Location: Camden Town

Ellen, Claudie and I decided that Camden Town would be the most appropriate location to explore for our project, as there are multiple tattoo parlours down the high street and the general atmosphere is perfect. We not only gained a lot of knowledge about people's reasons for getting tattoos, but also a large amount of initial footage and location images.

We interviewed a promoter for a tattoo parlour, who allowed us to film him and ask him questions about his tattoos (which he showed to us whilst we filmed him). We also got a lot of footage of Camden Town itself for our final documentary, as well as many still shots of the surrounding area.

We left the camera running as we walked through the market and out the other side, as we thought the idea of over-saturating and contrasting the footage as well as speeding up the clip and putting fast paced music over the top would be a very interesting opening to our documentary. This will really express how vivid and exciting Camden is as a place, and reflect the individuality of the people living there, as well as being an engaging opening for the audience.

Tattoos Presentation

Here is our presentation on tattoos that we created to explain our ideas:

Tattoos presentation

View more presentations from Ellen Crane.

Miami Ink

Miami Ink is a documentary/reality show which revolves around the lives of 6 tattoo artists and their work. Miami Ink isn't solely about the tattooing, but also the artists themselves and their lives. The documentary proves that tattoos are not solely about appearance, but often have memorial value to a person, and this theme continues from episode to episode. Each of the artists has a different style, for example, Ami (who owns the shop) specialises in cartoon style tattoos including a large amount of vivid colour, whereas Kat Von D works better with black and white tones and working into portraits, with particular attention to detail.

This documentary is very different to others featured today, because of how controversial the topic of tattoos are; they are either loved or hated, and this is reflected in what Ami and Chris named their shop in Miami, 'Love Hate Tattoos'. The concept of tattoos can be considered in many ways; some people see tattooing as scarring someone's body, whereas others see it as the perfect means of self expression. The intention of the documentary is to expose the importance of tattoos to individuals and also the lives of the tattooists - the viewer gets an insight in what tattoos mean to them, and why they decided to get involved in the tattooing industry.

Secondary Idea: Tattooing

We decided against the idea of subliminal messaging, as when we did a survey for our year group to find out about their opinions on subliminal messaging, many people did not understand what it was, or couldn't relate it to things in every day life. We then did some more brainstorming, and decided on a completely different idea - tattooing. We really liked the concept of doing a documentary on tattooing and tattoo artists, as we realised that it would be a topic that would be easy to get footage on as asking for filming permission would not be difficult, and we could show different extremes of tattooing (for example, people who are obsessed with tattoos and body modification, and those who simply want a memorial tattoo that means something special to that person.)

I have been looking into one extreme version of tattooism in particular. The 'Cat Man'. Dennis Avner claims that he follows the 'Huron' Traditions, one of which is turning yourself into a cat aesthetically. Therefore, Avner has had facial modifications and tattoos, along with having silicone implants in his forehead and cheeks, tattoos covering his face and body, and whiskers all on his face. This is a prime example of people who take tattooism too far, and do not use it for memorial or personal reasons.

The predominant reason behind many tattoos due to memorial reasons, where people get their body inked in memory of a person, pet or other. Other reasons behind tattoos can be simply because of an addiction to the pain, where people get tattooed simply because they find the pain enjoyable, or purely for aesthetic reasons.


Here is a link to a documentary, LA Ink, which focuses around tattooing and the lives of the tattooists in a parlour in LA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at148-GVvNE

Initial Idea: Subliminal Messaging In The Fashion Industry

My final group for our project consisted of myself, Ellen and Claudie. We spent a long time brainstorming and planning our initial ideas. We landed on the idea of the use of subliminal messaging in relation to the fashion industry, looking at how the models, designers, magazine editors and the public are affected by the representation of women through these subliminal messages that encourage people to be slim.

We investigated the way that billboards and magazine spreads present people and how the subliminal messages that are incorporated influence the view that the public have of themselves. We also looked into the way in which model's are edited to make them look more svelte and beautiful, therefore giving an unrealistic appearance to the public, and creating a vast number of self conscious children and young adults, as they feel the definite need to be slim and attractive.

Here is an example of the way in which Subliminal Messaging works:

9/11 Faker

I have been looking at another expository documentary, this one revolving around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their survivors. The documentary i have been analysing was based around a woman who had claimed to be a survivor of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and one of only 19 people who had been above the point of impact and survived the incident.

Head had claimed that her fiance had died in the tragic terrorist attack. Her dramatic story was highly convincing, and she even managed to create a fundraiser of the 'World Trade Centre Survivors' Network, set up to support victims who were still suffering after the attacks. Tania Head even gave guided tours around Ground Zero, giving a detailed description of her so called experience, and fooling the nation entirely. She managed to retain this facade for over 6 years, before being discovered as a liar and a fake by the New York Times.

The importance of a documentary like this, is to expose stories that are relevant and important to the public, as well as being controversial and interesting. The way that this documentary in particularly was presented, was as one where the main focus was a particular person, rather than a topic. This added interest to the documentary, as it is shocking that a person could have a mindset to behave the way that Tania Head did.

Cutting Edge: Cotton Wool Kids

This 'Cutting Edge' documentary is of an expository format, and it focuses on children who are being suffocated by their protective parents. The documentary exposes the lives of a few children in particular, who's parents stop them getting vital life experience and enjoying their childhood due to their obsessive nature regarding safety. This behaviour does not regress as their children get older, if anything it gets progressively worse.

These parents buy their children expensive gaming software, mobile phones and computing equipment such as new laptops, gaming chairs, iPhones and various other new items to retain control and encourage their children to want to stay at home rather than play with their friends from school. These children aren't even allowed to play outside the front of the house, as these parents are terrified that they might be stabbed, kidnapped or worse.

The documentary focuses on three parents in particular; Adel, Toni and Jenny. The expository nature of this documentary reveals the way in which technology now allows parents to be protective over their children, by microchipping and GPS tracking, for example, which is the means of protection that Toni was particularly interested in. 'Cotton Wool Kids' gives us insight into the way that some families live, which allows the audience to analyse their own and compare, therefore making this particular style of documentary interesting.

Link to the documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebGOl_G3jes&list=SL