Film TV 2 reflection 1

The excerpt from the documentary           drinking for England confused and displeased me as I thought it was an odd and in my opinion ineffective method to document the subject, although I think my interpretation of it would have been quite different if I had watched the whole film. However as an excerpt the clip felt very average, the cinematography reminded me of some generic overused music video as did the singing. As a result of this I was for the most part distracted from the lyrical content but when I did tune in it also did not seem like anything new.

 

10 min doco

 

Intense, confusion, distraction, the north, landscape, peacefulness, soothing, Canada, atmospheric. These are the notes I took whilst listening to the recording, which is what seems to be a audio doco using 5 interviews to gather a series of personal experiences of a location (Northern Canada). The introduction was for me the most interesting section, although initially confusing as you adjusted to pick up audio bites and struggle to hang on to one person’s dialogue it became more intriguing but still hard to follow for any extended period of time. The start of the interviews was obviously associated with travel, which hinted that there might be a sound scape narrative that was running in conjunction independently with the dialogue from the interview.

 

 

I really only pulled off four good recordings, firstly the sound of my own footsteps, secondly the street/road sounds, thirdly café chatter/noise and lastly the sound of flowing water.

 

Footsteps was nothing special didn’t really evoke many emotions was more just technically to see what it would have sounded like to be moving and recording at the same time.

 

The street recordings was probably the most technical difficult recording to pull off as it took me a few tries of readjusting volume to allow for loud vehicles passing such as large trucks or trams.

 

The Café chatter worked well with the exception of a couple of audio spikes. The chatter is quite indistinguishable and evokes images of a busy environment.
This recording also evokes personal nostalgia as the background song playing in the café was one that I have heard a lot during my childhood.

 

The water recording is my favourite because it holds a very different atmospheric tone to my other recordings it feels as if it was not recorded in a city. It also evokes the usual feelings of peacefulness, tranquility and needing to go to the toilet.

Film Tv 1 – FInal reflection

 

MILK – did not actually see this one but heard many positive reviews if anyone has a link that would be appreciated

LAPSE – I think this crew pulled the idea off pretty well with a nice romantic built up through the action. The main characters confrontation with the people on the street was necessary but the dialogue felt a little weird.

STRANGE NOISES – In hindsight I think this was the most entertaining great opening and characters the strange imaginative views of the mother were good except I felt like i missed bits of the dialogue in these scenes but overall I think it wasn’t an issue.

PRANKING FRANK – some great performances, the end felt very different to the rest of the film but entertaining nonetheless.

GRANNY THEFT AUTO – Despite the character of the granny I feel this film would have benefitted if the Thugs actions were a bit more believable.

SHELTER – The concept behind this film was very bold, I think it could have been a bit more believable if they had created props instead of using calculators and vacuum cleaners.

 

Q2:

“In 200 words or less please outline your goals, desires – what you want to get out of this semester. You will review this later in the course. Many will rethink this dramatically by the end of the course – this is a good thing.”

No? Go back and have a look.

 

Now we’d love you to do the same at this end.

 

Please reflect on how you feel about the course. What surprised you, what excited you, what disappointed you. What we could have done better. What you could have done better.

 

Feel free to copy and paste what you wrote in week 1 into your response.

 

A2:

In looking back upon my goals and desires I feel that they were all adequately fulfilled. The lectures were very helpful however I think I would have benefitted more if the tutorials were more structured. They started out strong but after the Lenny exercise they started to fall apart a bit I think if we had just been allocated different exercises each week in our groups similar to the Lenny but perhaps a focus on the weekly subject (lighting, editing etc) would have meant we got more practical experience with our other group members and the equipment.

Just like to finish by saying I think the screening was a really worthwhile and enjoyable event.

Essay + Film

Here is our K-film 6 Degrees of Separation made by myself, Karl and Jie.

The link to the film is here

And you can find our essay below

 

Integrated Media – 1.

Tutor: Hannah Braiser

Group: Axel Debenham-Lendon, Jie Shi, Karl Walker.

K-Film Title: 6 Degrees of Separation.

