The initial intension for my project, Sweet Dreams, at the
beginning of this year was to produce a physical book outcome of my dream
responses. This then developed throughout my proposal as I made the decision to
produce a website to exhibit my work inspired by my dreams, with the addition
to have continuous submissions from externals with their dream responses in an online
magazine format. After deliberation of the idea throughout my final production,
I decided to create an online exhibition of just my own work, but collaborating
with other creatives to produce a consistent style throughout, ensuring the
project outcome was an exclusively personal response.
The project represents a part of me, not only because of my
personal input of dreams, but I have also developed a style as a result of
deeper investigation of inspiration and influences. My two most influential
professionals have been photographer Tim Walker and Makeup Artist Elya Bulochka.
Both creatives possess an unmistakable style that I find disturbingly beautiful
and inspiringly creative. Tim Walker captures dream-like creations with the
combination of his imaginative creative direction and unique concepts. Elya
Bulochka has the rare quality of a makeup artist who has the ability to
single-handily shock her audience with her haunting yet ostentatious creations.
These creative individuals have influenced the movement of my personal
development within this project and have really enabled me to understand the
importance of being passionate about my work and to not lose who I am as an
artist.
The aesthetic that I subconsciously began to adopt
throughout this project was initially derived from the play on words with the
project title. I wanted to choose dreams with a nightmare origin as for some
reason I am really intrigued by dark psychology and disturbing art. Toying with
a sickly sweet idea, I wanted to produce a beautiful adaptation to provoke
thought for the viewer but to also generate something glamorous with a
contemporary twist. During the design process I noticed a reoccurring theme of eccentrically
styled hair and makeup, producing flamboyant and theatrical aesthetics.
Developing a style to represent dreams as our subconscious fantasies I saw
myself being drawn to the works of Pierre et Gilles. Their style is bold and
colourful with a very strong sense of sexualisation and obvious camp
characteristics. After studying their work, I began to notice myself
incorporating a similar suggestive style. The reaction I gained from my peers
was exactly what I was after as they were visibly absorbed in the concepts.
In addition to adjusting the aesthetic outcome, I have also
further understood my desired aim. By using
artificial enhancements and bold choices of hair styling and makeup; including
wigs, nails and eyelashes, I have created an emphasis on the unclear boundaries
between fantasy and reality of dreams. With the power of clever lighting
manipulation and postproduction I have been able to produce surreal visuals. Throughout this project I have also become
progressively understanding of the incredible potential of our creative minds.
Not only have I discovered my own personal style, but also I
have learnt many other valuable lessons throughout the progression of this
project. The most significant being learning how to successfully perform under
pressure and effectively organising team collaborations. Working as a part of a
team is an essential for a makeup artist in the industry, but leading a team is
a skill I have had to quickly pick up. My first shoots, ‘Neglect’ and ‘Scopophobia’,
had to be the most challenging shoots of them all. With what seemed everything
against us during ‘Scopophobia’, we eventually managed to get the images and footage
we needed. From this, I have learnt to be prepared for virtually anything and
to not be solely reliant on the equipment supplied by the university. ‘Neglect’
was a definite challenge, and I had many sleepless nights as a result. In
preparation, I was extremely prepared in terms of team organisation and
covering my creative production role. What occurred to me was that I clearly
hadn’t portrayed my concept well enough to the photographer and model,
resulting in a misconceived idea of the desired outcome. Even with provision of
reference images of inspiration and style, then providing posing and expression
examples to the model, it was still clear that the idea was not presented
successfully. Both photographer and model had generated a completely conflicting
concept to my own. In my state of panic, I arranged to meet the photographer to
adjust the images in postproduction to create the correct conceptual outcome.
During this time it was necessary to enforce a clear briefing for the two
approaching shoots in order to avoid future miscommunication. During this
action on my reflection from the previous shoots, we were able to produce the
following shoots with great success and little confusion.
I also had the pleasure to collaborate with two other
talented photographers. They both understood my project and brief instantly
with the same explanation process. The results were fantastic with a fast
turnaround of postproduction and very little chasing up. This leads me to
question if my leadership and communication skills were actually poor with the
other photographer, or if he simply tried to force his own ideas into the
project too much and ignored the purpose of the shoots. Luckily, I am more than
pleased with the final images, even if they were a challenge to produce and
receive after many difficulties. From this, I have discovered I possess
persistence with my approach to reaching my goals.
During the briefing process with the photographers, models
and stylists, I was able to also benefit by discovering my exact desired
outcome in better detail. This procedure was very important for my own concept
development. Also working with multiple creative people was extremely
inspiring, especially in comparison to the experience of the proposal shoots. The
quality of the final images have exceeded my expectations and really
demonstrate the importance of having a passionate team to understand my
creative visions, especially as some concepts are quite controversial. During
this briefing process I had large concerns of prejudgement from the team, but
they all took of board my concept very professionally and even contributed to
the creative direction. As a result, I believe that working with a larger team,
despite the challenge of organisation, has largely benefitted this project.
As an addition to the images, my decision to create films presented
a slight risk as it generated a much larger workload for myself. I had very
little knowledge with the editing program and had to quickly teach myself. The
first few dreams took up a lot of time, taking away opportunity for valuable
reflection, but I believe the outcomes have massively enhanced the overall
experience of my project. Reflecting on this, it is clear that I misjudged my
time management skills and the production period but I am extremely happy with
my decision to produce the films as I believe they are highly beneficial for
the concept interpretation. I also took the responsibility to completely design
and produce the website myself in order to gain full control of the final
visual outcome. After developing the concept and style, the pressure to produce
an outstanding website resulted in a challenging creative block that I
struggled to overcome. After taking advice from my tutors, I went and researched
other creative online exhibitions to construct the ultimate style of layout.
After many failed computer based attempts, I resorted to sketching and
concentrated on presenting a more image based outcome. My mind was able to
think creatively rather than productively and I have produced the desired
outcome.
Choosing to create a website over a book was a result of
deliberating the benefits of presenting an online outcome to other
professionals and potential employers. Considering the future development of
this website, I am still undecided if I will add a blog-like submission section
for other artist’s work. Depending on the success of the website this will
determine the future prospects. To enhance the popularity and success I
produced an Instagram account solely dedicated to the project. This decision
was made in order to promote my work onto easily accessible and regularly used
platforms. Social media has massively helped with my self-promotion as an
artist and I have had people approach me about my project and show a genuine interest
and excitement.
This project in no way represents the physical
representation of myself, but perfectly depicts my creative mind and love for
bizarre art. I would like to think that my weird concepts and controversial
outcomes demonstrate my creativity as an artist, possible representing my inner
alter ego. But although this project has not only tested my positivity and motivation,
I feel as though I have generated something extremely personal and rewarding
that I am so excited to fully share.
