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Protest A2

This project is about protest and its importance in society and also the fact that younger people cant make change to things on their own. For this project I will make something that helps with protest or speaks on a topic that I believe in.

This is a mood board I made on miro so I can get a few ideas for what to do in my final project and the different options I have for it and how I can do some of them.

Research

For this project I'm going to do research on famous activists who have helped their causes and different forms of protest like how art can be used for protest.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.He also said one of the most powerful speeches of all time at the Lincoln memorial in 1963, the speech helped secure passage of the civil rights act in 1964 which prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. He was shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.

Malcolm X was an African American revolutionary Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement until he was assassinated in 1965.He was shot dead on stage at a New York ballroom as he prepared to deliver a speech to his Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was a minister in the Nation of Islam, preaching in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. With Malcolm often the spur, the Nation of Islam grew from a small religious sect based around Chicago and Detroit to an important national force among primarily northern urban blacks.

Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women to win in 1918 the right to vote in Great Britain and Ireland. Between 1903 and 1914, the Suffragette movement used radical protest tactics and a creative publicity campaign to demand women's right to vote in the UK. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other activists for women's suffrage received repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions, and were often force-fed. As Pankhurst's eldest daughter Christabel took leadership of the WSPU, antagonism between the group and the government grew.

I did some research on this book made by Banksy who is a pseudonymous England-based street artist and political activist who uses his art to reflect on problems in England and around the world. Banksy is well known for his art in England even though that his real identity hasn't been revealed.

This is one of Banksy's most iconic works which was originally done in Beit Sahour and this shows represents peaceful resistance which is a core message in many of Banksy's works. In this image the flowers symbolize hope, while the figure’s stance reflects defiance against oppression

In this Banksy is quoting a famous quote but at the end saying that reciting old proverbs makes you sound like a tw*t, this is done because in society even if you think like that your still contributing to it.

persuading audiences

For persuading audiences I'm going to use Donald trumps interview with Zelensky

During Donald trumps interview he was clearly running things with his tone towards Zelensky and the fact that he was telling him that he had spoke enough even though he was barely letting Zelensky speak
this did make Donald trump look more powerful especially when they were getting Zelensky to say thank you for what they'd already done and it made Zelensky seem weak and small especially with his body language during the interview.
After the interview, Zelensky did bring it back using twitter.

Zelensky made this tweet after his meeting with Trump and he put this because it can be seen as being sincere but him saying thank you so much makes it seem like he's mocking their demands and you'd expect him to be doing it on purpose to mock them because of his past career as a comedian.

Lots of advertisements use humour so they can make the audiences laugh and this makes them more likely to speak about the products they're selling because of it instead of making a sad advert for a normal brand which wouldn't be as memorable as something funny.

For example the Irn Bru adverts always use comedy and show things that are embarrassing or would make someone angry happening but they have a sip of an irn bru and it makes them happier and lots of the adverts are relatable to the audiences and the way they're done is very funny.

This advert by John West also uses humour to put across their brand by having a man fighting a bear. This is done because of it being funny with the way the bear fights like a human and also this was probably done because this was around the time that the internet became bigger and funny animal videos was a massively viewed thing and this is very similar to it and makes it more memorable and probably led it to be more spoken about than most other adverts

This advert also uses humour and displays the product a lot in it. The advert has them using the ability to turn anything into fruit by the foot and makes it a competition but the characters way of speaking and how calm he is with his bones being fruit by the foot makes it funny and memorable and also displays the product well.

Sweatshops

Sweatshops are a factory where workers are treated unfairly by having low wages, working long hours and dangerous/poor working conditions. Sweatshops also use child labour. Also their wages are so low that they have to do overtime in order to support their families. Sweatshops now are usually located in the sweatshop belt which primarily includes Asian countries like China, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and India, Southern and Central American countries, and Eastern European countries like Romania.

Sweatshops are also mainly used by major corporations like Nike, adidas, ralph Lauren, north face and many more massive corporations. The big brands use sweatshops because it massively reduces their production and storage costs as if they were produced in England or USA they would have to be given far better wages and the working conditions and hours would be a lot better and if they tried to make sweatshops in them countries they would be immediately shutdown. The big brands that have been exploited for using sweatshops to make their brand haven't faced enough backlash for what they are doing to exploit people and lots pf people don't realise that most of their clothes were made in sweatshops in dangerous working conditions.

some people argue that sweatshops make poor people better off which of course they would as its a job but no person especially children should have to work in the dangerous conditions in sweatshops working 10-14 hours a day while making less than 2$ a day which is clearly unfair for working 10-14 hours a day in them conditions. The workers in these sweatshops shouldn't have to do this work and be so underpaid and nearly all of their wages will be spent on feeding their family so how can they get out of poverty if all their money is going on food and water. In my opinion I don't agree with the working conditions in these sweatshops and its just completely wrong to treat workers in the manner they are treated in sweatshops.

