#the highlighted words were specifically chosen for their characters and how I interpret their aspects

[soupwings]

god tier headcanons for the Winchester family

sorry not sorry for homestuck x supernatural in 2023

[drawing-way-outside-the-lines]

2, 5, 11, 15, 16, 18 aaand 31 for the story teller asks.

Gotta stop here before i send all of them xD

Oh man! :D Thank you so much! I'm very excited to answer these! :D 2. Describe your story in three words or less Chaotic.... but loving. Not that the story is written chaotically, cause I don't think it is, but I think from an outsiders perspective, specially considering I sorta started sharing the story publicly almost 300 chapters in, I'm sure it at times can seem rather chaotic? Or maybe I'm the chaotic one? 5. How do you choose your characters’ names? Hm... it's many different ways really. For the most part I recall a name I really like for whatever reason, or see a name somewhere in the passing, like a tv show or an online article? Sometimes I use Google, let's say I want a very "bohemian" type of name... I'd Google that, cause I know shit nothing about that. And for the McKinney's I Google a fair bit. They all have Irish/Scottish names (well 99% of them do) and since I'm not Irish/Scottish, and I don't want everyone to end up with the most mainstream names, well, Google is my friend. Also specifically for the McKinney's, their names are chosen because of their meaning. Raven's birth name is Brandubh, which essentially can be translated to little black raven. Ronan, his brother, means seal, and he is actually a key that can seal the doors of hell. Eonan is knight... he was a knight of hell. Aedan (Andy and Raven's son) is born of fire, Andy has a power to control/create fire, that not many knows about. The McKinney brother's fathers name is Alroy, which means red haired (cause he simply has red hair, *snort*) And I could keep going. But I'm sure I would bore everyone to death. Anyway, point is, all McKinney's have a name that has something to do with either their powers or their appearance. 11. Why have you decided to tell this story? are there any messages or meanings within it? First it never meant to be a story for anyone but myself. It started as an RP. But when the RP ended, I had all these characters with elaborate personalities, living and breathing inside me. It felt empty to just drop them there. So I continued writing the story for myself. It was never meant at first to continue for years, I actually continued with the thought that I'd maybe write 5-10 chapters or so, and simply writing an ending of the story. Yeah, that was at least 275+ chapters ago. The story fast became a way for me to live a life I had to at the same time face I could never live out in real life. So I suppose my decision to keep writing, was a way for me to pull through a lot of things, I'm not sure I otherwise would have been able to pull through. There are a lot of "hidden" messages and meanings in the story, but I wont sit here and spoil them all, it's up to the readers (now that the story is actually being posted... here <- to interpret it for themselves.) However, I'm always up for answering questions about it. What I can give you is the message of loving people for who they are, not what you want them to be. To love yourself, even if you aren't the version of you you wanted to be, you can still be a pretty rad person. A message that we can overcome much more than we believe, as long as we keep fighting. And last but not least, a message of never giving up, and following your dreams. And to never give up on love. But above all, the message is simply love. I chose to write a story that heavily weighs on love, simply for the fact that I more than ever, believe what we need most on this planet, is love. And lots more of it. A lot of our issues could be solved by simply loving each other more, and loving the planet we live on, before there's nothing left to love. It sounds cliche maybe, but it's my opinion, and you don't have to agree. 15. What have been the highlights of creating your story? Definitely getting to know everyone, watching their characters unfold and grow. It has kept me to my writing. Back in school, my Danish teacher told me to never give up on writing, cause in her words, I'm good at it. She told me to 'always write, whether I would be bubbly happy or breakingly sad, write

