A PHD student, Hannah, came to our class to talk to us about her projects with Korsakow, she was also on the panel that we had to present our project briefs to.

For her, it is all about noticing. She has based her entire project around noticing with Korsakow. She starts with a quote – “To notice is to make a distinction, to create foreground and background, to distinguish some ‘thing’ from its surroundings” (John Mason). Like our group she refers to Matt Soar – she uses his words when she says “if not languid, exactly, then contemplative, interpretive and exploratory”, and that the works are documentary-orientated.

She goes into talking about how there are three components to making a K-film:
1. Video component
2. Relational pattern (the work you do in Korsakow such as key wording)
3. Interface (what the user interacts with as they view your work).

She said that her starting point was to film everyday moments that she believed were worth noticing and build conceptually upon that collection. She then goes into saying how close up thumbnails are better to use than a wide shot as it is more personal and interactive, and she likes to add sound to the previews, to suggest they are video like.

Coming away from this class, the questions that came up were to think about the interface design – the video granules positioning for the different clusters and bridging clips ; How can we find a voice in a K-film combining noticing, list making, and multi-linearity?

Our group needs to look into key wording, as this was a huge emphasis on Hannah’s work, and one point is to not have too many key words. We need to create patterns for the user to pick up on, and not to complicate the key words, keep it simple! She is suggesting to think about patterns and rhythms that are reoccurring. We need to notice what is happening!

Now going onto to interface designs, she works with multiple interfaces, uses clustering and has bridging clips, which relates to our projects in the way we want to have four clusters with bridging clips that allows us to create a structure for a multi-linear non-narrative. With Hannah’s work, she has designed her interface in a way that has four clusters and has them set in the same position so that the user can see the reoccurring rhythms – which could work for us if each bike was in the same position. She says that Matt Soar has clusters and then a rhythm – it has an alternating rhythm! We can use loose assemblage through patterning, and k-films express an idea instead of telling a story – this will help with the keyboarding process!

This presentation that she delivered gave us further inspiration, and ideas to move further to make the best of the project, and get the most out if it. We can now go away and rethink what information she has given us, and the way she designs her projects through media practice. We have been to focused on creating a set structure whereas Hannah suggests that we should be allowing Korsakow develop the natural structure, which is where she informs the idea of noticing.

The feedback from the panel was a mix of positive feedback and constructive criticism. They enjoyed our pitch and the direction that we were heading in, however told us possible ways that we could go. Those being:

-Focus on Carly specifically

-Not focus on Carly as such, but let the idea of four bikes lead the viewer from cluster to cluster. Carly does not have to be the main object, there could be other cyclists as well.

-Specify which direction we want to head in directly , whether that is with Carly as the protagonist or having the 4 bikes the main idea – or we can stay with our own idea of Carly and her four bikes.

-The Korsakow expert said that the idea that we have works because thats the beauty of Korsakow. It is a multi-linear non-narrative we can have various leads, because there is no set structure – however on the other hand she liked our structuring of the clusters.

-One of the panel members  said that he isn’t affected by the jumpy and out of focus footage, because that is what you expect when you are on a bike. What he does have a problem with is how over exposed the shots were. He said that this is the worst thing of all. We could use zebra patterning (which I have used before) or just switch the camera to black ad white, which is an easier way to distinguish exposure.

All of these points that were brought up will be considered and improved upon for Project Brief 4.

After having come away from the group presentation, we gathered all of the constructive criticism given and discussed how we could improve for the panel presentation in a couple of days. We were told that everything we had was good, but their were no visuals to compliment this; the audience couldn’t see any of the work that we had done. Therefore we came together and discussed what we needed to improve on, and that was to have a presentation running in the background. I went away and created a presentation for the group over the weekend. I gathered the material that I wanted to have shown and timed it in with my speech. When the others had their material I got them to send it through so I could put it all in one document.

For this presentation I used Keynote as I believe it is a simple and professional application that works with what we are trying to achieve. We used a collection of granules and images to support what we were saying, and to illustrate to the audience what kind of work we have created thus far. We cut out our introduction for our talent Carly, and let a video from one of the interviews introduce her. This was a more dynamic way of incorporating our presentation with the speech. All of our slides are timed, and in the correct places, so that in the presentation to the panel, everything will run smoothly.

After having completed the group presentations we got a positive result alongside certain feedback that relates to every group in the class.

-Always have something on the screen – be more visual. In a good presentation it also has to be visually appealing for a design course.

-Keep presentations dynamic – someone talking, someone working the computer and going backwards and forwards between the K-film and the powerpoint.

-We need to think of the delivery – what is the best way to get our message across?

-Clean interviews – get good sound to go over the footage to make higher quality granules.

-Korsakow can be quite poetic – does not have to be traditional.

-Think about using text – applies with point 5

-Time lapses? Could work with Carly – riding or preparing her bike.

These are all points that we will be analysing and approving upon for the panel presentation along with the Project 4 brief.

