World of Dreams
Conceptualize and create a surrealist event poster advertising the annual Chicago Underground Film Festival
Environmental Photography / Costume Design / Photoshop
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Research
. A Complex Context
With a general problem to solve under my belt, I had a total of one week to ideate and conceptualize a solution, scout models, plan and professionally acquire location, design props along with fashion, rent equipment, schedule and coordinate the shoot, edit photos, and print comps. Then just two short days after, re-edited final deliverables were due.
Surrealist photography is always something that I’ve been able to appreciate from a far but have never specifically had the chance to indulge in due to equipment and time restraints. Having the chance to not only dive into the world of surrealism, but also use it as an addition to design had me overly excited. I felt as if this implementation of surrealism over such a well-known, annual event was a great way to visually represent not only a growing event but also the limitless artistic creativity and all the possibilities that come along with depicting film as a medium.
This project was also a beautiful look into not only the pros of a quick turn-around, but also a few of the possible cons. The main issue I found to come along with this particular instance was that our client in question gave minimal to no feedback on our process. This gave what seemed like a very accurate representation of how different levels communication can have a strong effect on a highly professional environment.
Surrealism - (/səˈrēəˌlizəm/)
A 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.I was able to find a lot of my inspiration from online photography communities, heavily showcasing the use of surrealist photography. The one concept of this genre that I found so absolutely enthralling was the ability to take multiple different environments/conditions and fuse them into something so unthought-of, making the boundaries of my concept almost unending.
Location: Philadelphia Naval Yard
Art Exhibit: Sea Monsters Here
Exhibit Closed
Location: Philadelphia Naval Yard
Art Exhibit: Enter the Cocoon
No Professional Photography
Location: Franklin Institute of Philadelphia
Science Installation: Museum of the Moon
Successfully Accessed
This environment I was able to work with was found upon my extensive research of the available art exhibitions that were taking place around the downtown Philadelphia area. Through contact, I was able to get in touch with the Franklin Institutes lovely floor manager who helped me progress my proposal onto the owner of the exhibition, Luke Jarrem, who was welcoming to allow me to execute my concept.
With my two levels of clearance within the museum, it was a breeze for me to design the shoot to my exact specifications, especially with arriving the museum at such a slow hour, I managed to get every photo I had conjured up in my head with minimal interference from my surroundings.
Thinking Out Loud
Initiated my ideation process by researching posters of the festivals past years, felt as if a lot of the old editions had a very dark concept and setting which caused me to want to push more towards lightening the atmosphere in the work I would produce work. This in turn gives the feeling of progression, or growth, of the festival and organization.Moodboarding had me taking a lot of my inspiration from very atmospheric surrealism photography. I decided to take the idea of space and astronomy and create a mashup of environment with a slightly cyberpunk’ed neo-future.
The main challenge of this entire process was not only finding a computer monitor to use for my model, but also learning how to gut the entire internal component in order to turn it into a semi-comfortable mask for them to place on their head. Out of the entire week I had to prepare for my shoot, I spent roughly half of it scouring the web in order to find an old CRT monitor.
After over 10 trips to local recycling plants and waste removal sites, I finally found a hint of luck. In the video, you can watch below as I successfully disassemble the machine in quite good timing to then prepare it for painting.
.Execution
As I met with my model on location the day of the shoot, everything seemingly fell into place. The open floorplan of the exhibit gave incredible room to work with, my models props and outfit came together perfectly as they complimented each other extremely well, also the interior design and lighting of the exhibits contained room suited my concept incredibly well.While the editing was fairly time consuming with working in such an odd perspective within the photo, it wasn’t too difficult in terms with building my exact conceptual vision into the scene (editing the computer screen, adding text to the moon, including small details).
