Project Brief 2 – Trashy fashion

Project Brief 2 had us make a 30 second to 1 minute long fashion film on a subject of our choice. I’m really into the idea of these project briefs that give us the freedom to pursue a topic that interests us, especially because the umbrella of fashion is so expansive, it truly allows me to be as creative as I possibly can at that certain moment in time.

I thought it would be wise for me to use this project brief as a good precursor for my final project brief. I love the trashy side of life and the uniqueness that comes with individuals and their own wardrobe. My friend Harriet is an incredibly unique and creative individual and i’ve always loved her sense of style. She has the keenest eye for found, unique pieces and surrounds herself with young, emerging designers. I thought it would be great to use her in this project brief.

I loved the way it came out! I love the joyful, spontaneous nature of the video all thanks to Harriet and her incredible collection of clothing. Rob and I played the song during the shoot with Harriet so she was able to dance along to it, which made it a lot easier to edit in post-production as her natural rhythm and groove matched up with the song already.

Whilst editing the video, I really took on board Robin and Christina’s advice about framing the video in a consistent matter, and as a result, made the choice to omit the shots of Harriet’s feet and legs from the finished result. I think this ultimately gives the video more direction and stylistically makes more sense then mixing shots of her upper body with her lower body.

In saying all of this, I can’t ignore the fact that I have two personal qualms with the video in terms of technicalities. Whilst I initially believed that a lower quality video would suffice and promote the idea of trash better than something high quality (I still believe this), I just wish we’d filmed it on a bit more of a ‘capable’ camera with some adjustable settings. I think the overall texture of the video is a tad unpolished where it could have come across as a bit more reassured had it been filmed on a more technical camera. Finally, I think that a camera with a bit more manual settings could’ve fixed the auto-exposure issue that you can see sometimes throughout the video. At times the wall is a tad warmer, and in other scenes its a bit cooler in temperature. Whilst these are problems that I find annoying, I do not believe that they take away from the overall aesthetic of the project.

This project brief contains the party vibe that I want to bring to the rest of my projects. This was a good place to start to get myself hyped for future assignments and to get me truly thinking about how I want to approach my final video and how i’m going to execute it to fully put forward this trash/party culture vibe that I want to convey…