Puppetry: The art of improvisation

SHORT DOCUMENTARY / 2019

'Puppetry: The art of improvisation' proved to be a challenge for me as a visual storyteller. Throughout the process of making this short documentary, I was constantly faced with new obstacles to overcome. While filming in a bedroom is not the most demanding of spaces, light was always an issue for me. Over the two days which we filmed this project, the sun, sure as it will, moved across the sky, leaving areas of my image dark. It was at this time that I began to experiment with using shadow to my advantage, and I realised that not all of the image had to be perfectly lit all of the time. While the puppetmaking itself was mainly improvised, so was the cinematography.
 This project gave me plenty of time to experiment with composition and the newfound love I had for the slider, which I borrowed from my friend at the last minute on the gamble that it would work out. I have merely filmed the story, but being able to tell it in such a visual manner, and to make a piece of film that I can be proud of is an achievement for me.

Politics? Who even knows at this point

A series that just moans about Brexit.

The struggles of an agenda

A mini photographic series

This series was originally intended to be shown as how a night out can turn for the worse. But I think it serves as a tribute to how a lot of plans, however well structured they are can go horribly wrong.

To me, light is extremely important in photography. It allows creators to help tell a story in an image. In this series, I chose to be extremely consistent in my lighting design. I used a method I had not tried before on a shoot in order to achieve a soft, flattering light on the face which allows for a gentle shadow under the chin. Typically, this is achieved by the use of an octodome. Since I don't have the money readily available to buy one, I used one of the studio flash heads I had and set it up around eight feet from the model, and between it and the subject, I placed the central diffusing layer of a reflector clipped to two light stands. This massively diffused the light and spread it out among the entire area of the reflector. This created an effect that I am very happy with overall. Out of shot of the model, I placed another flash which fired against the white backdrop, blowing it out in the camera's shot, and it also bounced light back on to the model to act as an edge light which offered separation between them and the background. Overall, I think the lighting of this image contributed to the storytelling aspect of this series, because without it the image would look totally different.