Creative Contextual Practices: Part 2...Monsters and Fairytales: The Project

In order to challenge the Film and Costume students I devised a creative project that would demand that they work with people they have never worked with before. 
The students were divided into 6 groups of 4-5 students - half of each group from Film, and half from Costume. 
The project:
Work together, utilising your skills, to create a scene from a fairy/folk tale. 
Research an idea, then plan and make a set using found materials.
Set up a professional photo shoot of your set in a suitable studio space.
Produce one still image that includes a relevant line from your chosen fairy/folk story.
The objectives:
Focus on team work
Select a project manager and undertake a skills audit of the team.
Research, select and design a scene.
Use mise-en-scene to "tell the story"
Understand image systems, semiotics, mise-en-scene
Adopt professional working practices, especially with respect to delegating roles, utilising equipment etc
The Outcome:
Each student team to present their work in an illustrated seminar that shows the development of ideas, relevant research, focuses on "critical incidents", and showcases their finished piece[s].
Critically evaluate the group's performance
Critically evaluate own performance in the project.

Student groups immediately started discussing and selecting appropriate ideas. Each group set up a Facebook group to enable sharing of ideas, and to evidence the research and discussion around the idea.

What they did...
Group 1: Selected The Ugly Duckling story but got caught up in making puns about KFC..."goodness how I've changed. I hardly recognise myself".
The group did struggle initially, but eventually settled on The Emperors New Clothes, "Does not my suit fit me marvellously". The group wanted to focus on celebrity culture / fashion and consumerism. 

Group 2: This group very quickly decided to use Bluebeard as their fairy tale. They were well organised, and understood each other's strengths, deciding on elements of the design that each of them could undertake. They located excellent props in second hand shops, and quickly came up with an entire concept. They decided that they would like to make a moving version, with sound, as well as a still image, and also thought about creating gifs etc. They started testing ideas using a camera phone and paper sets.
The group really understood the brief and researched the themes of Bluebeard intensively to gain the right feel for the set.

Group 3: This group chose Snow White and quickly thought up a concept. they were efficient and independent in their research and design. Their idea was different from the others as it focused on real size props, and avoided the mini set build that other groups chose to employ. The focus for the group was on creating a 'beauty' magazine front cover that explained their concept. Next post you can see the results...very impressive.

Group 4: This group talked through a lot of ideas before settling on Alice in Wonderland.  They worked very well together and came up with a clear design concept that worked to highlight each of their own skills. Again, this crew sourced some great objects from second hand shops and adapted them for use. They researched in depth and shared their findings. Great communication.

Group 5 Struggled to settle on an idea. They were excited about the project but as a crew could not focus on organising their ideas. Eventually they decided on Hansel and Gretel and created a good set although the concept could have been explored much more. The challenge for the group became how to make a house out of sweets, rather than on what the concept of the idea actually was. No one in the group wanted to take the lead and manage the project which was reflected in the lack of focus. However, they did undertake a lot of research into the use of witches in fiction and evidenced this on their shared blog.

Finally, Group 6 who struggled for a long time about what story to use, before settling on Bluebeard. They worked well as a team, and shared ideas for developing the concept. A very positive, solutions-focused input from Costume students.

The project has been really useful to analyse how the students worked as a team; with people they did not know well; with materials/equipment they had not all used before; under pressure; how they communicated and collated research.

The following images show each group in their photo shoot:

Group 6

Group 5

Group 4

[Group 3 shot "on location" - no photos available yet]

Group 2

Group 1

Next post will show you the finished projects and critically analyse some of the activity that took place.

Creative Contextual Practice: Part 1...Monsters and Fairytales

This term I've had the opportunity to welcome some first year Costume Production and Associated Crafts students into the Film department to work with first year FD Film and Media students.

This was exciting for me, not least because it tipped the gender balance of students in the room to about 50:50! However, it threw up it's own challenges because I didn't know the Costume students at all. They had been taught by a colleague during the first term, whereas I had been teaching the film students from day one.

The first afternoon session was a bit of an unknown. I had to work out what these students were interested in, find out what makes them tick, and how to get their attention on topic. I have to say they were really great! Although they started out a little quietly, they soon engaged with some of the ideas under discussion, and we had critical discourse about their interests and what they expected from the module. The Film students were much more relaxed and open, and very much owned the space, so I decided that this would need to be addressed over the course of the next few weeks. I decided to put together a scheme of work that would address the following:

• 1. Interesting themes that would engage both film and costume students, and their particular and diverse interests.
• 2. Focus on discussion, and creative tasks that would encourage group activity, including a project where I would put teams together.
• 3. Strategies to encourage full engagement with the themes under discussion, focusing on developing their research skills.

The scheme of work I put together encouraged independent research as well as group discussion and some informal presentation / sharing of research each week. It focused around themes to do with monsters, and particularly analysed mise-en-scene and cinematic/photographic storytelling.

The first topic we began to analyse was the fairy tale. This is a great topic to use with creative students because it is so rich with imagery and there have been so many retellings and re-appropriations of the key themes and characters. We focused on Red Riding Hood, and it's key motifs, and also used auteur theory to contextualise the work of Guillermo del Toro, particularly Pan's Labyrinth (2006).
link to seminar slides

Sket (2011 dir. Bhogal)

Vogue US 'Into the Woods' (2007 Mert & Marcus)

Red Hot Riding Hood (1943 Tex Avery) 

Pan's Labyrinth (2009 dir. Del Toro)

Having begun to investigate the notion of the monster in fairytales, the second week moved this topic on, looking at Bluebeard specifically. We focused on the concept of the Orient, Orientalism, learned cultural norms and stereotypes. We used a wide variety of case studies to discuss race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity.

Link to seminar slides

Bluebeard

Orientalism in painting

Rihanna 2013 Pour it up

Our third week focused on bringing together notions of monster / other / cultural beliefs, and looked at the way the monster is used as representative of particular ideologies.
Link to seminar slides

District 9 (2009 dir.Blomkamp)

Aliens (1982 dir. Cameron)

Monsters (2010 dir.Edwards)

Our fourth week began to look towards developing a project. We focused on semiotics, mise-en-scene and how to read images.

link to seminar slides

For the costume students some of this was entirely new, and the film students had a chance to show off their knowledge. The focus was on discussion, individual and group analysis of particular images and film examples, and an understanding of the full range of elements that relate to mise-en-scene. The level of critical analysis was really strong. Students felt able to speak up about their ideas, and were noticeably increasing in confidence.

Child with Toy Hand Grenade (1962 Diane Arbus)

Engagement throughout these first four weeks was excellent, and the students brought many examples and case studies of their own to the discussion. However, they were still quite stuck in their own cohorts so, for me, I felt it was really important to encourage some cross-discipline work, and focus their energy on working with people they might not ordinarily have worked with.

The next post shows how we used some of the ideas investigated in the seminars to work on a set design project.