Category: Semester 1

Portrait Reveals: Dad Edition

Alaine Thompson on

Today we revealed our portrait of someone else, our final portrait projects. Film festival style as always. And a De Bono style feedback session after (as always), also.

This time, we all took on every hat as we pleased, and my feedback was actually really great to hear. Only getting feedback from your parents can only get you so far in a project.

My feedback

First off on the red hat (which also kind of blends into the yellow hat), my group thought that my dad was pretty cool, which I definitely have to agree with. the whole reason why I chose to do this project on my dad is because he’s the type of guy who you always ask to tell his stories, because they’re always so interesting and he is very unashamedly open.

They thought that it was interesting how 3D printing is a very creative field, even though it seems to be a very technical field, which I totally agree with. One of the things my dad loves about 3D printing is that it allows him to be creative with programming, two of the things he loves to do.

I really enjoyed showing that part of my dad and my group thought that I captured the creative side of 3D printing really well, as you could see how passionate my dad is about it, which I was really pleased to hear as I felt like I had done his creative mind justice.

The stop motion really emphasised the mechanical, step by step process of the 3D printing, which was great to hear since I wasn’t really sure what to put in that space until stop motion dancing Groot came into my mind.

My use of found footage helped to cement my dad’s history in their heads as it created an image not otherwise possible, such as in the day dreaming section.

The opening shot of my Dad’s work-space was good to establish the type of person he is.

They really liked the time-lapse of the 3D printer.

And although I noticed the clipped audio a lot during the editing process, they said that it wasn’t that noticeable or that big a deal.

Now time for the black hat. As good as the choice of found footage was, it didn’t flow very well between images of my dad being interviewed as there were very little links, so it didn’t flow as well as it could have, which now that I notice it I agree with completely and want to work on it.

They also thought that I should’ve somehow placed more of the 3D printing process into the piece which I also agree with, as it probably would have brought the focus more onto the printing itself.

They also mentioned that the section at the end on Thingiverse could have been done better, using more varied images and text to show the same thing, making the sequence more visually interesting. Yet again, I agree.

I really enjoyed making this project and utilizing found footage was very exciting and enticing for me, to the point where I feel I may have over used it in some areas and forgotten about the flow of the project. However, I do feel that I managed to capture the essence of my dad and his creative and enthusiastic approach to 3D printing. If I had the chance to do something like this again however, I would have limited my questions strictly to 3D printing as I find that the best solutions and ideas come from thinking outside the box. But how can you think outside the box when there is no box to begin with?

Jeremy’s Project

I really enjoyed this unique take on a portrait by Jeremy Costa, as it really captured the personality of his subject, Keegan Mew, through the views of others surrounding him and a unique and very uninhibited look into his daily life through his hair and poses for the camera only he could do. The use of found footage as a sort of shadow over the footage of Mew doesn’t over power Costa’s subject and simply compliments the mood and aesthetic he is trying to achieve. It finishes on a nice note, as Costa asks Mew to describe himself, as all of his friends have done. The only thing I’d suggest is, add in more found footage, just so that complimentary shadow like effect occurs more frequently to greater impact.

A Portrait of my Dad

Alaine Thompson on

For our most recent project (and the most recent iteration of the portrait saga), I chose to create a two minute portrait of my father. For this project, as there has been with with each one previously, there has been a unique ‘catch’, found footage must be utilised throughout the project.

As with each project there has also been a reflection required, so here’s mine;

Looking back on the piece I feel that the found footage I chose to match with the audio really linked together to create an entirely new meaning, a more childlike hope and sense of wonderment, as I felt that was the essence of my father that I was trying to capture. I also feel that the photographic components worked really well in the piece and aided in creating this mood drastically. This was the first time I created a timelapse video and utilised stop-motion to create movement on a large scale, and I think that both processes worked really well.