write write'. For many years after I finished school, I barely wrote at all, so I was insanely rusty when I picked writing back up. My story helped me with that, and I found my way back to writing. Another highlight is definitely all the hard times my story has gotten me through. Doesn't mean I am smooth sailing my way through life, but it keeps me from drowning completely, and that's something. I still need to make some major life changes, but till that's possible, I'm holding onto my story, and it keeps me above water. 16. What about the process do you enjoy? *Snort* I think if people has followed this blog more than a month, it's already clear I enjoy creating characters, and as a result post some of the most lengthy bio's on Tumblr. But I enjoy just as much to see the scenes unfold in front of me as I write, feeling the emotions of the characters, often so intensely that it affects my own mood. There's just something in it, that makes me feel like I'm a part of the story, like I'm literally in there. And that's enjoyable to escape into for a time. 18. Choose a song that reminds you of your story A? A song? Like in one? ONE song for a circa 300 chapters story??? How??? How do I cram such an elaborate and still growing story into ONE song??????? Ghost-boi.... pls.... I'll have to get back to you on that *goes into full on panic mode searching through albums in my head* 31. Drop some random trivia about your story Pffft.... First chapter that actually made it into the story (cause there were a couple loose ones before that, that never made it) was actually written under different names, as I was considering sharing it online, but didn't want to annoy my previous RP partner, so I changed everyone's names. Andy was Alexander. Congo was Connor. Evan was Ethan. And there you also have the original poly relationship, that ended up in so much more. Well.... at the very beginning of the story, Evan and Congo still wasn't dating, but it didn't take many chapters. Adrian was originally made as an attempt to create something different, look-wise. To get out of my comfort zone and play with new features. While making him, I sat there looking at his face thinking 'this is me'. I simply connected not only with his looks, but also the character I started seeing growing in front of me, so writing his bio was probably one of the easiest ever to write, and he was very easy to adapt as a main character in my story. He just swept his way in there like a cool breeze on a way too hot summers day and the main cast was like... keh... cool... So he actually sorta became the main focal point of the part of my story I am sharing on my story blog, where Andy is the main focal point of the main story. Akin, the Alpha wolf, was originally supposed to never be a fully developed character. He was "just" a doctor that popped by here and there, but the two readers of my story back then, liked him a lot, and started expressing seeing potential in him. So I started developing him. As I expressed how he looked (he was originally extremely tall and a bit like a rugby player) they strongly disagreed and told me he was definitely slender and with semi-long dreads XD And that made Akin look more or less like he does today <- About that song though... if I have to choose just one song for such a BIG story, I'd have to simply choose a love song. But not a sugary sweet one. A haunting, emotional, longing, breathtaking, yet deep, passionate and warm song. I'd go with <- Witch is also a song from the movie Romeo + Juliet, by amazing Baz Luhrman. So basically a story about teenage suicide. In that aspect it doesn't fit at all. But it was the first song that came to my mind.... Sooooo.... I'll quietly leave this as well, on the way out <- (which is probably a much better fit anyway, both regarding lyrics and music video) 

[blorbosexterminator]

I really need your two cents about the fork scene

It probably won't be worth more than that because I honestly haven't thought that deeply about the scene. From a more objective pov, I think the show was just trying to mark Andrés' descent into "Berlín" or rather, lessen the gap between the two that kept getting deeper from part 1 to 2.

But I will get into why it was a scene like that in that context that they have chosen.

I believe that it was working on a symbolic level of what was happening internally with Andrés both in general and in that specific moment in his life. It was a crucial scene for the characterization of Andrés on so many levels (his tendency to violence, unawarness of actual social codes, etc.) but the most important of them here is his internalized homophobia. I'll put this scene in context with three others: 1) the other part of the restaurant sequence where Martín jokingly offered Sergio a blowjob, 2) the wedding scene, and most importantly 3) the kiss scene.

In the first one, it nicely puts a framework of contrast. After Martín leaves for the bathroom, Andrés defends to Sergio that Martín only offered him a blowjob, showing Andrés' supposed open-mindness with Martín's sexuality. He's very fine with it, it would seem.

But I do think Andrés' actual stance is hinted more in the second scene I've chosen: the wedding scene. It was a pretty humorous scene, I don't think Andrés (or the show) was going for actual offence, but I do think it does show Andrés' regard for homosexuality. When he answered Martín with something along the line of 'you're the closest we have to it' meaning unmarried women.

Andrés' perception of homosexuality, despite how highly he thinks of Martín (which I'd believe only makes it the more complicated for him), is something inherently unmanly. And we all know Andrés' terrible relationship with masculinity (one day I'll go off about this whole thing with not just Andrés' femininity, but also the perception of it from other characters).

The third scene, the kiss scene itself. We all, myself included, like to do elaborate readings of the scene; why Andrés left Martín, disregarding the actual writing of the scene itself. What I'd like to do here is leave aside this why and take Andrés' words for their worth. His own reasoning is that despite his love for Martín that surpassed anything he ever felt for women, including the one he was happily married to in the moment of the speech, is that he couldn't be with him this way because he wasn't physically attracted to him. It is important that this is what the actual writing says, it could have had any other reason that would also be interpreted, but what it is in canon is that Andrés was physically unable to be with Martín. There are multiple reasons why Andrés left Martín, but this is the actual only reason why he didn't get together with him over the 10 years period they were 'together'. It's signifcant that Martín immediately, probably always has, understood it for what it was, and that it wasn't that Andrés didn't desire him, but that he didn't allow himself to, and pointed at his head, mocking Andrés' "desire" and calling him a coward, because that is exactly what Andrés was.

