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Exploring the Intellectual Dimensions of Fiction Filmmaking
Get PDFFilmmaking can be seen as a kind of alchemy—a fusion of innate talent, craft skill, and serendipitous moments. However, this mystique is unhelpful, particularly to future filmmakers, as it contributes to the 'cult of the director', keeps creative ‘workers’ in their place, and overshadows the collaborative efforts of those diligently working to complete a film. With a background as both a practitioner and educator in filmmaking, my research centres on the making of fiction, particularly examining which stories are brought to life and who has the opportunity to create them. This research is twofold: firstly, to expose the collaborative nature of fiction filmmaking through a process-led reflexive praxis, and secondly, to explore innovative narrative forms that encourage critical engagement and challenge the boundaries of fiction cinema.
About the Night is a short fiction film that draws inspiration from Ernest Hemingway's, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1933). The script was not an adaptation; however, it shared similarities in setting, ambiance, and a focus on characters over plot. I served as both director and producer and collaborated closely with the writer. Our goal was to stay true to the writer's original intentions of rejecting normal conventions of conflict-resolution, not unlike Hemingway. In recent months I have come to realise that what we did was work with the concept of ‘friction’ rather than conflict. This also mirrored the production process, and using Stoneman’s insight (2012), I will unpack the process and demonstrate how filmmakers need space for dangerous creativity, by embracing uncertainty, chance and risk. I will also explore how ‘friction’, as a positive concept, can create evocative radical storylines, and be employed within the collaborative process as a positive innovative force
Navigating Friction: A Filmmaker’s Exploration of Collaborative Storytelling in Fiction Production
Get PDFFilm and television fictions serve as powerful cultural artefacts that can influence and reshape societal perceptions. Fiction can have potentially radical implications. Yet how such artefacts are developed, produced and marketed is complex, and a process that is not often revealed to all. As a practitioner and educator in filmmaking practices my research revolves around making of fiction, with a major focus on what stories actually get produced and made, and who gets to make them. As a filmmaker I do not lack imaginative ideas, but these ideas are limited by codes and conventions, resources and influence, or lack thereof.
Limitations have never stopped creativity, in fact the opposite, but as practitioner/academic Stoneman (2012) discusses, filmmakers need space for dangerous creation, to be able to embrace uncertainty, chance and risk. All of these elements have the potential to cause friction, and it is this friction that producers, funders and/or financiers find hard to deal with. In fact, the least amount of friction the better. Yet it is this friction that sustains radical and imaginative work.
In this paper, I want to explore the messy production process through my own practice of producing and directing a short fiction film, About the Night (2023). My goal was to craft a narrative that captures life's intricacies and fosters empathy without dictating emotions. Each step of the way there were creative choices with all of them done in collaboration. As a research project, I centred on these collaborations and documented the frictions (uncertainty, chance and risk) that lead to productive compromises. The emphasis was on crafting a story that emerged from a collective voice, rather than being solely shaped through the lens of an auteur. In this process, if we all did not embrace the friction, we jeopardised the radical potential of the film
Anti-Colonial Snapshots
No full textIn this contribution to the Decolonising Acts, A Symposium, I reflect on ‘decolonial acts’ and the various informal and formal strategies I employ in my daily practice. Using the everyday practice of the snapshot to frame this talk, I notice, witness and record small and large ‘disruptions’ and share points of make connections (and highlight disconnections) in enacting structural and cultural change in Higher Education and beyond.
Drawing inspiration from disparate sources; cultural icons, my neighbours, public intellectuals and scholars, exhibitions, the UAL Academic Enhancement Team and random acts of kindness, these snapshots take us beyond the individual, to collective acts that unsettle, challenge and dismantle
Schools Without Walls
No full textThis paper draws upon feminist and educational theorists to reflect on a week-long, architectural archive-driven, live construction and performance project. Schools Without Walls involved 30 eleven-year-old students and their teachers at Orchard Primary, London designed in the 1920s as an ‘open air’ school, now a voluntary-aided Muslim faith school. The project introduced students to their school’s radical architectural and pedagogical history and invited them to creatively interpret, build and perform their own versions of this history in a series of site-specific learning pavilions
Landscapes of Repair: Creating a Transnational Community of Practice with Sheffield- and Kosovo-based Researchers, Artists and Civil Society on Post-traumatic Landscapes
Get PDFIn this chapter, we will discuss a 2021 knowledge exchange project between researchers from the University of Sheffield and forumZFD Kosovo, in cooperation with Kosovo artists, researchers, cultural workers and civil society activists. The collaboration – Landscapes of Repair – occurred through an online exhibition featuring the work of six Kosovo-based artists and architects and a programme of international cross-sector talks and masterclasses. This collaboration gave space to questions on the role of informal networks of communities, cultural workers, artists and civil society activists in tangible, transformative interventions in dealing with traumatic pasts in public space. Questions such as what does repair mean in the context of a wounded built environment? How might repair be performed at a physical and a symbolic level? What forms might it take? Working proactively through a self-reflexive and action-research lens, we now share insights from Landscapes of Repair. Our insights include exploring – the reclamation, reoccupation and re-imagining of sites shaped by difficult, violent or traumatic histories; reflections on how processes of memorialisation and creative artistic and architectural practice might contribute to repairing landscapes scarred by trauma; critiques of the tools of knowledge exchange as a means of building a transnational forum for trauma-informed reflection and praxis with regard to the repair and re-appropriation of public space in post-conflict Kosovo; and we present our mutual learning and critical self-reflection on the community of practice that has emerged through Landscapes of Repair. We conclude with a reflection on how projects of this kind are de facto embedded in power imbalances and inequalities. From this we show how we can continue to work towards building trust and respect, as well as sharing common experiences, practices, lessons learned and strategies in the context of post-conflict and post-traumatic placemaking
Architectural Lettering, Visual Identity and Early Branding in Commercial Buildings in London (1870s-1939): The Truman's Case
No full textThis thesis is focused on design practice and uses a practice-informed approach to examine the use of architectural lettering on commercial buildings during the last years of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century (1870s–1939).
