MEET THE PEOPLE - EP.3

official monologue (script)

"gender neutrality is a form of a escapism from all gender discrimination/expectation"

(negative) imprisoned, minority, forced, isolated, expectation, normal, different, construct, binary

(positive) liberated, comfortable, embraced, choice, empowered, community

What is the gender? is the first thing people want to know.

Before we even see the light of day, before we have any concept of life itself, we are grouped placed into boxes.

People are not born with the freedom we're led to believe, our freedom to be who we are. Something as simple as colour seems to have society define me already.

 The way in which I walk or talk or play with toys.

I am a prisoner in my own body, my expression is frowned upon, discriminated in one way or another. 

  school, changing rooms and toilet are uncomfortable.

bullying, loneliness and isolation leads to depression.

The Fear getting bigger and bigger.

I lose faith in myself, in humanity.

Why do we limit ourselves and throw away the horizons we want to reach just to simply fit into a system, a box.

production page

Website: http://gabriellalivingsto.wixsite.com/7evenproductions

Blog: http://7evenproductions.blogspot.co.uk/

produced by I 7even productions

directed by I  joshua manley

first ad I gabriella livingstone

second ad I alessia leo

camera operators I joshua manley, jacopo la spada and oya malgir

grips I jacopo la spada, joshua manley, gabriella livingstone and ryan loebell

runner I ryan loebell

location manager I gabriella livingstone

location scout I ryan loebell

editors I joshua manley, gabriella livingstone and alessia leo

cast I film

ryan loebell, gabriella livingstone, oya malgir, alessia leo, and roberto

cast I meet the people

eve maleham, dan seamarks and louie woodcock

official website

http://gabriellalivingsto.wixsite.com/7evenproductions

contact with toby

contact with matt

evaluation

Evaluation

Our short film 'a box' is an experimental film about gender neutrality, which was highly inspired by the feminist artist Sanja Ivekovic and Louie Woodcock, a fashion student from the University of Westminster.  

Pre-production

We were assigned production teams in order to produce a 90 second film that would be inspired by an art piece from The Tate Modern. Our first decision was to decide on a day to visit The Tate as a group. After a few hours of viewing the art and getting to know one another and listening to each other's opinion on the various art pieces, we came to a conclusion that the nine-minute short film called ''Make up-Make down'' by the feminist artist Sanja Ivekovic would be what our film would somewhat aspire too. It was hardly surprising that with everyone's different backgrounds we would all have various opinions on different subject matters and ultimately art. After hours of discussion, arguments and conclusions we could not come to an agreement. However, after a few days of learning about each other and understanding one another's opinion we all realised that we had to come an agreement by compromising. For instance, we firstly had a couple of ideas that the majority liked however some had questions about if the theme was contemporary enough? or if we should produce an abstract film or follow a linear structure. We decided the best way for us to agree was to include everyone's idea in one form or another. In most film projects such as this one, it would have been difficult to create a film that fused all our ideas together. On the other hand it worked well for us as we all had ideas that would compliment one another without even realising it at the time.

As the film, 'Make up - Make down' ultimately focused on the idea of feminism we initially thought that our main 'contemporary theme' would be focused around feminism and how to make it a contemporary issue through the use of film as it has been a issue in the past and is continuously is one. Unfortunately not everyone agreed with this idea as they argued that in a way the theme of 'feminism' was not particularly a contemporary issue for us right now in comparison to 'hot' news such as 'Brexit' and 'Trump'.
Listening to our tutors was very helpful because we did understand that our idea was not at all something to do with feminism. All of us had a different concept of what feminism actually is. I was a bit disappointed after the tutorial because I thought that we were going the right way but we were not.Our idea was more about gender discrimination and, through a lot of research and people's help we found out about gender neutrality. In the beginning some of us were a bit confused about this subject because none of us ever heard of it before. I found it very interesting and I honestly even started questioning my gender.
We watched many videos of gender neutral people, we read some of these people's stories and we tried to understand what other people thought about this matter through a small, simple survey. We too were able to have a little chat with university LGBTI society president about gender neutrality and interview a gender neutral person that we luckily met on campus who nicely talked to us about his personal experience. It has been hard work even because the group has not always been together. We have tried our best to keep this group united but some of us have not been either productive or interested in what we have been doing. Nonetheless, we have kept on carrying on our work and I personally have learned a lot from this experience and I have been lucky to work with people who are already familiar with film-making, photography and editing.I reckon I could have done much more but as I am brand new to the media practice world I have been a bit shy and I have not been sharing my ideas with the others. Although, I have tried to be supportive and learn from them and I feel way more confident about my practical skills. I am sure I will be much more prepared for my next project.
We decided and plan make 90 seconds short film about gender neutrality. We influenced art video about feminism at Tate modern. In the beginning l ask myself how contemporary feminism is? What is contemporary at the moment? How l can take feminism to contemporary level? As a artist l don't like to look people with gender. As a subject feminism contain gender. I think whatever contain categories brings division between us. Feminism see woman right only. I believe todays society biggest problems are human rights. We need to learn and respect each other's right. To understand we are all equal. We are all human beings it doesn't matter what race, genders, religious ethnic we born with. Been woman or man just sex we born with.
I begin to ask my self how we invited all this gender roles. I looked anthropologist research study. My research shows gender constructed by society. Biggest discovery for me I never question my gender before. I accept my gender roles with out question it. And how little l know about gender neutrality. I believe l know deep down if l ever question this roles is e biggest mistake biggest weakness or wrong in me. Some how they teach me never ever question gender.
As a concept gender neutrality is a very new for lot of people. To understand what other people think about gender neutrality we need to teach also what is the gender neutrality? To achieve this we set survey questions.
Our tree survey questions are find they know about gender neutrality. Make them to understand this concept. Give them definition about this concept.
We ask:-Do you know what ‘Gender Neutrality’ is?
‘-Gender Neutral’ in the dictionary only refers to the choice of words being used such as pronouns, but does not explain ‘Gender Neutrality’ in society, however do you agree with the definition that ‘Gender Neutral’ is “the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender, in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than another”?-Gender-neutral language is “language that avoids bias towards a particular sex or society's view of gender”. Do you agree with the definition above? During the this survey l talk to over 100 people l observed how people feel insecure uncomfortable think, questions or talk about their gender. How big defends mechanism we built around. Just thing themselves out of gender box how scary for people. Feel like we all came to this world just to playing perfect gender roles. Hold on very tight this role which is constructed by our ancestors society.