What I meant with saying that Andrés was physically unable to be with him isn't that he wouldn't get hard. But that, that would be the last step that would completely shatter Andrés' image of himself that he was trying to feed to the world. Because in every single other aspect, Andrés was in a romantic relationship with Martín. He was his life-long partner, he lived with him, despite being married; he literally said he was going out to meet his wife. In that scene Martín was casually hanging in the room that we were told in the show services as Andrés' bedroom, the room that he was also casually getting dressed in while Martín was there. Martín himself regards the effect of Sergio's words, Andrés' leaving him, as breaking their home. Later on, Martín, in a speech that very clearly meant to be about him and Andrés, calls it a romantic relationship with a lover and beloved. I really doubt he would have called it as such because of one moment in a ten years old friendship. It was a romantic relationship that Andrés treated it as such 99% of the way, only not allowing either him or Martín to admit it as such. And it all goes back to that one aspect: the sexual intimacy of it. Because that was the one thing, that if it had happened, Andrés would no longer be able to deny to himself, and he would then have to face what this means to the whole, very fragile image he has of himself.

Now to the scene that you specifically asked for. It's really significant the sequence it was in, right after Sergio literally forced Andrés to look in the eye and admit the reality of Martín's feelings (and his own! Every single point Sergio used in his prove that Martín was in love with Andrés could be applied on Andrés from scene in canon). And right after, Andrés' worst, deepest, probably unconscious fear was confirmed by the man. And that is, a physical, public relationship with Martín, a man, would destroy his manly, "respected" image.

So taking a step back and looking at the whole sequence, Andrés was forced out of his illusions to face the reality of his relationship with Martín, and immediately he was faced with society's reaction to that truth. If this was a psychological thriller movie we would have seen the scene from Andrés' pov as he was delirious and imaginging everyone's closed-on faces laughing hysterically at him. The scene has the same significance, the same effect. Someone pointed out on a tumblr post here how it's also significant that Andrés castrated the man, with the objective of the attack being on his penis; his 'manhood'. This, to me, shows what was internally happening to Andrés, he was returning the exact same damage that the man did to his own manhood. It's not important that Andrés was the one who attacked the man, to me, its importance lies in showing what was happening internally to Andrés, the damage it to his regard of his own masculinity, and most importantly, how he can not accept it, can't live with it. I don't think the scene was in prideful self-defence, rather acts on how threatened Andrés is over his masculine image and to the extent of his violence to preserve it.

The reason I believe Andrés never faced his feelings for Martín is definitely his internalised homophobia and that scene is one of the most important in the show to highlight that aspect.

[sbooksbowm]

The ‘Does this make sense?’ check: Chapter 3, Part 2, paratexts

Part 2 examines paratexts, which are all the texts in a work that is not the body (i.e. the title, the tags, the chapter titles, summaries, author notes, appendices, etc. as opposed to the actual story). I look at how paratexts, particularly tags, are crucial infrastructure for signaling a fic’s content and setting reader expectations.

Part 2: Paratexts and signaling interpretation

I define paratexts as written or chosen by the writer for the purposes of enabling ‘legitimate critical interpretation’ [1]. Under these criteria, in fanfiction posted on AO3, the tags, title, summary, prompts, and notes are paratexts because the fic writer selects or writes those elements herself, often narrating in tags, summaries, or notes her writing process or her interpretive intentions. Conversely, unless a writer explicitly cites extratextual information, one cannot claim that a given text post is a paratext to that piece; rather, it may be an intertextual reference (e.g. ideasofmarch tags ‘the jackson files’ with ‘based on a Tumblr post’ but does not explicitly cite it).

Paratexts actualize Coppa’s definition of fanfiction as shaped by ‘the literary conventions, expectations, and desires of that community’ [2]. Tags, summaries, and notes are ‘labels indicating a set of narrative and thematic expectations’ that establish how a fic speaks to those literary conventions, expectations, and desires [3]. Barker echoes this, arguing that paratexts ‘have in some significant way to point towards the work they are attached to, draw attention to features in it, entail and imply things about it, provide points of reference and relevance in relation to the work, suggest and contribute to the mode of participation in it’ [4]. Tags, author notes, and summaries all directly point towards the work. In particular, tags categorize features of a work by denoting the relationship pairing, the characters involved, the characterizations chosen, perspectives, and more techniques employed by the author to differentiate the work while signaling its familiar tropes. Tags also enable participation; tags allow readers to filter out what they do and do not want to read, allowing them to find fic that interests them.

