Rebels of Extinction Collaboration for MIF Festival in My House and Yours 2021

Sustainability is something very close to my heart in all things, from helping to set up a group for sustainable productions in my time at LIPA where we encouraged fellow students to consider both the material choices and make more from what they could recycle on productions. Through to my own personal life with clothing and fashion, from my earliest days back in Birmingham, where I would visit Birmingham Rag Market which then was full of vintage and second-hand clothes and more to create my individual look as a New Romantic.

Most years I would invest in a few key pieces and mix up with my charity shop finds, to the point now when I treasure my treasures discovered in my favourite secret outlets! From the very warm as new jacket, I wear most days on my walks through to the most amazing Alexander McQueen shoes I tried to make fit lol some results of the hunting trips are better than others.I hadn’t really had much experience or using fast fashion until I went to Uni and began to see the daily parcels being delivered to the reception from all of the known brands and seeing students scrolling through their screens did I begin to grasp the size of this market. Order for the weekend, wear once, bin! The culture and price points offered made it hard for them to refuse as budgets tight, the overt marketing to create this ethos is immense and hard to resist.

Fast forwards to lockdowns, no theatre I have been attending the rather wonderful Artist Drop-Ins hosted by the Manchester International Festival team, a real tonic in dark times. A place to meet and just share where we all are, offer support to each other and share practices. They have developed over the year (can’t quite believe I am typing that statement) to now hosting some great zooms with local, national and international artists and a brilliant concept Matchmakers. A kind of creative speed dating affair, bringing possible collaborators together and forging new working partnerships. Check them out here

https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/mif-matchmakers-february/

From there Rebels of Extinction formed, collaborating with Actor Devisor Simone French, Actor Devisor Visual man Tom Halls and Director/Producer/Writer and brilliant Voiceover artist Rebecca Taylor Sharman.

With our bid sucessful the time to create content was here, so as a newbie to be sure with filming and so far only creating work for projection I hadn’t really given sound and eek editing footage with words in sync! much thought! Big Big learning curve and at times I may have thrown my toys out of the pram had it not been for the calm more experienced Tom stepping in to help re-edit sections .But that is what a creative growth life is about right? going in with naivety perhaps but then also allowing yourself to be helped and supported.

This is one of the big takeaway moments for me on this project, how a team working remotely and under time pressure can come together and make something happen.

I really enjoyed getting my head into After Effects once more and to a more advanced level than I had attempted before, with lights,cameras and action, there is that wonderful moment when you are self learning software when the basics become second nature and free up some more heaspace to push on to learn more.Since entering the doors of LIPA in 2016 I seem to be on a continual route of new software learning and folks it doesn’t get any easier trust me.

With the additional footage from an oustanding documentary about just how destructive the production of clothing around the world is having on our planet from ‘Riverblue the Movie’ a huge boost, and the fabulous images of Salford Mills from my old neighbour and local historian Tony Flynn we had our story. A story crafted by Simone and Tom with their unique satirical approach, the catchiest earworm so far of 2021 all underpinned by Rebecca’s scripting and direction.

A huge big thank you to the team from MIF who looked after us in the production process, we streamed as the second of this years Festival in My House and Yours on January 28th . It is still online and available to view here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH9yiWP3HYw&ab_channel=ManchesterInternationalFestival

Simone and Tom’s theatre of TomYumSim here

https://www.simonefrench.com/tomyumsim.html

http://www.tomhalls.com.au/welcome

River Blue http://riverbluethemovie.eco/

Cherish your clothes,make considered choices,change one thing

discovering a new technique for photo montage for projection

In my second year studying at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts we had a day working with amongst other things, artist Gavin Mitchell who’s work I found completely brilliant and so interesting. He blends the old and the new with a delicate humour and wryness which turns a multitude of found images into a new fabulous creation. OK you can see I liked it lol so much so I now am the lucky owner of one of his works a present for graduating from the Mr Gibbs.

Find his work here

https://gavinmitchell.net/

So back to the workshop and looking at projection and content creation, we had been asked to bring some imagery to play with , well with a career and study of photography going back a wee while ! I have in fact a huge plan chest filled with remnants of my early days from college through to the last commercial film shoot I did back in the 90’s! So I grabbed some that I thought looked interesting with a thought that some of my cohort may not have access to stuff as living in halls.

He also arrived with a wealth of stuff from old movie’s on film, trailers for films and a massive collection of old slides sourced from car-boots and many a bric a brac find both here in the UK and on his travels. Looking at overlaying them to create images with stories or indeed oddities .

At first I was tentative, as any photographer will tell you the thought of chopping up transparencies is well? just not done ! fact. The first three were combining some footage and stills from Gavin with some images I took for a property developer of the Manchester Tobacco Factory both before and after. Shot on a magic film called polarpan where you actually processed it yourself? I know ! the resulting images were a strong contrasting black and white . Exceptionally fragile and at times not a guaranteed outcome, we were edgy in the 90’s lol

still available to buy (must dig my processor out ) from one of my favourite places full of interesting photographic and video finds

https://www.profilmdirect.co.uk/polaroid-35mm-auto-process--slide-mounter-slide-mounts-polapan-and-polachrome-1521-p.asp

The shots gave me some great graphic windows with which to play with, placing behind them almost giants of humans going about their business.

Series Windows

I was loving this with the possibilities for projection work for bands or theatre work opening up my mind and making me braver, with a gentle nudge from Gavin I did it !

Using some outtakes from one of my earliest test shoots whilst working as a full time assistant at Avalon in Manchester and clips from processing of some really interesting branches in oil from a collaboration with a young artist who’s name along with the model has long been forgotten (research underway) I began to snip the larger medium format images and recreate as 35mm slides!

Girl in the Wood series

So new from old,I am now in the process of multiple layering of images to create new content for projection . Then scanning them in on my Flextight Precision II another part of my transition from analogue to digital as a photographer , yes you could do it in photoshop but how much more fun is it to be hands on and make something.

FIRST TIME WITH THREE

Was a great challenge on Bright Lights Big City to incorporate three projectors , the theory was there but the practice of rigging two above the set proved a little trickier. A lot learned and to be carried forwards but loved the creativity it allowed me especially in the final scene, where my design was to be the feature as the lead character Michael begins to type and reflect on his journey.Working in what is quickly becoming one of my favourite software’s Adobe’s powerful After Effects, I created and animated word drop with a fabulous typeface I discovered AlbertSthal Typewriter. The director Graham gave me the freedom to develop the concept, seeing it for the first time in tech was nerve wracking ! with a little tweak on timing working with my assistant 1st year LIPA TPT student Matthew Wane we ran it again and it worked in perfect timing with the final number. We ran the footage in slightly different sizes and positions through the two Panasonic projectors over the set and a Christie positioned front of house to cover the floor and frontal aspects of the set. Many thanks to Brian Roberts for the clip