2019 What a Year! oh and I won an award

Graduating and Begining of a new Tracey and what winning an award means 

What a year it was finishing my time at the most brilliant LIPA or Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts to give it's an official name with a First ! culminating with my Paul McCartney handshake and beginning life back in the real world once more.

This proved a little more bumpy for me personally than I had bargained for, I guess as an evermore self-employed freelance person the daily structure was a lovely respite in the challenge to find ongoing work. Also the vibrant world of higher education and forging new friendships along the way, a creative and learning playground for the three years.

So the year finished on a high that was never in my mind when I began a study into stage lighting that of video design. My mission was incredibly narrow at first, then fate took part and I was brought in to creating content for what would prove one of my most memorable moments at LIPA. A true piece of collaboration with set designer Kirsty Barlow and Director Will Hammond for the production of Love of the Nightingale. I was sold! two months of self-learning of many adobe platforms including After Effects and Premiere Pro (ongoing) I went on to create content for dance and musical productions in my final two years.

 The annual Association of Lighting Designers awards for recent graduates was fast approaching and I was keen to enter, but which me? The lighting designer or this newer crossover with my photography life that as a video designer? After consulting with my amazing lecturer and lighting designer Sofia Alexidou I made the decision it would be video.

Having entered photography awards with some success pushed me along creating my interactive portfolio. Early December arrived and no news! the waiting is the worst part, then news, what a great email day that was I had won! Attending the lunch in London with Sofia was brilliant and to add that title to the new Tracey took a bit of getting used to, resisting adding it to my website and email signature. A trademark of Tracey has and to a certain extent still here is to play down my achievements and fill that hole with a whole load of self-doubt. But this award given by my professional piers has increased both my confidence and belief which I think is one of the best bi-products from any award, as we are often in the creative industries our harshest critic!

So here I am a recent graduate seeking collaborations and work in the world of theatre and performance, the year has got off with a bang more of soon, with projects in discussion including lighting and video design for a one-woman show. Still learning and working on the skill set I got from my time at LIPA and every now and then a visitor back there as one of their preferred photographers which is great as I get to keep my ties with a place I loved every second of .

So Happy New Decade from me Tracey Gibbs Winner of the I-Blue Media Award for Excellence in Video Design

here is the link to my winning portfolio which gives you an insight into both my work and methods

https://indd.adobe.com/view/443ebaaa-363e-4c3f-9d9f-b9a2677e78ca

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.

Developing the new Tracey Gibbs Video/Lighting Designer

So my journey studying Theatre & Performance Technology at LIPA Liverpool is entering it’s final year, the first observation is whoosh where has that gone? closely followed with both a sense of sadness that the journey now has a finish post and a tinge of nervous excitement about where my creative path will follow now?

So here in blog land I am going to expand on my methods of approaching projects for the theatre and beyond.

Every designer has their way of approaching a production for me the design process begins with the story, be it the spoken word or the unspoken delivery of dance, the chance to interpret both the narrative and the directors vision and working in close collaboration with other creative’s on the team.

The story triggers a journey of research from many realms then to experimentation and creative bliss, reading through or listening to the creative treatment people are looking for to the end product and that tentative step into the weeks of production. A what a world we now occupy to fuel and discover inspiration , where do I go first ? well it can vary but music is one of my big triggers to begin the thoughts along with the all important story . And then there is the set design, this combined with the directors thoughts is a truly pivotal moment in the process, seeing the initial white card giving me a sense of scale and space that will ultimately become my playground.

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