SA PROJECT UPDATE 2

Second concept board - Caroline Wong

As I am required to create accessories for my shoot, I decided to keep looking into other inspirations surrounding duos. One such duo that have particularly caught my eye are Thing One and Thing Two from Dr Seuss' "The Cat in The Hat". For this project, I am going to produce an editorial and a fashion film/advertisement and Thing One and Thing Two have qualities that I wish to incorporate into both pieces of work. For the editorial, I studied they way Thing One and Thing Two had been illustrated by Seuss and I liked the fact that their names were the only defining feature of their red morphsuit-like body. It is this slogan that I want to incorporate into my shoot and I plan on making them into headpieces so as to not deter away from the outfits and expressions of the models. 

The aspect of Thing One and Thing Two that I am using for the fashion film is their playfulness. In the book, Seuss portrays them to be troublemakers and comical characters, sometimes even childish. As my editorial highlights the sadness a psychological attachment can bring, I want my film to do the opposite- focus on the positive and fun of a psychological attachment.

As my starting point for my editorial was to look at my best friend and her impact on me, I looked into my family as the starting point for my film. I have a number of photos of my cousins and I when we were younger where I realised we all dressed alike and looked alike to some extent. This however isn't the case anymore. I now have a younger cousin who was born a good few years after most of us and she's currently 3 years old. In all our family photos, none of us look alike nor dress alike as we're all older and we're all our own people now. We have the ability to make our own decisions about the way we look and thus, we don't look the same as our parents aren't able to bounce off of each other for infant styling advice. My cousin, I feel, is missing out in a way. There will never be a photo where we all laugh because everyone one of the 5 eldest cousins is rocking the same hideous bowl haircut that our grandma gave us.

Cousins and I all dressed similarly (2002) - Caroline Wong

The youngest cousin, Marlene Ko - Ina Ko (October 2014)

This led me to think a bit more about what I'd realised. Sure, my cousin didn't have photos where she'd appear to be similar to us in the way twins are similar to each other but so what? I still wasn't sure how I was going to relate this to a shoot or film.

Instead of thinking too much about it, I noted the thoughts down on my phone and took off to Central London as I like walking around on my own as it starts to get dark since it helps me think. I brought my sketchbook with me and, whilst on the tube, flicked through to my initial brainstorm of ideas. One of my trains of thought had been to use my family members as models- this itself would show family relationships and psychological attachments. 

I took myself off to a Costa Coffee and began looking into one of my other inspirations- twins, be it paternal, fraternal or Siamese. In my mind, I see twins to have an incredible bond with each other. Not only do they usually live together but a lot of the times, they are brought up in exactly the same way, eating the same food, attending the same school, having the same teachers and lifestyle and being dressed in the same way too by their parents. It is not just their DNA that twins share identical versions of. Siamese twins too also share a literal attachment to each other and what I've taken from looking into twins in general is the idea of having two, or 'seeing double'. This is an aspect that will feature in both the shoot and film I produce.

As mentioned before, I will be using two models for my photo shoot and I plan on using split screens and other means to show my cousin in a double act.