1. Music is about exploring the structure. Its got formal properties which will feel like its meaning rather than finding meaning.
2. Hearing gives us a sense of where to look in the surrounding environment. So in VR or a Computer game the sound of footsteps behind your view will lead you to want to turn around and see whats happening. It also gives us an intuitive feeling of the environment such as how big a room is by subtle echoes of your movement
3. Paralinguistic codes. Once you have the semantic of the message understood, when its repeated you’ll instinctlly lisen to the melodic aspects of it. This is one thing that I have never thought of. This type of thing is hear quite a lot Techno music which has single or triple word lines which are repeated over and over. While there is a beat there, the vocal would at as a second

What do you want to get out of this studio? What technical skills would you like to improve? What is it about immersion that grabs you? Have you watched any films, listened to any albums, been to an art exhibit, watched any TV series, that really pulled you in? How do you think this was achieved?

In this studio I would like to learn more about sound and how Its used to enhance or takeover a Film/video and what factors are at play. Maybe i’d like to expand my skills further into sound recording but then mixing because when it comes to editing the sound for videos Im clueless.

I would like to make something truely which is visually and sonically immersive. In previous studios I’ve worked on other people projects but never fully with them. So I would like to work on a project where everyone has a role and we are creating one piece for the final assessment. I would like the final assessment to be good enough to go in my portfolio of work.

The Pitch went all right I feel. I could have been more clear with my idea but that’s the point. I want to mosaic sketches together with one similarity and their weirdness. I want to create a flow between scenes despite their diversity and obscurity. Movement and sound will be very important in linking sketches together. Ive got lots of ideas on how to do this but my main issue is time to film all of these.

I am no longer doing one single sketch but branching out to 3 -5. This means there may be less emphasis on quality than I wanted in the other project. I still want each video to have a cinematic image but because the content doesn’t need that quality, it really doesn’t matter as much. If it were a drama it would be completely different (true to form).

On reflection of the Pitch I should have really prepared more stuff to say. I read off the slides and added more onto them but I’m actually not a great public speaker. I sometimes go around in circles and end up confusing myself and the audience. Next time I have to do a presentation I need to read through it a couple more times because I often stuffer and say words multiple times.

these are a few of the inspiration I had in my powerpoint presentation. THIS IS THE LINK TO THE POWERPOINT

Anyway my aim out of this project is to make something humorous but disturbingly odd.

As the Pitch approached I was having second thoughts on the ‘don’t jump’ project. Firstly getting permission to film in a car park would be very difficult. Getting enough actors, and finding funny/weird looking actors would be even harder. Logistically I don’t feel like I’m equip to handle a big shoot. Id also probably have to pay a few people as well. If I were in a group the level I want to make It would be possible but I feel like I might be over shooting its viability.

Looking back in my trove of collected observations and ideas for sketch’s on my phone, I feel like I want to some how integrate all these little ideas to build a big picture. A notable person who comes to mind with this type of style is obviously David Lynch. Hes a pretty big influence for ‘student’ filmmakers because of his daring subject matter and lack of clarity. Over the years I’ve studied his films and TV shows, and accidently falling in the trap of Lynchien dialogue in my own scripts. This style subtracts any sense of realism as the audience is unable to relate. The effect it causes makes us feel uncomfortable and queasy with the combination of odd visuals and strange sounds. I really enjoy this though. Its very ‘emotive’ filmmaking which exacerbates everything in a good way.

I would love to some how link my multiple ideas into some kind of sequence using sound and vision to cycle or between different sketches. I will no longer be doing one sketch but many, focusing on nothing.

“I reckon I could do that”
A question we thought would never be answered. A friend of mine named Joe thought he could handle 100 oysters in 60minutes after someone proposed the idea. Instantly the idea of a live stream sprung to mind. It was something you wouldn’t even imagining happening on a live stream but because its so unique and weird I just had to record it in a public arena.

I wanted to do this the right way, the proper media student way.