interview questions for eve and dan

1.state name, course, how many years doing the course, job title
2.how long have you been in the committee and how long have you been president?
3.what is your personal story and what made you want to join the committee at first?
4.what do you know about gender neutrality?
5.how did the idea of getting gender neutral toilets come about?
6.how long have the genders neutral toilets been here?
7.was it difficult convincing the university to support the idea of gender neutral toilets?
8.what does gender neutral mean to you?
9.are there any future plans in the university to accommodate to gender neutral people?

audio evaluation

Here I have experimented with sound editing, mixing and generating in order to create a soundtrack which could contribute to the immersive experience of the film. In order to do this I used Audition as I felt I had a basic knowledge through the sound tutorial I previously had on this software and also gained some help from Matt the technician. We wanted to use a heartbeat soundtrack which would replicate a child's heartbeat when in the womb of the mother. 

In order to create this we decided upon downloading a royalty free heartbeat soundtrack at a reasonable speed and pitch. We listened to it several samples and felt that a particularly deep heartbeat sounded more natural than a higher pitched one as it could be noticeably artificial and in some cases sound metallic or computerised. We considered generating our own heartbeat through using various drum instruments but felt that time management would play a factor in carrying this idea out so we decided to just download a pre recorded track. However we came across an issue with the playback of the audio as it seemed to be very quiet on the MacBook Pro. We then tried playing it with headphones as well as playing it on an iMac which provided reasoning for the quiet playback. We realised that the speakers on the MacBook pro were too small to project the complete scale of sounds on the soundtrack. As when we played it on the other devices it was much louder and also you could hear the bass levels of the track which were a key factor to the heartbeat. When editing the track I began with using the FFT filter and altering the EQ levels in order to enhance the bass and lower the hi-pitched notes. This allowed for a very deep, realistic sound to be made rather than the previous sound which seemed artificial in the sense that it didn't sound natural. 

After this I then experimented with using the software in order to see what outcomes I could achieve. For example, I included two of the same heartbeat track to play at the same time and through using the FFT filter I could change the tones/pitches of each track. Here I tried to increase the bass and lower the semi and high tones as there wasn't much information after 300 htz. I then increase the semi tones of the other track and therefore got both bass and higher pitched elements when played together. However we still felt that the single lower tones bass heartbeat was much more effective as we felt it was most relevant and natural to use. Another thing that I tried was generating my own noise on Audition as I wanted to create something that could accompany the heartbeat and make it sound more atmospheric. To achiever this used the generate tool where I could make my own noise and also edit it, here I created a very deep continuous noise which added to the impression of a womb, almost seeming underwater. We also considered with the pace of the track and felt that we could perhaps gradually increase the tempo which could correspond to the visuals and plan to include video cuts on each prominent heartbeat. Another thing we took into account was what beat to include the cut on, as a heartbeat mainly consists of two beats. We found that the cuts we made more evident when acquired to the second beat of the heart. 

After we was happy with the soundtrack we decided to visit the Kodak theatre to playback our soundtrack in order to assure that the audio was conceivable by the speakers and the low bass were picked up and our atmosphere was create. We were glad to know that the speakers did pick up the back and create a very immersive atmosphere which surrounded the theatre. Overall, we are relatively happy with the outcome of the heartbeat and feel that it could work very well with the visuals.

contact with louie

pay it no mind