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Here is a link to our group instagram that shows the making and journey of our film. The backdrops and the different textures we explored, projection, techniquestion and the general production of our film.

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Women’s fashion in 1968 both and what prosittutes were thought to wear in 1968.

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http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/

Flatpack Fim Festival is a 10 day fetsival where all diffrent artists creative, visual, dancers, puppeteers and film artists showcase their work through Birmingham’s culture. We get the oppurtunity to present our film to members fromr the flatpack film festival panel to nomiate films for 2018.

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Group stpryboard for our film and the group narritive:

‘ Show how desperate sex workers lives were in 1968′

This i believe to be a little insensitive to the topic, my preffered narritive would be:

‘The day of a lady into a lady of the night’

Despite my best efforts I was out voted by my group to connect our film to a modern day story of a woman who gives birth and continues prostituting just 30 minutes after.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5229591/Prostitute-gives-birth-work-half-hour-later.html

Above is an article that talks about prostitution within Hull, the one stand out story of a woman who gives birth and is back prostituting  within 30 minutes. we original inspiration of the Ballsal Heath image and the prostitution in 1968 we connected our film to a modern day story. to represent that this is still a prolific thing happening today just as it was back then. It hurts me to think that any woman would be that desperate for money she would put her body threw that. The fact that she really believes she has no other choice or option.

People need to hear and understand this instead of passing judgements and help these women get on the right path of happiness for them.  On the other hand, a controversial view of if women want to be sex workers , they haven't been illegally forced through violence, threatening and intimidation, it should be regulated like any other job therefore taxable.

In my opinion I think the story of the prostitute giving birth and continuing to work, the story Balsall Heath story and the red light district, should of been two separate stories I think our message about 1968 prostitution has got lost with this modern day connection. They should each have their own representation. As our project was suppose to convey the times of 1968. Yes the film works as a whole but it would of worked better if we were clear with our message and understanding focused in on Basall Heath more and really been able to perfect it. Instead adding in a modern day link so late before it was released. Because when I  furthered my research it's deeply interesting and moving i would love to re visit Janet Mendolsohn's photography again for my own personal project, her photos moved me.

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Imovie

The programme we edited and ran our film through was Imovie, using stop motion, which is one of the best programmes to do so because it gives you that control over the individual time frames. Also allows you put instrumentals over the top and view and edit this through speed, time and colour. However, this was not my role within the group and didn’t have lot of say in how this was executed as it not my area of expertise's. My role was in the making of the physical puppets. I have used Imovie in the past but only at a basic level and would love to brush up on my knowledge so I can play a bigger part in the editing and filming

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Above are the puppets I made for our group film. My main focus when originally making my puppet was sourcing different materials and objects and gathering ideas and inspiration from there. I always found the best place to get one of items are charity shops I found all sorts of porcelain dolls, wooden dolls, toy babies but nothing I really thought fit the theme. However, did play a big part in pulling all my ideas together and sort of doll I definitely did not want to make.  I came across some miniature wooden drawings dolls, the ones you used to have in school to teach you about portions and was a basis for drawing the human figure in many different ways, which you can bend and move to form any shape. This idea of movement and interaction was already there and I thought if we decided not to do stop motion you could add strings and it would be just as effective. Then went around my house scavenging materials, jewellery, buttons, string, lace anything I could fashion into a 1968 dress. I came across an old pair of gloves cut the finger and used this to start my dress i think added trimming I found around. The use of a left over arm cast came in handy for the underlay of the skirt. A broken necklace acted as the earrings and added stone to shoe. An old scarf and superglue was carefully and painstaking attached to the head with silver string for her hair bobble. It was the items I found that gave me the idea for her outfit and then with research into 1968 women's fashion I managed to come up with these two dolls. One is day time wear casual taking her children to school. The other what she wears when she is prostituting. As you can imagine what you wearing has an impact and symbolic reference when prostituting in certain areas at certain times. She is trying to draw in attention and in essence she selling herself so her daytime outfit would transform into something that would fit the roll, shorter skirts, dresses, stocking, boots something a little more revealing.  I tried to reflect that through my puppets.  I left her without a face because I don't want to identity her as one woman she represents all woman and the silence of this film shows the silent suffering women have to go through everyday a lot of the time with no other option or against their will. Loved making these puppets seeing how clothes and details can bring something to life.

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Basall Heath, Birmingham in 1968 when it was Birminghams biggest red light district. rubbole and rubbish left over from the war. Compared to present day 2018. you can see that the buildings still have a similiar sort of architecture still keeping with the victorian houses and style. Howver, what a huge difference. Really has came a long way. For me it’s a reminder of lucky we are to not live in area destroyed by war, taking years to rebuild.

