Ever since I came to London, I tried my hands on anything that I can try, one of them is editing images. I have some projects back from home that hasn’t published yet and needed some editing to make it more appealing. My friends who helped me edit the photos is currently busy so I attempted to do it myself.
Violet Stellar Because the photographer usually does commercial work, the editing became somewhat commercial too. The character that I made seemed too pretty–while I aimed for quirky as she’s like a princess gymnastic from another galaxy. And because this was a beauty shoot, the dynamic of the poses was limited. I edited the pictures to ‘scanned old magazine’ feel in order to town down the prettiness.
Twin Moon For the first two photos, I cleaned the background and gave a little correction to the brightness, contrast etc. Then I added some ‘anime’ effects because in my head they’re space rangers who roam the galaxy to safe people–in anime style. For the second one, I practised on correcting skin colour and smoothen it. If you look closely, you can tell the differences between before (left) and after (right). For the last one, I did the same skin colour correction and added some sparkle to further heighten the edginess of the characters.
Uranus As the God of the sky, I wanted to make Uranus more ‘fairy-like’. My friend helped me turned the sky to blue (it was flat white), then I added planets/stars on the sky to emphasizes ‘outer space’. I also gave her fairy wings and butterflies friends.
Overall, I feel satisfied with the pictures and proud of myself since I edited them only with guides from Youtube and Google. From now on, not only doing pre and production, I want to make more materials to hone my post-production skill.
From the first tutorial, I got recommendations from Vicky on stereoscopic moving image, a music video by IAMX called Bernadette and a short film by Martin Arnold which he kept repeating or going forward-backwards to create a new meaning to a scene.
The first tutorial lead me to reach a new idea about nightmare.
Continuing my nightmare story, I got inspired by this animation video by Robert Ek. It gives an uncomfortable, unsettling feeling when you watch it. This one image illustrates how my first weeks in London felt like.
Robert Ek (2017)
Because of this video, I tried to search for videos of the most unsatisfying things on Youtube. (Disclaimer: they’re unsatisfying in many ways).
From these videos, I decided to portray the idea of ‘nightmare’ with an agonizing video. I wanted to challenge myself by going out of my comfort zone; I’ve always been creating stills so storyboard and film are new for me. I also should practice more on editing, so I’d like to edit the video myself (with a little help from here and there).
Additional notes after the second tutorial with Ellie.
I can’t decide for now whether to film all the scenes myself, pair it partially with footages from other works or completely making an experimental film with footages from other works to exercise storytelling through film. If I can’t get any studios this December I’d probably choose the last option or filming anything that I can this December and continue it in January.
For Fashion Media Lab, I was thinking of creating something related to my research and final project. I wanted to treat this unit as a practice or trial and error ground before making the final product next year. But honestly, I’ve been stuck on what to make for the MA final project so I decided to do something different.
At first, I wanted to apply the stereoscopic technic and make (as I discussed with Vicky before) a visual narrative of photographic setups with high styling. I love fairy tales and fantasy characters, especially about deities. I have this one idea that hasn’t been executed since a year ago: a series of triplets Gods photography.
Reference: Rosalia’s El Mal Querer Album Animation Cover Filip Custic (2018)
Reference: The Color of Pomegranates – The Poet’s Childhood Sergei Parajanov (1986) If turned into a film, the work would be a more photographic movie without dialogue like this.
The Moirai are the three fates that decide human destiny. Clotho decides who will be born, Lachesis help measures the length of a person’s life, and Atropos decides how one will pass on.
The Erinyes are deities of vengeance, they are the punisher of wrongdoings. Not only God, but victims too can call on the Erinyes and pray for their curse. The worst curse in the eyes of Erinyes came from the parents–if the child is wicked, they can wish for the Erinyes to fall their curse upon the child.
Black-winged daemons, children of Nyx. They’re the personification of dreams that appear differently according to the dream.
The idea is to have the three in each set design with a different colour palette. The colour was chosen to further emphasize the mood of each deity’s existence. The Moirai will be white since it represents life, which is pure, sincere and innocent. As it signifies passion, strength and desire, red is chosen for the Erinyes. Black will be the Oneiroi’s colour for it represents mysterious, authority and fear.