This research argues that, despite the lack of a corporate approach at this early stage (Henrion & Parkin, 1967; Olins, 2004), in the case of large corporations the use of architectural lettering was fundamental in shaping the company’s ‘house style’ or ‘visual identity’ by contributing to developing identifiable buildings. It does so by exploring the architectural lettering of the London-based brewery Truman Hanbury and Buxton and Co. Ltd., also known as Truman’s — an iconic London landmark, but also an unrecorded and unexplored example of the use of public lettering. The analysis suggests that the use of architectural lettering for Truman’s public houses was fundamental in shaping the company’s early visual identity by developing identifiable buildings. During the early 20th century, companies like breweries — prolific and early adopters of copyright legislation (Duguid, 2003) — helped to shape the history of branding, not necessarily by having an identity strategy, like the London Underground or the national railways, but to protect themselves from their competitors. The specific history of London pubs and legal regulation (Jennings, 2007) created the perfect opportunity for the development of ‘house styles’, as the breweries used pub exteriors for advertising and communication. The flexibility of lettering — its ability to adapt to different contexts and particular needs in terms of size, position and space (Baines & Dixon, 2003) — was, I argue, essential in establishing a cohesive yet flexible visual identity.
This is significant because it challenges canonical histories of design by suggesting that overlooked players such as Truman’s had a significant role in the development of visual identity schemes in the 20th century. The study of design history has generally focused on pioneer companies and key individuals which has reduced the richness and complexity of design history (Scotford, 2014, p.44). Smaller companies like Truman’s, while not pioneers in the history of design, also contributed to the fabric of branding and graphic design, an idea that contradicts the ‘hero’ approach that graphic design history has borrowed from art history, an approach that ‘singles out individuals and emphasises the designer not as a communicator but as a personality’ (Wilkins, 2014). My research addresses this gap in design and graphic history by focusing on the visual identity of companies that were simply ‘doing their job’, often for pragmatic reasons rather than unified design strategies. In doing so, I record a previously undocumented aspect of London’s ‘graphic memory’ (Farias, 2014) in the 20th century, building a case for the protection of architectural lettering on commercial premises.
Finally, this is a practice-informed research project that borrows and adapts methods from different disciplines under the umbrella of design research (Gray & Marlins, 204). Architectural lettering is interrogated from both macro and micro perspectives, using archival and historical research and case study methods combined with visual methods informed by design practice. I have used my experience as a visual practicioner as a tool to explore others design practice, as an ‘instrument for reasoning’ (Tufte, 1983, p.9), to transform existing knowledge and to construct new knowledge (Orna & Stevens, 1995, p.134)
Naturalistic assessments across the lifespan: Systematic review of inhibition measures in ecological settings
Get PDFInhibitory control is essential for our everyday lives. Despite this, it is commonly assessed using non-naturalistic assessments. In this systematic review, we argue for the importance of taking an ecological approach to assess cognition. The aims are to present the state-of-knowledge in naturalistic assessments of inhibitory control, focusing on their methodological characteristics, including psychometric properties and user experience. PubMed, PsycINFO and Web of Science were searched until September 2024. Studies were included if they used at least one naturalistic method of assessing inhibition. The included studies (N=64) were grouped into three methodological categories: gamification, virtual reality, and brief, repeated assessments in participants’ usual environment in the form of ecological momentary assessments. Sample sizes spanned three orders of magnitude (N=12–22,098). We report considerable heterogeneity in the types of tasks used, and the psychometric details reported. Nonetheless, naturalistic tasks were generally comparable with standardised equivalents, although some tasks assessed mixed-domain constructs. Tasks were feasible and acceptable for participants, with generally high completion rates and engagement. Recommendations for future research are discussed
The American Film Institute and Cultural Policy: Experimental and Independent Cinema during the Cold War
No full textThis book examines the role that the American Film Institute (AFI) had in supporting experimental and independent cinema at a key moment of change in the history of American film. Weaving a rich historical narrative, Ramirez argues that the Cold War struggle for cultural supremacy motivated the creation of the federally-funded AFI. Exploring the intersection of business interests and political objectives, Ramirez demonstrates how the AFI’s approach to experimental and independent cinema was marked by an interest in promoting innovative aesthetics and protecting the creative freedom of filmmakers but lacked the attention to distribution and exhibition that would strengthen the viability of experimental and independent filmmaking as professional practices. Scholars of film, history, and American studies will find this work particularly useful
VIRIN: 825567-O-DWI94-718.jpg — Edmund Clark
No full textAccording to the dictionary of the Albanian language: The cause of something; the source of birth, the beginning of the development of something.
According to the dictionary of the English language: ‘to put a substance into an empty space’
The project FILL was conceived by visual artist Endri Dani in collaboration with MAD Cen-ter/POLIS University in Tirana. FILL consists of organizing a series of exhibitions, where a single image will be contained in the space of a gallery. This image will also be the subject of a public conversation that will accompany each edition of this project. The formula of the FILL project seeks to demystify the overproduction of digital culture and challenge the cur-rent economy of images in the contemporary world, where quantity corrupts critical thinking by manipulating the frequency of sources and maximizing ambiguity about what a raw mate-rial or the roots of a problem might be. FILL attempts to create areas of resistance against the delirium of the rational mindset to which we are entrusting the fragility of our emotional sphere.
In this, the third iteration, Edmund Clark discusses the image VIRIN: 825567-O-DWI94-718.jpg from the U.S. Department of Defense photo galler