Even after doing the stop motion spaceman I felt I didn’t have enough footage to make the video. I decided to brainstorm more imagery ideas, ones that would not be as extravagant and time consuming to make but would fill out the video with more symbolism and imagery.
I thought again about the colourful MRI scan idea I had of looking inside my head and other spaceman related imagery I could include. I started some artist research by looking into the artist collective Pharmacopeia’s work. Their work is a mixture of art surrounding medical and politics, this feeling like it linked quite closely to the health aspect of my own work. I was reminded of the mother in Requiem For a Dream by the work Hip Hip. In the movie she becomes obsessed with taking diet pills after receiving a call from a day time tv show about winning a prize and becoming somebody. I wanted in the MRI scan imagery to have my own medication present- sertraline. Instead of it showing an obsessive relationship I wanted it to be more of a look into my mind.
I decided to storyboard my work as I felt it would give me much more structure when it came time to filming and making the piece as time was of the essence. I was inspired by day glow’s album cover to use the shoulders up and make my piece out of clay. I wanted however to have a much more realistic look to my prop and paint it similarly to my face.
I used wire and a polystyrene ball to create a frame for my piece. I halved the ball and hollowed it out, covering the whole piece in clay. I then took reference images of my face so I could get the projections and shape as close to my actual face. I was working under time constraints however as I wanted to get the piece done the same day so I could also film so I cooked the clay in the oven. I then painted the face as though I was wearing my makeup and started to hot glue white wool that I had painted roots onto to my head. After I decided to thread black string through the top part of the head so I could remove it. Im really happy with the final outcome of the prop. I think it looks really professional given the time limit and limited materials.
Then out of cardboard I made a box frame for the set I’d put the head in. I wanted to use a black background as I felt after I played around with saturation that the solid black would look really surreal, the prop standing out against it, the main focus. Inside of painting the background I used black fabric for both quality and time reasons, this choice influenced by the Dayglow album cover. For the MRI scans I used clay and just moved it around to create the effect of the brain activity revolving around the sertraline. I used stop motion as a camera shooting choice for each clip- I think the choppy stilted way it looks makes the video have a eerie quality.
Im happy with this sequence over all, I feel it looks really professional and gives off the tone I wanted to create with the video. I now need to create further imagery to fill the video, but I think so it remains relevant ill record my voice over now so I can create imagery to correspond. here I’ve uploaded the sequence as an unlisted video so it can only been seen here:
Olivia Naysmith 