The most problematic aspects of the project for me were the audio and the interview process. I found it very difficult to edit the interview I did with my father as he is a very fast talker, and generally didn’t leave me any space to cut the audio cleanly, which made some clips sound rougher and more clipped than others. I also discovered very quickly into the interview process that some of the questions I had written down were too open ended, as answers would stretch on for around ten minutes each. This gave me around an hour and a half of footage to edit for the interview, which was very difficult to break down to just two minutes of material.

I found that the use of found footage allowed me to take the essence of the piece to the level and the attitude of my subject, allowing me to hopefully instil the audience with as much hope and enthusiasm for the future as my father has.

While I did borrow and use the Zoom H2N recorder to record the ambient noises around my dad’s work area, I later discovered, after returning the device, that the recordings were not very useable without alteration, and also realised that just my father’s words by themselves were powerful enough, so I decided to let his words and the imagery speak for themselves, as opposed to over-saturating the piece.

Through this piece I really wanted to experiment with the linking of the visual and the auditory, creating meaning through these created links, as well as cuts between footage. I really wanted to utilise match cuts to link the two parts of the ‘story’, so I matched an image of a rocket flying with the 3D printer, printing a rocket, which was a new idea for me but I think worked really well. I feel I really achieved my goal of creating a new meaning through editing, and brought through the essence of my dad’s persona.

Collaboration: Community Sourced Media

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In today’s world everything can be shared instantaneously through social media, making everything more accessible and starting a new wave of entertainment and media sourcing. At the head of that wave are websites such as YouTube and Vimeo, on which artists can freely contribute whatever they create for the viewing pleasure of audiences around the globe. The sheer number of artists present on these websites has created a vast community, some of whom interact and collaborate with each other to produce even better videos than before.

But, there is an organisation that not many have heard of that is utilising this idea of collaboration and taking it to a whole new level. Joseph Gordon-Levitt started his open, collaborative production company ‘HitRECord‘ in 2010 where they started by producing short collaborative films which were screened at film festivals such as the Sundance film festival. As Gordon-Levitt himself puts it, an open, collaberative production company is, “open, meaning anyone can contribute, collaborative meaning we use the internet to work on our projects together, and production company because that’s what we do.”

The first season of HitRECord on TV! won a Primetime Emmy and an Emmy for ‘Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media – Social TV Experience’. The TV show, through its collaborative and mix of styles is a new version of the variety show in the age of social media. The first episode, ‘RE: the Number One’ was first aired on YouTube before it was aired on television and contained work from 426 contributors:

The show, like most vloggers and bloggers of social media, is also unafraid to tackle vital issues on the headlines of newspapers such as this call out for contributions regarding feminism:

Other topics explored include fantasy, trash, space and money, among others. Even though the other episodes in the list don’t seem to cover topical issues, each episode goes in depth on its topic, exploring every possible avenue it can, such as in the first episode above where they bring light to the honey mushroom, a singular organism that is so large it is destroying every tree that stands in its way in the forest it occupies.

HitRECord is only one of many entities that use community collaboration to create some truly amazing artistic creations, and thanks to the internet and social networking sites, collaborative art works are more and more possible to create, not just within a network of peers, but globally too.

Media is a Form of Research: Collaboration

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Today Amy Saunders and Rachel Wilson spoke to us about research and collaboration respectively.

Amy, the liason librarian for our program, spoke to us about how to properly use the resources at our disposal through the library, such as how to search properly, the databases available to us and how to know if your article is scholarly or not. It’s surprising how much you don’t know about this type of thing until you look a little closer.

Rachel talked to us about collaboration and the value and need for successful collaboration within the industry, all in time for our big group assignment. She gave us a lot of valuable information about how to structure our group work and meetings to ensure fairness and strong collaboration within the group, such as writing minutes for every meeting convened, and different ways to diffuse bad situations, involving sharing ideas and solving problems when they arise.

Zoom H2N Sound Recorder Practice

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Today in our workshop we practiced with the Zoom H2N Sound Recorder, moving around the uni to try and capture all different sound qualities. The list included lovely locations such as, a bathroom and a large hallway, and various nature sounds.

