Rain

Tiny drops of water turn quickly from droplets to pellets as tens of people rush out of the train on their way home from work and their daily commute. Everyone rushes to grab their umbrellas, coats and bags to shield themselves from the sheets of rain, rain so thick you can see barely see through its whiteness as it slides and jumps off of the pavement. And I, in the middle of all this, my hood of my rain coat on, not doing as much as I wish it would, my jeans getting soaked through instantly, suspiciously only on the right side, and the biggest smile on my face the entire time.

This whole scene is utter chaos. In seconds the sky just decided to open itself up. And I, as well as many unhappy people, were stuck in the middle of it all, no protection or shelter, just us and the storm. And I couldn’t help but smile and laugh at it all. It was amazing! It was spectacular! And to all the people swearing behind me, it was a nuisance, an inconvenience. Where I saw hundreds of little fish dancing off the pavement and flying into the air, they saw water droplets out to get their feeble clothing and destroy their stable plans and realities with the dreaded ‘cold’. To me it was a beautiful rhythmic dance on a minuscule level, something to revel in, absorb every minute of because it wouldn’t last. But they couldn’t wait to escape the instant it started. I bet they’ve never really seen the rain.

Today in class we each spoke one of the observations we’d written. This was a great open discussion that enabled us all to not only see how we could develop and explore the act of writing observations themselves, but also how we could possibly translate the observations we’d already written into film.

Through this discussion, as well as feedback from Robin, I realised that my own observations were too centralised on myself, on my own experience, feelings, morals and attitudes and this then limited my observations and interactions with the world, as I was unable to observe past my own inner experiences, when the act of observation itself innately requires to externally observe, to be outside ones self. Robin also ha an idea as to how to approach this process, in order to help distance ones self from the act of writing observations in response to a question from Penelope. He said that it may help to act as though you weren’t there The act of re-describing details for the reader may help you to re-discover details yourself. I hope to put this ‘system’ into practice soon and dive deeper into the act of observing outwardly, as opposed to observing inwardly.

We also discussed how these observations would translate into films:

We thought that many could be a straight re-enactment. As the moment itself had a great deal of power behind it already, it had an enigma about it, after all you chose to observe it in the first place.

Others were stronger as ideas or base concepts, to build upon and shape. Find the kernel and develop it. It can be a small idea or concept that intrigues you, the intriguing enigma that brought you to observe the moment in the first place, that drives you in a new direction to develop an entirely new story and plot, acting more as an inspiration to delve deep into, and develop upon a new concept and idea.

We also watched excerpts from a film called ‘From the East’, a film that mixes actuality and contrived construction in observational documentary form. More than anything though, to me, this film emphasised the haunting nature of simply observing something. Of letting the act speak for itself, letting the human mind fill in the gaps. It spoke volumes, volumes more than any dialogue ever could.

Jerry And The Towel

The other day, holly, in her old age urinated on the laundry floor. So we mopped it up with an old towel. We hung it out on the line on the side of the house to air out and hopefully get washed by the rain.

That night I let the dogs out before bed and when I let them back in, Jerry started to run around the side of the house. I called him back before he could go too far. And it happened again, and again, until I realised what was around the side of the house. Jerry was smelling Holly, or at least he thought he was smelling two Hollys at once. That smell was the way he identified her, it was half of his connection with her, smelling her and understanding her on a biological and physiological level. He was being fooled by his senses. Like so many of us. But to be so reliant on that sense that it constantly fools you?

Salt and Pepper Man

The man in front of me has grey salt and pepper hair, so long that he has to tie it up into a tiny little pony tail at the back of his head. And yet there’s a giant bald spot in the center of his aging dome. He looks around him everywhere, as though trying to find the quickest way through the crowd, and then before he can get across the road, the traffic lights stop him dead in his tracks. He looks around him hastily, waiting for the traffic to heed his panic and relieve his stress, or at least relieve his spastic motions. As soon as the lights turn red, before the green man says to walk, he’s off. And I’m standing there, staring at this salt and pepper man rushing in the opposite direction while I stand there observing the screech mark he just left on the pavement, thinking how glad I am that I’m not quite addicted to using salt and pepper on all my food yet.

