EVALUATION AND CONCLUSIONS
AUTOBIOGRAPHY BRIEF
CHRISTINE KEELER

I think on the whole i have learnt a great deal from this project and towards the end enjoyed what i was doing which i think was the main point of this brief. For once having the freedom to work in whatever medium, format and style that we wanted was a plus for me, as a usually prefere more boundaries with stricter briefs and a very specific outcome.

Looking back on it i am glad that i got a person that i knew very little about beacuse it meant i had to start from scratch and did not have any kind of biased opinion already in my head. This meant that i didn't go off doing the first thing i thought of because i really wasn't sure how to go about it. I was open to all kinds of ideas which basically grew from what i read, saw and heard about Christine Keeler.

About half way through i found myself not concentrating so much on C.Keeler but on the photographer Lewis Morley which then developed into the chair itself (designed by Arne Jacobson) where the idea changed a number of times before i finally produced the finished piece dedicated to Arne Jacobson because people die but designs do not.

FINAL OUTCOME
AUTOBIOGRAPHY BRIEF
CHRISTINE KEELER

This is my piece dedicated to ARNE JACOBSON, inspired by Christine Keeler and Lewis Morley. It was the haunting element of that famous photograph taken by Lewis Morley that to me seems really spooky. The photo was taken pretty much against C.Keelers will as she only let it be taken due to the terms in her contract, yet it has become an iconic photograph world wide, but few people know about dark history and scandal all wrapped and contained in this one photograph. I tried to give the piece a cold feel, but with a glint of happiness to represent the few positive elements that came from this photograph being taken,

'ARNE'

LATE LATE LATE LATE LATE LATE!
AUTOBIOGRAPHY BRIEF
CHRISTINE KEELER

Look who showed up at 8.45 this morning, this sucker did! Two days too late! So the chair finally came, not much good now but it is doing a good job in my room and to be fair it is actually a well designed chair! Its really supportive and comfortable. I can see why Lewis Morley bought a whole bunch of these babies!

Getting back to Tuesday which was a day I was seriously dreading due to the fact i had still not offically got a studio session and my whole idea could of fallen through and never happened.
I got the amazing news from ALEX M around 9am Tuesday and was stupidly releaved to find that i had got a slot from 2-4pm the same day. It meant that the filming session was on! Everything went according to plan and i got the footage i had hoped for. With the footage in the bag it was just a case of putting it together in a creative interesting way.

HOW MANY THINGS CAN GO WRONG?
AUTOBIOGRAPHY BRIEF
CHRISTINE KEELER

*BT phone line been down for 3 weeks
*Chair didn't arrive
*TISCALI broadband faulty
*ERROR 721

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Had a tough time this weekend sorting out the phone line with BT. Managed to get an engineer to come out monday morning between 9.30-12.30, so thought it was sorted for now. Woke up at 9am to find a message on my phone from 'Jade' saying she had knocked on the door at 8am, and suprisingly she got no answer! (we live in a flat on the first floor, you have to ring the bell so people know your there!) By now i was getting pretty stressed as it has taken so long to get an engineer out and then i missed them.

I quickly phoned up and managed to get another BT tech to come out after they had finished their current job, which turned out to be about 12.30pm. (So much for getting into Chelsea early to see Alex and booking a studio) Alex was shut by the time i got there at 3pm. DAMN! I left Alex a note on a piece of paper, this was my last chance and my handwriting got gradually worse. I left my number with my plea to Alex.

Left for home and was still pretty stressed and nervous. At least the BT line was now sorted and i could simply plug in the DSL modem and get the Internet at home! OH NO I COULDN'T, turns out that Tiscali faulty with ERROR 721, this meant another hour and half of ringing some poorly paid guy telling me what i already knew and simply said sorry try again in a few days. Everythings gone wrong!

RUNNING OUT OF TIME!
SOMEONES ABOUT TO CHUCK
ME OUT OF THE COMPUTER ROOM!

This is where i am going to go check out tommorrow for good backgrounds and areas to put the chair!.

Last night i had a good think about what i want to do and where i want to take this project as i was worried that my original idea about taking photos of the public in Soho was that it would just turn into a slideshow of the same position sped up, animated or whatever i decided to do with the images.

I am now thinking that it could be more of a featurette about the iconic photograph of Christine Keeler, and alomost test how famous it is, with myself/mate in the position on the chair, see how the public react and ask them if they know who made the shot famous.

I definately want to do something with 'the chair' I still haven't convinced myself enough about either of the ideas. I'm confused as what to do now, i hope i will get someguidence in todays review.

PLAN FOR FRIDAYS PRESENTATION
CHRISTINE KEELER
AUTOBIOGRAPHY BRIEF

After discussing possible ideas with my group of 3's , i found that i had concentrated more on the work of Lewis Morley and 'The Chair' which was designed by Arne Jacobsen. 'The Chair' was therefore going to be the main focus of my presentation about Christine Keeler. I found many examples of the postion Lewis Morley used repeatedly over the years with different people sitting in Arne's chair.