I constructed a fully-fledged broadcasting station in my garden; this was not going to be an iPhone to Facebook live stream. I educated myself through various YouTube tutorials on how to setup a Facebook live stream and make it look like a news broadcast. I used OBS which is a free software that allows basic control over a live stream video.

Random notes on it

• I downloaded GIFs, some relating to Oysters, others to vomiting or just odd.
• Put a countdown timer in the application
• Borrowed a monitor from a friend for the large view screen
• Set up my Canon 6D and streamed it into the software to give the audience another angle
• Downloaded uplifting music for the lull periods of the broadcast (curb your enthusiasm theme)
• Scrolling hotline number with question to the audience

This Video gives a quick insight into the behind the scenes of the shoot

Here’s two videos of the broadcast. I wouldn’t recommend watching them the whole way through at all. Maybe just skip though.

The live stream got a great response despite 2fps at times and the stream being cut into 3 videos because of the Internet dropping out. It got 125likes and 2.04k views.
Where the production went smoothly was in the entertainment section. We used multiple props to enhance and humorise the event. The ‘gimp’ gong was one of these special moments when the ‘gimp’ would waiter at Half point and hand Joe another 10 oysters on a silver platter. I’m going to definitely need to utilize costumes in my film

It was a very rewarding experience. I will definitely do more live streams again in the future. Joe successfully completed the challenge FYI

Until this point I hadn’t really had an idea that I wanted to follow through with.

This story is called ‘don’t jump’. It’s about a middle-aged man who is mistaken for someone trying to commit suicide (yes very funny isn’t it!!). He’s at the top of a car park maybe on lunch break. He wants to take a better photo of the city view so he stands up on the ledge (or a step up higher to the railing) when a bystander from behind asks him how his day has been. The following encounter is ‘The man’ trying to persuade hordes of people that he was not wanting to commit suicide but take a better picture without the railing in the frame.

I wrote through the various sections of society you wouldn’t expect to see at the top of a city carpark e.g. Farmer, Sick children, War veteran etc. there would be maybe 6-9 different ‘categories’ of people there, each trying to get the man to climb off. I hadn’t really thought of an ending. One was that the man jumped off in the end because of the stress of the arguing. But the better one was when he shifts the questions to the bystanders and asks why they were up there. It turns out that they were up there to jump off but because of the audience shift the focus onto ‘the man’ instead.

The scene is meant to build in ridiculousness as it progresses.

This is the start of the script and is very rough. I’ve written it with inspiration from back and fourth dialogue seen in Monty Python sketches. I’ve used the script application Celtx for the formatting.

This is the location I’m considering filming at. Its RMIT’s Carpark so might be easier getting a permit to film here. I’ll need to get onto it ASAP. There’s car park in China town which is perfect for the shoot but I need to go and take some photos to see if its viable.

At this location ill need to film the scene from a low angle to make sure the lower level of the car park cannot be seen.

One thing I’m worried about it whether or not I’ll get bored of the is project. I don’t want to get roped into something I’m not 100% committed to.

My previous ‘epiphany moment’ in which happened the depths of building 9, inspired me to want to experiment with lighting to create a music video. A bunch of different shots weaved into a music sequence.

However after another consult with Paul and thinking about the end result of the idea, I realized that maybe I wanted to do something a bit different to what I know. Something which was scripted with heavy dialogue. In this new epiphany moment I wrote down almost in blog-point-form, a short rant about the current state of internet comedy and what stimulates my dormant funny bone. Its pretty underwhelming the type of stuff people are making ( the videos they make are popular so I guess they are doing something right). There’s just a formula that they apply to all of these ‘sketches’ which im sick of.

As a ‘Filmmaker’ I don’t want to make something that’s the same, I want to challenge things, perhaps prove a point. breaking away from things that are true to form is what makes good comedy. Anticipation in comedy is so important; If you already know what’s around the corner before you see it you’re less likely to get a shock.

A big influence which constantly shocks me into laughter is Adult Swim (which ill go into in another post). The content they produce is weird and imaginative. Its creative and original which is what I want to investigate in my Film.

