This weeks workshop saw the class present their final edited self portrait sequences as part of Project Brief 2. The quality of the pieces that I was able to witness was simply astounding and terribly intimidating. I have positive things to say about all of them but I will discuss only a few. Bliss’ self portrait was a delightfully abstract piece, her idea to project childhood videos onto the wall and record it was genius enough. However, her further decision to then distort the artifacts created a video purposefully chaotic yet flowing that perfectly reflected the complicated process of the human mind.

Alex’s use of cuts in his project brief created a video that was not only individual, but also one that contained a strong narrative and perfectly reflected his identity with or without a reflection. I particularly loved the speed of the video, where the quickening jump perfectly fitted a complicated mind into the one minute time restrictions.

Finally Ella’s piece had a really interesting calming quality to it. The constant use of quiet silence really worked to generated her love of peace and the martial arts. Furthermore, her piece had a significant beginning, middle and end, something which I think my piece definitely lacked.

In terms of the presentation of my piece, it was received somewhat better than I expected. Despite myself not being entirely happy with the finished product (who ever is?), the humour in the video gained a great reception and was clearly it’s strongest element. In terms of constructive criticism, it was pointed out that perhaps their were simply too many ideas to fit into the small time restrictions.

I have undoubtedly left the workshop with a number of ideas for my next project brief, particularly the use of jump cuts, and Bliss’ projection idea (it really resounded with me), I also like the idea of using an authentic guitar piece as my backing track. Currently for Project Brief 3 (a portrait of someone else), I am looking at my uncle Cam, and I already have a number of ideas running through my head.