05
Location

COLLABORATION NOTES:

Hard Times: Han Rowe, Emily Phillips, Ella MacLeod, Ray Jones, Astra London, Anna Southern, Sarah Lopez, Jack Edwards. Shared some initial research, decided on a street to use for the scene together, shared measurements. Created a group presentation together for an output.

 

This project was about adapting a location near the University in order to fit a scene in a given script, reflecting a past era. This was my final main module project for Year 1 of DFTV.

 

My script was ‘Hard Times’, adapting a Charles Dickens novel first published in 1854 and set in the fictional Northern town of Coketown. I started by creating a schedule for the project in order to visualise the time we had. It was a pretty short amount of time as we were leading up to portfolio and I was due to go on the annual DFTV trip to Belfast which was excellent. I then began to do research into Victorian Nottingham in order to compare and contrast what I knew of Nottingham today and what was period-accurate as well as arm myself with appropriate and useful reference. We were put in groups for the project and I shared these images on our shared Teams chat as well as some maps I found of the city. 

 

I aimed to immerse myself in Victorian-set and Victorian-created media, so I watched the 1946 adaptation of Great Expectations as well as the recent adaptation of Oliver Twist called ‘Dodger’ that has been on CBBC and some examples of Victorian kinetoscope and ‘electro-photographs’ of the time. Later on I did some research into Victorian pubs specifically as this was a featured location in the script, as well as photos of Northern cities like Manchester (then a town) and Liverpool in the Victorian era and examples of Victorian typography in Nottingham and my home-town. I was also able to find period-accurate paint swatches by going through the archives of online museums. I really enjoyed doing the research for this project.

 

We then did ‘recces’ and decided on our street for the project, going on the Belfast trip shortly after. Through this project, I was able to successfully produce visuals, moodboards, storyboards, two tech drawings that I am very pleased with the feedback with, a prop list, a dressing plan, three annotated overlays (before-and-after illustrations), Sketch-Up models and signage reference. I feel that my skills have really improved in creating moodboards and also in doing tech drawings. My favourite thing during this project was the development and adaptation of my designs from Sketchup to tech drawing and I would like to further utilise this going forward.

 

Overall, I am really pleased with this project and grateful for the feedback that I received on it.  I am really pleased with how my industry skills have improved throughout this year and look forward to developing them further in Year 2!