We sourced our hospital gown online from a retailer that supplies to hospitals to ensure that we were getting an outfit that is as authentic as possible so as to not make the protagonist look like she is in fancy-dress. We are still waiting on the dress that we have decided on getting for the "escapism"/"dream" component.

Tonight we are going to revisit a movie that we both thought would be a good watch to give some inspiration, "A cure for wellness" by Gore Verbinski.

Today myself,Raphael and Stephanie (featuring in the film) are going over the story-line and thinking about how we can improve our ideas one last time before we shoot tomorrow. We aim to start early and get any park filming done tomorrow so that we are given a good amount of time to edit the footage and decide on any changes if the footage does not come out how expected. 

*Posted the storyboard notes yesterday.

We will have the storyboard in our sketchbooks.

The people we met at Waterlow Park:

Clive and George
- I met Clive upon entering the park, he walked around with such confidence and familiarity/certainty that I asked him “Are you Mark?” (assuming he was the head-gardener) to which he replied with a smile, “Should I be?”. He directed my “model” and I over to a part of the park with a shelter where we set down our suitcases and equipment as it was wet.

Clive left us there for around an hour to go for a walk. Almost by coincidence, my model was putting a yellow dress over her vest top and leggings and I was zipping it up under the shelter - three to four quite aggressive park rangers drove up to us and began shouting at us over “nudity” and around that time Clive had made his way around the park to where we are, he was taken by surprise by the rangers and stayed with us to defend us as (of course) there was no nudity whatsoever. As soon as Clive arrived, the rangers rushed off.

-Clive told us that he thinks they were trying to intimidate us as we are women and they do not tend to treat women nicely at the park. I found it curious when they rushed away at the sight of a man.

-English/British man aged 50-ish.

-Visits waterlow park daily and is local to the park.

-Had a past of mental illness and was regularly at the mental health hospital beside Waterlow park. Went to walk in Waterlow park at every given opportunity to escape from mental confinement and feel air. To be free of structure and instructions.

-At the park he met George, a Greek older man with wild grey hair and a beard and a strong accent. We met George too. Clive described George to be “wildly extravagant” and explained that we should not be alarmed if he jumps up and begins to exclaim things mid-conversation. George is a self-proclaimed/self-taught artist that practices privately and does not exhibit his works. He often visits the park and gathers materials of all kinds to put together “kooky” small sculptures.

-Clive is somewhat lonely. He explained that he visited Waterlow park daily for his walks, he tells us about one time when he kept walking past one man in particular by the tennis courts.

-Clive is a lover of tennis and often stays to watch people play games for hours on end. The man that he had been walking past for so long approached him and asked him if he would like to play a game. They have been meeting often to play tennis ever since then. Clive says that Waterlow park has allowed him to meet and connect with individuals that he would probably never interact with outside of Waterlow park.

Myself and Michael filming Stephanie with the drone (captured by Raphael).

Shooting this short-film was my first experience working with a drone, Raph and I (with the expert help of Michael) made good progress today learning how the drone operates and how to use it. We had some issues with the drone beeping and landing when it came too close to Stephanie but we were able to avert this and troubleshoot how we would film those shots of her by adjusting the speed of the steps towards the camera and bringing the drone close to Stephanie in some instances as opposed to her walking towards it herself. We managed to get all of the shots envisioned. I wanted to test just how high we could shoot our shots for the "birds eye view" ones and it was quite high, we had to land it a few times and take things again as the wind had an effect on how steady the shots were.

We ran into an issue today:

The dress we had planned to be the escapism outfit did not fit and no matter how hard we tried to zip this up , it would not do, eventually we ripped it. We thought about the prospects of using the dress without the back properly fastened and making-do but this wasn't a possibility as the drone would have captured the broken back from above and ruined the shot. We will have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a solution as we haven't been able to shoot the liberation scenes in the dress. We no longer have the budget to make a new purchase for the piece,so we will have to get creative with the wardrobes we have at hand and find the best possible alternative.