Pseudo Reality

The TV binge. The digital age ‘s new addiction. This past weekend has been a blur of pseudo reality mashing with my own reality, but only within the shallow microcosm of my house and Facebook messenger. The line becomes so blurred that this space too blurs into pseudo reality status. Only getting up for basic necessities. A reality pit stop of sorts, never pulling you back to it, but sustaining you just enough so you don’t become a complete shell of yourself.

Every show builds a world for you to escape into. A world with its own reality, own rules. So similar to our own. You change the show on Netflix to an animation hoping it will be less realistic. It isn’t.

You finally find a distracting enough show. A comedy, perfect. You watch and watch until boom, end of b plot c plot and a plot. The niggling fear of reality seeping in, well seeps in. And you push that button as you always do, the button you turned off of auto play because you thought it would help stop this from happening. And you keep going until it’s past your feesible bed time because it’s Monday tomorrow. And even though you hate Mondays like Garfield, you also need to face them eventually

For our first exercise we had to film two shots, 50 seconds each, in the style of Lumiere Brothers films such as:

Washerwomen on the River (1897)

I was very much inspired by this piece for my own camera practice task. The depth and layers of action within the image, each layer telling its own individual story made me want to find a place that would express similar qualities for my own piece. So after some thinking I found the Princess bridge, a bridge with many layers; a river running beneath it, a path with steady foot traffic both above and below and cars and trams running across it constantly.

I was lucky enough to have Jenny there to help me through the process (so much heavy equipment!), and I found what I felt was a beautiful composition. Even the blue tones of the camera’s preset white balance of 3200 Kelvin looked good, although my viewfinder was set to black and white, so it was hard to tell. Looking back at this exercise I realise that if for any reason you are uncertain about exposure it is better to move a half stop down and be slightly under-exposed than over-exposed, as through reviewing the footage I can see that the river and the whites in the bridge just past the Princess bridge, while not the focus of the image, are peaking and loosing information and detail. Therefore it is important to examine all aspects of the image in detail, no matter how small, to ensure the correct exposure, as opposed to examining it as a whole.

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration.

Hi man, How Have You Been For The Past Seven Years?

Today I passed him in the street again. He had his hair slicked back, a leather jacket on, and he was with a girl. I stared at him that little bit too long, and when he noticed me I could tell that he recognised me. Something clicked in his brain that said, ‘Oh, Alaine. From Primary School. Should I say something?’ And before he can make up his mind, he’s gone again.

We’ve both been playing this very strange game of chicken for the past year and a half, since I got to RMIT. The game of ‘ Who will say hi first?’ and I just know that even though I know him, I know his face, his dorkish smile, his love of Star Wars, that that kid is long gone, and the answer to ‘How have you been?’ will give me answers I could never have seen coming. We live a street apart from each other and always have, and yet every time I see him I feel like we’re miles apart because we never spoke in those formative years. We never knew each other when we went through all of those hardships. And now we may never know each other, because the gap of ‘how have you been?’ is ever widening to ‘how have you been for the past seven years?’. And soon, it’ll be eight.

We may have only known each other vaguely in Primary School. Him being the best friend of my best friend’s brother, who then dated that best friend for a week, all in grade six. I still have fond memories of him, of talking to him and my friend and her brother, of the adventures we used to have when we were kids up at her farm. And I wonder if the fond idea I have of him that makes me want to say hi, say hi to this now man I really do not know at all but only by face value, is really only of that time. Of my childhood and the things I used to do. The crazy things I did when I used to feel free and unburdened by the adult mind. When I was a child.

I’m glad that I miss those times, because it makes me remember that freedom so much richer.

 

Fond Memories

I have so many good memories of Primary School. And then High School came up over the mound and swallowed my childhood whole.

Primary School was this bizarre microcosm of society. As kids we’d only ever observed the adult world. So, in Primary School, we of course reflected everything we thought we knew, from movies and the like, in the most naive way possible. Children playing at adult society. We had gangs of kids who were so bad because they’d go around chewing gum and dacking people. And then when someone truly was bad, well they didn’t know how to deal with it (for instance the reality of one guy smashing another guy’s head into a brick wall one day).

There were also popular cliques. I personally was in the second most popular clique. That’s right, we took the time to rate our cliques, that’s how many we had. It was as though our clique was a slightly sub version of the most popular clique. We even socialised with them, as though the boundaries didn’t matter, but we all knew they did. The popular girls even took it upon themselves to have boyfriends. This meant a kiss on the mouth in public, and that was it. Most would date for two days to a week, and that was considered long term. Just enough for the scandal to form. But some, who filled most of the schools gossip minutes on the grape vine, dated for months, and even ‘pashed’. Everyone, at at least one point said ‘they’re meant for each other!’. When they broke up, the whole school was divided along gender lines about who was wrong and who was right.

And then High School came. And suddenly, such naive ideas of love and relationships were gone. And the high standards were back again. Social hierarchy was king, or in my case queen. All girls schools are a whole new kind of politics.

Holly

Today my dog looked at me, the way she always does when she longs for my attention. A look that says ‘wait! Why did you go! Come back and pat me, just one more time’. Repeat until never satisfied. But this time, as has been happening more recently, her old age has been slowly creeping into that look, so that it no longer quote says ‘Just one more time’ but ‘I need you. Come comfort me. I’m in pain.’

I think about Holly dying. Again. As I’m thinking about it more and more now. I feel like I’m the only one still adoring her eccentricities as opposed to complaining about them in her old age. As she sits beside me, snoring deeply and happily, I think about funeral arrangements of sorts. I think about what our next door neighbours did when their dog Mandela died. They had him cremated. I think about Holly being cremated. Losing her smile, her fur. Her snore. And then, for some strange reason I think of Family Guy and how Brian’s parents were stuffed and used as coffee tables when they died. I immediately think how perverted it would be to stuff my dog. To preserve her like that. And then I finally understand the reasoning behind such an act. To still see that smile, feel that fur. Imagine that snore. And suddenly it’s not a perversion. It’s a reminder that one day, she’ll be gone.

It’s the first week of class and I’ve already learnt so much. On Wednesday we learnt how to take apart and put together piece by piece a tripod.

I learnt about each element of a tripod.

• The spreader
• Telescopic legs
• Pan handle
• Tripod head (usually a ball joint that has a level and needs to be adjusted to be level whenever moved)
• Base plate
• That you can lock the pan and the tilt, as well as adjust the tension of each, allowing for very different changes in shots

And then there was the camera, the mammoth Sony EX3. Once you’ve found everything, it’s surprisingly straight forward, it can just be hard to find everything, so you really need to spend some time with the camera and explore its many various aspects.

We dug deep into the menus and not only learnt how to put the camera into the correct mode, adjusting the exposure to match the conditions, manually focussing, adjusting the focal point to the desired distance and depth of field. We also learnt all of the aspects of the camera, such as the ND filter which can also effect these manual aspects and the control we had over the camera, the Neutral Density filter effecting the exposure.

We went out to test our new found knowledge by taking two different shots of the same subject. Each shot had to be 50 seconds in length and we had to think carefully about when we pressed record. The second shot had to have one deliberate change in perspective in order to accentuate the focus or create a different feeling around the focus. We decided to film the on campus cafe, the first shot being a very symmetrical image. The second shot we decided to emphasise the people watching aspect and go from above our focus, creating a very creepy and perverted aura.

Overall the time we spent on the set up and decision of placement really added to the effectiveness of the shots.

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration.