Dying. It’s week 12.

I’m still freaking out about my assessments. But surprisingly, I’m doing okay for this ontography course, or at least I’d like to think that.

I didn’t post any blog posts last week, I was too worked up and honestly, I couldn’t be bothered.

I’ve been procrastinating. It’s done me no good.

Over the past week, I continued to work on my film essay. I did some research, downloaded the articles that I thought would be interesting and I read them one by one, not just the abstracts this time, I read the full article but not word by word of-course. I was so interested in some of the articles that I got so into it that I actually forgot that I had an essay to write. Somehow, I managed to reference the articles to my essay. It took me some time, I got to admit that. Writing is not my strong point. Thus, the informal writing I’ve been writing all semester. This is what happens when you speak four languages.

ANYWAYS!

It’s week 12!

It’s been a journey, I’ll say that much.

I would like to say that I’ve finally finished  editing my film. I’ve have a total of five rough cuts for my film. My film was showed on the projector in the studio today. It was nerve-wrecking. My film was finish. I didn’t want to tell Adrian or my classmates, but what they were watching in front of them was my final film. I didn’t want to continue to spend my precious time editing my film. I spent too much time already on it. I was scared that I would get feedback with the advice to edit again……. And guess what? I did receive some feedback about tweaking a few things in the film. I was disgruntled. My innards cried and trembled at the thought of editing again. Far out.

Some of the feedback that I received from Adrian were:

• Get rid of the sink and crafternoon stuff
• Move the shots after your commentary to the beginning of the film
• Have your commentary at the end of the film – so it ends on the commentary
• Just have the shots of the room – ceilings, walls, etc.
• Make the film shorter

From all the feedback that I received from Adrian, I decided to edit my film again. To my dismay. I didn’t get rid of the kitchen and crafternoon sequences, I liked it too much to part with the shots. I did move the shots of my commentary to the beginning of the film and I did have my commentary end my film. The film is also shorter now, around 3.48 minutes. I’m sick of editing. Editing is not my strong suit. I loathe editing… Even though I had studied film production for two years… This is the final cut of my film. Or at least I hope?

I’ve zipped my film file into a zip folder and I’ve uploaded to the Google Drive and I’ve shared this with Adrian. I just did this tonight. I’m tired now.

Oh speaking of my film. Adrian and my classmates seem to quite enjoy watching my film now, so that’s a positive. It felt good that they liked it. A lot of effort went into it, even though it might not look like it. A few of my classmates liked how the film is not that ambiguous anymore. I think the soundtrack helped along with the narration of the people in the coming out workshop audio track. I decided not to just have random audio tracks stacked on top of each other but rather have voices narrate with some subtle references to the Clare Colebrook’s quote that I’ve based my film and essay on.

My essay is going well. Adrian had the class print out two copies of our essays, one page each and we were to edit our classmate’s work. I received some helpful feedback from my peers, something that I didn’t think about.

Originally, I thought our essays have to be 2500 words, that’s why I was freaking out these couple of weeks. That’s a lot of words. Turns out we only have to write a total of 1500 words. Funny that. Because I had already written 2500 words. I had to edit it down. Which I did last week. It turned out that I wrote a load of nonsense in my essay. That’s quite sad. I had focused too much on the queer stuff and not my film. I got rid of a heap of those paragraphs that were to queer. And when I did, all I could hear was Adrian’s voice ringing in my ear, ‘Ai Vee, you need to queer it up’ hahahahahahaha! I tried not to queer it up too much in my essay even though I so wanted to.

My essay is currently in the fifth draft. In the studio today, Adrian told us that he wants to know whether our film is a list of things and why, as well as how is our film non-fiction. I’ve been focusing too much on how my film is a list of things and the queer stuff that somehow I didn’t manage to write about how Sissyphobia is a documentary and how it is a documentary. I looked at the readings on Adrian’s studios blog and I’ve downloaded the Bordwell and Thompson article. I’ll be referencing that reading where it says about documentary films in my essay later tomorrow. I just want to hand in my work already!

I plan to finish writing my film essay so I can work on my other assessments.

I haven’t written my 1000 reflective essay yet, the essay for my portfolio. I should I know. I will do so eventually. But right now, I will need to concentrate on this film essay.

You know what? I’ve actually learnt a lot when I wrote my essay last week, when I did some more research and when I read the articles in depth. I found the articles really intriguing. It captivated me. Maybe it was queer related. Not only that though, I read some articles about lists and networks. It made me understand ontography more. And it made me appreciate Adrian’s teaching more. Reading the articles made sense to me now as if I had read the articles back in week 1, I think I would have struggled to make sense of it all.

