When receiving this circular narrative brief i was a little aprehensive as i wasn't one hundred percent sure what a 'circular narrative' was and i was unsure of the idea of being given a starting image which you have to use at the start and end of your series. But, i like a challenge so decided to try and get a better understanding of a 'circular narrative' first before attempting to come up with a narrative. After watching several films for example Momento and Fight Club i had an increased understanding of the concept and thought i was ready to tackle my given image.
When i first saw the image it instantly gave me a negative feeling because of it being in black and white and the composition of the image with the closed door. I started brainstorming and came up with the words 'behind closed doors', i automatically knew that this could be part of my idea and thought i could use it as a working title. After having this working title it was much easier for me to come up with an idea/narrative to go with it.
My initial idea was to base my narrative around an NSPCC campaign and create a narrative for each of the rooms (doors which you can see on the image). I started off researching into NSPCC campaign posters to try and get a feel for the kinds of images included although whilst in a feedback session it was suggested that i base my idea more on an NSPCC TV advert so that i can show all of my images, as a poster is more often just one image and for someone to look at very quickly, from this point on i looked into previous NSPCC TV adverts to get inspiration. After watching several i felt i had enough of an idea to start shooting.
My first idea was set out as the room which had the door that had been left ajar would contain a daughter who was being abused by her father, and the room with the closed door would contain a police officer after work one night watch television. There was a lot of dispute with this idea in the group feedback session, one problem being that a room with the abused child in probably wouldn't have left the door open as the father is probably trying to hide what he is doing, the second problem was that it would show the police officer in a bad light because he didn't notice the abuse going on across the hall. Instead of the police officer i decided i would change it to a happy family of two children with a mother and a father, then i could show the difference between their lives even though they live in the same block of flats.
After deciding on my final idea i started to take pictures. I didn't want the images to look posed so i decided to use my nieces and nephew as my models for the children characters as i live close by and they know me very well so are relaxed with me meaning i can get natural images as they are used to me being around with my camera. I wanted to show the narratives for each of the flats by picturing them during their daily routine of breakfast.
When i had taken a sufficient amount of images i then went through them and chose the ones which i felt portrayed my idea best. I didn't want to just hand in the images as their immobile state and as i was aiming this brief at a NSPCC child abuse campaign for a TV advert i decided to put the images together into a video and add some sound and text. I had never used iMovie before but i felt that now was the time to start, i researched into songs which are used in adverts like this and finally chose 'You are my sunshine' by Elizabeth Mitchell as i felt the feel of the song and the lyrics really portray my idea. I also added some text on the last image to finish off the video and give it that NSPCC feel.
After finishing my video i decided to show it to friends and family to get feedback and a lot of people said it would help them understand the narrative more if the images at the start of the video of the happy family had more colour in them and were slightly less unsaturated, so i decided to test out adding more colour to those images. After more feedback it was found that the video with more colour in the first images sent a clearer message of the narrative to the audience so i stuck with this version as my final finished video.
If i had the chance to do this project again i would try to learn more about iMovie first before attempting to produce an advert, i struggled with time as i was learning how to use iMovie at the same time as i was trying to meet a deadline.
