to be remembered. This is what led me to my first idea for an artifact to do with memory: 15 images of remembrance. Obviously going back to Berlin would be rather unfeasible, so I’d need to scale it down to Coventry (an obstruction!!). As luck would have it Coventry was as much a victim of WWII as Berlin was and so there is no short supply of memorials knocking about.

To summarise my first idea for my first artifact is 15 images of memorials around Coventry.

The Five Obstructions-A Reflective Review.

My overall thoughts of The Five Obstructions were of intregment, the concept of not even creating something, but remaking it, with a number of completely unnecessary constraints placed upon the creative process was enlightening. My initial thoughts, however, were that the whole concept is a bit pointless: Why would you make life harder for yourself when its not easy at the best of times. Then, the more poiniant the constraints got the more I realised how necessary they where. For example, to only use 12 frames per cut seems crazy, but that forced a pace and tempo into the piece. So to push yourself outside your comfort zone creates results.