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Working together as a team, Mike Cosgrave and I already lay down some of the aims we wanted to achieve such as experimental projection, some post-production and motion graphics etc. I had already been knocking around a few ideas in my head for a fashion show, mainly involving a sort of touch-sensitive catwalk, where the model would walk on and imagery would react with her movement from beneath. We pitched this to Fashion people and shown them examples. They loved the idea, along with the also pitched 3d video mapping, which we proposed we could make the entire area of the catwalk look more exciting whilst people are waiting for the show. Once we got the go ahead, we began researching more coherently. Although we had started to get an understanding of the software to do some motion tracking and reactive visuals, when looking into the costs, it was just becoming impractical. It was about £150 for a square metre of plastic that could be strong enough to walk on, as well as project through, and LED are majorly costly. A logisitcal nightmare, we started to drift away from that.

As that happened, we were offered another job of working on a production of Dracula for the BA Acting course. They wanted some visuals made and projected on a sheet behind the actors, and it would have to be cued up live. We sat in on some early rehearsals and draft up some ideas, took on what the director wanted and even heard from the students their ideas. We only had about 2 weeks to get this all sorted properly, so once on it we were focused.

As well as our visuals, we were to be given a map to project that would be tracing the route, made by 3rd year animation student called Kavon. He had more time to work on it than we did, and days before we had to go to Lighthouse in Poole for the performance, he handed up a rather shameful attempt that could’ve been done in 10 minutes. It was aptly discarded and I asked my friend Joe Barnett to help us out with a drawn map (rather than one from google images). Evidently, that experience right there was great on a professional level, essentially someone doing a bad job and being told to go away, and getting someone more competent to do it. And it felt good to be on the judging and sorting it out end of it.

The rest of the Dracula experience also great. We gained experience working with large and powerful projectors, working under pressure and live. After we had done 3 performances, it sunk in that we had shown our efforts to over 1000… considering it was a success, especially the final show, it was a massive boon to my confidence. And because of that project, it’s now something I’d be interested in carrying on, to do similar projects as a career option.

Once finished with that, we organised a meeting with Sarah Charles to get back on track with the fashion people. We sat down and discussed what they wanted etc etc. The students set out to make the entire thing have a black and white theme. After agreeing to it, I went away and then thought about it. Technically, we can’t project black (absence of light), and projecting white onto a white screen is just unreasonable, considering we’re back projecting and the front it going to brightly lit. So it seemed the best option to overcome that would be to change the material we’re projecting onto, thus I fell back on my previous unit’s research. I felt sure the the best technical solution would be to make a Water Screen to project on to. This would even allow a certain amount of creative flair as well, as it would give the visuals a look of being suspended in mid air. I pitched that and the students and Sarah loved it. And since then I’ve been majorly working on making this work out. As the show isn’t till June the 16th, I’ve got a bit of time to further develop it, but it’s taking longer than I expected. What I thought would be simple has turned into a costings and design war to keep it practically, moveable and keep to health and safety standards. I’m determined to do it, despite any worries. I’ve set out to prove this will work, because I believe it can. On a professional level, I haven’t’ discouraged, and have developed and ulterior motive for this screen. Once we’ve got a working frame, I’ve thought about the possibility of renting out the water screen. Proper precision made ones cost thousands of pounds to rent, so this has a small scale commercial potential, and I’m currently thinking about £500 rental per event, with extra services coming with additional costs.

Finance has been a vital aspect in all our work, most evidently in the production of the fashion show looking at cost of materials. Working on Dracula, we got informed that the 9000 lumens projector that was hired cost £1,000 a day to rent. When it came to working out the budget and invoices, we used the guidance from the rate card and adapted it. Everything for Dracula was as it was recommended, price per visual and per days etc, with a budget of £4,450. However, the budget for the fashion show we put a total of £10,000. Now, our expenses are only just under that, so I’m worried that it might not of worked out correctly. But I believe I’ve got the grasp of working in a self-employed/partnership aspect. Adding up the profit of both and finding out what National Insurance class I’d be in was enlightening. I’d estimate that a good years worth of work would get me close to £15,000, more or less. And because it’s a partnership, we’re able to work around VAT.

