Selecting my portfolio images

I was initially anxious about selecting images for my portfolio that I felt best represented my development as a make-up artist. My primary focus in terms of work experiences this term has been on short films as this was an area that I felt required some further attention as it is the area of industry that I am most interested in working in. Although this has been extremely beneficial for the development of my skills and in gaining experience of how film production works, it does not reap quite the same rewards as photographic projects in terms of obtaining high quality portfolio images. Thankfully I was able to contact members of the crew from certain films that were in possession of either the rushes or the finished edits of the films and save some screen shots. Although these are not necessarily the highest quality of images, they do show my work reasonably accurately and in the correct context and setting. The final chosen images were shots from 'Bridge' and 'Zoochory Hitch' from my first year and 'Bruises' and 'No Place Like Home' from my second.

Although I had undertaken one photoshoot during my second year I did not feel that the images were strong enough to put in my portfolio. Instead I made use of a number of images from photo shoots completed at the end of first year that had not been edited in time to be included in my initial portfolio, as well as a few from my previous portfolio that were strong enough to be included a second time around. 

Although working on theatre productions is not my area of specialty and is not something that I would really want to do within industry, I felt that it was important to show a range of skills and experience within my portfolio. The inclusion of a photograph from the production of 'The Beekeeper' at Waterloo East Theatre was therefore important to add a little variety. 

Finally I felt that it was important to include some work exhibiting my skills in special effects. Although this is the area of industry that I am most interested and passionate about, I found that my selection of photographs for this type of make-up was severely limited. I decided to re-use an image from my original portfolio as I felt that it was one of my strongest pieces and also included the image from the Dramatic Contexts unit. Although the application of the make-up was not 100% successful, the sculpture and mould making processes that went into it definitely display a level of skill with prosthetics. It is my aim for the coming year to expand my portfolio in this area specifically so that upon graduation I can confidently produce a portfolio that best reflects my passion for prosthetics and special effects and can be used to obtain relevant jobs within industry. 

One difficulty that I encountered when I went to print my portfolio images was the quality and resolution of my screen grabs from the films that I had worked on. I had feared that this might be the case and when I went to have them printed, these fears were confirmed. Because the images were so small, when they were blown up they appeared pixelated, and the larger the image, the worse it got. I was therefore forced to change my plan and have all of my images printed to A4 size in order to reduce the amount of pixelation. Although this is not the ideal scenario and an A3 portfolio at this level would be preferable, I made the decision that an A4 selection of better quality images would be best. This is an issue that may trouble me throughout my work as it is often very difficult to get on set photographs and it is therefore necessary to rely on screen grabs once the film is complete. In future I will aim to make a conscious effort to find an on set stills photographer, if there is one, and if not, bring my own camera and ask the actor to allow me to take photos on set before or after filming.