For this project we were given the task to create our own Narrative based around the work of Tom Hunter. As part of this we had to split into small groups; for this I worked alongside Rose Mary and Megan Woodford. We began our work by researching into different narratives that we could use, by looking at newspapers and finding headings that we thought were interesting, we mainly looked at the Plymouth Herald newspaper.
We took down a couple of ideas of articles that interested us and possible ideas that we had surrounding these. The article that stood out the most to us was 'Plymouth college of art was one of the highest of the universities that generated the most waste'. When delving deeper into this we found another article about 'Plymouth college of art setting record straight over wasters list'. This gave us a clear basis for where to start our work; for this we wanted to keep the props we had to a minimum, but still focus on getting the detail right in order to get the message across.
We set an evening that we wanted to shoot our narrative and began setting the scene and getting the equipment ready. For our narrative we decided not to use a studio setting, instead we used Rose's flat and cleared the area ready for the shoot. From this we then lay a blanket down, which acted as the back-drop. Megan then laid on the floor and Rose and myself began spreading various 'waste' items around her. The items that we chose were key because we wanted them to have a connection to Plymouth college of art; so we decided to include materials that would be used within the college, including paper, a college lanyard, old film etc.
Throughout the process of doing this we took many photos; making sure to change the lighting settings, change the camera angle, zoom in and zoom out of different areas in each shot. This was key in order to make sure that we got the message across effectively.
Once the shoot was complete, it was Rose's job to edit the images, whilst it was my job to gather together all of the research that we had conducted in order to create the magazine including the article and the research that we had, so that we could show it when presenting. Another thing that we all had to organise was printing our 'chosen' image; for this we had to prepare one of our images that we had taken and print it in an A0 sizing, which would then be placed on the wall as part of our hand-in for this project.
We decided to choose the image which showed Megan laid on the floor, with the rubbish surrounding her. For this image Megan had her eyes closed, we felt this was important within the image, as although Megan is a key part of our image, linking to the work of Gregg Segal, she was still not the main focus and we did not want to draw the attention away from the other areas we were trying to show within the work e.g. the different pieces of rubbish.
Overall, we were very happy with the outcome of our work, especially due to different reasons we had less time than some of the other groups. However, if we had to do this project again, I feel that next time it would be good for each individual to have a go at being the subject in amongst the rubbish, using different forms of rubbish within the images, in order to create a different feel.