Box mounting!

It’s been a while since I wrote in the exhibition journal now. Although the project is finished to some extent, I just wanted to add some final touches.

First off, the second year students did an absolutely amazing, brilliant, fantastic job on constructing the flats, the hub, the plinths, the everything! We carried the plinths to the studio a few weeks back, and they’re perfect! It was really nice being able to take some money out of the budget and reward them with pizza (not to mention feasting on the leftovers!).

Yesterday we had a session gluing boxes, which was nice. It was a good break from all the stress of finishing for the deadline, for some peculiar reason. Henrijs painted the boxes today, and I cannot believe how nice he made them look! I mean, seriously, they’re used KFC boxes, and he made them look like canvases!

Robin brought in all the pillows she made. Meg helped out with the build on the day she got back. I’m super excited to get started on exhibition stuff once we finish our assessments. It’s going to be a genuinely beautiful exhibition, and I have had such a great time being part of the development process. I can’t wait to see it all come together.

Presentation of exhibition project

I met Jack at 10 by the AV shop to pick up camera equipment. Everyone were getting in early to rehearse the presentation. I think people were a bit jumpy in the beginning of the day, but as we got on practising, the tension somewhat wore off. It was a fun day, everyone seemed really excited to show off what we had come up with.

For the sake of grading, here were my chores of the day:

• Pick up camera equipment
• Bring in supplies for drinks (me and Robin)
• Get ice (more tricky than it sounds when you don’t have a freezer, haha)
• Mount concept art onto foam board
• Mix drinks (me and Robin)
• Hand out concept art and popcorn during the presentation

I was very, very, very happy I didn’t have to present. I was so impressed by how organized our presenters were, I think they appeared extremely professional. Perhaps Lucy the most, since she wasn’t actually supposed to present, and had to step in last minute.

I’m confident that this project has been a great experience for us as a group. It was a shame that not everyone participated, but those who did all helped us get to where we are today. It’s been busy, chaotic, annoying, entertaining, hysterically funny at times, but most of all: simply brilliant. I’m very proud to have been part of it. Douglas was an amazing and truly inspiring teacher for us during this period, and he really helped us get to what we have now. This project has been a really good experience, which I believe most of us really enjoyed.

The best reward from the project came straight after the presentation, presented by dead silence in the room. This, followed by feedback we had only dared to hope for. It felt really good, I think every single person in that room felt on top of the world for the rest of the day. Our little corner of the studio was filled with the essence of world conquer. It was truly brilliant.

Presentation practice run

The people who were presenting started rehearsing early in the morning. I had a meeting in Bank, so I didn’t get into uni until 3pm. They had obviously done a lot of work. We stayed for an hour or so more, and divided up some tasks that had to be done for the following day.

Mine:

• Bring drink supplies
• Pick up AV equipment
• Let Robin know I had signed her up for filming the presentation
• Print and mount samples of concept art for the presentation

Once we heard that the Jellyfish talk tomorrow had been postponed, we decided to meet up at 10am tomorrow.

Final exhibition meeting with Douglas

Today we met up with Douglas in the studio, to practice the final presentation of our curation project. We decided the following:

• Presenters: Jack (screen group), Milly (model box group +BFI exhibition), Mia (detail group), Charlotte (budget), and Amber (exterior group).
• In the following order: Mia (detail) -> Milly (model box room) -> Jack (screens) -> Amber (exterior) ->Milly (BFI) -> Charlotte (budget). This gives a nice flow through the concept, which also represents the journey we want our concept to tell.
• Sara and Pilar would be in charge of each their presentation screen.
• Two or three people would film the presentation, so we could put it on our Kickstarter and possibly in the exhibition itself. Me and Sophia would have each our handheld camera, and we’d have a free-standing one in the back.
• Hand out sample cocktails and popcorn during the presentation.

Projection try-outs

Me and Sophia met up today to test projection for the screen installation (which may not be a screen installation anymore). We tested out the interview footage and some videos of our work onto different surfaces: brown cardboard boxes, white foamboard, thick watercolour paper, some kind of thin, grainy paper roll, and the white plinths from the studio. I personally love how the projection looks on the brown cardboard boxes. The danger with having a brown background is how people’s work might change colours as it is projected. But we can prevent all that by just testing it out first.

I have to be honest, I don’t understand what some people were saying when they claimed projecting onto foam board would look like shit. It looked better on watercolour paper, but foam board was still nice. -And: it’s cheap and will shrink our workload oh so much. A3 sheets of white foam board can be bought for £0.74 per sheet. We need 6 sheets per box. That equals £4.44. Say we’d make 20 boxes, this would add up to £88.80, which is way less that the £600 screen installation. The sheets come in packs of 15. We’d need 120 sheets in total, which divides to exactly 8 packs. No waste!

We could also get different sizes, all pre-cut, so nothing would look shitty. Then all we’d need would be pins. We spoke to Henrijs this morning, and he can get nice cardboard boxes for free from work. We could use these to make a skeleton for our foam board boxes: that way they’d be sturdier.

Henrijs also has experience constructing sets with cardboard boxes. He said he could make the installation sturdy and safe. Safety is another matter: no one’s going to get injured if a foam board box falls on them. All we’d need to do is fireproof them.

Wednesday

We started filming the interviews today. Me and the rest of the Screen group set up in 209, as the key to the sound studio had gone missing from its previous tenant. The interviews went extremely well, it was amazing to watch the difference between someone presenting their project for assessment, and someone talking about their project in a relaxed situation where you know that if you mess up, you can do it over.

When I looked over my interviews, however, I noticed how arrogant I sounded. It was a really strange contrast between how deep in thought I felt while talking, and how shallow I appeared on screen. It got me thinking on how to present myself well. How can I show myself as enthusiastic, while still acting natural? The problem might have been that I was overthinking things too much during the actual filming process. If I know my answers better by heart, it will be easier to explain in front of the camera. I’m going to redo my interview tomorrow, try to smile a bit more: seem happy and inviting rather than excluding.

But other than that, the interviews went extremely well! I’m really happy that we’re filming these clips for our exhibition, but also, it’s simply inspiring to listen to people explain their work and learn how their individual minds make connections.

Monday meeting

We met up to discuss the upcoming week. Tomorrow we’re meeting with our External Examiner, and Friday we have the first out of three Concept Art workshops. We also decided to test out filming our exhibition interviews on Wednesday.

VectorWorks workshop, DMC

We didn’t really work with VectorWorks, but the session was still useful. We started out by going through different SketchUp models that the Detail group has come up with. We analyzed bits and pieces that could be worked on, things we really liked, and things we weren’t too fond of. Then we split into our separate groups and divided work responsibilities. For the Screen group, we split the work to the following:

Jack and Sara to test out projectors and design the screen installation.

Siyo to be in charge of the projection part of the Model Box room.

Sophia to do something that I can’t remember, but I know it was important…

Me to hunt down old screens on eBay, FreeCycle, Gumtree, etc…

Doug explained to me the type of screens we need to get. I sort of understand it… Basically, you need the same type of screens in order to connect them all to the same media player. In example, we could connect five screens to one media player if they’re all analog, or three analog screens to one player and three of the other kind (name recollection trouble) to another player.

The problem with searching on Gumtree is all the scam ads. Some are so obvious, while others are so strange that you simply can’t imagine what the point is. And then you have the ones that are so funny that they make your day, like a milk carton searching for a new home. Not that that happened, I was just imagining an example. The other problem of shopping on sites like these, with the exception of eBay, is that they usually won’t hold the item for you, and so it’s really tricky to arrange a pick-up for a specific day in the future. I found some really good deals though, but the problem is that we’ll have to contact people on a day where the ones in our

Moodboards…

I was struggling a bit to get my moodboards for the exhibition down. Initially I wanted to use car tyres inspired by Tooting’s many car dealerships and design this in an infographic style. Then I got more inspired by Tooting’s flower stands, and wanted to use rollfilm as a theme.

Somewhat okay moodboard.

Moodboard which failed…

I’m not super certain about what kind of colour palette or style I would want the exhibition to be in. I’m pretty sure I’d be fine with anything that’s not inspired by the 70’s. I like the retro TV style we were discussing, and the modernist, plain white style, but I don’t really have a preference yet.

What I am really keen on, is building a ferris wheel-like shelf for our white cardboard models. The models take up so much space, and although they’re very interesting for us to look at, they might not be eyecatchers for our audience. So I thought we could make something fun for them. The idea behind the concepts below was to have a spinning rollfilm reel, in the style of a ferris wheel. I thought we could make the base frame out of wood or metal, and cover it with hard plastic sheets (brain freeze, can’t remember the name!). Since the plastic sheets are a bit transparent, we could make the shelves as little boxes and put coloured lights inside of them. I think this could be a nice match to what some people were discussing to do with the television wall (also still under planning).

The main source of inspiration came from the set build of Lumino City (video below). The ferris wheel really inspired me.

Monday meeting, Feb 16th 2015

We met with the various Wimbledon technicians today. What I realized from the different people we talked to, was how far ahead we are. We nearly know the design layout we want to go for. What we need to sort out are the technical difficulties of the new studio space. Then again, all spaces have their difficulties. I’m sure we’ll be able to put up something spectacular.

So far we have a few fundraising ideas. We’re running the film club, which even though is not giving us a huge profit still manages to bring most of us together for a relaxed couple of hours. I’m guessing more people will show now that we’re making some screening changes, but I also quite liked the selections we’d made in the past. Honestly I don’t think it matters too much whose films we put on. It’s more about creating excitement for the event.

I signed us up for the B&Q charity scheme, which might give us some free materials. Charlotte managed to get free printing of posters from the Student Union. Lucy got a popcorn sponsorship for the screening of student films, which has proven to be super popular. And delicious! Everything seems to be starting full speed this week. I’m very excited for the next few months.

Mia gathered a list of what people are roughly planning to exhibit. The BFI group seems to be doing a layout of the studio for the exhibition, and we’re all coming up with suggestions for tomorrow on how we might organize the various projects.