Contextualising Statement:
This task required the telling of a story through images that link together with accompanying audio. This task required both collaborative and individual work; the shoots themselves being carried out in a two man team (due to the amount of equipment), but the topic of each shoot and all of the subsequent image selection and editing were individual tasks.
The original story planning requirement for this task was challenging as a Cine Roman is not a commonly known medium and this was the first time that I had come across it, the idea was quite confusing at first and so I went for a very simple story progression. This meant that it would be easier to shoot and select all of the correct images that I would need to tell the story in the short time available to me. However, if I were to attempt a similar task again in the future I would designate far more time to the planning and writing of the story that the images are designed to tell.
For my shoot, there was a requirement for Harry, the other student acting as the subject of the shoot to hang his head from a window that was two stories up from my flats kitchen on university accommodation. This required permission from both my professor and a correctly carried out risk assessment that was signed off. It was deemed safe as only Harry’s arm and head would leaning from the window, with most of his bodyweight holding him inside. This allowed my shoot to go ahead as planned due to a correctly prepared risk assessment.
I decided to have most of my cine roman appear to be in black and white, this was influenced by the research carried out in the lead up to making it. After watching Chris Markers La Jetée, I felt that the best way to put across a significant development of story without the benefit of normal film (which obviously has more visual and audio aids for the audience) was in the way the images were presented. La Jetée seemed more emotional as a result of its black and white presentation and so I wanted to try this technique for myself. The reasoning behind the reversal to colour at the end of the sequence of images in my cine roman is that it seemed artistically more interesting and helpful for the progres sion of the story. In under a minute there is very little space to properly develop a tale and so I felt this further highlighted the importance of the picture to the gentleman in the cine roman who drops it from the window. The colour signifies how the polaroid is a memory that can and has been lost, which was the orginal idea behind the story.