From the research and development of the two 3 screen installations, then the three attempts to get the split screen approach working there are clearly still issues. The playing around with all of the different elements has been helpful in so much as it has enabled me to see what is and is not working on a stylistic, contextual and ideological sense. However what is now needed is streamlining of these. I will outline these below and then state where I looking to go next in an attempt to address them. these are all the same questions stemming from both my own thoughts and those of my peers from crits.
TOO MUCH GOING ON IN TERMS OF IDEOLOGY AND MESSAGE.
This needs to be skinnied down and will hopefully lead to a clarity in terms of style too getting rid of elements. Ideas on religion, popular culture, represenatation, appropriation and sampling are clouding the key message that all these works were inspired by the genius of one person and 6 seconds of inspiration. I need to create a hierarchy of the key ideological elements and in my opinion they are in terms of hierarchy of the piece and constructing the message. These also need to be greatly reduced and I have outlined how I see this happening below and which elements are important in order of importance are below.
1: GC Coleman:
It is HIS story, HIS creativity that inspired the whole piece he needs to somehow have greater representation and play a stronger role. I need to look to get footage, photos or shoot re-enactments possibly so he and his fingerprints are all over the piece.
2: Contextualisation of artists who have used the break.
The appropriation of his work by the artists IS currently in the work and needs to stay in there. I have played around with the length of this clips and this is working in my opinion BUT they need to play a slightly more subsidiary role to GC himself. He has to somehow own them, or they be channeled through him somehow. This needs more investigation and testing as to what may be possible.
3: The revelation element to the piece
This is currently still not clear enough and I want to try and create that moment where the audience manage to piece the drummer, drum beat and songs using it all together and have the penny drop. The on screen type helps to clarify this but it needs to be subtle and drip feed the audience the message rather than an all out reveal..
A LACK OF CLARITY AND STYLE AND COHESIVENESS
The bottom line here is simply too many elements. However moving forward the knock on effect of the tightening of the ideology and message down to 3 central elements will also focus this. The visuals must somehow.
1: More GC Coleman as mentioned above he needs to be at the centre of the piece and represented all over it. Shooting re-aenactments, more use of photos etc may work but him, his figure, his playing, images of him need to be onmipresent in the piece. I am currently leaning towards shooting someone who looks like him playing the break.
2: Creatively present the artists and bands that have used the Amen break. Boxes are simply not doing this. Do I use music videos or perhaps record sleeves or a mixture? Do I need to show the whole of the music video as intended? Can I manipulate it? can I obscure, crop or distort them to make them more visually interesting.
3: Text or even voice over on screen to create a clean style to communicate the story. VO could be distracting from all of the other audio elements and text seems to be working. BUT keep it simple and sparse and short.
LACK OF STRUCTURE AND CLARITY OF MESSAGE
Currently this is not too present except in the split screen version 3 where I felt it was a huge leap forward in this test. Narrative and character are always really important to my work and these got a little lost.
1: Structurally there is not much going on and narrative need to be included. I love working with these and I feel a story being told will help the revelation and also provide a spine to hang all of the other elements on to.
2: The piece is a all a little cold at the moment and needs to have more of the character of GC Coleman included. Again are-enactments will get a lookalike to create some of this but also images could. he always seems to be smiling in photos and even looks a little cheeky and elements of this fun and character represented in the piece is greatly needed. This will incite empathy from the audience and make them feel for his story which does not end happily and pluck the old heart strings.
3: The information that needs to be communicated in the huge influence of the drum break that GC saw no money, recognition or acclaim for. This MUST be communicated more clearly for is the emphasis of the whole piece.
4: Appropriation and sampling debate. This is the least important and not even sure if it needs to be included as with clever use of narrative and text it could be implicit without being clunky and explicit.
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