Fashion: Constructed Image

In our group we came up with three ideas, we couldn't decide on one right away so started to research all three then will choose one when it come apparent which is the strongest.

Film Noir Mood Board

One idea was to look at the Literature themes, here we thought about perhaps detective novels and using the descriptions from a book and translating them into an image. Straight away from thinking this we thought Film Noir. However even though the final image might have been good aesthetically we thought it might not push us to our fullest potential and thought it was something we could perhaps do in out time to play with this kind of lighting and effects for an image. 

Protest Mood Board

Another idea was to follow the News and Current Affairs theme, looking at the protests something we all as a group was interested in and some of us had been to. This idea appealed to us much more than the Film Noir idea as it was something that could push us as a group and as a concept. Its still something we might be looking at as it could be a very strong image and have some structure behind it. One doubt was how to represnt the street protests in a studio, it might loose its feel or meaning by trying to recreate the protest in a studio, might almost become far to 'fake' and maybe mock. However this is strong idea which hasnt been completely struck off like the Film Noir idea.

Warhol Mood Board

The idea we decided to carry on with was one which followed the Art and Artist theme, decided to look into the world of Pop Art and mainly focusing on Warhol. As a group we felt this might be a bit of fun to do and definitely push us to create something worth while. We thought this could be executed to a high level in a studio as our initial plan is to break the studio into three sets then have three models, one in each room. Playing on the repetition of Warhols work have everything about the room identical to each other, same props etc but in different colour. Running with the Art and Artist idea: Andy Warhol Key Points to idea: Set to be in three Each room in its own colour same props in same position as each other in the rooms Each model to look same Must be an anti-consumerist under tone We decided to play off the repetition of Andy Warhols work as it was in a way his way of protesting against the pop culture and how celebrities and people of stature can be in a way churned out like as if in a factory. Also to enforce this the type of print was even able to be done in a large scale, mass produced way. The screen printing process cuts out the individuality of the celebrity.

Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol

Soup, Andy Warhol

Our concept radically changed from our initial one as we spoke with the tutors. They developed our thoughts and inspirations and helped us to our concept. We decided that instead of making an andy warhol set and trying to give an underline of anti consumerism that we should make a set of anti consumerism with Andy Warhol being the undertone.

We wanted to show through our set how, as a person, everyone is surrounded and engulfed by different products and brands. In this capitalist world we live in it is impossible to escape brands. They dominate our lives, most of the brand we use are owned by the same major corporations. There are even cases where one corporation will create another popular product similar to another of theirs to control that particular market.

We decided to use three walls, each with a different color, as a way to show that consumerism isn't easy to escape. When you think that you have found a way out it just ends up being different products or brands. We used 3 colours: red, blue and yellow. We did this as nod towards Andy Warhol and his "Soup" series. We shot various different products in a studio environment and then photoshopped them together to make the wallpaper.

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Roles in the group

- Kym Mumford: Build Lead http://kmumford.blogspot.com/

- Harry Scott: Props, Camera Master http://hscottphotography.blogspot.com/

- Chris Turner: Shoot Co-ordinator, Health and safety

- Josh Jordan: Casting, Post Production http://jljordan.blogspot.com/

- Aaron Price: Lighting http://aaronpriceuca.blogspot.com/



To start with we looked for visual references and styles to inspire our work. We looked at the work of Chris Jordan and his series "Running the Numbers". A series where he shot products in different ways and then put them together digitally to create a huge print that from a distance resembled somewhat artistic but if looked closer astonished and impacted the viewer. He then highlights the image with a fact about waste, pollution and other matters to impact the viewer in to thinking about the way they treat waste.

Depicts 400,000 plastic bottle caps, equal to the average number of
plastic bottles consumed in the United States every minute.

Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles,
the number used in the US every five minutes.

 We also looked at Andreas Gursky's image "99 cents". It became famous for becoming the most expensive image ever when it was sold for the first time in 2007. It depicts an overhead view of a 99 cent store with numerous brands and products.

We then looked towards film for inspiration and found to films that helped us settle on an idea and a set: "Men in Black II" & "Hurt Locker". "Hurt Locker" is a film about a bomb disposal expert, when he comes back from war he is given a simple task by his wife to pick up some cereal but is confronted by walls of cereal. It doesnt seem real in comparison between his work, life threatening war zone and back to 'life' where its literaly just consumerism and wants, shown by these walls upon walls of produce. From here we took inspiration for walls of produce and then used our initial Andy Warhol and transformed it.

The scenes we took inspiration from in "Men in Black II"are the ones where a different world is hidden in a locker and right at then end that shows the human world being nothing more than the same in an alien race's locker. From here we took the inspiration of a door leading to a different world in the middle of a wall.

As an initial lighting reference we looked towards Guy Bourdin. Below is photo for the Vogue Paris 1977 what interested us in this image was the shine on the back wall paint. It's this shine that might be very useful for our set as it sparks off visual connotations of plastic, which then gives the idea to the viewer of everything in the set showing falseness.

Bourdin's 1985 photo for Vogue Paris has certainly sparked off many ideas. The fact the mannequins are naked reaching out beyond the shop front glass to the models dressed in the clothes gave us many ideas.

For the character we were looking for a young 9 to 5 worker who still had an eye on fashion. A person that works for these big corporations without knowing all the bad things they do, a person who is in the consumerism cycle of working in a corporation to earn enough money to but products from that and other companies. Knowing this we looked for models with a strong face and looks that would look good in a suit. We did a quick casting around university and also looked outside of the university and then choosing a select few of these looked at them in a suit to choose our final model, Tom.

From here we chose Tom and Brendan to see how they looked in suits.

We decided on Tom as we thought that the look he gave the camera would be more interesting but kept Brendan as second choice. We went with Tom to Bluewater to find a suit that fit. At the last moment Tom had to back out for work reasons, luckily the suit we had bought still fit Brendan.

SET BUILD WEEK: