Mia Gvozdic – Looking In from Media Factory on Vimeo.

Reflection:

What I have discovered about noticing through this assignment is quite clear, for me, the noticing world involves an environment filled with objects, living things and intangible forces (such as emotions). I’ve realised that I have a naturally notice people and the objects that revolve around them. In particular, with ‘looking in’, I have learnt by searching and evading people’s private spheres that I have noticed and connected deeply with people, I thought I was already extremely close to. I’ve discovered that noticing can be the ability to see the world around us, but on a deeper level the people that live within it as well. In terms of nonfiction I’ve discovered that I am able to manipulate people’s viewing experience through camera framing, positioning and audio. That creating something that came from my perspective though reality captured on film, although I’ve fabricated and manipulated it, I can evoke thinking and emotions that are real within the audience during their viewing experience. I’ve realised as a film maker, noticing in this text is what interests me most — and I think its an important thing to grasp, because in order to truly connect with your audience, its usually characters or people that they invest in and engage with most. I understand the path this studio was trying to lead me towards, however, I understand nonfiction and noticing to be something that has come naturally different to me. In many ways my project stemmed from the word tuning but ended up with the word wondering, my project only skimming the surface of whats to notice and understand in our own world and others.

The concept of noticing and nonfiction has evolved quite significantly for me. In the beginning, noticing was just becoming a aware of my surroundings and recognising something when it stood out to me or came into focus. Then having the conscious effort to store this fleeting moment into my memory or to create a permanent record of it. This has soon changed into the idea that we are noticing all kind of things whether it inside or outside oneself, that it is a natural process we do all the time. From this studio I’ve learnt a lot about myself as a media maker, that no matter how hard I try, I will always gravitate towards people and their stories because it’s natural for me to do this in order to make sense of the world around me.

Nonfiction started out as “a very grey area”, I thought it was impossible to create media that captured something ‘real’, as reality is constantly changing, therefore as soon as you try to make a record of something, it’s already momentarily changed. I also thought media can be quite constructed, so it is very hard to distinguish between perception and reality. However, now I believe that although the above is quite true, its important to stay as authentic to the truth in terms of content, and instead, I should focus on a feeling or understanding that can ‘real’ at the time of my audience’s viewing experience.

The semester as a whole, has taught me many new creative processes that have slowly made me need to adapt and evolved my work into something bigger. I’ve learnt that the world around us can have a personality of its own through pattern, movement and colour. That the concept of noticing and nonfiction extends far further than I initially thought, from a conscious act of being aware to creating nonfiction projects that develop over time. I particularly liked creative works that I was introduced to, like James Benning and ‘Starry Night’, both teaching me about different forms of noticing whether it through the tools of distance or long duration shots within a landscape. In many cases, these artists focused on the moment or landscape telling the story for itself.

Learning Outcomes:

• Apply yourself into new creative processes and environments, that allow you to produce different modes of nonfiction media.
• Reflect on and adapt work, based on research and the feedback given.
• Create to present a new perspective on the world and evoke an understanding within the work you create.