 

For our main group project we all decided that we were most interested in people and their interactions with the world around them. To try and bring this theme forward we decided on creating a K-film centred on portraits, inspired by the website “Humans of New York,” and we would ask people questions after we had taken their portraits. We started with two questions: “What is your dream?” And “what piece of advice would you give to someone?” This was done to give more of an insight into the values and aspirations of the person in the portrait. After presenting numerous prototypes we decided upon narrowing the questions down to each subjects answer that was most meaningful to us. We related our works to the writing by Dovey and Rose on Documentary and Data Montage as we in essence were trying to create a study (documentary) of life by assembling data in a montage form that enables the viewer to engage with the film on multiple levels. We decided to call our film “6 Degrees of Separation” in reference to the theory that all people are interconnected by 6 associations/interactions. This heavily influenced the patterns created in the work as we wanted to establish the possible relationships between these people and how they co-exist together in various spaces.

The patterns in our film work via two methods, firstly the visual relations of place within the background of the clips and secondly through the thematic meaning within the responses of the subjects. The film is separated into three different landscapes within which the viewer navigates through and between. These different locations were separated into the park, city and night environments. By connecting the subjects through the aesthetic associations, rather than by mood or thematic patterns, we are aiming to prompt the audience to create their own mood or thematic connections. By grouping them in locations we allow the viewer to connect to the subjects spatially whilst also creating their own relations of contrast and juxtaposition through the responses of the subjects. The viewer is then left to connect the people explicitly through their spatial relations and implicitly through the values and ideas of their answers. By using these connections we are effectively creating a spatial montage which Manovich says represents “a logic of addition and co-existence.”(Dovey & Rose, 2012)

 

We used this to reinforce The overarching theme of the film as we attempted to symbolize the co-existence of different peoples and their values. Other visual patterns include the facial responses, most of which consist of natural stares, however some offer more emotive responses with laughs, smiles and slightly uncomfortable looks. Although these facial linkages were un-directed or premeditated they still reveal another possible level of emotive connection between the subjects. The lives of the clips also create a distinct pattern, the majority of clips within each cloud only possess one life and so they die upon viewing. Four clips however act as corridor and linkage clips between the clouds but possess a lower smaller narrative unit (SNU) priority meaning they are less likely to appear in each cloud until all the other clips are dead. This creates a slow death effect for the film as it ends with the viewer repeating through the last four corridor clips. Three of the corridor clips connect with two clouds as well as the other corridor clips e.g. one clip will connect to both the park and the night whilst others connect to night and city etc. There is one central clip that connects to every cloud as well as each corridor clip. This creates a unique structure and pattern of relations that can vary from viewing, as the film will ‘die’ in slightly different patterns. This is designed to give the film a re-watchable quality inviting the viewer to contemplate and perhaps allow a slightly different interpretation each time they view the film.

 

The interface consists of a large SNU viewer with three preview thumbnails sitting on the SNU’s right hand side. It also features a text box under the main SNU viewer displaying the subject’s responses with the graphic logo sitting by the right of the text. The logo also holds its own graphic symbolism to the film as it is a visual representation of connections in the form of an interlinked 6 sided shape in reference to the theory and namesake of the film ‘6 Degrees of Separation’. The layout of the interface uses a grid frame and draws from similarities with other large video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo which display the next video or in this case the thumbnails on the right hand side of the main video. By drawing on these established conventions the interface aims to give the user a comfortable and familiar interface.

The style of the interface is minimal as it consists of almost no graphical background or details apart from the logo and credits. This also synergizes with the layout by emphasizing focus of the content to the audience whilst leaving the logo as a reminder to the audience for the overarching concept of the film. Ideally the logo would have also served to a hyperlink to an ‘about’ page, however due to software limitation we were unable to add that feature. The layout also groups the SNU with the thumbnails creating a close spatial relationship between the clips and reinforcing one of the film’s central themes of the interconnected relationships between individuals in the different spaces. The interface also utilizes different aesthetic relations between the clips as the thumbnails are displayed as black and white small stills whilst the main SNU is displayed in a larger scale in colour and looping motion. These distinctions separate the SNU viewer visually from the preview thumbnails by creating a visual contrast, which is aimed to engage the viewer by withholding visual information prompting them to continue clicking to obtain further details. The visual contrasts also create an immediate hierarchy as the main SNU viewer takes visual priority with the audience. The last key piece of information that is withheld from the audience until the audience selects the chosen clip is the text, that is, the key element in revealing the thematic relations between each clip. The predominate font of the interface is ‘Georgia’ which provides a neutral serif style and also contrasts with the black of the background. The text is associated with the main SNU viewer through its positioning underneath the video on the layout yet it also possesses a lesser priority to the main SNU. It ranks lower on the hierarchy as it is both smaller in size and adheres to the black and white contrast similar to the previews.

