Sweded Movie...

My group were given the film 'Edward Scissor Hands' to make a 'Sweded' version of. We decided to use puppets rather than real people for the characters which we thought would give it more of a 'homemade' feel. For puppets we used gloves decorated to look like each character. We also made sets using card, paper and paint of the house and the castle where most of the events in the film happen.


Before we could write a script, we had to decide on the most important bits of the film since we could only include a few scenes. (We were only allowed to make the video two minutes long.)


Then we wrote a script using various snippets from the real film script and some of our own improvisation : ) . We taped the soundtrack to the film so we could play it at different times during our video.


We took turns at filming and each played one or two characters. I played the part of Jim, Winona Ryder's evil boyfriend, which basically involved shouting angrily and fighting with the Edward puppet until I met my dramatic end by falling from the roof of the castle : ) .

Anthony Micheal Hall as Jim in Edward Scissor hands...

... Jim the puppet-the resemblance is uncanny...

Jim being angry.

Party...

My group was given the theme of the artist Rachel Whiteread for our party. Rachel Whiteread uses negative space in lots of her work as well as a monochrome palette, so we decided to use these aspects for our party.



To mimic the white boxes she used in 'Embankment' we stacked tables and covered them with white sheets to make a large cube that filled almost all of the space. The fact that the cube had space inside it that was not accessible connected to the idea of negative space and gave an air of mystery around what was inside the cube, which is what Whiteread said she was trying to achieve by using the shape of cardboard boxes in 'Embankment'.



We also taped black balloons onto the walls around the cube because they increased the idea of a lack of space, while still having space inside them that was not accessible. They are also associated with parties. Rachel Whiteread often uses plaster casts of objects in her work so we painted cups, bottles, straws and plates white so they looked like casts of things you would see at a party.

I thought it would be good to use sugar cubes for food since they would look like the white boxes in 'Embankment' but unfortunately we couldn't find any, so we used white and dark chocolate instead, which was in keeping with the monochrome theme. For invitations, we cut squares of white card and left them blank.
('Embankment' by Rachel Whiteread.)

Ants In Your Pants...

I wanted to make a simple, fun game which involved people physically, rather than using a board etc. I originally set out to make large, fake pregnant bellies that attached to the player, with holes in them so that little beanbag babies could be catapulted into them, but this proved difficult to make as it was hard to find a material suitable for the bellies. I wanted to use willow as a frame for them but couldn't find out where to get some, so after briefly considering just finding a willow tree and chopping bits off it I decided to change my theme but keep to the same sort of idea...

Using trousers was an easier way of attaching something to catch things in to someone's body, so I extended the waistband of an already very large pair of men's trousers using black felt and created a frame to hold the waistband in a circular shape using hose pipe which worked because it wasn't rigid but still held a shape. Then I made the ants from black felt stuffed with beanbag beans. I also made a blind fold but decided not to include it after testing the game and realising that it was quite difficult to catapult the ants in the first place, let alone with a blind fold on.

I'm glad that everyone elses' games weren't too serious since mine involved a pair of giant trousers and a catapult- it would have been hard to pretend it had a deeper meaning...
I probably should have made the ants legs out of something less sharp than pipe cleaner for health and safety reasons-it was actually quite scary having them catapulted at you and they scratched the skin : ) Probably could have done with being a little more polished aesthetically as well, but the home-made look works sometimes...