-Visited Lux to view BL CK B X: Alia Syed  "Wallpaper". This visit was predominantly to think about the space for the editing process, the use of audio and the way to best display the film on the screen. We had been thinking about split-screen scenes and now know that these will (hopefully) be the most effective way to view certain scenes. I was very impressed by the surround-sound and the way that the sound was manipulated to come in through different speakers. I am not sure that I will use surround-sound as it will be the one musical track playing , I think it would work in favour of a piece with a variety of different sounds.

Today we watched back and tried to edit together the footage we had. It was super frustrating because our initial vision that we had was not actually materialising. We took some time to think and I suggested that we would probably benefit from a change of setting with the other outfit, it would be complimentary both visually and aid the storyline. We have too much of the green park footage and not enough of the escapism and dreams. 

We decided to wait until the sun had come out to create a hazy look for our dslr shooting and filmed the "dreams" component upstairs in a bedroom. After some searching, I found a flowy,green floral dress that was perfect for this component, it closes in the back with a tied bow in the same way that the hospital gown closes, I liked that connection. Initially this was not planned, but we decided to include the back of the dress being closed in a similar way to the hospital gown being closed. We focused on small details of liberation at first, shooting subtle shots of smooth hand movements across the bedding and the movement of the feet, in a rhythmic but soothing way. Then in the evening we shot some flash shots of free head movements and the water shot with the blue lighting. The water scene is one of my favourite components, I like how the water moves and flows as she is submerged in it and yet it doesn't feel like a typical relaxing bath/swim it is  somewhat controlled and artificial (with the blue light).

Found this book about Lauderdale house, I will use this to do some more background research about the site.

During Matt's premier-pro workshop, I experimented with some found footage and text overlays/legacy title's to think a bit more about the layout of our title and which might be most effective. "A dose of green" gives a little hint towards the mental health/medical undertone,yet is still fairly abstract as I am not a fan of things that can seem too obvious. On the other hand, there is "The gardenless", shorter and perhaps more effective? though it feels slightly less original and could be risky as others might name their pieces the same thing...this takes inspiration from the quote "A garden for the gardenless". I feel "The gardenless" is more fitting for what we are trying to convey in the video, and perhaps the shorter title would also appear best on the screen.

Side note- though I chose the found footage quite randomly (simply because I have always been drawn to American Horror story's filming) I would like to revisit the footage,tear it apart and piece it together in my own way at some point along the line. 

Curating the Park exhibition.

It has made me think about the space in greater detail, specifically lux and how to best utilise the screen and sound- specifically the result of great audio. The audio in our video is incredibly important, since we only want to use non diegetic sound. We decided on V.Paster Noster "Voices of light" which was originally created when Noster was inspired by the silent film "The passion of Joan of Arc", I really like this as the tension builds for most of the music and bursts very briefly into one euphoric scene until it goes back to normal. It is quite performative music. 

https://sites.nd.edu/smndactivitiescalendar/libretto-and-translation-of-the-cantata-voices-of-light/

Tonight Raph and I were lucky enough to visit the Harold Pinter theatre to see "The Birthday party" and participate in a Q&A with the cast and producers (pictured above). I knew nothing about the play really going into it but was drawn to it as they advertised it as "the horrors of the everyday". Raph and I have been thinking about music/sound and setting non-stop throughout this project and this visit definitely answered a few questions that arose for us. The entire play was acted out in one main set, with the indication of other places presented through sounds coming from behind doors and outside windows (e.g.-seagulls outside a window to indicate the placement of the seaside boarding inn). 

We were so excited to speak with  Zoë Wanamaker who appears in some of our favourite films, she described the music as "ambient" and said that it paved the way for the story to be created but you would not notice the music alone, it aids the whole production but is nothing alone.

