Creative Development

The MIC project has been a long time in the works, but despite this, it was quite difficult in places to develop it as a piece, and as a result compromises were made. Having the Christmas holidays in the middle of the project was not ideal and if we had communicated more effectively during this time, there wouldn't have been the issues with the accents. We chose America as the base for the project because my research indicated that this is a very big problem there. America has one of the highest prison populations in the world, and this was why we made this decision, but the actors American accents didn't work for me, and compromised the message. Unfortunately, by the time I had heard the project it was too late in the development to change this, which was regrettable but we agreed that if were to develop the idea it would be an ideal piece to translate into different languages and cultures, and as such accents and languages could be substituted in, which would give us room to improve this.

The process wasn't as immersive as I would have liked. When we constructing the 'performance area' it transpired that creating a four walled room wasn't going to be possible with the budget and spatial constraints we had, we couldn't mount the projectors anywhere, and the flats weren't sturdy enough to support them so our initial plan warped slightly, as the project was a sales pitch, we agreed that with a bigger budget it would be possible to create a more immersive space. In the future were we to develop this project I would imagine an actual room with a central seat for the audience and four walls, with projectors concealed within, this would make the overall feel of the project to be more what we had initially desired.

I took issue with the criticism that the presentation let the piece down. We had a central design theme, and we explored the development of the piece, which we would have done were we selling the piece. I also feel that what was desired of us in the presentation wasn't made clearly, we adhered to the initial brief which stipulated a presentation of 15 minutes of produced media, and we put a lot of effort into developing a documentary, made with stopmotion to go along with this. I especially commend Alfie for her work on this, as she was tireless in it's development and she worked really hard, I feel it was unfair that this was a criticism.

There was also critique that the piece was too film like and literal, and I disagree with this. Mental health problems are very hard to describe to someone who has not experienced them, and as such it's very complicated trying to represent them in film and sound, to use more abstract video I feel would have obscured the point we were trying to make, and taken away from the over all message.
However I do appreciate that it is not everyone's taste and take this criticism on board.

I think when you are talking about mental health it is very important to treat it in the same way that any visible illness is treated. There are sad emotive films about cancer, malaria, parkinsons, but because mental health problems are not visible to represent them like this is very difficult and as such I wish to see more media where they are treated with as much respect and emotion as a visible illness.

Overall I think the project was a success and I really enjoyed working on it, the groups cohesion along with the initial idea made it enjoyable and I liked what we made as an end product.