After the first tutorial, I was doing further research about the three pairs and discovered that The Moirai actually have agents. When Atropos decide how an individual die, it will notify a certain agent to do the job. A cruel and violent death means The Keres, blood-thirst spirits, will do the job. Peaceful or nonviolent death will require Thanatos, a God of death that will guide the soul to the underworld. I found the story more intriguing than the Erinyes and thinking of changing them into Keres. So the story would be around life/death or conscious/unconscious–and they’re all the children of Nyx, the Goddess of night.
But the deeper I dig into the stories, the more I become confused about how to change this idea into a film. Especially when I created this idea, the output that I thought of are still images. That is why I decided to ditch this idea and try to find another one that is similar and more doable.
Notes from the first tutorial with Vicky.
While thinking about this, I can’t help but feel a sense of panic. I couldn’t sleep, thinking that I wouldn’t make it this unit. Then I remember my own experience. On the first weeks in London, I had nightmares. Sometimes the story continues from one dream to another. The feeling of not doing good enough, overwhelmed, being chased, pressured, and rushed all together haunted me. I think the occurrence can be a good starting point. I will explore the idea more for the concept and output.
While researching more for research unit, I found a zine and an article that intrigued me. The article on Vice Indonesia, titled ‘Like Mother, Unlike Daughter: Portraits of Women Defining Their Own Femininity’ (you can access it here–it’s fully in English!). The article writes about Anak Perempuan (means ‘daughter’ in English), a photo book by photographer Nadia Rompas unpacks intergenerational femininity, gender stereotypes, and identity. In the series of photography, stated by the article, ‘mom is someone who hangs over their daughters’ lives regardless of whether she’s physically present. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s frustrating, like when your mom has very different ideas about how you should dress, who you should date, where you should work‘.
What intrigued me are the stories of two women my age, who dress drastically different at home with their family and outside because of the social pressure their mom put on them.
“I think I’m my mother’s nightmare. If she could do it all over again, I’m sure she would’ve done things very differently with me.”—Alia Marsha
“My mom started wearing a hijab daily and forced me to do the same, backing it with scriptures and all. When I couldn’t refute her, I couldn’t refuse. She makes me wear the hijab outside the house, but I always keep spare ‘non-hijabi’ clothes in the car and change when I’m not going out with my family. This has been going on for ten years and counting. I don’t know if I could ever come out.”—Zara
This is how Zara normally dressed every day, she has a lot more freedom as she lives far away from her hometown. I don’t know how she maintains the dual identity for 10 years.
This article attracted me a lot since I have the same experience (and it’s kind of the same with a girl named Katy in the article). My mom works as a teacher at Islamic university, her students are obliged to wear hijab and modest clothes (you have to cover up and not allowed to wear tight attire that exposes your body shape) and she’s one of the people who enforced the regulation. Naturally, she wanted me to do the same. So every time I need to go to her campus or hanging out with her friends, I compelled to wear hijab or pashmina and long sleeves. This is like having two identities because of the social pressure from the mom.
I am thinking of making this into my 500 words essay and try to find more information regarding the topic.
Another interesting thing that I found is Buah Zine, a digital zine by Teta, an Indonesian diaspora who lives in the US.
The zine featured interviews of people with Indonesian heritage who lives and/or grew up abroad. Their stories are interesting, and I saw the pattern for Indonesians who live/have lived abroad from Buah and Anak Perempuan: they seem to be more carefree on self-expression. Now the question is, should I go deeper on this for my research?
I stumbled on this documentary at Aesthetica Short Film Festival, on the repeat screening of the Director’s Pick. The film is by far my favourite from the whole festival (it won the Best of Festival at the same event and in the making to be a feature film). I saw some experimental and documentary films the day before I saw this and I almost fell asleep in the middle but this one kept me engaged and gave me chills. I felt very pumped watching this.
