For this piece of work I worked with Beckie B and Ria. We created a piece that looked in to the idea of trickery with the use of media. Our set up consisted of having two television screens back to back, linked together using video cameras. So the camera facing the door was wired to the television facing the back wall and the same for the other side with the camera facing the back wall being wired up to the television facing the door. This enabled a two-way conversation between an audience member and performer. Our trickery came in to play when we asked the audience member to read a passage from the door. Once positioned facing the door they could no longer see the television screen. As they read aloud, Beckie who had been sat talking to them, got up from her chair and made her way round the edge of the room (extremely quietly) to the other side where the audience were sitting. As she did so I then switch the camera on to play mode, now showing the audience pre-recorded footage of Beckie reading a book to her self. As the audience member finished and sat back down the pre-recorded Beckie began to read from he book. At a certain point Beckie then walked to behind the audience member very quietly and began to read in time with her self showing the audience the final trick.
Criticism
We did have some technical problems with this piece. We found the sound level to be a problem. For them to be able to hear the recorded footage the sound had to be up quite high which meant when it was a live feed there was a lot of feed back through the cameras and the voices were unclear. Our solution to this problem was to use Ria, who had been playing the part of Usher, to have the volume controls with her. As the audience member turned around to read the passage she would change the volume at the same time as I was switching over to play mode. This worked well as it was masked so the audience didn’t see the change.
We also had a minor problem with the camera turning its self off all of the time. We resolved this problem by constantly recording the audience member. By having it on record the camera did not turn on to stand by mode.
To make sure that Beckie was looking directly at the audience member and so she could also see the screen so she new when they had turned around we had to position the camera right in front of her television. It didn’t matter, as her side did not need to look good it just needed to look like she was looking at them in the eye. But so the set up looked good on the audience’s side and so we could see them and the door we had to set up their camera to the side of the television. This meant that they were not looking at the camera. A lot of people sat and didn’t know where to look. They weren’t sure whether to look at the camera or at the television, this was confusing for them and I think we should have thought of a better position for their one.
Other Groups
Sarah and Janice had a great idea for theirs, to overlap the faces on the wall. I liked this because this is something I had done in the previous term with Dani. I had printed a photo of my self and one of my mother’s photos on to acetate. My mam and me look very alike any way. I used an OHP to project the two images on to the wall. Once every one had had a good look at the two images in then place them one on top of each other. This shocked them all as it was now like looking at one person. Every feature lined up perfectly to create a new image. This was a nice development using media to show it instead of acetate.