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wouldyouwearitifyouknew · 8 years ago

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The Creative Media unit has been extremely challenging for me, but also very rewarding, as I have gained some great technical and project management skills to take with me in my further studies at LCF, as well as my professional career.

I approached this unit in Spring 2017 not knowing how to create moving images. I only had a project idea, which originated from my previous Fashion Journalism unit; my concept idea of revealing the ‘dark truth’ about the fashion industry, which developed into an interview about child exploitation, and my own images of faux and real fur.

In January 2017, I watched a breaking news story on ITV about child labour in the cosmetics industry’s supply chain; children from the age of 5 was being exploited to collect mica – a natural shimmering mineral found in beauty products like makeup, such as eye shadow. I learned a lot by watching this news story, however, I wanted to learn more, so I started researching this, in the hopes of creating a follow-up story for my magazine.

Unfortunately, I did not have time or space for such article in my magazine, but I kept my research, which eventually led to my concept idea of my Creative Media project; create awareness of child exploitation in the cosmetics industry.

I was the Project Manager of our group, which consisted of three students, including myself. I am a good team player, but I prefer to study on my own, so collaborating with two other students to plan this big project challenged me a lot both in relation to my patience, and my time management and organisational skills.

My main role as a Project Manager was to lead the group and its progress, and being the first point of contact for everyone involved. I was delegating roles to my group members, and planned deadlines and team meetings to hold a schedule and ensure all work was completed in time for our exhibition event.

I enjoy being part of the decision-making process and ensuring that deadlines are met. However, my role as a Project Manager was taken advantage of, which led to me doing most of the group work to ensure it was done in time.

Being Project Manager has given me leadership skills and has made me more proactive than in the previous terms, since we were all depending on each other. It has also taught me to be more concise and firm when making decisions affecting more people than myself.

In this unit, I had to generate 50 pages of A3 research. In the beginning of the term I was unsure of how to create these, but after a session with two previous students showing their portfolio research created physically in a sketchbook, I was inspired to do the same. I bought an A3 sketchbook and many different art tools to create my research pages; I enjoyed being creative and building up my pages, although it was time consuming.

We were handed a reader called do it, which was a project idea developed for an exhibition to make the audience interact with it. This reader inspired me to create layers of research on each page in my sketchbook to make my research pages more interesting to look at, but it also gave an opportunity to engage with the pages by flicking through each layer.

I went to Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition at Tate Modern as part of this unit. I was very inspired by how he presented his research work to the exhibitors, as it was a great way to let the audience follow his journey of this project, as well as reading information about his themes.

The do it reader, as well as Tillmans visible research at his Tate Modern exhibition inspired me to have my own research pages at display, to show my development throughout this project.

I learned a lot through this process, in particular about layout – my first few pages were messy, I had filled up the whole page with information, but after a layout session with the tutor, I started using grid lines and play with negative space.

Developing my concept idea into story boards to help shooting my film was a task that I was not confident in. Furthermore, editing my footage was another tricky part of my project, as I had not done any of it before.

I had explored photography in my previous unit, using a professional camera lens, but I had never filmed professionally before, so I was worried about the outcome.

I decided to use my iPhone 7 to shoot everything, because I wanted to create a certain natural rawness, but also because I was not confident filming with a professional camera. We have had a couple of technical lectures including Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC to help us with the editing process of our footage. I had never used any of the programs before, which made me concerned about the end result, however, being a fast learner I quickly picked up the basic skills for Premiere Pro CC and decided to edit my film using this software.

I planned to finish my film a week early to allow time for a tutorial with Mandeep for any feedback and last-minute edits; this proved to be a good idea, as I needed to colour correct my film and add in more audio.

Finally, after half a day of last edits, I finished my film and I am pleased with it – filming with an iPhone 7 has given a surprisingly great outcome, and I believe my concept idea is communicated well.

The day of our event was stressful, as I had a few things I needed to do for my own project, as well as completing final tasks for our group work.

I had decided to hand in two sketchbooks – one being the original with all the layers, which was displayed at the exhibition for the audience to see and flick through. However, as I was worried the original sketchbook would get damaged during the exhibition, I scanned and printed all the pages prior to the event, to hand in with the original sketchbook.

I went into this unit with no film editing skills and very little project management skills, and I am ending this unit with having learned both. It has been a long, challenging, and rewarding journey; I have struggled with the group work, but I have enjoyed creating my individual work, and I am proud of myself for my development throughout this unit.

For future projects, I need to start a lot earlier than I did to avoid stressing out last minute. Furthermore, I need to be more assertive when it comes to managing the project, to ensure all team members have equal shares of work and all deadlines are met.

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