Blog 9

Last week we went to Burleigh Print Works, where they do offset lithography. We got a little bit lost on the way, thanks to our teacher's brilliant navigation skills, but I shall not be mean as if it were me we'd've been crashed into a tree in mexico by that point. (or a cactus, in fact.)
But either way, mexico aside. We arrived, and were greeted and sat down for a talk about the CMYK colour systems and everything they make. We were taken on a tour through the building, going through every stage in the process. From design to formatting to planning to printing onto aliminium sheets to actually printing to cutting to binding. It was pretty fascinating in an odd sort of obsessive compulsive perfection sense. After we had finished out tour and note making, we returned to fairfield and had a session of planning the Electric December invitations. We did some benchmarking, then made note of the things we have to include in our own.

Looking at the design process at Burleigh.

Blog 8

This week we were at the Watershed again. This time, we had returned to look at the room in which we will be hosting the Electric December launch night, did some brain storming on good and bad parties, informal vs. formal, how we will decorate the room, signpost, greet guests, dress, the food we will provide, the plan for the evening, the technology, and produced a rough plan for each to be sent to the Watershed even planner people.

Once we had finished this, we were shown to a watershed screening room, in which we watched the 24 films chosen for E.D, we were the jury on which films will win prizes on the night. There were some atrocious films, some hilarious, some disturbing and some brilliant.

Over all, my favorite had to be 'Beloved', a brilliantly shot film with well-incorporated graphics and an amazing twist at the end. There were other films I liked, but this one definitely shone through for me.

Watching the films. The Watershed has incredibly comfy seats.

Blog 7

Last week we spent the day at Fairfield for the first time in a while. This time we were finding our pictures from alphabet city, picked a few and resized them on photoshop to make them the correct sizing for lino cuts. We then spent the rest of the day creating two lino cuts and making several prints of each. When we had finished our printing we picked our favorite and had it photographed. We downloaded the pictures, then edited together our prints and our reference photographs by changing the opacity of the pictures and overlaying them. We then used filters and adjusting of brightness and contrast to finish our pictures.

Me and Ruby cutting out our lino prints.

Blog 6

This lesson we went to the Watershed in our minibus, and were greeted on arrival by Maddy and a professional photographer. The Watershed staff talked us through our plans for the day, and the photographer gave us a talk about her work, inspiration and materials. We watched a film called 'the dark side of the lens', about a man who has combined his two dreams, photography and swimming, to create an amazing piece of monologue-film with beautiful imagery.
When we had finished the talk and brief, we were issued our cameras and went out to the space around the Watershed, where we began our project 'alphabet city', finding letters in the shapes and forms around Bristol. This was interesting, as it taught us to look for the smaller details, or the bigger picture. Looking at a town we know so well from a different perspective, height and state of mind.
When we had finished this we headed back inside for a brief look at the portraits taken by the other group, and got our alphabet city pictures onto the computers.
We went to make some photographs without cameras. Photograms. There was a table filled with everyday objects, of which we each picked a few, arranged in any shape or pattern we felt fitted the 'world through my view' theme, and left them out on sheets of blue paper in the sun to develop. I created an eye shape and a squirrel shape, which I was pretty proud of.
We finished up with a portrait studio, in which I flaunted my unphotogenic awkward skill in front of a camera, (ohdeargod) and I got some good shots of Ruby.
We ended the session with another talk from Kirsty, and I was awarded chocolate for doing a good job. (loving life.)

Because we look super-fly when we are pushing each other over...