Tags and expressing boundaries

Tags on AO3 provide fundamental infrastructure for readers to navigate works. Tags are open-ended gifts, in that they are generated and organized to the benefit of the entire fandom, not an individual creator, sitting firmly in the ‘community’ zone of the community model [5]. Tags organize the archive, filter works, signal basic content, and allow writers to summarize and highlight key aspects of the story, such as driving relationships or central characters. Busse describes the use of paratexts as a mode of collective signaling that holds writer and reader to certain expectations, solidifying the reader-writer relationship:

‘Moreover, within fandom, readers and writers have collectively negotiated a way to signal content via notes and tags, effectively formalizing the reader–writer contract common to all reading experiences. By signposting pairing, genre, tropes, and warnings, the author allows readers to make an educated decision about whether they want to read a story, which in turn holds the writer responsible if their tags are deemed insufficient’ [6].

Paratexts are a method for a writer to direct their story to a reader, but they’re also a mode of preinterpretation on the reader’s part in selecting and expecting certain elements in a story. Herzog takes this further, arguing that a fic’s title, summary, disclaimers, ratings, and pairings ‘provide to the writers an opportunity to engage in a dialogue with the readers, initiating communication by offering information, prompts for interaction, or comments on their story’ [7]. In other words, the use of paratexts opens up a dialogue between reader and writer around expectations, likes and dislikes, and continuations. This kind of communication is an extreme, rather than a rule, of reader participation. For example, the comments on the fic that I examined for this dissertation were mostly affirmative: thanking the writer for her work, pointing out sections that were particularly poignant for the reader, lauding the quality of the story. Only on dirgewithoutmusic’s ‘boy with a scar’ series did I semi-regularly observe comments with suggestions of prompts for other one-shot alternative universe imaginings of Harry Potter. This type of behavior aligns with the precedent dirge set by regularly citing the reader-submitted prompts in her author notes.

The tag selection box on AO3 auto-completes key words paratexts is somewhat constrained, so the paratexts available to a writer are partially predetermined, which maintains the boundaries of fic categorization. While predetermined tags streamline organization, overusing tags overpopulates results. Readers use tags to filter for the works they want to read, and there are many posts about how to navigate tags and how to tag one’s own work [8]. A misuse of this paratextual system muddies its usefulness and meaning for all users, and LullabyKnell wrote an extensive guide to tagging on Tumblr in attempts to ameliorate this issue. She distinguishes between no tagging and over-tagging: ‘If you have written niche content, then tags can be how you get your content out there to readers, past the mega-popular slash pairings’ but ‘over-tagging makes it difficult to find fic that really focuses on minor characters or on popular background characters’ [9].

Tags are part of the AO3 infrastructure and are managed by tag wranglers, who group similar tags that express the same fannish idea. For example, a disambiguation of a tag, such as ‘Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue’, includes all of the tags expressing that idea (e.g. ‘canon until epilogue’, ‘(ignoring the epilogue)’, ‘for people who hate The Epilogue of Doom’) [10]. Goodman describes the rigorous classification of fandom as a managerial method to allow the multiplicity of text. That is, the classification of fandom allows for myriad, and often contradictory, interpretations of text that proliferate in fandom. She asks: ‘If fan creation is premised on multiplicity, on the noncontradiction of different performances of the fiction under question, then how can fans so rigorously demand unity in the collective understanding of the fictional universe?’ [11]. The answer looks like tags: the ‘self-regulating, archival, and taxonomic tendencies of fandom. Fan works, particularly fictions, are rigorously organized by a series of different classifications’, which not only allow readers to find what they desire, but to avoid that which is uninteresting, uncomfortable, or outright heresy to them [12]. Adhering to this system doubly reinforces the community as context and recipient: the fandom-specific community is able to navigate to the fic and the fic contributes to the corpus of fandom text, and the community of [AO3, fanfiction readers] is strengthened from the participation in this self-regulating system.

Martin Barker, ‘Speaking of “paratexts”: A theoretical revisitation’,    p.240.

Francesca Coppa, The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age, p.9.

Coppa, p.9.

Barker, p.242.

Tisha Turk, ‘Fan work: Labor, worth, and participation in fandom’s gift economy’, 3.2.

Kristina Busse, Framing fan fiction, p.117.