It was very interesting to hear the variation between room types and to hear what echo was like close and far away from a subject. Emily Mitrevski and I experimented with echo as we had a conversation in a small, echoing room. We pointed the microphone towards and away from whoever was speaking during our conversation, noticing that one person’s voice was echoing while the other wasn’t.

Also, in the bathroom, I experimented with sound by placing the microphone faraway from the sound and then close, creating very different sounds each time.

I also put a Zoom recorder out a window slightly to record the sounds of the outdoors. As I securely moved it from side to side of the window, the glass slightly blocked the sound and dulled the noises, especially the wind, creating a kind of kaleidoscope of sound , as it changed drastically from end to end, scaling down in the middle.

Through this exercise I’ve discovered a lot more about the capturing of sound and how the distance at which you capture it from can create a unique versatility thought unique only to the visual image.

Found Footage: Society’s Critic

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Found Footage by definition is footage that has been rappropriated and redefined for an entirely new and different context. As Tilly Walnes puts it, “there is no end to its newness.” (Walnes, 2015). This much is true, as through this act of remixing and reappropriating, the footage takes on an entirely new meaning and context, in an entirely new film.

Found footage films, such as Bruce Conner’s 1958 “A Movie”, often critique the “mass media’s use of images, narrative codes, and editing conventions, exposing their ideological function and questioning their authority as conveyors of meaning.” (Walnes, 2015). Through this critiquing, such films play an essential role in our current society, as they allow for social commentary to occur through a familiar, accessible and viral means.

The first ever found footage film was Joseph Cornell’s “Rose Hobart” (1936) which “stitched together and slowed down movie reels featuring the eponymous actress and added a blue filter and samba soundtrack.” (Walnes, 2015):

The film ends up being a rather strange and depressingly unique insight into the world of an actress and the seemingly fake emotions and person that is constantly created on screen, the blue emphasising these emotions while the samba soundtrack detracts from this and gives the idea that what she is doing is a pointless dance with not just the audience, but possibly even herself.

The art of utilising found footage to create an entirely new piece of work has become incredibly popular in recent times, as the internet has allowed more and more footage to become available to the average person, hosting sites such as YouTube have become more and more popular allowing people to voice their social criticisms, and editing software is becoming more readily available. All of these factors heavily contribute to the increased popularity of the found footage film, as well as remix films, but one other factor had a great deal of influence as well: the creation of creative commons.

The creative commons is a licensing agreement that allows artists to release their work to the public for free to be used as they see fit, whether that’s an attribution license, meaning their work can be used in anyone else’s work in any way, shape, or form, around the world so long as they are attributed correctly. Or a non-derivative license which means the work cannot be altered in any way or included in any other work, but can be shared as much as you want, for free. Creative commons gives the artists control over their work and it was only created in 2001 (Walnes, 2015). Before creative commons was established the only options for artists publishing on the web was ‘all rights reserved’ or ‘public domain’ (Walnes, 2015).

While many of the advocates for found footage film-making consider it to be a kind of “no-budget folk art” (Walnes, 2015), the art form is gaining considerable popularity, and with the creation of creative commons and the increase in the digitisation of artwork, its popularity will only continue to increase.

– Walnes, Tilly. “Movement 1.1:The Futures of Cinema. Story Without End? Found Footage in the Digital Era.” Feb. 4th 2015. Available at: http://www.movementjournal.com/issue_1.1_futures_of_cinema/01_story_without_end_walnes.html

Camera Practice on the Sony MC50E: Shaking Hands Three Different Ways

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On Monday for our media 1 workshop we did a camera practice on the Sony MC50E HD video camera, in which we had to show two people meeting and shaking hands then parting ways. We also, somehow managed to create a coherent and flowing narrative with a beginning middle and end. So enjoy this very random story of, shaking hands.