Kofi and Lartey is a story about Agbogbloshie, a commercial district near the centre of Accra, Ghana. It’s well known as the biggest e-waste site on Earth. The director, Sasha Rainbow, gave a few words about the film:
“There has been much documentation of Agbogbloshie in recent years, but in most cases, it has come from a sensational perspective. I wanted to tell a human story from within the environment, a story that the audience could relate to and empathise with – a story of human strength within the harshest of environments, a real-life Wall-E. It was important for me to bring insight into what it is really like to live and work in such a toxic environment from an insider’s perspective.”
I tried to search for some information on the director herself, and it turned out that she began her career in the music industry, directing work for companies such as Universal, Sony, Mercury and Warner. That makes sense since I think her choices of music or sound on the film is one of the factors why her documentary is appealing. She also used footage of a rapper from Agbogbloshie as the closing scene of Kofi and Lartey. And parts of the short film is made into a music video for Placebo’s “Life’s What You Make It”.
Sasha worked with Abdallah, who’s on a mission to provide education for kids in Agbogbloshie. They also gave Kofi and Lartey the power to record their lives themselves to have candid output on how life really is there. I still remember one quote from the movie: how the scraps of metal that the workers tried to find to trade with money, probably in some years to come found their way back to Agbogbloshie. It’s like a nonstop cycle.
Going through her works, I found another similar pattern: her creations are empowering. Watching Kofi and Lartey, I feel empathy toward the people who live and suffered because of the toxic in Agbogbloshie but at the same time, the individuals seem powerful. Especially when they showed cuts of individuals in the middle. I got goosebumps.
One of commercial work by Sasha Rainbow. The message is to have strength and take a stand against bullying.
The power of the cinematography in the film was also amazing. The DP of the project, Pau Castejón Úbeda, succeded on capturing the documentary and making it interesting to watch. I was totally captivated the whole movie I wished it last longer.
After the festival, I just realized that Sasha Rainbow has another documentary called Kamali, a story about a single mother’s fight for her daughter’s empowerment in India through skateboarding. They screened it on Sunday but unfortunately, I had to go back to London on Saturday night. Last night I found a link to watch the whole film and glad that I did.
Trailer for Kamali
The reason why I hooked so much on Kofi and Lartey is that in the future, I’d love to create documentaries about my own country. I wanted to create it like how Sasha Rainbow did for hers: absorbing and enticing. A piece of compelling harmony between narrative, visual, and sound. One that makes the audience not only aware of the issue but at least curious and wants to delve deeper about it.
Spending a weekend attending a film festival is a new thing for me. I don’t watch a lot of films and the only film festival I attended in Indonesia is Europe on Screen. And because of my work I usually just watch one or two films there. That’s why for Aesthetica Short Film Festival, I went there completely not knowing what to expect and how it works. But I’m excited about the city.
The first thing I did when I reached York was to collect my ticket from the festival hub, grab the programme book, and sit down to see which films I would like to see. A lot of self-conflict and debate happened since I’m at the festival with some friends. Here are my favourites from ASFF 2019:
Mindfoolness – A Beginner’s Guide for Distraction by Benjo Arwas
What interests me is the minimal set design and sound whilst focus on the model’s actions and expressions as a reaction to the narrative are captivating. I think the model herself plays a big part as the video wouldn’t be as fun if she’s not 100% into it. The choice of styling with vibrant colours, texture, and shape of the clothes makes the minimal set up make sense.
Kingdom of Sport by Eliska Kyselkova
As a fan of God and Goddesses in mythology, I fell in love with this film. The creator made the characters based on classic painting and Greek mythology, making traditional sport into the form of deities each assigned with specialisation and their own world. This is similar to what I’ve been doing and will continue to do from now on.
Down by Garry Crystal
I hate films with too much blood so I don’t watch horror/thriller films. But this one–even though I watched it while rising my hands in front of my eyes a couple times–I like. The setting is simple, just two strangers trapped in an elevator: one is an injured, dying man and one a woman who is dying to escape. The unique story and element of surprises make this film memorable.
