It's been quite a while since I last wrote, but that's because there's been so much happening! We were entrusted with the task to create a 3 minute vox pop on any topic of our choice (oh the possilibities!), and were placed in groups in order to do so. Once in our groups, we decided what each of our roles would be. I ended up being the presenter/interviewer, however we all agreed that we would help each other out, and that our roles weren't completely exclusive to just ourselves. After all, we will all be judged the same for the final product!
The difficult part was coming up with a subject. At first we were going with headlines and what was trending in the news. However, I wanted to do something a little bit different, something more fun... so I suggested we do something based on the entertainment industry. But what was something controversial/interesting in the entertainment industry at the moment? This got my mind rolling, as I then suddenly thought of the street artist Banksy who is indeed quite controversial with his work. Not only do they stand out with his unique stencilling technique, but he uses dark humour and comments on issues within politics. Here are some of his works to demonstrate what I mean:
We decided that focusing on street art was the way to go! We figured that people would have differing opinions, and decided to focus on street art as a whole as well as Banksy to create more interest. Our two questions were: 1) In your opinion, do you think street art is vandalism or a form of expression? and 2) What do you think makes Banksy stand out against other street artists?
There's street art everywhere in London, in some places more than others, which is where we ventured to in order to get some great cutaways. We also thought the people in these areas would have an opinion on the art surrounding them. The main places we went to were Brick Lane and Camden, and we truly got some amazing shots!! Here are a few of the cutaways we managed to capture:
We planned to find a few Banksy artworks to include, but we only managed to make it to one due to time restraints and the difficulty of getting everyone together at the same time. We ventured to Shoreditch, and went to the street that we were looking for and the particular place where the art was... but it wasn't there anymore! They'd painted over it. At first we were disappointed because we'd traveled all the way out there to get a nice cutaway of a Banksy artwork, however we decided to use it to our advantage to prove a point; that some DO consider street art as vandalism as it was clearly painted over due to opinions based on it being a nuisance.
During this assignment, I definitely learned a lot. I found I had more confidence to input my ideas and to take a bit more control. I was overviewing the shots and sound, I was finding people on the street to interview and asking the questions, and I found myself directing quite a bit... something I never could have done a few weeks ago! Progress.
I would say there were a few downfalls with our group, as a few didn't really put in as much effort as the rest of us or seem to care as much, which was a shame. But we did the best we could under the circumstances, and I must say I'm rather proud of what we managed to conjure up with about 3 of us working together!
Overall, a very helpful project, and one which I had a lot of fun with! :)