The photo taken by Lewis Morley is so iconic and famous today that i feel it is the strongest area to produce something creative and visually sound. The plan is to somehow get hold of a similar style chair and try to get as many people as i can to sit in 'the position' in the areas of Soho where she was working when she first came to London. I have just looked online at possible chairs and there are a lot of copies floating around for about £26 which is pretty good, but it is a risk depending on what the delivery time is like because i only have a
week really.

I would like to take a still image of 20-50 people using a digital SLR and also record the whole project by video camera to make a documentary because i am not sure how 'up for it' the public would be.

My back up plan would be for myself to be in the pictures at a number of different locations and see what people would do,say and act. After i capture all this raw data i can then turn it into a structured intresting presentation in the form of a movie.
I have just placed an order for a Keeler chair! i hope it arrives in time, plus i actually like the design of the chair itself and it will be nice to have in my room.

CHRISTINE KEELER?
WHO THE HELL?
AUTO BIOGRAPHY BRIEF

After recieving my unfamilar name from the very unfair selection process of Luke's box, i was puzzled about who and what this thin piece of paper was about. The name did not ring any kind of bell, not even one of those small ones that posh people get their butler to ring when dinner is served. On the way out i was re-assured by Gill that it wasn't as bad as i thought and that she was a pretty iconic woman and stuff. So i started to look into the world of 'Christine Keeler' as i was actually pretty intrested in what she had got up to in her 'eventful' life.

Let's start with the basics, Christine Keeler born 1942 (unlucky!WWII 'n' that) and was an English showgirl and model, born in Uxbridge, Middlesex, England and was rasied by mother and stepfather (text book so far, nothing unusual.) But when 17 came around she must have been very confused because she fell pregnant to an African-American Sergeant from 'Laleham Air Force base' which is all normal, until she tried to abourt the baby by stabbing herself with a knitting needle, but failed(how?) So already i'm thinking she is going to have an interesting lifestyle. Which was backed up by her numerous affairs and relationships with 'bad' people. The most famous of the lot the 'Profumo Affair' which would get most coverage and publicity which happened in 1961 and involved John Profumo the 'British Secratary of State for War' which as u can imagine didn't go down with the government.

The most interesting area i found about Christine Keeler was this iconic portrait that i did actually recognise taken by photographer LEWIS MORLEY. This was taken at the height of the 'Profumo Affair' and this photo was part of a shoot that was to be used to promote the film 'The Keeler Affair' which never was released. So with that said i need to decide how i am going to go about this whole biography thing. Until i know a bit more about the brief and what outcome we are to aim for i can only type down ideas that i think would be useful.

This image was also reference in the film 'Basic Instinct 2' with the whole on chair naked backwards.

As Keeler was around a fair amount in London with jobs and shows i figured its a good starting place to go visit some of the these palces to see if they are still running or even there. The is a mention that she worked at a club called 'Murray's Cabaret Club' in Soho which might be a starter. Thats all for now.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
IM SO ANGRY RIGHT NOW!
IV'E LOST IT!

Just had a total shut down off my laptop, was in the library with Tom catching up with the blog for the clip-art project, wrote about 300 words and as i was publishing my LAPTOP CRASHED! so i lost everything I tried to get back onto the Internet but that failed aswell! So this section is underconstruction. F**K!

Stage 4 in
Copy_Create_Remix_Destroy
Magazine - Heat Destroyed

ON THE ROAD TO RECOVERY! Hands feeling better and not so ill as yesterday. Don't have much time to say anything as there is too much to do. Going to get final prints of finished stage 1 +2.

Then there is Stage 4 which has been so rushed im not sure if its even appropriate anymore. It spent all of Wednesday playing with the type i had created in stage 3. I wanted to expriment with the quotes and clippings from the articles from heat. Heat is a very repetative magazine with very similar headlines every week usually on the same celeb for a month or so. From this it was my starting point (rushed+weak) that i wanted to create a piece of design based on TYPE and the way it could be layed out to represent repetition. Well that was the idea anyway. No more time to write going PRINTING!

p.s. i wonder who has spent the most on printing for this project?

Stage 3 in
Copy_Create_Remix_Destroy

Magazine - Heat Remixed

WHAT A WAY TO END THE WEEK? Incase anyone saw me rockin the old double plaster at todays review of stage 3 and wondered how it had happened. This should explain slightly. CRACKED GLASS+TRYING TO WASH WITH CLOTH x DANGER = HAND LEAKES. Nearly had to go to hospital but NURSE JAT got some TCP and Plasters from the 24 hour shop opposite our flat. ( I bet the owners were puzzled/scared when a guy comes in at 1am asking for TCP + Plasters)

Anyway back to week 3. My starting point for this section was from the angle of what would make me buy HEAT magazine. As it stood it was probably the last magazine i would ever buy. Ben got me thinking about what kind of mags do i sit about reading skate,music,tech mags mainly. If anyone doesn't know this then now is the time to learn, skaters love t-shirts no matter what kind but there are literally thousands of skateboard companys that just make t-shirts for the skateboarding world. I waned to see how i could manipulate the content if heat into something slightly realistic that u might find on a skate T-shirt on a skater somewhere in London.