And what’s more, I reread all the articles that Adrian gave us earlier on into the semester. All of a sudden, Latour’s and Bogost’s readings made more sense. I felt that I had a better understanding of the readings after reading it again. Maybe this time I focused on reading it so I could reference in my film essay. Or maybe it’s week 12 and it’s all the stuff that I’ve learnt all semester that made Latour’s and Bogost’s articles interpretable. When I first read their articles, I was utterly confused and I didn’t get what they were trying to explain. It was just utter nonsense to me to be honest….

I’m nearly there.

Classes have finish.

Today was my last class. Ever. At RMIT. I have officially finished my classes and soon my studies at RMIT. I’ve only need to study my Bachelor of Communication (Media) course for 1.5 years. I won’t be studying at RMIT next semester. It’s a scary thought. I’ll be graduating soon.

Okay.

Right now.

All I have do for Adrian’s class are:

1. Sissyphobia documentary film
2. Sissyphobia film essay
3. Portfolio essay

Also, today my classmate Tom nominated me to be part of the panel for the End of Semester Studio Showcase on the 11th of June. My film is interesting because it’s queer related? Or is it just how I filmed it or edit it? Or is it the audio that makes it interesting? I’m scared to speak in front of so many people. I’ll need to prepare for it definitely. Right now though, I’m going to focus on the more important things. That is, my essays and my film.

The Wednesday studio task for Friday we were to list ‘Five questions for the class to collaborate with, excluding ‘what is an ontograph?’:

1. How is list of random video footage make up an interactive documentary?
2. Is listing an archive of the components of things a good way to document?

I can’t really think of 5 questions… So 2 questions have to suffice.

In the studio yesterday, I showed my rough cut #1 of my film to the class via the projector.

I received some advice after the viewing of my short film.

Advice from classmate:

• Rearrange the videos and audio so it’s backward to forward, as in have the song that Andy sings playing at the start of the film and then have the stuff that Natalia, Clare and Tung said in the end.

Advice from Adrian:

• Only have the shots of the parts of the lounge, for example, the walls , ceilings, stuff, but not the gay stuff, for example, the resources and books on the bookshelf.
• Use the part of your script where it talks about Clare Colebrooks article, that entire paragraph.
• You don’t need to use all the 100 shots.
• Make your film shorter.
• Make the font at the start of the film smaller and more centre.

I’ve taken aboard the advice of my classmate, that is, I have rearranged my film to when the song that Andy sings will be playing at the start of the film rather than at the end of the film and where Tung talk about his coming out at the end of the film.

I’ve also taken on board Adrian’s advice. He noted that I don’t need to have exactly 100 shots in the film……. You see… I didn’t know that… I thought that we had to use all 100 shots in our films – I knew you can reshoot footage to replace the footage that you didn’t particularly like in project three but I thought that was it. I didn’t realised that we just use half of that or even less. I’ve already edited rough cut #2 yesterday afternoon in Adrian’s class and I’ve rendered that out. It looks good. I like it. I haven’t inserted the recorded audio of the script yet but I will do so today – right after I post this blog post – I was late to class yesterday as I was busy recording the script/narration for my short film in my office. I use a Zoom Z4N audio recorder for the recording.

In the rough cut #1, the film was around 8:39 minutes long, right now, my film sits on around 4:20 minutes. I’m not sure if I’ll be cutting out more shots as of yet to make my film even shorter. I quite like the length of my film, it’s not as boring as the first cut.

I’re already made the font at the start of the film smaller and more at the centre and I’ve deleted all the shots with the queer resources and queer books on the bookshelf. It seems that I’ve been explaining too much in the film, that is I keep reinforcing what the context of the film is rather than allowing my audience to come up with an idea of what the film is about.

Over this weekend, I will continue to work on my essay, I think I’m more worried about the essay than my film to be honest. This is only because I feel that no matter what, I feel that my film can be quite self-explanatory even though it can be ambiguous to some of my viewers. I’m worried that I won’t be able to express myself properly, the process of the “making” part of this studio. Either way, I’ll try to write as much as I can.

Also, I haven’t started thinking about the presentation yet. I have not prepared anything.

As I read my daily dose of ‘gay news’, I came across this article about ‘Twinks’ on samesame – http://www.samesame.com.au/features/12304/Be-exactly-who-you-are – the article was written by a gay man with the pseudonym, brandycooklyn. 

In the article, the author discusses the stereotypes in the gay community. And how he loathes it.

In the essay that will accompany my film, I have looked into the word ‘sissyphobia’ – a word that I have discovered recently. Sissyphobia is the fear/loathsome of the more effeminate gay man.

A couple of quotes from the article:

‘I am often times given the label of a gay community stereotype, one I do not personally identity with. A twink is a feminine, flamboyant young homosexual man.’

‘We have been conditioned towards treasuring masculinity and demonizing femininity in gay men. It’s something many of us have tried hard to avoid, but inevitably collapses out if our rears at the unlikeliest of times, just when we think we’ve unlearned it. We have been also conditioned into stereotyping others, and placing them in categories. This is both a blessing and a curse – and unfortunately for some, has a habit of somehow determining their perceived worth. But you can’t ever be held to someone else’s standard of beauty. You are better than a body or a type and you are worth so much more. After all, are we not an incredibly diverse community, awash with colourful characters and whimsical personalities and beautiful stories?’

I came across this TED Talk by Brene Brown on my Facebook feed, a friend of mine shared the video. I had already watched the videos last year and have downloaded the audio of the talk.

In this particular TED Talk, Brown explores the challenges of being vulnerable. Have a watch:

 http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability

These two quotes stood out for me in the video:

‘When you lose your capacity to care what other people think, you’ve lost you ability to connect. But when you’re defined by it, you’ve lost your ability to be vulnerable.’ (Brown 2010).

‘You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.’ (Brown 2010).

I can totally relate to what she is saying in the video. It makes so much sense when you are expose to the queer community.

As I have written in my poetic essay script:

Fluid as it is, sexuality and gender identity implores the notion that visibility is vulnerability, that is being visible as a queer individual in society is to be vulnerable, as there is a likelihood that they are can be more vulnerable to hate crimes, discrimination, and homophobic quips, especially so if they are an effeminate gay man, a butch lesbian or transgendered person.

Below is my final script that will accompany my short documentary film.

________________________________________________________________________________________

I am one of the Queer Officers for RMIT University’s Student Union. The Queer Lounge as a safe space on campus is a privilege. A privilege that some queer students take for granted such as when they drink their coffee or eat their meal, and they leave rubbish and dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. To my dismay. For I am the one who has to clean up after them. There are various posters about cleaning up in the lounge. These students must have such a busy schedule that they find time to use the lounge, yet no time to wash their dishes.

Fluid as it is, sexuality and gender identity implores the notion that visibility is vulnerability. Being visible as a queer individual in society is to be at risk because there is a likelihood that you will be more vulnerable to hate crimes, discrimination, and homophobic quips. Especially if you are an effeminate gay man, a butch lesbian or transgendered person.

In Claire Colebrook’s article Queer Aesthetics: I really like where she says ‘I am the being who I am and have always been; that I do not expect or hope to change?’. I am exploring aspects of sexual orientation and gender identity. The challenges of coming out and determining the role society plays in the wellbeing of a queer individual, and what it means to identify as a queer individual. Honestly, I have written more than a thousand words on this snippet of Colebrook’s over the weekend. I noted that I plan to focus on various topics of the queer identity and queer issues such as coming out, religion, mental health, etc. My essay was all over the place. It was random.

Speaking of research, I came by the word, “sissyphobia”. The definition of the word is something along the line of a person – most likely a cis-gendered masculine male – who is afraid or have a distinct dislike or even hatred of the more feminine male, that is, the effeminate gay man. Sissyphobia is where gay men dislike being with the more feminine men. What intrigues me was that this term is totally new to me. To be frank, I didn’t even know this word existed, but then again, there are plenty of words out there that I don’t know of that I don’t know exist. I have found four peer-reviewed articles using this term ‘sissyphobia’. I’ve only read the abstract of each article and even so, I found it quite informative. I plan to use these articles in an essay.

I’m intrigued by the idea that some gay masculine men view effeminate gay men as submissive and “weak”. Why is there this creation of inequality? Is it even possible for effeminate gay men to be as equal as their more masculine peers, both inside the bedroom and out? In the LGBT+ community, there are many, many terms of describing each queer person. Many people have told me how they dislike this idea in being categorised. It makes them feel like cattle. Often they identify as non-binary, which is fair enough, since this world we live is so patriarchal, misogynic and discriminative of those who are not like them.

In the gay community, just like in the lesbian community, there are many terms to describing a gay man’s physical appearance, their personality and their mannerism – such as “bears” and “twinks”. In the lesbian world, these opposites are clearly defined by “butches” and “femmes”.

Mannerism is what make the queer community go round. In reading one of the abstracts of the sissyphobia articles, I’ve realised that mannerism can be a topic that I am able to explore. I believe in my three years of coming to terms with myself, that it all comes down to mannerisms, that’s what people in your community would classify you as. It’s rather sad actually, as if you are nothing more than a label. Yes, labels! Why is it that in the queer community we like to label each other? Yet, heterosexuals also label us? Why do we do it to each other? Stereotypes in the queer community is rife. Why is it that butch lesbians are categorise as a masculine with male traits and why are femme lesbian categorise as feminine with female traits: even though femme lesbians identify as cis-gendered females – though there are some males to females (MTF) transgendered people that identify as femme lesbians.

In one of the articles about sissyphobia, the author noted that some gay masculine men dislike men with feminine characteristics because they feel threatened by them that it is through their own insecurity of effeminate gay men. I find that strange. Maybe there is a reason why descriptions of “no Asians” in dating profiles of gay men on Grindlr is common.

The Queer Collective hold weekly events in the Queer Lounge. These social events are designed to encourage a sense of community and belonging. Events include crafternoon, games night, movie nights, workshops, queer collective meetings, afternoon tea, and wine and whine – where we drink wine and whine about our life. I’m most proud of the workshops; these workshops explore a variety of queer topics that promote services and support that are available for our members to use at their disposal. These workshops aim to inform and educate our members about issues facing the queer community.

Beyondblue reports that queer individuals are more likely to experience from depression and anxiety than the rest of society. As a Queer Officer, I strive to develop and nurture the welfare of my collective members into wholesome adults. The Queer Lounge provides an opportunity for queers students to meet new people, build connections, create a network of support and to socialise and bond with each other. This creates a stronger feeling of a queer community at RMIT. In there, queer students are able to express themselves without the fear of judgment, the fear of retribution of being their true self. It is a safe place. Some even call it their home. Their second home.

________________________________________________________________________________________

This is how I feel right now.

A mountain of work sweetly calling out my name. No… Actually, it’s screaming out my name…

So, last night, I read up the assessment sheet for Project #4 and for the portfolio. Turns out that we all have to write up three essays for the studio, all due too soon. The writing of three essays completely slipped my mind, I knew we had to write up an essay to accompany our short film, an essay to act as a script where we narrate it for our short films and also an essay for our portfolios. But somehow… All this slipped my mind. I think week 11 is getting to me…

I’ve already finished writing up my script.

I’ve already written up nearly 2000 words for the essay that will accompany my film. HOWEVER! I did not use this essay prompt as a basis for my essay: ‘Let’s adopt ontography as a name for a genereal inscriptive strategy, one that uncovers the repleteness of units and their interobjectivity. From the perspective of metaphysics, ontography involves the revelation of object relationships without necessarily offering clarification or description of any kind’ (Bogost 2012), in the week one reading of Ian Bogost’s Alien Phenomenology article.

Instead, I’ve been using one quote of my choosing to be the basis for my essay which is a quote from  Claire Colebrook’s article Queer Aesthetics:

‘I am the being who I am and have always been; that I do not expect or hope to change’.

And to think that I’ve written a 2000 word essay based on this quote alone. Far out. So, you can only imagine my horror when I read the assessment guideline for project #4.

I freaked out. All that time spent writing this 2000 word essay. Gone. Down the drain. Or so I thought. Instinctually, I notified Adrian at once through the Doco Ontography Facebook group to clear things up.

After Adrian cleared this mishap of mine, that’s when I finally realised that there are three essays to write for this studio. Even though, sub-consciously I knew that.

There are a total of five questions that I can discuss in the essay that will accompany my film, I am to select one of the questions and I am required to write my essay in regards to it. I have decided to write my essay on ‘how and in what way (is?), your interactive ontography a documentary? Why? How?’. I will continue to write my essay using the 2000 word essay I’ve been working on a couple of weeks ago.

I have not even started writing my 1000 essay for my portfolio. I have not even thought of that yet. I’ve been so focused on this 2000 word essay.

I better get a move on.

AND STOP FREAKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG OUT!