I Want You to Panic by Nina Holmgren
Inspired by the speeches of Greta Thurnbeg and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, director Nina Holmgren tries to visualize the teenagers’ words. The story depicts a family whose house is on fire but the occupant seems ignorant and not reacts to it.
Nouvelle Vague by Omar Perineau
Most of the fashion film I watched at the festival doesn’t have any storyline with them. But this one sounds like a beginning or introduction part of the film and I like how they create a brief story about each character.
From Beyond by Jordan Blady
Another fashion film that has a storyline. I like it because it’s a bit absurd it’s funny. I looked up the director’s website and watched his previous work. His films feel like moving photographs.
The Blink Fish
The Blink Fish, I think, is clever on their take of a fashion film. They put the narrative into it, do it with humour, and sometimes poking the irony of fashion with it.
Stone Blind by Stone Blind
Stone Blind is a film made as a response to Brunei Darussalam’s government recent law that states homosexuality is illegal in Brunei. Sexual relations between the same sex are punishable by death; one of them is death by stoning. The film depicts the horror that will be faced by the LGBT community in the country.
Schmetterling by Ella Scanlon
The story of a man who feels a change in himself while subtitling a documentary about a butterfly. I love the colour palette, set design and how they visually portray the similarity of identity changes with caterpillar transformation.
Call on Me by Imogen Legrove
The film started based on Legrove’s curiosity on the existence of Phone Sex Operators. She spent money and rung up numerous sex lines and collected recordings, then she fictionalised the characters behind the voices and constructed her own interpretation of them on-screen. Legrove also shared the women were hesitant and hung up the phone as soon as she said she wanted to create a documentary. She needed to get permission from the official sex lines first in order to reassure the women that their identity and story are confidential and safe with her.
State of the Nation by Beth Atkins
A more experimental film with dialogue. The work is made of archive footages and visual metaphors that illustrate the dialogue. For me, the nation mentioned in the film could also be interpreted as the state of self–how the chaos happened inside yourself–and I cried a little watching it.
Deady Freddy by Alicia Eisen
I went to watch the animation films in the hope to find more lighthearted and funny pieces, but I went to the one with ‘suffering and choices’ theme so all the movies were sad and dark. For Deady Freddy, the story is about Freddy, who lived a happy life and given an encore: he must live again through the eyes of every bug he has ever killed. Uncomfortable.
For Research Methods unit, I decided to continue on my study proposal: to create a space for individuals, Indonesian youth to be exact, to do self-expression.
Self-expression and representation is an important discourse in my country right now, particularly for the younger generation. As a conservative country with a Moslem majority, people are not very welcome to the new wave of youth; individuals who express themselves differently–whether through clothes, body image, sexuality, etc.
I followed the study proposal at first, looking at what makes a ‘fashion capital city’ from the book Fashion Cultures Revisited.
Notes I got from Fashion Culture Revisited. There are some factors that make a city titled ‘fashion capital’. The first one is a geographical part, most of the capital cities belong into 85 – 52 degrees latitude, which means they have four seasons and are relatively cold countries. If compared to my country, this seasonal rhythm is something impossible since Indonesia is a tropical country and only has two seasons. As for specialist workshop or individual craft workers, clustering of designers, entrepreneurs, and garment trade workers, Indonesia has it. But I need to make sure if there’s a standard to decide whether Indonesia really has it. But in the end, I think comparing the capital cities to Indonesia left me with a huge gap and the problem lies within it may vary and too much for me to research.
Mind map and scribbles of my thoughts
In the Fashion Cultures Revisited, there’s a paragraph that talked about how the fashion on the street moves to the catwalk. The liveliness of street style affected the style on the runway. That is also one thing that Indonesian doesn’t have: the street in street style. Besides the hot weather, we barely have any pavement to walk on. You can see sidewalk on a big street or business area. But it’s nonexistent on the others. We have a lot of backstreets as well, sometimes only the size of a motorcycle or a person. Pedestrian often walk with motorcycles or bump to street vendors. Our fashion is happening inside the building; malls, cafes, events, or the most pivotal one: the internet. I had worked as a writer on a teen fashion magazine in Jakarta before and I had to fill the street style column by looking for teens with ‘style’, and I found all of them inside malls and fashion event–never on the street. This argument also supported by an essay by Brent Luvaas called “Shooting Street Style in Indonesia: A Photo Essay”. Luvaas found it difficult to photograph ‘street style’ cause it’s hard to discover ‘cool’ people on the street. Thus the definition of ‘street style’ in Indonesia became blurry too.