Alexandra Herzog, ‘“">But this is my story and this is how I wanted to write it”: Author’s notes as a fannish claim to power in fan fiction writing’, 1.2.

storiesintheashes, ‘Hi Anon, @ao3commentoftheday…’, Tumblr, 29 July, 2020; LullabyKnell Ficlets, ‘How I Tag on AO3 – A Beginner’s Guide’, Tumblr, 29 April, 2019; ao3commentoftheday, ‘What does it mean when a fic is marked…’, Tumblr, July 2020.

LullabyKnell Ficlets, ‘How I Tag on AO3 – A Beginner’s Guide’, Tumblr.

Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue, tag disambiguation, Archive of Our Own.

Lesley Goodman, ‘Disappointing Fans: Fandom, Fictional Theory, and the Death of the Author’, p.666.

Goodman, p.666.

[masculinetrajectories]

(Process) Writing up the journey of the project to inform viva script 

Following the culmination of the context report the first step I took was to look back at the rowdyism project earlier this year. My studio project began with me highlighting and mapping out my field of investigation through creating a sort of manifesto.

The investigative roots of the project were established with the very first act of me dressing up in Drag to start to comprehend the culture through the act of doing which was more challenging than the route of just documenting from the outside. This challenge really freed up my view on the experimentational nature of where the project could go, as initially I was very worried about the seriousness of the subject matter in regards to mental health and masculinity. Following this I decided to do site specific research into Drag Culture, by visiting The Glory, in Haggerston. Here I was exposed to the complex nature of performative gender and the social interactions that give drag it’s cultural reputation. I collected artefacts that I thought were interesting and hard to define as either masculine or feminine, I personally felt that they presented the viewer with the challenge of deciphering the blurred gender connotations presented in the imagery.

Alongside this I began to explore two other areas of interest, the first was Ray Bulloch whom I found on a facebook page called ‘On The Tools’, arguably the most stereotypically masculine page on facebook. The interview framed him as the owner of the first LGBT construction company in the UK. I was fascinated by the anomalous nature of Ray, an openly gay tradesman with a pink van that reads ‘Powered by fairydust’ on the back door. Therefore, I messaged Ray explaining I was doing a project about masculinity and he quickly responded saying that he lived in London and would be more than happy to arrange an interview. In the same way I treated the visit to The Glory, I approached the meeting with Ray, my goal was to document Ray’s story and collect artefacts that I thought were interesting in regards to masculinity. However, I had no idea how sad and beautiful rich the story of Ray Bulloch’s life would be.

The third aspect of the investigatory work I was doing at this stage of the project was putting out questionnaires to start to log data from which to base my future work. The way in which I posed the questions evolved over time due to the reflections over the way in which questions are interpreted by the reader. This refining of questionnaires led me to go back in time to the work I did under ‘ffmncy’, however I had now chosen to interview both males and females, asking them to describe their ‘ideal’ partner. No gender was specified, and the initial reason for doing this was to then analyse the words and then show people that their ideal partner was neither male nor female due to the fact that everyone’s understanding of language is highly nuanced. That was the initial plan. However, after I had sat down and analysed these results they surprised me due to the fact that females used more physical descriptors than their male counterparts and males used more character attributes than their female counterparts.

At this stage in the year the Work In Progress show was approaching and I had all of these artefacts, and data from the language interviews and was looking for a way to showcase them. I experimented with a few ways of displaying the fruits of my labour, but I didn’t feel satisfied with just showing these interesting things I’d found by just putting them on a table and telling people what they were. This was partly because of the fact that my overarching subject matter was masculinity and these findings were relevant however they weren’t doing much by just being there.  Therefore, I began to consider ways in which viewers could interact with and use these findings as touch-points for debate and discourse.  

[flannelsfloorboardsandflavo-blog]

“REAL”ITY TELEVISION: Video Project Rationale

Goals:

For the video project, I wanted to stick to a topic or theme that I was familiar with in order to create an argument that I could both heavily contribute to and also enjoy. As I’ve mentioned in the past, television is one of my strongest passions, so I knew that my project could focus on some aspects of editing that are unique to television alone. In working on our class presentation on “Visual Evidence”, I realized that most of Hempe’s concepts could be applied to reality television as well as documentary filmmaking and as I continued to work on the project and then presented it in class, I found that my fondness of reality television allowed me to interpret this genre of television in an academic framework. In my blog about my plans for this project, I stated that “my primary goal in the video project will be to compare and contrast the raw footage of an event with the edited television version and also to display some behind the scenes maneuvers that producers do in order to influence contestant opinions.” In order to exemplify this, I used a scene from an episode of Big Brother and then compared it to that same event depicted through raw footage from the live feeds of the show. Now that I’ve completed putting together my artifact, I believe that the argument I laid out adheres to the original goal I had for this project.