This just reminds me of the student’s line in Latour’s On the Difficulty of Being an ANT: An Interlude in the Form of a Dialog, a week 4 reading where the Professor says to the student:

‘I have never understood what context meant, no. A frame makes a picture look nicer, it may direct the gaze better, increase the value, allows ti date it, but it doesn’t add anything to the picture. The frame, or the context is precisely the sum of factors that make no difference to the data, what is common knowledge about it. If I were you, I would abstain from frameworks altogether. Just describe the state of affairs at hand’ (Latour pp. 144).

I think that’s what I have to do. I have to ‘just describe the state of affairs at hand’ (Latour pp. 144) of what is in my film and just focus and describe in great detail of the “why” and the “how” of my film. I know I can do it. I just need to get my confidence back. I lost a bit confidence of myself last night after discovering I’ve written my essay wrongly.

This week is week 11.

Time to freak out.

I’ve got so many assessments to do and so little time to do them.

Over the weekend, I worked on my documentary short film, it is a list of things that is in the RUSU Queer Lounge. I’ve haven’t enhance my videos in any shape or form and I don’t plan to now, even though a few weeks ago I said I will edit the colour balance of some of my shots since the lighting in some of the videos are pretty horrendous. I have yet to reshoot my videos, I haven’t got to reshooting some shots yet. Now, I’m just thinking over whether I should reshoot or not. Because when I come to think of it, the shots seem quite fine. The footage is raw. Just like how when a queer person who is new to the Queer Department come and pay a visit to the Queer Lounge, the emotions they would feel would be raw too, wouldn’t it? Considering it is a new surrounding, a new place of belonging, a safe place that is free from judgment, I mean look, how many places are there in Melbourne that’s like that?

I quite like the rawness in my videos – the unedited aspects of the lounge – it conveys this sense of realness. Many queer students when they first discover the lounge, they couldn’t believe there such thing as a Queer Lounge, a haven of all sorts at RMIT. It took them awhile to wrap it over their heads. This rawness of the videos with all the shadows and the blurriness of colours is what someone new to the lounge may see.

This just reminds me of the student’s line in Latour’s On the Difficulty of Being an ANT: An Interlude in the Form of a Dialog, a reading that Adrian handed out back in week 4:

‘I am always limited to my situated viewpoint, to my perspective, to my own subjectivity.’ (Latour pp. 145).

This rawness to my short film is only my viewpoint, would my audience see it that way? Or would they just notice how awful my shots were and how the ‘things’ that I shot were not lit properly, would it matter? How would they interpret it?

I’ve finished writing up my script. I believe it’s quite well done, it’s poetic or at least I think so?

I will be borrowing a zoom recorder and recording the script for my film before the studio on Friday hopefully, if not, I will record it after the studio in the late afternoon. I’ll be recording the script in my office, in the consultation room at RUSU.

I’ve already recorded the script on my phone, however the quality of the audio is appalling and it’ll be embarrassing if I use it in my film. I’ve timed my script twice. One time I recorded the script with a total running time of 6:43 minutes and another time was 6:58 minutes. I did speak rather slow and I did mess out my pronunciation of a few words. I will seriously need to consider practising reading my script this week before I record it on Friday. I believe the final recording of the script will be less than seven minutes long. My film is currently sitting on 8:39:14 minutes.

I will be using some segments the audio recording from the coming out workshop in week 9 as my audio track for my short film

In my presentation of my project #3 back in week 7, it was noted that I could possibly use an audio track in my film, that audio track would be of people in the lounge talking, but I was to distort the audio track so people’s voices are unable to be recognisable. I’ve considered this and over the weekend, I thought of layering my audio tracks. That is, I layer one segment of the audio track with another segment. I experimented with this idea and I liked it. Since my film is quite long, I’ve layered the audio tracks with segments of noise – that is, many  people talking all at once – with a segment where only one person is talking at a time. In some parts of the film, I’ve juxtaposed the audio tracks to have two segments of noise at once, so it’s just noise that my audience will hear but at times, they will be able to comprehend what is being said.

Since this experiment was a success, I will be using this method.

The queer collective members that can be heard clearly in the recording have given me their full consent for me to use their voice in this short film. I’ve asked them to sign release forms after the recording. I’ve already asked them again for their consent and thus approval for me to use this audio recording for my project and were please to do so. Those individuals who can be heard in the recording are out, they are out to their peers, family and to society, and they’ve assured me that I’ve got their consent in publicising their voice as audible and undistorted for my project. Frankly, they don’t care. And they told me so. Actually, they want their stories told.

