Fine Art Collaboration - Sea

For this project we were given a week to create a 5 to 60 second video on a specific theme. The point of this project was to develop teamwork skills and to use both a game arts and fine artist viewpoint to create our theme into a form of art. As our theme was ‘Sea’ we discussed different ideas as well as film styles, such as high res, stop motion and slow motion. As well as discussing film styles, we still needed to decide on a subject matter to portray into out film.

After discussing different matters we remembered on the image we was given there was a jellyfish. One of the members of the group had the idea of using plastic bags; turning them upside down and making them look as if they were jellyfish. We further pushed the idea forward when I thought of placing balloons inside the plastic bags with some form of liquid, and then capturing the balloons bursting on camera. We thought this would give the film subtle undertones of pollution as well as possibly animal cruelty.

We collected the equipment we would need, including a transparent water bath, bags, balloons and different substances to place inside the balloons. We tried different types of substances such as paint, washing up liquid and PVC glue to see what affects they would have on the water.

Now knowing how to make the fake jellyfish, we discussed what our film would be about, however 2 of the group members hadn’t got in contact with us and after numerous attempts to make contact the rest of the group decided it would be best to continue. As we’re all on the same page, we decided to crate a mockumentary style film involving a scientist’s discovery of the new species (with the irony being the creatures are clearly fake). We had one of the members of the group playing the part, while the other filmed. I myself was in charge of location finding and part of the script writing.

Although the entire groups original plan was to create a serious film, we felt a comedic film would be much more interesting then something predictable. We had a lot of fun filming, using a lot of the outtakes as a bass line for some of the scenes in the film. One of the members was also able to do a convincing David Attenborough impression, which when using as a voice over to the film (similarly to T.V shows such as Planet Earth) added to the comedy in the film.

Once all the filming was done we took our equipment to an inside location to film the underwater jellyfish scene. We filled up the box, placing pebbles on the bottom to make it look more convincing. We found by turning off the lights and shining a bright light behind them box, and illusion type effect happened to make the light look like sunlight, and actually look like the camera was underwater. We filmed the fake jellyfish underwater, as well as getting shots of the bag bursting to go with the joke of film being that the creatures pollute the ocean themselves.

We also tried a variety of different effects we could achieve by different processes. For example we placed LED lights inside the balloons, combined with the mixture inside the balloons. This worked really well at certain angles which show a light glowing inside the 'head' of the plastic bag, which gave a extraterrestrial vibe to the pieces. We also used different lighting to see how it would show up against the water and bag itself; we did this by using translucent coloured paper to see how the light would appear in the water and against the plastic bag.

In all I feel the film worked well and we hit multiple genres, that being comedy, documentary and as well as sending a message about pollution. At the group screening of everyone films we made the audience laugh and feel that we got the reaction we wanted. While it is regrettable the fine art part of collaboration didn’t contribute much to the project, but I feel we had the best result this way.