 I was impressed with the opening scene of the play, it was simple and yet very effective (in my opinion), the set was covered by a semi-sheer sheet/almost like the fabric which is on many windows and stops people from looking into your living room, behind that curtain was the set that didn't change, though it was lit so dimly that it appeared as if the figure in the centre was outside. Stanley , the protagonist (Toby Jones) was behind this "curtain", you could just about make out his silhouette through the flowing fabric, the lit a cigarette but you could only just make out this beam of light/fire making up a tiny detail in the middle of the stage. This fabric soon disappeared and we entered the main set of the seaside boarding house to witness a mundane and never-ending conversation between Meg (Zoe Wanamaker) and Petey (Peter Wight). The play catches you off-guard in ways that you didn't think it could, there is a lot of conversation and typical non-events until there are sudden almost abstract bursts of action that you cannot fully comprehend. One of the most interesting bits for me was Meg giving Stanley (who we are made to believe is insane/"not all there") a drum for his birthday. After a long conversation, Stanley switches on Meg and gets a bit out of control. Just before the curtain drops for the interval, Stanley stands in the middle of the stage and begins to bang on the drum with the sticks, each time hitting it harder and faster until the curtain sharply drops. This is an example of "music" creating tension that I have considered.  I also liked the appearance of the drum again in a later scene where the strange new guests of the inn blindfold and spin Stanley in a weird game of blind man's buff, Stanley spirals out of control and walks straight into the drum on the floor, piercing his foot straight through it with a bang.

*We decided on "The gardenless" as our title as opposed to "A dose of Green".

We had contacted a local hospital to seek permission to film in an empty corridor, but it was a no - I didn't actually know this but a lot of hospitals actually create media packages that cost thousands to shoot in the hospital...I find it a little disturbing to consider how much of a "business" the hospital actually is.

We resorted to found footage of a hospital corridor after finding the cost of shooting ourselves and with the permission of the content creator, we used it and tried to edit to create the illusion that the corridor turned at the same time as Stephanie did through our editing process.

 During curation of the exhibition, I made a pop-up site where gallery visitors could access a virtual map and a blog about our works, with a series of questions answered by many students the visitors could read about our works for a more detailed insight.

Link to the blog post

In this interview, we speak to Marianna Petrides and Raphael Delbono that create work within the 4D department of Fine Art.

 

 

 

What is the title of your work?

“The gardenless”.

Summarise your work in 5 words

Confinement,liberation and the mind.

Talk us through the process of creating your work

The person that you see in this video is nobody…in the sense that they do not portray one singular living being, this person is a vessel that carries a message about us, the gardenless.

The fact that Sydney Waterlow gave the park to the public as “a garden for the gardenless” can be thought to be a little unsettling. A garden can evoke the feelings of freedom, fresh air, liberation - in contrast we “the gardenless” have been contained, indoctrinated and have subconsciously become slaves to the concrete jungle that we call home.

The process of creating the work begun as soon as we heard the words “garden for the gardenless” used in our initial contextual lecture about the project.

Before filming anything ,by chance we came across “Voices of light”, a 1994 musical composition by Richard Einhorn (which we have since discovered was inspired by the silent film, “The passion of Joan of Arc). “Voices of light” instantly jumped out to us both as it steadily and slowly builds a tension which releases in one swift, intense burst of this incredibly beautiful melody, then it returns to the same slower tension.

Einhorn’s music has a burst of spontaneity but swiftly reverts to something slightly more routine, this fits into the cycle of the experience of the park. The park visitor is able to briefly escape the grey city that surrounds for a duration of time (the park opening hours) in which time they can experience an exciting escapism which will result in their exit into the real world and routine. In short, we felt the art and music alike imitate life.

After the selection of music, we drew up a story-board and took to Waterlow park to film using both DSLR and drone. The drone was able to shoot from higher angles than we anticipated, the further the drone flew from the subject, the more the feeling of containment and control was created. We edited the footage using Premier pro.

 

 

 

How is the work "site-specific"?

 

 

The work is site-specific as the filming took place in the park itself. One of the more intriguing ways that made Waterlow Park the best choice for filming in is the view of the city beyond the greenery that we captured when shooting on drone, it almost creates a visible barrier between the world that we live in on a day-to-day basis and the green haven that is the park. We also thought about the way in which the work is time-specific, the park opens and closes at specific times, at other times it is inaccessible - which inevitably means that the visitors will have to leave the park and return to the concrete city. The cycle of confinement and liberation is constant…ultimately it is infinite.

 

 

You can follow Marianna Petrides and Raphael Delbono on instagram @mariannapetrides and @raphaeldelbono