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stop motion

 stop motion animation also known as stop frame animation was a type of filming we were considering looking into when filming our own film. What is stop motion? stop motion is when an inanimate object is placed photographed then slightly moved again, this process is repeated, then the photos are ran together very quickly to create the illusion of movement. I personally love stop frame animation is has a beautiful handmade quality about it, just like the puppets iu made for the film, so i though these would compliment each other well. The time and details put into stop motion if done well can be very effective and when looking at films such as Wallace and Gromit, Caroline and The Nightmare Before Christmas I was inspired because puppets, clay models and dolls aren't actually suppose to move the finished product of stop motion. It really is a likeness to how you would imagine they'd move, especially when viewed by children. An example of how stop motion can be done simply just with a flip book in the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T_dQniyXIU

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Paul Klee

Paul Klee was also an artist I briefly looked into when toying with the idea of possibly making hand puppets, I liked the free loose style to his work. This technique gave me the feeling of nostalgia, and reminded me of the simplicity and freedom of creating puppets and artwork at school. His work has a Punch and Judy vibe and when researching deeper in to what inspired him to  create these very abstract and dada-esc puppets, it was in fact his son he made a series of 8 puppets based of characters that were appropriate to his son the positive feedback he got is what kept him creating. I love the imbedded comedy in the comical clay faces of his puppets, they tell a story before even being performed.  The raw earthiness of his clay and cloth puppets compliments very well, even as a standalone puppet you get the intimacy and interaction with audience as they can play out there scenes. I love that his work doesn't seem unreachable, all you need is an imagination and odd bits of collected items to start making your own puppet.  which are techniques I adapted when making my own puppets.

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 Janet Mendolsohn, Balsall heath 1968 & The Red Light District

 This was the starting point for our film. When originally discussing a theme for our project we were given the guidelines of picking something prolific from 1968 or a topic that you could successfully articulate whilst giving out a meaning and message to our film. This image really stood out to me because this is how the majority of people were living in Balsall Heath at the time people weren't dirty and hungry it was just a  very working class city where people work very hard for very little. A photographer called Janet Mendolsohn was an American studying photography in Birmingham and she created a montage of photographs that really showed you the inner workings of Balsall heath at the time. In fact the biggest red light district in Birmingham at the time meaning prostitution was  a prominent culture and people were always aware of who was a lady of the night and who wasn't. This image gave me the basis to form an idea for our film for people to understand the struggle or being a prostitute especially in 1968 where their weren't masses of open opportunities and it was even harder if you were a woman. A delicate depiction of this is what I had in mind, a woman who feels she has no other option and has to find  a way to feed her children using any means necessary  ensuring her children are warm and clothed. Janet Mendolsohn portrays this through her work giving you a glimpse of the everyday life of a prostitute in the inner district and the profound importance and significance it has. She interviewed families, pimps and the prostitutes themselves which is a rare insight into a still very secret unknown world. With around 200 prostitutes working there at the time it really was the largest red light district in Birmingham, which is still the second biggest city in the UK. Varna Road  named the 'wickedest road in Britain' was legend to all sorts of rumours but Janet Mendolsohn went and looked deeper focusing mainly on a particular woman Kathleen and everything that surrounds her life as a prostitute She has captured photos of her taking her children to the park, looking lovingly at her newborn and standing on rain washed sheets she wants people to see it as it was, normality. Varna Road became a place for sightseers. people wanted to see the red light district for themselves. After the war Britain's infrastructure was falling apart and needed cheap labour so looks towards colonies like Brixton, London ect.  Balsall Heath was one of the first places first generation immigrants settled.  I think the true beauty in capturing these photographs is that they were brought to light 50 years later when a social historian came across them when creating an archive of the 50th anniversary of Birmingham centre for contemporary cultural studies, and what perfect representation of real life and culture in Birmingham in 1968. A different fresh perspective on the red light district.

 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/11/wickedest-road-in-britain-photographer-janet-mendelsohn-varna-road-birmingham

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Hannah Hoch

Hannah Hoch was a German artist born in 1978. she was a Dada artist and know for her social views and this was portrayed through her artwork.  Having strong beliefs in political discourse and gender roles her work inspired women to liberate themselves and blur the lines of the stereotypical woman and their roles at the time, especially in Weimar where her work is well known and circulated. Hoch solidified her beliefs by being one of the very few women in the dada circle and the Nazis even stopped her 1932 exhibition in  Bauhaus because she depicted androgynous women and this when against the ideal Aryan women at the time. Although, I believe the reasons lied with her sexuality, this never stopped her and she vehemently went on to put her message out into the public and continued producing unique art that went against the norm. She wanted an autonomous world where women were given the same rights and opportunities as men at the time. Hannah Hoch's work and the message behind relates well to my project as it's all about the roles of women and their struggles through difficult times and politics. Being one of the originators of collage she inspired a lot of my ideas at the start of the project when I was building a set and gathering different materials together. I was trying to recreate a room from an image taken in 1968 for our film pulling together different materials that I could possible turn into something else which is what Hannah Hoch does with her work. She takes multiples different images and brings them together to create something completely new in the simplest most effective way.

Hannah Hoch's puppets are conceptually perfect for the message she is trying to convey about women and their roles. She furthers her style of portraying women as androgynous through her puppets. Creating eclectic and abstract pieces using lots of random materials she pulled together to give the general outline if the female form in her own vision. leaving breasts and nipples on show, to further reinforce her message. She uses beads, odd cuts of material, wire, wool, infact anything she can find to transform her vision. I myself used this method cutting up gloves, scarf's and jewellery to make the clothing for my puppet, it's a huge part of the process and works as inspiration. that bottle lid could be a hat or the start of an umbrella this is the true beauty of working with physical objects the texture, shape and movement impact your ideas and become a part of the creative journey.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_H%C3%B6ch