Australian story is successful because it engages audiences by “seek[ing] out unique stories that feature fascinating characters and original storylines with unexpected ‘twists and turns’ and compelling visuals”.

How do they convey these stories so its entertaining?

In the reading this week ‘Directing the Documentary’, multiple techniques are discussed on how to create an engaging documentary. Each story needs change and development to avoid “non-event” narrative . Comparing past to present is important to assert that growth and change is possible.

The term ‘beat’ is a moment of incontrovertible change that forces a protagonist or character to take a different course of action. The complication raises the stakes and a strategy must be developed. It either works or doesn’t, making the beat a success or failure. Beats are endless even after a success.

beats hike dramatic tensions which in traditional forms of documentary, leads to a final climax and resolution.

The directors and producers of  Australian story succeed in documentary production because they understand the importance of beats and character development and reflection. Even the a story classified as a non-event, can be improved and re-imagined through the editing process

Week 5’s reading “looking at photographs” illustrates two major ideas of the relationship between people and photography.
Its obvious that art has always been a produce of human interaction; The painters brush strokes, the sculpture’s chisel marks. Its the same with photography where the camera is the tool and the film a canvas. The relationship of art and humans is strengthened via conceptual possibilities that can be encoded though semiotics.

The theory of semiotics suggests that media texts share codes that are encoded by the sender and the read by the reader. Photographers who work in reality (not purely photoshop) have to manipulate a subject or scene using light to paint the canvas and balance the look or aesthetic to match the meaning of the photo. Its the artists aim to display the meaning in the image (in most cases), but its also the audiences job to actively looking at the photo, decipher cues and signs to form a meaning of what they see.

The meaning of a photo relies on both the artist and the audience.

This weeks in Lectorial, Rachel stressed the importance of sound and how it can make or break any film/video. Ambience is a key component in a layered audio composition. It is the backbone where the ‘figure’ is heard. The ‘ground’ brings both these elements together to form a spacial and directional feeling of a scene.
Films like the Revenant succeed at seducing the audience because of the focus on rich environmental cues. When I watched The Revenant in the cinemas the sound was so spot on i felt like i could have been in the wilderness hiding from a blizzard. Breaking this down more, it was the ambience each location which pulled me in.
Ambience in any media is key. For example a photo of a babies room could evoke an ambience of silence or screeching.
Ambient music can do the same, only it forms an imaginative image as well as emotion. Listening to though many songs and mixes theres nothing ive listened to before thats quite like Sounds of Dawn.
https://www.mixcloud.com/NTSRadio/sounds-of-the-dawn-27th-june-2015/
It takes ambience to a new level for me as it puts an emphasis on tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. Its a concoction of synths and environmental noises which meld together to give rich textures. Two sections which i would recommend are at 0:23minutes and 1:31. Actually listening to the mix instead of hearing is really meditative especially at 1:31. You need to put a big of time aside for it but its worth it.