I thought as this project went on it would get easy and more fun, but it hasn't. It's been the total opposite every week i have been more tired more undecided and frustrated with this whole project.

This coupled with what was expected and trying to do something creative and innovative just left me totally exhausted and penny-less (t-shirt cost about £35 equal to a weeks worth of food at some beers) I spoke to Ben on friday and he seemed happy about my plans for a T-shirt that would fit my content from HEAT magazine into a wearable magazine garment that still reflected the style of skateboarding magazine DOCUMENT which after putting into practice what i have learnt this project have found this to be the best layed out and produced. Where as before i thought they were all very similar.













Making the T-shirt was a lot harder/expensive/time consuming than i first thought. I did a couple of test prints and the paper that i got from the shop was working well, and so i decided to carry on with this process. Got my layout sorted and cut to fit into A3 pages for printing.


Printing went ok apart from costly, ironed it all on as best i could as it is not the easyest thing to work with but got there in the end.

Stage 2 in
Copy_Remix_Create_Destroy
Magazine - Mens Workout + HEAT

WHAT A BAD WAY TO START THE DAY! Stage 1 was in the bag, well for now! still minor adjustments needed for the final print out such as correct colour settings, and clipping paths on all images to get rid of 'GHOST BOXES' (techincal term for something thats gone tits up.)

Stage 2 was now in full motion, me, Heidi and Blanka drew up a plan for how best to fit our HEAT magainze content into the MENS WORKOUT layout. We got most of the content to fit into the front cover without any real problems, as the layouts were similar in both magazines.

The double page spread seemed easy at first but after a review with Luke + Ben on Friday we saw that there were a few issues with how the double page spread looked. We had been trying to copy the layout too accuratly and as a result it looked a bit forced in places and didn't flow as well as it could have. After finding out it did not have to be as identical as we thought it meant we coud become a bit more dynamic and editorial with he whole layout as long as it still looked like an issue of MENS WORKOUT, but did not have to be the exact one we were using.

On Thursday it was time to chill out down at PLAN B in Brixton, which included an art exhibition by 'SOOPER DOOPER' and some body popping/breakdancers from all over the world. A good night for a fiver. Its on about once a month.

So for Monday we were pretty much ready to roll for the printing of stage 2. I thought it would be a quick in and out from 10-11am but it turned into a full 10-3 kinda story. I spent about 4 hours trying to figure out why we had these strange transparent layers buggering the final print out and changing the shades of the colours in random places.

Kinda solved the issue by trying every setting in the export menu which seemed to do the trick until i could work out why it was happening. Another stressful tiring week...............

Stage 1 in Copy_Remix_Create_Destroy
Magazine - Men's Workout

Week 1 - Off too a good start with the group getting a lot sorted on the first day and worked on how we were going to print our final piece for Tuesday. We got a slot booked with Jeff Foster for early monday morning. After indesign workshop on Wednesday morning we worked on the project all day in our group to get as much done as possible, finding the fonts was a tough task, but after sifting through hundreds of fonts we found that the best font was Impact! We just beefed it up and it worked well within the magazine.

The layout was fairly straight forward to create in indesign, although there was a lot of measuring as the grid used for the magazine was very random and had no real flow to it. We got most of it together by friday but after our first meeting with Pete, Luke and Ben they advised us to reconsider our double page spread choice as it could incure problems for the next stage.

After this minor set-back we were on target for the week so some 'hardcore chilling' was in order. This started with a drink in the bar and lead to a lot more drinking in the bar, which then lead to dinner and drinks at Astrid's with Joe,Laura and Astrid's housemates. We hired out 'The King' which was pretty good, bit of a slow burner, but still worth watching.

Saturday night was based around going to see Tom Dickinsons's band play their first gig in a pub in London Bridge, which was pretty cool to see. After a lot of pissing about we finally headed home and were gonna have a reasonable nights sleep unitil 'pissed Jat' came in about 1.30am we decided to carry on drinking and chill outside on our roof for a bit.

Took out the arm chair for some more cold beers curtesy of the 24 hour booze shop. Me, Joe and Jat could not have predicted what happened next at around 2am. Our next door neighbour 'Mark a.k.a Lovejoy' climbed out his window above our flat and kinda fell,climbed down to chill on the roof.












After some introductions he wipped out some French cheeses and some homemade chutney. Mark told us he had just been in Paris for the fashion week and he had brought back some food from Paris.

I instantly wacked out the Jacob's Creams crackers to combat his cheese and chutney combo as some hardcore eating took place for the next couple of hours. Completly knacked we all went to bed about 4.30am.

Sunday was productive and we sorted out everything to be printed for monday(well we thought we had). Printed monday morning to find a fair few problems with our print out involving MISSING LINKS, wrong colours, pixelated images,and beige boxes.

Then me and Heidi spent the best part of monday fixing broken links and adjusting colours. Our second run was better but still some strange translucent boxes randomly appearing in the final print. We did our best to work around this and printed out finished version to hand in Tuesday.