TRIALS AND ERRORS
When writing the proposal for my advanced project, I did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve, but I knew that I wanted to include colour theory into my practice. Even when we presented our ideas in class for the first time, I explained to the group my desire to explore the connection between emotions and colours in a different way than what I have seen before. When hearing the feedback, I was faced with the first challenge – my idea was too broad, my field of study would be too big to properly represent in such a short time. After thinking it through, I decided that the best way would be to focus it around a specific film genre. I considered romance or independent films, but then I realised that there is one genre that tends to evoke strong feelings in people – the superhero genre. This is how my initial proposal presented an idea that was highly focused on the use of colour theory in the superhero genre and the changes it went through as time passed. I mentioned that I wanted to look further into the psychological and philosophical aspects, but, at that time, I did not yet know where that would take me. In the beginning, the idea for the exhibition was created around colour palettes – showcasing them accompanied by an edited video featuring different ways superhero films use colour to create emotions. Through the research practice, everything changed.
Between sending the proposal and my first supervision session, the idea was already modified – it was not fully focused on the superhero genre anymore, it shifted to using the superhero genre as more of a case study to explore Carl Jung’s Shadow Theory. It took a more abrupt change than I was expecting, but I believe that was for the better. At this point, I was still considering colour palettes as a way to exhibit my findings. During the supervision session, I was told a few more places to look for inspiration and got advice for further academic research. Following this session, I looked more into colour theory and colour palettes, I analysed the examples my supervisor suggested, and I realised something important – I did not want to present my project through colour palettes. This was the second challenge I faced. My initial idea changed so much that the way I imaged the exhibition did not feel suitable anymore. After thinking it over, I realised that the way I was going to present it needed to change, but for that to happen, I needed more inspiration from the real world. That was when I decided to spend a few days visiting different museums and art galleries around London, taking pictures of what I found inspiring and writing down the name of artists that I was planning on researching further.
I began making different video edits and showcasing them to people to figure out what emotions emerged from what they were seeing on screen. The videos had clips from different superhero films, the colour oversaturated and slightly edited to be more evident when seen on screen. The results were similar, but I was not sure if the connections people were making were based on the colours themselves or on the fact that they had prior knowledge of the films. I tried this method a few times throughout my research and not a lot changed - people were giving similar answers when it came to the correlation between the colours on screen and the emotions they were feeling. At the end of the day, I believe this part of my research helped more with technical aspects rather than artistical ones. Through these small workshops, I managed to get ideas on how to edit the video better in order to get my point across. All this was repeated during the crit session we had in class. I was told what changes I could make to the video and was told that, while the idea was good and interesting, the video did not manage to showcase it in the right way. I agreed with this, I was considering a different approach for quite some time but was unsure of where I was heading - that is why I presented the video in the first place.
The feedback I got from the crit session did not feel like a setback, but more like the extra push I needed – I decided an installation would suit my project a lot better; a better-edited video could still be present, but it would not be the main focus of my exhibition. I believe the group and crit sessions helped a bit with the technical aspects, but, mainly, they were a big help mentally. Understanding that everyone has their own difficulties and approaches and discussing them with each other is a good way to get out of a creative block. Even more, showing your work to an audience can bring out things you missed because you were too focused on something else or because you just spent too long overthinking your own project. Either way, it turns out peer-reviewing your work is a good way to make sure you are moving forward with your idea and are not stuck on a destructive path.