The layout and style of the interface remain consistent over the length of the project with the exception of the opening credits. This consistency is aimed to encourage the audience to create their own connections and interpretations as to when the film’s patterns of location change. This change then also pushes the audience to actively engage with the project in finding the changes, as the visual separation of locations can at times be quite subtle.

We have constructed our content from the idea of portraits, which was influenced by the works of Humans of New York and also by the Kuleshov Experiment. Both cases are where images of humans may be read or interpreted in relation to their surrounds. We wanted to create a similar effect to this with the subject staring straight into the lens so as to give the viewer a more attached perspective to the piece. We shot all our footage on DSLR’s so as to give ourselves a shallow depth of field style and to have the opportunity to have all footage shot from a tripod. We chose to go with tripod-mounted shots as we believed that it would focus the audience on the subject more and not the camera movement. By using this technique we were trying to achieve still-moving life: still as in stationary but moving as it is a moving video image where the subjects will move slightly within the frame. This is to achieve a study of life that we are not privy to in our everyday lives. Looking into the eyes of someone is very personal, something we would not go around doing to anyone on the street, so the use of composition of the subject is quite challenging at the same time as being engaging because eye-to-eye contact is usually reserved for people who know each other. We positioned the subject off-center of the frame to allow the viewer to also take in context or detail of the environment in which we encountered the subjects. Although the shallow depth of field gave focus to the subject by dedicating a portion of the frame we were attempting to draw attention to the locations and setting. The looping effect was also relevant to this feature as it aims to allow the viewers focus to drift to other features within the frame such as the background or any noticeable facial qualities. We decided that we would strip all sound from our video content as we believed that there would be too many variables to encounter as well as being very time consuming for us to manage logistically. E.g. sound gear, stripping existing audio and pairing with new audio. In the end it was decided that we should use an “atmos track” of nature/city throughout  the whole film. This works well with the piece by enabling the subject to be created in the environment in which they are found with minimal input from the audio track. This is to further elicit the audience to imagine themselves as the subject and not as the viewer.

In the reading cited earlier by Dovey and Rose they discuss how, “Fifty years ago, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin filmed French people answering the question, “Are you happy?” in what became an early sequence in the seminal documentary, Chronique d’un Ete. This is akin to our process when constructing our film. We wanted to gain further insight for ourselves and the viewer into the lives of other people. The questions asked were simple; what is your dream? And what’s your best piece of advice? This we planned to juxtaposition just below the video. Inspired by the Internet page Humans of New York in which the creator talks with the subjects that he has photographed and uses quotes from their conversation as text below his photos.

We felt that the question “Are You Happy?” wouldn’t work effectively in today’s social environment as people are much more cautious of people they don’t know. We thought that two questions would work well together in providing a backup for each. If one question fell flat, then perhaps the second question might elicit a better answer and viewer enagement. While in production we all came across some really interesting people who were eager to help out. One person was a girl in her late 20’s who was working as an intern in a psychology practice told one of us that “You have to be able to relax from whatever you do in life” “How do you relax from what you do at the moment?” she awnsered: “I’ve just taken up Pole dancing classes, its great fun and an amazing workout!” Before going up and engaging with this person and asking for their portrait there was no sign at all that she was into pole dancing, which is an instance of why we found our topic very enjoyable as giving an insight into the life of others.

We believe that we effectively constructed our film K-film as a data montage documentary by combining people and places in such a way as to elicit the audience’s engagement their own connections. This was done in relation to the idea of the Kuleshov Effect and the writings of Dovey and Rose who state there can be, “a third meaning produced through juxtaposition.”(Dovey & Rose, 2012) In this project we have added to this third meaning by placing text at the bottom of our film for each portrait so as to give the viewer a better insight into the life of that person. Our pattern was constructed so as to link peoples’ environments which could be a link between the people. Black and white thumbnails on the interface were used to attract the attention of the viewer on the main video and to focus them to the people and not what is going on around them. We feel that our use of an “atmos” track helped to link the subjects further and our overall theme of relationships between people.

 

 

 

Reference list

Dovey, J. and Rose, M. (2012) Were happy and we know it : Docu- mentary: Data: Montage. Studies in Documentary Film, 6 (2). pp. 159-173.

Film TV – Reflection 6

 

Q1: Consider Sandra’s lecture “Directing Actors” and describe at least a couple of points that you took away from it (even if you’re not the director).