Overall, I’d say all of these experiences over the past 3 months have given me a lot more understanding of what I want to to and how to do it in the next few years. I feel confident about starting a live visuals and experimental projection partnership, and if we keep at it, I’ll start building a good amount of contacts.

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Working on a fake budget of £4,450 for Dracula, and a rather generous £10,000, we put together an invoice, under the Partnership title of ‘Flashbang’

INVOICEdracula

INVOICEfashion

I’ve looked at how the tax and national insurance should work in terms of a partnership. Tax, as far as i can tell, isn’t determinable as such as you’d have to do a full on Tax return at the end of the financial year. National insurance though was easy to get a grasp of. I looked at our profits and determined that if we continued doing projects like this through the year, we would be in the Class 4 N.I. bracket, earning between £5,715 and £43,875. This means of our actual earning, 8% gets deducted. And that works out like so;

Dracula

1260 – 100.8 = 1159.2

Fashion Show

3000 – 240 = 2760

So, overall profit = £3919.20. A good few months rent and bills there… And that’s actually considering that we could potentially be undervaluing ourselves, so there’s potentially more money.

As brief as this is, i definably think i’ve got a firmer understanding how to sort out the business side of things.

So, thought out this design (done to scale) and then calculated the volume of the reservoir…

Max volume in reservoir = 504 litres

Proposed amount = 45-55 litres

Amount in top pipes = 0.6 litres

1 litre = 1kg

I feel confident about sticking close to something like this. My main concern is just figuring out how to fix the vertical bars to the base. Whilst researching cost of steel and aluminum i came across some telescopic poles, like what we used for the test footage, and interesting possibility that is, the poles only came to 2m in length. Costs of it all it a main hassle, as this is adding up to something expensive, and perhaps time to look at some alternatives than metal…

In terms of the crit next week, we’re quite possibly aiming to build several things, one to show this works with the pumping system reusing the water, a lightweight one for the Fashion Show, and another more sturdy one for possible renting out….

And the result, was this….

[Vimeo=http://vimeo.com/11268433]

So we’ve got moving images, stills and text for comparison to show it’s perfectly fine. Also, how you can hardly see people behind (although that won’t be an issue as we’ll be setting up some black gauze at the show). Now just to get the frame properly designed and built!

Now we just have to make sure it’s ok with the BA Fashion people.

Although we’ve started planning it, we decided to test of the pump, just to see how well it works. So we basically knocked up this contraption as a test.

Evidently, we learned that the area needed to catch the water needed to be alot wider, and that the pump was a bit too powerful for just one length of nozzles….

So, a bit of redesigning needed….

Black and white theme… well, we’ve learned from experience you cant’ project black, and in a dark space it comes out as a grey. But we’re not in a dark space. Before, we were going to be working with a white screen and rear project, so that’s a white screen light from the front to compete with putting out white. It just wouldn’t work. So, it was time for a technical solution to a creative problem. Thankfully, I’m falling back on my previous research in my performance video unit. Yes, that’s right, i believe the solution is to change the material we’re projecting on, to water. Yeah, pitched it to the fashion student and they loved it. Which is fantastic, and essentially rang my dad for some help, and i’m now borrowing some materials from him.

The screen so far is already quite costly, and essentially i’m glad the that most expensive part is borrowed. I’ve got 4 lengths of pipe (to keep it modular and easier to build), each with a set of blue nozzles on to turn it into a fine stream. Each nozzle costs £4, the total of all of them = £256. Yeahh. So it’s a trip to b&q to sorte out drainage, and i’m already borrowing a pump for the recirculation.

Did a test during easter, and the effect works quite well and it’s definitely the correct solution.

This was just a simple test done at night with a standard data projector. When it comes to the show we’ll be using a more powerful projector so it’ll punch through any thing.