Affordances: The most difficult part of this project was the research required in gathering video and footage that was most representative in displaying the dichotomy between the live footage and the edited episode. My experience as a fan of Big Brother was enough for me to remember that such instances had occurred, but I couldn’t think of any specifics or the best examples, so I took to the Big Brother sub-reddit and basically asked them to provide any instances they could recall. Once I watched through some suggested footage, I found one sequence from this past season that was recommended by many fans to look into. I found the moment in the episode and then searched profusely for a clip of the conversation between Kaitlyn and Bayleigh from the live feeds. I finally located a clip that was as close I was going to get because the live feeds never captured the first 30 sconds or so of the conversation that could summarize the situation these people were in, so I had to employ title cards to explain the significance of that clip. I began to use these title cards to introduce videos and bridge certain gaps and this proved to be an effective way of getting across the amount of information it would otherwise take for me 20 minutes of footage to convey. The time constraint required me to be as efficient as possible and I had to make decisions such as is it better to include more examples with less details or focus on a few moments worth deeply examining. As I did in my last project, I used iMovie to construct this video artifact. It was enough to put together the segments that I had chosen and I didn’t necessarily require any fancy editing tools because I was more interested in using already existing footage (raw and edited) juxtaposed against each other as video evidence to support my argument rather than manipulate the footage in order to produce a creative interpretation that displays what I can accomplish with editing techniques. I felt comfortable focusing on the production context of existing media artifacts because my last project already demonstrated a significant amount of video and audio editing skills.

Audience:

My audience for this project appeals to people who have experience with reality television viewing and not just Big Brother fans because as I mentioned earlier, my use of Big Brother was the show’s unique property of offering audience members both raw and edited footage, not because of any particular elements of Big Brother as a television program. While I understand that there is a significant portion of the American population who aren’t familiar or experienced with this genre of television, I believe that this project can be viewed and understood by a diverse demographic. Reality television is interesting because while it’s a broad genre, many editing and production techniques are consistent throughout. In the television and streaming market, there are reality TV programs that appeal to specific racial, gender, and regional demographics, in fact, this genre of television has been known to be exceptionally popular with marginalized and minority communities. Therefore, I don’t necessarily believe that any specific demographics are inherently excluded from participating in this project, it all comes down to the individual’s own experience with reality television and documentary films.

Decision Making Process: As I mentioned earlier, given the time constraint, I settled on devoting an ample amount of time to two specific moments that offer a diverse amount of producer and editing manipulation worth exploring in order to enhance my argument. The first segment was meant to show how the produced program actively allowed (and potentially encouraged) Kaitlyn to claim that her knowledge of a conversation that she wasn’t originally privy to came from a clairvoyant moment. With the beginning (Brett and Winston talking with Scottie) and ending (Kaitlyn telling Scottie about her dream) being edited material from the episode’s narrative, I was able to supplement the depiction of this event with raw footage of what occurred in between, which was Bayleigh informing Kaitlyn of the earlier meeting. The live feed also proved to have some visual evidence (the camera followed Kaitlyn from the bedroom where Bayleigh talked with her, walking right through the living room, past the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the bedroom when her confrontation of Scottie took place) that corroborates with some of the shots in the produced episode. To give some context, at the beginning of this season, Kaitlyn was almost immediately a breakout character who was known for some delusional observations and claims. My purpose in including this sequence of events as part of my argument is to show how the producers are able to craft narratives by completely fabricating the explanation an event. The second segment I included had a bit more of a political argument to make about production companies and broadcast corporations protecting their interests by lacking transparency in reality television programs. The footage I presented of Jeff talking about why Dumbledore shouldn’t be gay was a very unflattering light to be seen in and as a consequence CBS never aired this footage. Since the broadcast episode never addressed those comments, I had a difficult time portraying the effect of this sort of omission, so instead I realized that following Jeff’s homophobic tirade with footage of him being awarded for his character and further promoted as a television personality accurately depicts the type of producer manipulation that my argument intended on highlighting.

