Blog post 3

When I reflect back onto my experience creating a moving image for my Fashion Activism class, I realise how much I actually learnt about my interests and work ethic. The general theme of our learning was creative direction, something I didn’t know I had much fascination for until now. It’s a subject that teaches you to work collaboratively, making use of everyone’s area of skill to create a piece of work. It was interesting for me to learn about engagement of the ‘behind the scenes’ happenings necessary for the successful outcomes of a brands image. For our project, my group was given the brand Lazy Oaf where we had to create a short film based off of their collection, ‘It’s OK not to be OK’ in collaboration with the ‘Time to Change’ campaign to jumpstart the week of Mental Health Awareness. Due to us not being in the same country, we decided to create a moving image of four of us saying the phrase “it’s ok not to be ok” followed by me ending the clip saying “ok?”. I then volunteered to edit all the clips together, making use of certain tools to alter the clips, giving the film a warped look, it came out looking as if the video was glitching and repeating itself. I then added sound and a black and white filter, along with text at the bottom of the screen with the said phrase. The reason behind this project is the idea of what mental illness would sound or visualise as. The repetitive noises symbolise anxiety as it has the tendency to make one overthink, the filter signifying emotion and velocity used to fasten and slow things down as well as rewinding and reversing certain clips. I used tv static to make the video uncomfortable to watch because it’s loud and harsh in sound.  We were trying to demonstrate ideas of what we think when pondering over mental illness. A thought of it being uncomfortable in your own mind and it not being very calm and peaceful but rather loud and difficult to grasp. Although this is only a fraction of the reality as everyone has a different experience regarding mental health, this video is trying to portray that it’s okay to feel the way we do as well as trying to make it a little easier for others to understand what it may be like in the mind of someone else. The theme of this project relates closely to social responsibility as it surrounds the subject matter of awareness. It also tackles the concept of diversity in the sense that no one’s experience with mental illness will be exactly like that of another, although there may be similarities, everyone’s journey is different and we need to understand that, instead of stereotyping based off of the first three symptoms that sit on the top of a Google search page.