A1: Here are all the key points I took down from that lecture

 

Casting tips

  • Take your time
  • Make sure they understand the story
  • Understand your own genre
  • Ask them to bring in a piece to act

 

Keep rehearsal brief

 

Influence an actor in a way that they think that they made the idea

 

Don’t let them talk about their character at first, ask about the story and their characters journey

 

You’ve got to have your B scenes  – which scenes are the most important

 

When there is no time to light it – go outside

 

Actors can be nightmare on set because everybody want’s something from you – sort it out in rehearsals

 

Lighting how you shoot scenes

  • Where’s the windows
  • Manipulate things around the windows
  • Little things in production design help

 

Key relationships  actor/director – camera/director need to be able to split your focus

 

How  would you shoot your scene with one shot?

3shot scene in 15 mins

 

Shooting out of sequence

 

  • How did the actor exit the scene
  • know where your transitions are
  • write it down

Q2: In this clip screened in the lecture from the Coen brothers’ ‘Blood Simple‘ describe what is happening in terms of the edits specifically in terms of the audio and video. Also name the different kinds of audio you can hear.

Different audio tracks include:

Atmos – notably crickets chirping in background

Foley –  sounds of paper and movements of objects on the table/bathroom

Dialogue – the dialogue between the two characters

Some notable editing techniques were using the overlapping technique during the dialogue. There is strong use of foley track to highlight the characters interactions with different objects and their physical properties.

 

Q3:Keyboard shortcuts.

Most applications reserve keyboard shortcuts for the functions that use most often. It is really good to learn all of these as it will speed up your editing and additionally alert you to functions that the software developers and other users find important. (You can learn much about the software by looking at keyboard shortcuts).

Find the keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Premiere and note two or more functions that you’ve never used before that may be invaluable to editing.

A3:

CMD k – performs splitting the clip at the playhead

S – toggles snapping on and off

The Whale Hunt

The Whale Hunt is an interactive photo essay or a “experiment in human story telling”  as by the author Jonathan Harris. I pursed this because it was referenced in this week’s reading about interfaces and seeing as that Is one of my roles In the group K film I thought it would be good to check out some alternate methods.

The film is a linear story of Jonathan accompanying the locals on a whaling hunt taking photos at least once every 5 minutes. For me this resulted in much of the content becoming boring, probably due to the fact we watch everything slowly instead of cutting to the salient events. As the reading says Jonathan tries to maintain interest with a combination of macro and micro information, but personally it was only the presentation of data which kept me interested in the project.

The interface design is the really interesting part Jonathan allows the user to navigate the photo database through three different methods, a timeline, a mosaic and a pinwheel. The animations, graphical style and macro representations of colours and number of photos are all elements which appeal to the viewer. The mosaic and the timeline both have their very nice defining qualities but I feel that the pinwheel is really just for show and is the least practical method when navigating the project.

Although I was bored with the view of the content I found the experimental methods and presentation of this project to be intriguing you can check it out here

FILM/TV 1 – Reflection 5

Select from one of the readings from week 5, 6 or 7 and describe two points that you have taken from it. Points that excite you, something that was completely new to you.

From the week 6 reading – Developing a crew

How culture can change the roles of producers. I would have thought that the roles of the producer would broad yet fairly universal so it was interesting to discover that there are significant differences in the approach of the producer depending on the country, culture and industry.

The team style nature of a crew and how individuals personalities can have either positive or negative effects on the rest of the crew/cast. This reading made me look at the roles in the crew in a less formal, taking peoples personalities heavily into account rather than just technical/industry experience. It also made me more aware of  the importance of morale and how key individuals temperaments/energy can magnify onto the rest of the crew.

Blow Up is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.
In this scene note the choreography of the actors, camera, frame and focus. As covered in the lecture describe the things Antonioni would have have to consider when directing the actors and the camera.
Firstly I’d note the camera movement as it follows the actors and it motivated by their movement. Antonioni would have had to carefully considered it’s position in relation to the actors especially the woman, the strange objects or structures in the house and how this impacts on the frame.
The framing often uses the rule of thirds and relies on the objects and physical structure of the man’s house. The framing is also very fluid as one frame size will pull to another in the same shot, meaning less cuts and longer takes.
The choreography of the actors struck me as a little odd their movements but perhaps that is because I am missing the context or choreograph style of the film. They seemed to function to work both to set the frame and movement of the shots instead of the actual dialogue of the scene, I think Antonioni would have spent considerable amount of time choreographing this scene in relation to the chaotic space of the house.