This video was took in a Temu sweatshop which shows the amount of work they have to do with parcels constantly falling down and the fact that they are all shirtless shows how bad the working conditions are because what job would you not be wearing a shirt for and they're clearly doing it because of the heat in the warehouse.

Rana Plaza Collapse

On the 24th of April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh came crashing down, killing 1,134 people and leaving thousands more injured. The Rana Plaza was a garment sweatshop that due to a structural failure and many workers pointed out that there were many dangerous cracks in the walls. Big companies like Zara, Matalan and Primark used the Rana plaza to manufacture clothing. 1,134 people died and 2,581 were injured in the Rana Plaza collapse and most of the victims of this were women. Some people had no choice but to amputate their own limbs in order to be freed from the rubble and survive. This shows how unsafe some of the sweatshops around the world can be and how poor the working conditions are.Since Rana Plaza, dozens of other deaths and injuries have occurred as a result of incidents such as explosions, fires, floods, and electrocution. A total of 75 incidents in garment, textile, and related factories between 2021 and 2023 resulted in the deaths of 168 workers and the injury of over 800 more, spread across countries including Pakistan, Morocco, India, Peru, Egypt, Cambodia, Turkey, Chile, and Argentina. I couldn't believe that this happened when I first heard about it and it made me think about the person who was in charge of the building and made the workers go into the building while there were obvious signs of the building decaying.

Hundreds of workers in Bangladesh shouted slogans for justice and survivors wept at the ruins of a factory that made clothes for Western shoppers and collapsed 10 years ago killing more than 1,130 people. Survivors include some who lost limbs or were disabled placed wreaths at a memorial at the site of the former nine-storey Rana Plaza complex. Those who were involved in the collapse of rana plaza want free healthcare and compensation as lots of them have lost the ability to work. The people involved are also mad at the government for not prosecuting Sohel rana (the owner of rana plaza)after 12 years.

Here are some images that I've edited on photoshop from the rana plaza collapse and images of the aftermath and the protests that have been taking place for the last 11 years.

This image is from when people were trying to rescue those stuck in rana plaza after the collapse and I used colour grading in photoshop to change the colours to the colours of the Bangladeshi flag. I also used the film grain feature and increased the intensity of the image so the smoke around him is more clear.

For this image of the protests after the rana plaza collapse I used the conte crayon filter in photoshop and I also changed the image to black and white as I thought it would suit the image more.

For this image I also used conte crayon but I changed the settings of it to suit the image better and instead of just changing it to black and white I used the threshold feature on photoshop.

This is the filter gallery which I used for the images and I was messing around with the settings of the filters and I was trying each one out to see which ones looked good and I will use a lot of these again. I also used The Threshold filter which converts grayscale or colour images into high-contrast, black and white images.

Whitworth Art Gallery

My First impression of the Edible family is that its a unique way of presenting art but it does make it more interactive for its audience and it will make it more memorable due to its unusual way of presenting it. My first thought of the exhibit is why someone would make it out of cake when it could go off. It makes me think about why they would want people to eat this family and what the deeper meaning to it is.it creates a pleasant mood because its edible if it wasn't edible I don't think it would give off any moods. I've done some research on this exhibit and the creator Bobby Baker and he said about his exhibit "I have come to realise that unpaid domestic labour is an incredibly undervalued part of life."

In the second exhibit Women in revolt the main image that's the face of this exhibit is of a girl screaming this makes me think about why she's screaming and seemingly crying and what the context behind this image is.

Protest Badges

I Made this badge on photoshop as a way to spread the word on serious topics and representing support for these issues in the world. For this badge i used the colour scheme of black and yellow to represent a hazard symbol as the working conditions in a lot of the sweatshops in the world are dangerous and many people have lost their lives due to accidents in sweatshops. I included Temu as they are one of the worst companies for sweatshops and some of the working conditions in Temu factories are nowhere near good enough and they exploit and endanger workers who have no other option for work.

For this badge i had the text say people over profit and i made the background colours the colours of the Bangladeshi flag to reference the rana plaza collapse which showed that some sweatshop owners care more about profit than the people working for them and their safety. I also made the text form around the outside of the circle so it doesn't look out of place in the middle. I did this using Adobe illustrator.