Theory/ Course Readings: This project was based directly off the work I did about Hampe’s article “Visual Evidence” for the in-class presentation I was assigned to. I was intrigued by Hampe’s ideas about footage as concrete evidence and I wanted to explore to what degree this statement was true given the similarities between documentary film and reality television. One of Hampe’s themes that appeared in my artifact was the edited episode including a confessional (or an interview) that described the event different than the visual evidence would have indicated. Hampe claims that “what is said and what is done should both be considered behavior, [so] what happens when people’s actions seem to contradict the words they are saying?” which occurs in my artifact when Kaitlyn’s confession about her premonition is used as the reason that she knew about the secret meeting, when the visual evidence heavily suggests that a conversation with Bayleigh was a direct cause of Kaitlyn’s confrontation (Hampe, 60). In working with so much reality television footage (raw and edited), I began to grow aware of some technical and logistical problems with using what footage exists in order to tell the most accurate version of a story. Wohl’s article “The Language of Film” was informative as to some of the potential constraints that reality television editors and producers may face in constructing a scene that tells the story they need. Wohl focuses on the technical aspects of editing and the rules that must be adhered to in order to create the most eloquent scene possible. If you watch enough footage from the live feeds, you might find that sometimes the footage of a conversation can’t be used because it could break specific requirements such as the 180-degree rule which explains the angles of faces shown in conversation that help the viewer understand who is speaking to who and it also helps establish the setting of the scene.

Reflection: As a fan of Big Brother and other reality competition programs, I was fairly aware of the extent to which producers take liberty in the editing bay to craft the narrative that fits best for the producers. The hundreds of hours of contestant interviews that I’ve heard in the past painted a pretty whole picture of the truth behind the scenes in regards to everything from casting, filming, and airing. In preparation and research for this project, I probably watched somewhere between 4-6 hours of live feed footage in search for some material that fit Hampe’s definition of visual evidence. In doing so, I was reminded of just how many hours there are in the day versus how many hours of edited episodes the audience sees every week. The amount of boredom and lack of action you see from the participants 90% of the time is a strong indicator that even though the 3-4 hours a week of episodes shown depict a certain pace of action, viewers are led to believe that those few hours are representative of 100% of what happens at all times. These are ideas that as a fan of reality television I’ve been cognizant of for a while, but when comparing the apparent “evidence” presented by the raw footage versus recognizing the biases present in any form of edited reality footage, it serves as a reminder of how much power the producers and editors of the reality television programs ultimately hold.

Sources Cited

Hampe, Barry. Making Documentary Films and Videos: a Practical Guide to Planning, Filming, and Editing Documentaries. H. Holt, 2007.

Wohl, Michael. “THE LANGUAGE OF FILM.” Ken Stone's Final Cut Pro Web Site, 30 June 2008, www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/language_of_film.html.

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Self Initiated Evaluation

The final part of my project response was based upon the individuals involved in the local Hardcore music community (OCHC), specifically focusing on those of whom have careers affiliated with the community. I proposed to work in a documentary-esque style of environmental portraiture and hoped to create a zine of which was to be accompanied by a range of larger prints.

I chose to work in accordance to this concept as I felt the persons involved in the side of the scene often go unrecognised for their work and tend to be left far from the spotlight of the majority’s attention. As a photographer who has worked in this music community for a number of years I believe the desire to complete this project stemmed from my own experiences and perception of the hierarchical positions within this subculture.  

For contextual purposes I researched into the background history, identities and characters present in this music scene in order to gain a greater understanding of the subject in which I was working with and to begin to understand the group I was working with on a intimate level. The historical research I carried out allowed me to gain an insight into the rich timeline of the subculture, how it has developed since its birth and what the community and music stand for. Looking into the overall identity evident in the national and local scenes enabled me to comprehend the atmosphere and social stance of those involved in the community. These factors coincided to give me an idea of greater depths in regards of the culture I was to be working with.

In regards of my concept, I feel that I didn’t progress and develop it as much as I potentially could have throughout this project due to being so set on my starting concept and reluctant to alter it as the unit progressed. On multiple occasions I felt that the path I’d chosen to follow wasn’t the best for my final major as I became bored and regretful of my choices towards the ends of the project, despite this I am happy that I was consistent within my final major as I am proud of the project and imagery I have produced. It is a possibility that this hesitation was caused through a lack of motivation and drive as the course was coming to an end however, as stated above, I am content with my work.

Moving onto the research aspect of my body of work of which I gained inspirations for a range of areas of my work and allowed my to progress artistically and conceptually. I looked into a number of artists as well as technical factors and lighting scenarios. I believe that I benefited from all of my research as evident in my progression from first to last shoot as throughout my photographic journey I took points of inspiration of other photographs and interpreted the technicalities and styles in my own way. The factors I felt I took a great amount of influence on and I progressed in was my tonal awareness choice, use of hues, compositions and locations - I used a these factors to give my imagery more of a sense of the subjects personality and position within the local scene. As well as this I looked into and practised a process I am not greatly familiar with which is film photography and the processes that go hand in hand with it. My experience gained through this experimentation has encouraged me to do further analogue work in future ventures. Another point of inspiration for this project was my surrounds, the people who are within my friendship group and those that have experienced similar involvement to myself. If I could improve upon my research I would definitely carry out more artist research as I feel that is the area of which enhance my work the most through influence.

