CoP Practical Evaluation.

Despite my best intentions my CoP Practical has not really been that successful in illustrating 'The Gaze in The Media'. I was intending to make a film piece that illustrated the ideas found in Coward's essay 'The Look' and Mulvey's in 'Visual Pleasure. (Discussed here) This would be done by creating 'conventional close-ups of legs or a face' etc ,that often are used in film to present women, with inanimate objects.

Some of the footage I collected worked, to an extent, in illustrating this but some did not. For example I thought I could manipulate things with blur to achieve a desired effect with any form of footage (such as the eyes in the image below) but they did not come across as believable, and had to be scrapped, thus leaving me with only a few 'successful' pieces I could use.

I also think the overall result was hindered by my lack of consideration with lighting (I should have perhaps back-lit my objects) and quality of camera (Creating depth of field etc was difficult to achieve). In the edit too I could have chosen better quality of music, though I think it creates context for what I am trying to convey (slow smooth music to illustrate the 'parts' of the female body in a 'sensual' way for example.) 

Whilst filming footage for this I realised there weren't many different variations of shot traditionally used in presenting a woman in the media as 'eye candy'. I ended up using a slow 'lingering' track up along curves quite often as well as extreme close ups, I think this in itself highlights the concept of the Male Gaze and that it is quite superficial and 'flat' in certain depictions of women in films and media.

Coward, R., The Look, in Thomas, J. (ed) (2000), Reading Images, Basingstoke: Palgrave

Mulvey, L. (1975) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema cited In Badmington, N. and Tomas, J (eds) (2008) The Routledge Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, London and New York,