Circular Narrative Initial Proposal

Proposal

Ben Stokes

Circular Narrative Brief

For my new assignment I have been given a photograph that I will need to go and produce a story based on a circular narrative using the photograph I was given as the beginning and ending image.

A circular narrative is one that finishes where it began, the whole plot of the story creating a circular motion back to the start.

I have been given a photograph of a leaf stuck to a window with droplets of water, which at first glance seemed quite a hard photograph to make a circular narrative story out of.

I intend to create a set of 6-8 images that show a seamlessly looping story, which embrace the circular narrative well and puts across the plot effectively to the target audience. My target audience will be fine art based due to the different views and ways of thinking which will be prominent in my set of images, focusing on people aged from late teenagers to mature adults. My set of photographs will hopefully appeal to such a wide target audience due to the fun yet challenging story line.

My idea is to create a story of what initially looks like just a photograph of a leaf stuck to a window but in fact as the story unfolds, through different viewpoints the photograph will be part of a much different story. The idea of trickery will be used in a tactical way to make the audience think about the set of photographs as they are read and as a whole.

My main inspiration is from Duane Michals whose photographic stories use trickery; very similar to that I am going to produce. The thing that drew me to his work is that through different perspectives he creates a whole different story line which switches and changes in each photograph but still circulates round to his original image.

I have produced a storyboard of how I want the images to look and have started to take initial photographs in order to gather more ideas. 

Gregory Crewdson

Crewdson, a film scene photographer, maker of twilight and between the roses. He shows the outcome of the so called american dream, the things underneath the beauty.

Briefs

Yesterday I started back for my second year at salford university, we were given two new briefs which both relate to the "narrative" theme. 

The first brief we were given entailed us to create a series of photographs which tell a story. We were all given a photograph inorder to start us off, we had to use this photograph as the first and last image in the sequence. We have to produce at least 5 photographs which fit into the story I come up with, making sure that the photographs flow well and are identifiable to the audience. 

The image that I was given is of a window which has droplets of rain on the outside of it, there is also a leaf stuck to the window. At first glance I though that this would be a fairly hard photograph to create a "story" from. My initial thoughts were that I could involve the change of seasons and weather, showing the transitions between weather in the UK. This idea would give me the opportunity to create a circular narrative which starts in the autumn and shows the cycle of weather throughout the year back to autumn, ending with the first photograph. The above is just one initial idea, I am going to go away and think of other stories which I can show through a circular narrative while incorporating the image I was given.

The second brief that we were given was a group assignment which was referred to as being similar to the game 'chinese whispers' where a story is told from person to person which sometimes causes the story to be changed and misheard as it is passed along. The assignment is similar to this however our group starts off with a photograph then the rest of the group have to react to the persons photograph who is above them on the list. The new photograph gets given to the next person on the list and they must react to this photograph only then pass their new photograph onto the next person. The photograph that each person takes must link and form a story based on the photograph that they were given from the previous person. I think that this assignment could be lots of fun and believe the outcome will be something interesting due to how different people react or read the photograph that they are given. I intend to create a photograph which will flow on easily and will enable the next person to form ideas of how to carry on the story easily. 

This blog will be used to take down any ideas, development and any other relevant information that I have for the assignments.