 

The Carp and the Seagull

This interactive film tells the tale of a fisherman who encounters a Japanese spirit in the form of a seagull. This short film takes place in duel worlds over four chapters and lasts around 8 minutes. The two worlds or planes form the relations within the story, one dark and negative the other bright and positive. The viewer views these worlds using WebGL and the scene sets itself in a kind of box which the viewer is able to rotate, traversing in between the bright and dark planes.

Other interactions are simple and limited include clicking on characters or the scenery to activate actions or place objects. Although the actions are limited and the story is fixed I see this as a positive point when considering the scale of the work. This film is interactive in the sense that the viewer prompts the story’s actions along, allowing the viewer to linger on particular scenes.

What really drew me into this film was it’s visual style and soundscape  as A puts it “The film’s low-poly aesthetic and synthesized soundscape produce an eerie sense of otherworldliness that offers a fresh feel on a traditional story.”

Another interesting point Andrew brings up in his article is that the lack of interactive films of this nature is due to level of difficulty associated with the process of making these particular films. So I think that the popularity of genre is somewhat reliant on the developments of technology and software allowing for the creation of these films to be more intuitive and requiring less technical knowledge.

It’s short ad sweet and you can check it out here

 

Trapped

This week I had a look at the interactive film Trapped created by the Seefood films for the Shelter, a British charity looking to improve the state of community housing. W follow a family’s journey through the community housing system.  Seeing as the last film I wrote up (The Border Between Us) was also was pushing an issue I am going take this opportunity to compare their methods.

Trapped is a film not a documentary, using actors to dramatize the events within. It has a limited structure but still uses multilinear pathways as the viewer is able to choose how to respond to certain events, for example in your first decision the child isn the story has become sick and so you choose weather to
a) clean the mold

b) take your child to the doctor

c) call the council

your choice dictates the next clip of the story.The film then return back to it’s set path meaning your choice does not have any major implications on the end result In-between clips the film reinforces the clip’s previous action with a small statistic. At the end the film prompts you with a one sided choice either you take action or nothing.

For me this film felt very unbelievable as it blatantly attempted to appeal to the viewers emotion through a set of over dramatised series of events. The only point that gave the film events legitimacy were the statistical findings in it’s intermediate sections.

To compare it to The Border Between Us  I feel that Trapped  might have succeeded in it’s attempts if the events and characters were real. Although the films target different issues and in different way’s I feel The Border Between Us is much more successful and elegant in both appealing to the audiences emotion and raising the issue. Perhaps it is because Trapped is trying to raise the issue with a particular narrow intent.

Trapped is one of the first examples I have seen of interactive documentary being used in a commercial environment but in conclusion I think Trapped is a pretty poor rendition  of interactive documentary and perhaps an prime example of how rigid narratives do not suit the mode.

Trapped

The Border Between Us

The Border Between Us by By Nicole Robicheau documents how an increase of border protection policy has effected two joining townships creating unnecessary social and political rifts. It follows the creator in as she interviews town figures uncovering stories and encounters in relation to the border.

Robicheau does not use videos, instead she creates a photo documentary taking photo’s of the interviews and places of interest. Robicheau then narrates her experiences intertwining her own experiences and emotions into the film.

The interface is simple, a main viewer with three preview on the right. Each preview is a thumbnail with an accompanying title which becomes visible upon mouseover. Robicheau forces the viewer to watch the intro of each clip before being able to navigate to the next. I found the titles a little distracting as I would become curious about the backstory,so in hindsight I think the restricted introduction was a good idea to get me involved with the current clip before trying to discover the others.

There was a bit more noticeable structure in this film through it’s fixed ending and start clips as well as the way in which the subject of each inked together. I think the titles did well in disrupting this pattern as I tried to link each clip to it’s next through it’s title but then would find that it was in fact the subject matter that was the key linking point.

Even though this film took quite a biased view of the border protection I think the characters really created the central interest for me as I found their stories drew me in to the film as a whole and urged me to continue investigating.

FIlm is here

Lighting points – Film TV

Some interesting points I took away from this week’s lecture were:

considering the natural light in relation to the orientation of the house and how this changes through the different seasons and time of year. This is just one concept that I would not have taken into consideration without it being pointed out in this weeks lecture.

Lighting for spatial and temporal continuity, particularly how to think about motivated or unmotivated light sources.

Another point which I think would have liked to be expanded upon was the techniques in identifying different lighting set ups through looking at the picture. Robin pointed some of this out briefly and I feel it is really a skill you pick up with more experience but none the less I found it to be one of the most useful insights within the lecture.