This is some text warping that I did on photoshop to practice because before this I had no clue how to warp text and after I found out how to i found a lot of things you can do with text and different ways of warping it and I will definitely use this skill soon.

This is an image I made using photoshop a while ago and I thought that I could use the text warp skill I learnt on photoshop to add to the image so it has more of a message about sweatshops and makes it more clear.

This is an image I made on photoshop using the photo gallery and I thought id do it as a image for one of the biggest anti-sweatshop organizations. I made this by using Photoshops filter gallery.

This is an image that I turned into a banner to show the Rana plaza collapse and the effects it had on the people involved and also show the after math of it. I edited the image with the filter gallery on photoshop and I decided to add the #no sweat as its probably the biggest hashtag far being against sweatshops and I think that this banner does what I intended it to by spreading awareness and the reality of disasters like this.

Deforestation For Cotton Farming

Cotton is used for a quarter of global textiles fibres globally. A lot of people don't know that cotton has a lot of impacts to the environment especially with water usage as for every 1kg of cotton leads to 10,000 litres of water And 1kg of cotton is needed to make just one pair of denim jeans. The fashion industry is responsible for 20 percent of global waste water. Cotton cultivation severely degrades soil quality. Despite the global area devoted to cotton cultivation remaining constant for the past 70 years, cotton production has depleted and degraded the soil in many areas. Most cotton is grown on well-established fields, but their exhaustion leads to expansion into new areas leading to deforestation.

All of this cotton leading to deforestation links to the fast fashion industry with the severe impacts that cotton being made has on the environment and with 80-100 billion pieces of clothing being made in one year this shows just how much of an impact that cotton farming has. Also the top 2 countries for cotton farming are India and China which are infamous for having a lot of sweatshops in their country. Cotton is necessary but cotton farming should be done more ethically and more cotton farms being made shouldn't lead to deforestation cotton farming should prioritise practices that reduce environmental impact, such as organic methods and water-efficient techniques. This approach not only benefits the planet but also ensures the wellbeing of the farmers who grow it because the heavy use of pesticides raises concern for the health of farm workers and nearby populations.

Research evaluation

After all the research I've done I'm going to try and use some of the knowledge from it in my final project and I think that all the research I've done on sweatshops has given me a far better understanding of the actual problems that the workers face and also the problems that the fast fashion industry causes like with the environment.

Final project

For my final project I've decided to do a short documentary with an interview in the middle of it. I also chose to do a voiceover for this project.

This is the script I made for an interview that I'm going to use for my final project. The script is for a voice over on the final project and then after that ill show clips from an interview after I've asked questions about sweatshops to someone who doesn't know much about them but I will show him a video of the reality of sweatshops and ask him the questions that are in the script so I can get an idea of what people think about the sweatshops and if they are right ethically.

This image is from my interview I did in the recording studio. For this I had to sort the lighting out and also put on the black cover for a cleaner background. For the interview I used the Sony camera and had a microphone attached to it which worked really well and the audio came out very good from it. For the interview I used the questions I had put in the script and I also wrote down some more information from the research that I've already done on sweatshops and things like its effects on the environment. The interview went well but afterwards I noticed that I had made a mistake with the lighting as it was way too warm so I used lumetri colour in premiere pro to make the image cooler and I also scaled and positioned the image so that you couldn't see the rest of the background and just the black background.

For my final project I went into Stockport so i could film B roll for my voice over and I got a a few videos of different shops that use sweatshops like Primark and Matalan for some of the videos I had to make them look a lot cooler with lumetri colour because of the sun. I also used pexels for some stock footage of places that I couldn't get to like garment factories

Here I used adobe media encoder so I could transport the audio from my final project to an mp3.

Here I used adobe audition so I could edit my audio so I could fix my audio and make some changes to it and cut out bits like pauses from my voiceover I did. I also volume matched it all and put it to -27 LUFS which i thought was the best sounding for my project. I then exported the audio back to my project and replaced it with the old audio

Overall I've really enjoyed this project and I think that my short documentary came out well, I've also learned a lot about different things involving protest like the civil rights movements in the 1950s with MLK and also Malcolm X which I didn't know much about before the research I did on them and also the reality of sweatshops and the Rana plaza collapse which I'd never even heard of until I started this project so overall I think I've made a lot of progress on the software's that we use in this course and I've also learnt a lot about the things I've been researching.

Risk Assessment