Throughout my project I have encountered a range of issues however I have taken them all in my stride and have overcome them. I faced issues regarding subjects bailing on shoots moments after agreeing to them and a number of photographic hurdles such as learning to enhance natural light, exposing for highlights and shooting directly into a light source. Subjects pulling out of shoots came as a massive inconvenience to me as it combatted my initial plan of producing a zine with a minimum of 20 images - I feel that I had very high expectations for myself to carry out this many shoots however I still did not accomplish as many shoots as I had hoped to. The technical bridges I crossed where conquered through a process of trial and error as evident in my contact sheets, this isn’t the most time efficient way of achieving goals however I feel that it works well for me as it allows me to see what I need to improve upon in order to reach my desired visual.

Regarding planning and production I feel that I have been quite efficient however things could have been done better. Throughout the project I have been keeping checklists of what needs to be done, I have been trying to complete work soon after starting it, fitting in extra work where I can and tracking my progress against the time plan and action plans. I don’t believe that I was massively organised throughout this project however everything has been completed either within the unit’s set deadline or my personal ones and to a standard I am proud of. I met all deadline as I’d hoped to with no issues despite occasionally making final adjustments to pieces such as correcting grammatical errors.

During this projects I experimented with and developed a range of new skills such as working with analogue camera equipment, processing film, shooting in a range of lighting circumstances, developing my portraiture and pushing progression within my tonal awareness, professionality and use of formal elements. I feel that in this sense my practical skills have been enhanced through the practise.

There has been a variety of positives and negatives of my choice to work in a sketchbook for this unit, as there would’ve been had I chosen to present my work through the use of a blog. I enjoyed the hands on experience of physically presenting my work, the sense of accomplishment I have felt when something is visually appealing and completely finished in front of me and the overall experience of working in a sketchbook. The downsides I have faced are the costs of the sketchbook, printing and additional necessary items however I covered these costs in my initial budget plan to ensure I had no financial surprises. Also I found sketchbooking to be more time consuming but I feel it was worth it for the finished product.

I carried out multiple evaluations and reflections throughout the duration of this body of work and all of which I believe are completed to a high standard and cover all of this areas relevant to the focus of the written piece. I consistently completed these evaluations and reflections following secondary and primary research, renders, experiments, directly after a shoot, after I have selected an image to edit, any final imagery and within my weekly reflections. These reviews allowed me to visuals and comprehend any improvements and create a plan of how I am going to achieve my new desired outcomes.

Moving onto my presentation I feel that I have covered this to an impressive standard in all areas. My sketchbook is well presented, flows in chronological order and coincides with my timeline and weekly reflections, I feel that these factors work together to give my work a sense of professionalism and continuity. If I were to improve my work blog I believe that I may have been more creative with my presentation and introduced more colour to the workbook. The powerpoint presentation of my proposal a few weeks into the project went moderately fine. I covered and included and appropriate information, met the required presentation time duration, used the powerpoint application to my benefit and remained professional throughout despite presenting to peers. As mentioned within my initial reflection of the presentation I feel that I could’ve been more confident and refrained from using filler words such as ‘like’ and ‘yeah’ and pausing throughout.

In regards to my final image and overall exhibition presentation I am proud of what I have created. My printed image, frame of choice, business cards and well produced artist statement combine to give a professional standard that I believe is consistent throughout the classes exhibition. I feel that audience may not be aware of the concept behind my work upon first review but will gain this information through the assistance of my given statement, I have no issues with this as I am overly pleased with my imagery and choice of text to be presented alongside it. If I were to improve upon my exhibition installment I would chose to print in a larger size in order to engage the audience in my piece. I was unable to do this due to financial issues at the time of printing but I am content with the size I have presented as it is what I initially had planned for.

For the duration of this body of work I have been evidencing use of my practical skills to a very high standard. All of my written work has been formatted into appropriate paragraphs and have followed the Point - Evidence - Explain - Expand pathway. My use of Maths and more specifically my use of data manipulation allowed my to process the information gained from my primary research into easily readable pie charts which enabled me to present my findings efficiently.