After talking to Paul again and fleshing out a specific idea I’m going to investigate one ‘sketch’ which is filmed in only one scene. I’m going to unpack ‘ridiculous’ humour in the setting of a car park. I’ve written the start of the script which I will talk about in a later post as well.

I guess by focusing on this one scene It will allow me to devote more time and energy to producing something which is of reasonable quality; possibly add into my show reel (which is non-existent at this stage).

The exercise we did in class on the A3 paper really made me think abut what I wanted to do. Its good because its gotten me to write down what I want to do but its also made the process a lot harder because now I’ve realised that theres too much i want to do. I really want to experiment with lighting and make a music video out of it. I also want to practice script work and work on screen dialogue. I was thinking i could do this though some small sketch comedy videos or just one. I also really want to just experiment with camera effects like this kind of video 1 . Indecision sucks because I don’t want to start anything fully until I’m happy with what I’m doing. Times running out though and i need to decide on something soon before we get to week 5 or 6. I just want to make something which will further my understanding of filmmaking.

A recent project I’ve been working on is a video for St Catherine’s Rowing club. I’d made another rowing video a few years ago which has done quite well in the rowing sphere. For this new project I was asked a while ago but at the time I didn’t feel like I had enough time to film and edit a perfect piece so I agreed to just edit footage they had collected on their IPhones. It wouldn’t make a film true to the slick and stylistic form of a normal rowing video but I wasn’t in the position to do everything myself. I back flipped on this idea however because I’d still be associated with the low quality footage even though it’s clear I didn’t film it. So then I went into a lull period where I did, but didn’t want to make them a rowing video.
I think the moment when I realized that I wanted to make a new one was when I watched quite a few new High school rowing videos. Since I had made my video there had been a massive explosion with the number of videos being made. The cameras people are using have phenomenal quality and are extremely expensive (you can tell the videos where daddy’s funding was involved. There are now a number of 4k RV’s (rowing videos) online which steps up the process of the RV. The production value is so much higher but the execution is not revolutionary.

I noticed a few trends. It was either pop music or an intense orchestral movie score which sounded like it had come off a royalty free site. A lot of them used the same songs which kind of reflected the videos originality. None of them really tried to challenge anything which I was surprised about. Flume-esque voices and juicy beats isn’t all a rowing video should be. These videos were formulaic but true to ‘the rowing videos’ form.

This want to challenge the preconception of a rowing video spurred me on to make the St Cath’s rowing video. I had a few songs in mind which were very different to the classical tunes you’d hear. I was tossing between a song I had been holding onto for a while Subliminal ‘Touch’ and a newer song which I was loving at the time Black Merlin – Tanksport. Both songs had the darkness and intensity needed for the video but I chose Touch instead because it was shorter and I knew that I wouldn’t have enough footage to do the complete song of Tankspot. The industrial low frequency pulses and the exact grunginess I was needing for the project. Using this song broke the form of the typical rowing video style allowing me to explore the edit.

I only had one morning to film the video which meant that I wouldn’t have a massive catalogue of footage to work with. One problem I ran into was the darkness of the morning but it actually helped the video develop a style. I was amazed by the light reflection on the Yarra. I made sure to show this off in the video. I had no control of lighting the subject only the framing. I could have bumped up the ISO and lowered the shutter speed but the quality would have severely diminished. Silhouetting the rowers was the best approach to tackle this. I didn’t realize but the lens had small splashes of water on it so some of the shots look blurry even though they were in focus.

I have a love hate relationship with editing. Its great when everything works fluidly but this is often never the case with any of my projects. In this rowing video I hit a massive wall because I didn’t think the music was working with the footage. I was half way through and couldn’t really turn back. I persisted with one of difficult parts (the under the bridge shot) and eventually finished it. I wasn’t happy with how the rowing action wasn’t in sync with the music and I couldn’t get it to work very well. With most projects I edit for too long then get bored and annoyed because I’m so sick of it.

I’m considering doing a music video this studio but I’d need to find a song and get permission to use it before I start filming it. I really need to hurry up because indecision is my worst quality and when I start to get behind it’s a bloody push to the top.