Clare Redman

Final Evaluation
For planning the project as a whole I created a Timescale, as seen in my Statement of Intent, as a
guide for me to keep on track for the deadline. This was valuable for week-to-week management
but changed a little as my project developed. Nonetheless it was a valuable process as it meant I
had smaller, weekly deadlines to focus on, rather than just the final deadline on Friday 6th May. I
used my three days per week in college to predominantly focus on use of studio facilities and
tutorials with my lecturers for feedback, and then focused on using time at home for research
and uploading work to my blog. Another important aspect of project management was
evaluating the development of my project. I did this on a day-to-day basis by using my A6 suede
journal to document daily tasks, checklists, reflections on productivity and forwards planning.
On my blog I evaluated each piece of work uploaded with regards to its quality, appropriateness
and use for future development. I feel that this evaluative process was a particularly strong part
of my work and it was valuable in allowing me to progressively refine my ideas to inform future
work.
I believe that my project developed well over the course of the ten weeks, and whilst I did
maintain my original idea of looking at mental health from a new perspective, I did not allow it
to restrict my ideas too much. For example, I originally intended to focus on use of visual
metaphors for mental illness experiences as a new way of portraying the subject to an audience,
but once I had curated my design ideas I realised that these particular ideas would not be
feasible to produce. The Wysing workshop was useful in allowing me to freely experiment with
different colourways, aesthetics and techniques, thus later informing the visuals of my final
piece. An example of this is the wide angle shots featured in my final film- they are partly
inspired by the extreme wide angles created from the GoPro I photographed with at Wysing.
Another important aspect of experimentation was my collaborative work with Kizzie. A visiting
ex-student artist, Jennifer Campbell, strongly encouraged us to try out collaborating with
another student. Kizzie and I were both working with multimedia and so decided to produce an
experimental short film. This was challenging in terms of figuring out a way to connect our two
themes- mental health and traces- but was thoroughly educating and valuable in learning to
bounce ideas off another person, rather than being too introspective which is often the case
with solo projects. For me personally, it was a beneficial learning curve as it allowed me to learn
the basics of Adobe Premiere Pro without the pressure of the final piece. This in turn made the
production of the final piece much easier, both in terms of using the software but also planning
and executing the shoot. The film was extremely abstract and loose, which was very difficult to
my usual precisely planned method of working, but again this was a valuable process in
teaching me another way of working through a project and ideas. I produced four storyboards
which I believe shows my capacity for creating a variety of ideas in response to a set brief,
especially as they were all unique to each other. The fact that I then selected one of these and
improved it further to produce a highly detailed storyboard demonstrates my ability to develop
and refine my ideas to a deeper level, as well as to meticulously plan a shoot. I found it difficult
to plan the final layout of my final exhibition space, as I did not know exactly how much space I
would have until we actually put the exhibition up. Nonetheless it was good to plan out four
different lay plans as it meant I could decide whether I was going to create a highly intimate,
isolated piece, or create a communal viewing area. This ultimately affected the nature of the
final video and so it was very much important. Further to this it meant that I could still
approximately plan my final exhibition space.

Clare Redman

A further strength of my Final Major Project is the extent of my research, both in terms of
variety and depth. My initial artist research into Utopia and The Revenant did not perhaps
influence my final outcome as largely and directly as I initially thought- mostly because their
equipment and software are far beyond my budget- but I still took some references. For
example, I used the saturated colours and contrast of Utopia in my final video to add vibrancy
and bring the film to life. I found that I could not work with the CMYK channels in Adobe
Premiere Pro, thus rendering me unable to produce the exact same pop of colour as seen in the
television show. This was a slight disappointment as it is possible to work with CMYK rather in
RGB in Adobe Photoshop and I expected the same would be possible in more of Adobes
software. Nonetheless I enjoyed experimenting with bright colours when colour correcting and
grading at the end of my project. Another example of my inspiration from Utopia is the shot in
which my actor walks across a landscape with a single blossom tree in the centre of the
composition, combined with a wide shooting angle. In Utopia, there are frequent occurrences in
which a lone figure walks across a wide angle landscape, and so this demonstrates my ability to
make in-camera references to existing practitioners through composition and focal length. I had
at first expected to heavily replicate the colour grading and shooting style of The Revenant, but
in the final result I did not utilise these techniques so much. This was because I was initially
anticipating using metaphors of water within my work, but this did not happen in the end
because it was highly unfeasible in terms of practicality. However, I did still use the wide angles
seen in The Revenant within my final piece. The Letting in the Light exhibition was the most
informative towards my project, and it was valuable in allowing me to see how current mental
health sufferers currently portray their illness in an artistic way. This, combined with multiple
interviews, allowed me to really engage with and understand various mental illnesses. The
benefit of this was that my final outcome is hopefully highly accurate in comparison to current
stereotyped portrayals of mental health.
For the most part I am happy with my final outcome for this project. With regards to meeting
the requirements of my brief, I believe I have achieved this. For example, I have used the
abstract style of my collaborative experimental shooting along with sound and pace to create a
sense of panic, which is far from being a stereotyped portrayal of mental health- an important
criteria I set for myself. A further goal that I met was ensuring the final outcome was highly
based on real life experiences, in order for it to not be influenced by any pre-existing images I
may have had. I met this criteria my using my interviews to form the basic plot of the films
story, but also the features within it. Considering that I have had no prior experience with
filmmaking, I am quite content with the quality of the film itself. However, there are some
quality issues that I think could be improved if I were to produce a similar outcome again. An
example is ensuring good use of lighting. In the opening shots of my piece the actor was backlit
and so the lighting on her face is of bad quality, making it more difficult to see her expression as
well as creating a distracting blowout of highlights in the scene. Normally I would be quite good
at ensuring good lighting, but at the time I was too focused on finding a good location for the
opening scene, in which the actor had to be sat down. The final video appears to be a lot darker
than it did on my laptop, as well as being much higher in contrast. When editing the video on my
laptop I was pleased with the tonality of the final piece, but it is not as sophisticated on the
iPads, perhaps because of a difference in monitor qualities. Despite colour correction and
grading, the overall look is still somewhat dull due to the bad weather of the day, but there was
little more to be done for this, as before the shoot I had planned around the weather forecasts
but they proved inaccurate and I was unable to reschedule due to the actors availability.
Nonetheless it was another valuable learning curve. I believe that the interview quotes placed
around the exhibition space further illustrates my main point with more clarity, and that is to
have a greater empathy and understanding towards those individuals who suffer with mental

Clare Redman

illnesses. The black and white scheme of the space is minimalistic and clean, thus placing focus
on the video itself. The one aspect of the exhibition space I am not pleased with is the dirtiness
of the floor. Despite cleaning it multiple times it proved impossible to remove every mark.
Although this final setup is not quite as isolated as the original idea of booths that this was
developed from, I still believe that by putting the headphones on and putting the viewer in a
relatively uncomfortable experience, I am isolating them from their surroundings and
immersing them in the message of the video. By separating the iPads out as much as I have, I
have demonstrated by ability to successfully use a given working space. Overall I have enjoyed
working through this project and have learned a lot from the process.