First Shot: Alaine Thompson
Second Shot: Samantha Antolini
Third Shot: Oliver Clark

This practice was very useful to not only get used to how to effectively use the tripod and video camera, but it also opened up my eyes to visual composition. Through each sequence it was easy to see, especially since we actually gave each its own meaning within the sequence of shots, that the way you present the action within the shot can give your story an entirely new meaning, allowing for a filmmaker to really have great control over the overall feel and flow of their film, simply by adjusting the composition of the shot slightly.

Found Footage: The Art of the Portrait

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Today in our lectorial Brian Morris talked to us about found footage for our forthcoming project; a portrait of someone we know consisting of a significant portion of found footage. Found footage is “pre-existing footage appropriated by a filmmaker and used in a way that was not originally intended”(Morris, 2015). The earliest examples come from avant-garde experimental films in the 1920’s which were then revived in the 1950’s during the new wave of American cinema (Morris, 2015).

Found footage has a constantly evolving meaning which depends upon the context of the film within which it is placed and the cultural and social context of the time, as this is where audiences draw meanings from the text. A good example of this is Bruce Conner’s ‘A Movie’ as it utilizes various pieces of found footage to satirize and criticize film-making:

We were then an Adam Curtis documentary trailer, as Curtis is notorious for his ability to mix mediums, that is found footage, captured footage, text, sound and photos to create a very distinct and clear message:

We were also shown many examples of portraits which gave us some good ideas of the basic conventions of the portrait genre. All of these examples combined to create a great overall image of what to do and how to create this ‘found footage portrait’. Now all that is needed is the subject.

We took some time to brainstorm some people who we thought would be interesting to do a portrait of and the one person that really stuck out for me was my dad because of his creative genius, love of 3D printing and amazing skills with a computer. Now all that’s left to do is to get dad to sign a release form and the project is off and running.

– (Morris, 2015), Brian Morris Lectorial.

Self Portrait Reveals: Video Edition

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Today we watched everyone’s self portrait videos film festival style. It was really interesting to see just how much people had done with only one minute of editing together bits and pieces of themselves. Every single one was its own unique, coherent little narrative. It was really nice to see.

It’s so interesting seeing how many different ways a one minute video can be told, so inspiring too to see how unique every person’s idea was. It gives me hope, even if it is a naive hope at this point, for the future of the narrative, because there really are infinite possibilities.

Self Portrait: Video Edition. (Naivety)

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Here is the second assignment of the year, a video self portrait combining all the mediums from the previous self portrait:

Through this piece I really wanted to show an emotional journey, the kind I feel my life has been and still is. From the beginning of this project I knew I wanted to create an emotional crescendo through the music, which starts out calm and peaceful but quickly becomes hectic, crazy and cluttered, as my mind often is.

I also wanted to show myself through images of my favourite places, and as I have grown up literally surrounded by parks, I have used trees as a motif to convey different areas of my personality throughout the piece. At the beginning I use trees moving in the breeze and fades to show my calm and positive side. This then develops into the idea that I myself have been labelled a tree because of my height. The vascular tree images, which I created using Adobe Illustrator, also give the idea that the tree is alive, through the use of montage theory which makes the tree pulsate.

To me, trees also symbolise growth and development, as each bump in its trunk was created by some event, it grows in a certain direction, it has many branches and thick roots. Trees to me also symbolise life itself and the journey of growth and change throughout life.

I found it very difficult to get the right meanings and ideas across in the middle of the piece, where things become more hectic, as I was originally going for a quantity rather than quality approach to the editing. But once I really thought about it I found an idea that worked. I still think there is a little too much going on, but I like the meaning that comes across throughout the piece through the editing.

The main idea I wanted to get across through this piece is that I changed so much in Year 12 that over the summer holidays, I felt I had finally gotten to know myself, only to discover once I reached university that I had continued to change and now I feel as though I know nothing again. I really wanted to capture that confusion and feeling of both freedom and being trapped at the same time.