I hope to finish my film this weekend or by Friday night this week. I want to get this film out of the way of my studies so I can focus on my essays, not only for this studio but for my other classes as well.

Ideas For My Final Essay & Final Film…………..

During the Wednesday’s studio class this week, as Adrian went around the class talking and advising his students about their upcoming project and essay, I brainstormed some topics that I could explore in my final essay. I’ve started working on my essay, so far, the essay is very informal and all over the place, I’ve written paragraphs/sentences under all the headings in the above image such as ‘love and belonging’, ‘bullying and discrimination’, and ‘modern times/globalisation’. Adrian asserted in the Wednesday’s class that we should ‘just write’ things, and that’s what I’ve done so far, I’ve written about 400 words so far.

Adrian also noted that the essay:

• Don’t make it linear
• Storyboard is ok
• Start doing it
• Identify what you want to work on now
• Essay – can be an informal essay – an informal essay with evidence
• Your essay doesn’t have to be linear
• Your film doesn’t have to be linear

Adrian gave me the advice that for my final project, the audio and the visual doesn’t need to make sense together and individually. Adrian also advice me that I can accompany 100 quotes to my 100 videos. By referring the 100 quotes that accompany 100 videos as a “poetic quilt”, these 100 quotes can be gathered through various resources and media, such as news articles, reviews, films (both fiction and non-fiction), books, and art (statues, contemporary art, etc.), and not just academic peer-reviewed articles. I will be taking his advice onboard for my project.

Somehow I want to write my essay in a linear form and create my final media product as linear, but now I’m thinking otherwise. Would it be better if I randomly place things here and there, write things here and there? Would it make sense? Would I get the marks I intend to get? Will I be able to express all the things I want to express in a non-linear form? Since I won’t be writing and organising the essay and the final media product in a linear form, I will be dependant on my reader/viewer’s interpretation of the project and essay. That is a very scary thought… Would the essay and final media product be ambiguous to the viewer/reader if it’s not linear? But then again, both would be pretty straightforward I believe.

I plan to make my essay linear a little bit – just a tad, is that even possible? – but still structured in a way that it’s not linear. Not sure if that makes sense but yeah…

I’m interested in a quote in Claire Colebrook’s Queer Aesthetics (2011), an  article that Adrian reference me:

“Would it be possible to assert simply that one is: that I am the being who I am and have always been; that I do not expect or hope to change? Or, would it be possible—this time not referring to oneself—to a world or nature that is fully actualized and that bears neither a potentiality for change nor a tendency to change in ways that are not determined in advance by some norm?” Pp. 26.

I will be researching and collecting 100 quotes from various resources in the next week or so. I hope that will help me in my journey in writing a decent essay.

Okay. So, I’ve just recorded the audio for the videos. For my final project, I plan to work on a short film, a nonfiction short film, and possibly non-linear whilst at it. The Coming Out workshop was on in the RUSU Queer Lounge yesterday afternoon. After Adrian’s class in the morning, I borrowed a Zoom Z4N  audio recorder with a boom mic so I could record the workshop session. I printed off 20 release forms and asked people who participated in the workshop to fill in, to which they had complied with. I’ll be using this audio recording for the RUSU Queer Department group and the Facebook page, I’ve already uploaded the file onto SoundCloud – raw audio.

I plan to have a montage of short videos with a constraints of 5 seconds in my short film with the audio track of the audio recording of the coming out workshop playing in the background. Of course I will be cutting up the raw audio recording into “bits”. I’m not sure what the duration of my final film will be as of yet, I was thinking maybe around 5 minutes, but would that be too little time? Because the audio recording of the coming out workshop was around one hour and seventeen minutes, so there is plenty of things that I will be cutting out: which if honestly, I think is rather unfortunate, I wish I could fit everything in my short film, as the content in the recording can be quite eye-opening.

Overall, I think I’m on the right track. Over the weekend, I plan to continue to write my essay, hopefully I can write and extra 500-1000 words and that I won’t be lazy but we’ll see how. It sounds like a lot to write but it’s not at the same time. Obviously, I will need to research more things, I’m really curious about queer expression in queer art and I might look into that this weekend.

I think I will focus on “queer aesthetics” for my final film and final essay. I still don’t particularly fully understand what “queer aesthetics” mean, but I will soon, hopefully.

There’s many, many things to do over the weekend.