-Summarise what we have done so far – meeting, shooting day, editing.
-What we are heading towards.
-Project 4 – user experience in K-film – what works. what doesn’t; additional shooting; additional editing; filling content gaps.
-What we learnt from the shooting process?
-What we learnt from the editing process?
-What we learnt from the equipment?
-Shooting stage
-Editing stage
-What we have planned for PB4.

The main idea is to portray what we are doing, what we have discovered, and what our plan is when exploring PB4!

INTRO:

-Broader picture
-Group focus
-What we are doing as a group
-Briefly refer to PB2
-Explain where we are heading for PB3.

MIDDLE: Explaining PB3

-What we wanted to achieve
-What we have achieved
-Pre-production – meetings, etc
-Production – shooting
-Post-production – editing
-Korsakow
-What we learnt from PB3 going into PB4.

CONCLUSION: Introducing PB4

-Where we are heading for PB4
-Why we are heading this way
-How we plan to use Korsakow
-We are focusing on the user interface
-How we plan to get to this
-Focusing on a greater scale (4 bikes – road/cafe/art/mountain)

After coming away from the meeting with Seth we did some brainstorming and re-thought what we wanted to achieve, and how we are going to go about it. We thought that by just having one bike through the use of clustering of geographical locations was becoming too linear, and that is not what we wanted. We later decided that instead of focusing on Carly’s road bike, we should focus on her three other bikes as well, those being art bike, cafe bike, and mountain bike. This meant that we now had four elements to focus on, and it would suit the idea of clustering a lot better in the  K-film. This was going towards the multi-linear non-narrative structure that we want. This also means that the audience can see four different aspects to Carly’s life, and interact with her on a deeper level, by still having her represent the cycling community of Melbourne.

Each group was allowed a one-on-one interview with our tutor, to get some feedback before the presentations.

The notes that were taken:
-Think about interviewing secondary people.
-Taxonomy of themes
-For project for have sustainable footage
-How are PB2 and PB3 determining how we record our material?
-It is all about the decisions we make from PB3 going into PB4.
-Are we still thinking multi-linear?
-How are we going to be working in Korsakow?
-Key-wording in Korsakow project
-Where can we go from here, moving forward?
-Focus on drawing content out of themes
-Understand what we are working with – Not necessarily geographical.
-Re-export videos – changing the compressions to specially cater for movement.
-Bridging the different bikes together
-What perspective are we portraying through cycling?
-What are we conveying about cycling?

Seth really challenged our ideas and ways of thinking, pushing us to look even harder into what we are doing, so that we can achieve the best results.

As Korsakow wasn’t our main focus, we only created a basic file, to support our granules and show the content we had, and the possible interface that we might use. We put the 12 granules into Korsakow and had a start SNU and an end SNU. From here we wanted to have the end video to be released later into the project and wondered how we could achieve this. We found through SNU rating that if we lower the rating the video will be shown when the majority of the other videos have been seen. This was an element that we experimented with that allowed us to find out new features to this program. We also rearranged the interface and used an image as the background, we haven’t done this in previous projects, so we had to do our research in order to pull it off. We were having with what we achieved in Korsakow, because in Project Brief 4 it will be the main focus.

Now that I have a structure to work with, I needed to go back through the various files that I created to see where Carly talks about specific subjects. At first this was quite time consuming and a little bit confusing, but after the first couple of videos were made, I knew where everything else was that I needed to use. This was the main stage that I could experiment with what works and what doesn’t work, and see how I could use this footage to escape the generic style – in reference to Matt Soar’s work.

Going through the footage, I noticed another important aspect that needed to be included which was M.S (Multiple Sclerosis). This is the foundation that Carly and her cycling group ride for, and they raise money by doing multiple rides a year dedicated to this cause. I felt as though this was a more personal and intimate side to Carly that has to be shown, to get the most out of her character in just a handful of videos.

After I had completed 12 granules I had to export them for Korsakow. I did this by using the H.264 format through a HD 1080p 25 compression; the audio was set on ACC; and the footage is high definition. Once the granules were exported we tested them in Korsakow and they worked. It is just a matter of seeing what works for your specific project and what doesn’t.

Later in the week after our filming day, we met as a group to continue editing, and for the other two group members to see what I have done. We sat down and re-watched the rushes, taking notes of reoccurring points and themes. We decided that from the edited footage we would create 11 videos to put into Korsakow – as Korsakow wasn’t our main focus – the content for the brief was. These 11 videos are self-dependent and each have a different editing style which we decided to experiment with for PB3.

The themes we chose are:
-Carly Intro – montage of footage
-Great Victoria – emotional, achievement
-Strava App – explanation
-Gran Fondo – explanation, personal
-Training
-Friends/Social – cycling group
-Lycra – women in cycling
-Bike – her collection (4 bikes)
-Bike – Individual
-Freedom – Journey, clearing her mind
-End – Tail wind home, montage of footage

These were the main themes that Carly covered in detail – allowing us to have more footage to work with. Coming away from this group meeting I have 11 videos to work towards that illustrate our talent, the theme/story we have gone with, the experimental facet to our videos, and to show how much work we have done throughout the production stages.