White Black is the title of my Final Year Project at the Glasgow School of Art‘sBachelor of Arts (Hons) in Communication Design, which was in partnership with the Singapore Institute of Technology. It was a 9 month long open brief project which we were required to self-direct. Having taken up this course in order to expand my skill sets and design thinking, I decided to have a go at experiencing all of the mediums.
To begin my exploration, i had to consider the different factors that affect acceptance. Was it political? Religious? Social? or even Personnal?
After going through the different types of acceptance and factors, i decided to touch on a personal perspective. Inspired by Finisterre from Kieran Evans and Paul Kelly, and La Jetee by Chris Marker, i decided to give a go at conveying the narrative using that methodology which features no narration nor characters. (This technique was further experimented in another production work for the cathay 80second 2015 film competition, titled "Recollection".
However, after producing the video, i found out that althogh such techniques are interesting and are worth exploring, i realised that the medium became quite abstract due to the lack of a narration and character. Wanting to have a more direct approach as my target was the general public, i decided to search for another approach to convey my message.
The thought of thinking about differences then lead me to think about what if, everybody would be the same. Should society be the same, how will that feel.
Deciding to go along that direction, Narrative methods were used to explore on how the message can be conveyed. This ranged from story writing, to storyboarding and even comic drawing. This proccess was insirped by Zack Snyder's movie production technique for 300 where the graphic novel from frank miller played a major part in helping create the 300.
Considering the narrative becoming too taxing on resources, i had to redirect my concept. Coming across the mask, i thought that it would be a good metaphor to use as it is a simple prop and have potential visual impact.
Playing around with the idea, a short film was made in order to convey how sometimes the public can be funny by condemning people from being different without realising.
Back to my initial aim of learning, i attempted to do some poetry in order to manifest the message that i wanted to tell people.
However, due to planning oversight, it was a terrible lesson where time and effort was wasted. BUT it was also a very good learning lesson as everybody still managed to learn something from the production. It was also an eye opener for both me and the crew who were new to a video production.
Some asked, why dance. To me, after working with a wonderful team of dancers: From left, a brilliant choreographer, Liu Peiying Wiing, and two exceptional contemmpory dancers, Yong Mei Lien & Subastian Tan, lastly, the main dancer of my final product, multi genre dancer, Chmel Oon. i came to realise that it was a medium which can be abstract & beautiful. The emotions conveyed aren't explicite nor implicit. This then lead me to try out myself to create a own choreography for the production after the failed attempt.
Due to time constrains, post production was alittle of a rush job as there wasn't enough time left for me to produce custom sounds for the film. (although there was some exploration done, but that is a different story due to the amount of progress.) And with some advise from friends and lecturers, not to mention the support from friends, lecturers, crew and loved ones, having made this project a reality.
Last but not least, Enjoy.