Examples of the streets in Jakarta
Another thing I noticed as a hurdle is how hard it is to get academic research on fashion–specifically on the topic sociology on fashion. I tried the e-source from UAL but mostly saw about modest fashion, e-commerce, and business side of fashion in Indonesia. So I only have a few resources that I can rely on.
I tried asking my friends through an Instagram story on the topic. Around 10+ people replied and I was surprised how open and frustrated people are about self-expression in Indonesia. I discovered some similar patterns from their stories. Most of them are uncomfortable with people staring at them because they feel like they’re being judged for something wrong. Especially for the women, they feel unpleasant when they walk on the street or ride public transportation because they got catcalled or harassed. Their closest environment (family, friends, colleagues) also put pressure on them, trying to ‘correct’ their appearance to make them look the same as everybody else. This is why I feel the power of the gaze and social conformity are two of the biggest issue that affected how people present themselves on the outside.
The internet exposed Indonesian youth to different styles or forms of self-expression yet they’re niche compare to the vast population. Individuals who dare to challenge the mainstream current is called nonconformist. I decided that the keyword for my research is ‘millennials and gen z nonconformist self-expression through fashion in Jakarta’. But nonconformist here still have a broad definition, that is why I try to narrow it down by demographic: half millennials and gen Z who live in Jakarta. The conformist should be defined too because depending on the social group or geography, they can change. I can narrow it down by industry (one of my respondents is a rapper and he usually performs in office working attire–shirt and structured trouser–while most people in the community wear oversized, baggy clothes), religion (especially for women who chose to not wear hijab), or social. I still can’t decide which to focus on. I am interested to look at the issue on Moslem conform since it’s the most apparent (you have to cover yourself, can not have tattoo(s), prohibited to change your body parts, etc) but it will be very liberal and I need a lot of strong backups regarding the topic as it’s a sensitive one.
The feedback I got from presenting my initial idea on the research questions. From there I tried to explore more and create some research questions. A lot of thoughts on the nonconformist and conformist; for the conformist–is there any difference between those who live/have lived abroad and those who live in Indonesia? For those who conform, whether it’s family, friends, or colleagues, is there any difference between those who conform but okay with people not conforming and those who conform but not okay with people not conforming?
I still have a long way to go to discover my specific research topic but I feel like I’m getting there.
For our object story, Yve and I borrowed clothes from CSM graduate Jojo, but we ended up not using it. To make it up for the designer, I tried to create an idea for a shoot. The clothes remind me a lot to childhood and fairy tales–especially fairies.
Courtesy of Jojo Ruiji Zhou
I got the idea to link the clothes with a fairy tale story. I remember Thumbelina, a story about a girl who was born from a flower, went on an adventure and wedded the fairy prince. But for the clothes, I wanted to twist the story so it won’t appear to be dreamy and sweet. The mood I aimed at was eerie and dark. Fortunately, I found surrealism paintings by Michael Cheval and Michael Hutter that I thought would help develop the story further.
We were thinking of having 4 models for the day. One as Thumbelina and the rest as fairies. Yve, the photographer Yichen (from MA Photography), and I had a meeting to decide the place and props that we needed. We decided to shoot at Crystal Palace Park, as it has gardens and maze that befitted with the concept.
Along the way, it was hard to get a model because the concept is too ‘weird’. Most agencies are more willing to give their models if we offer them a more commercial, simpler concept that emphasizes the model’s face so we ended up with none from agencies. Long story short, we only got two models on the shooting day.
Fitting situation
Hall inside Yve’s flat where we do the fitting
Saxophone and cello that I hired for the shoot in front of my room
