Monthly Archives: May 2016

Media 1, Thoughts

My weekly media moment

In our Workshop this week we were encouraged to consider a “weekly media moment” – an interesting or instructive encounter we had with some form of media. Last night I went to see a conversation between Ben Birchall and Starlee Kine at the Wheeler Centre on all things podcasting and storytelling.

I don’t know why but a lot of American podcast hosts are in town at the moment. PJ Vogt (of Reply All) appeared at the Sydney Writers Festival over the weekend, and Hrishikesh Hirway (of Song Exploder) will also be at the Wheeler Centre in a couple of weeks. Perhaps they’re on some kind of podcast host field trip, I’m not sure.

Starlee is a journalist, writer and radio producer with whom I first became familiar through her work with This American Life, where she worked as a story producer for over a decade. She’s something of a confessional storyteller: her radio stories generally revolve around events in her own life, and as such have an irresistibly charming personal touch to them. I find this kind of personal memoir to be among the absolute best form of media when done right, but unfortunately it’s very difficult to do right and can often result in boring, interminable waffling from people I don’t care about.

Last year Starlee wrote and produced the first season of her new podcast Mystery Show, which for many reasons I consider to be the best podcast ever made. It’s a complete reinvention of the form, differentiating itself from the accepted “formats” in common use, and Starlee’s personality and open, conversational nature give rise to some incredible conversations from unlikely places.

To hear her speak was wonderfully compelling. Among other topics she described the process she follows to create, develop and execute her ideas into finished form, which is something radio producers rarely do for competitive reasons. The thing that surprised me most was that Mystery Show existed as a pilot episode for two years while she searched for a platform that would take on the show. (Presumably This American Life passed on it to make Serial – probably a sound decision.)

I’d never really considered that creating a podcast pilot and trying to sell it (as a TV producer might do) could be one way to get a podcast idea off the ground. I’ve created a couple of podcasts in the past but they were small exercises between me and my friends, not intended to be treated too seriously, and we just kept pumping out episodes as quickly as we could make them.

Obviously in Australia there are no large-scale podcast networks like PRX or Radiotopia, which makes it difficult for Australians to sell podcast ideas (other than to Radio National), but since Science Vs made it to Gimlet Media last year it’s not out of the realm of possibility that an Australian podcast might again be picked up in the U.S.

Now I just need an idea…

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Assessments, Media 1, Workshops

PB4 video essay rough cut and feedback

In today’s Workshop we received some feedback from Louise on our video essay rough cut. As Katrina is doing the first pass edit for our video it was the first chance I got to see what she’d done as well, and I was so happy to see it all coming together. There was still plenty to be done (and our feedback reflected that), but as a draft it was very good and I feel like we are well on the way to a finished essay that comes close to our initial vision.

We wisely decided to cut a whole chunk of content out of the middle of our essay before we even presented the rough cut, because while it was interesting it wasn’t particularly relevant to our thesis. This saved us a lot of editing time and pushed our video down to around six minutes, which is still over the final maximum length but will be easier to cut down than if we’d included that chunk.

Louise’s feedback was that the bones of our essay were good — the structure and argument that we chose was effective and managed to get our point across succinctly. I was happy to hear this because I feel the same way — I think we locked into a good structure early in our discussions as a group and have followed it through to the finished product. She also pointed out that there were several parts that could be trimmed to save time, which we’ve happily done. One of her suggested edits ended up not being possible because later in the essay we refer back to something mentioned in the cut section, so if we wanted to keep one we had to keep both — and we needed to keep the second one. I think this will be a valuable lesson in making sure I have multiple potential “cut points” in my scripts that can be removed depending on how close I am to the desired length. Cutting down a long, stream-of-consciousness script is nearly impossible without losing some coherence.

Like our audio essay feedback this was an incredibly valuable exercise and will result in a much improved final product.

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Lectorials, Media 1

Studios

Today we were introduced to the Studio system that will define the rest of our participation in the B.Comm (Media) program. Based on what I know of last semester’s Studios this will be an incredible experience, working in medium and large groups on projects throughout the semester. Topics seem to range from highly theoretical / technical subjects to finely focused practical explorations of a single medium.

My main worry is that I’ll probably want to do all of the Studios. When I enrolled in my classes for semester one I had a short list of about 10 electives to choose from and I really agonised over choosing only one to actually enrol in. I even considered turning up to lectures for two or three subjects in the first couple of weeks so I could decide for sure which one I wanted to do.

Obviously this won’t be possible with the Studios, but hopefully over the next five semesters I’ll be able to complete a nice selection of Studios that both appeal to my interests and help to develop my theoretical and practical knowledge.

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Cinema Studies

Genre and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

The following is a blog post written for my Introduction to Cinema Studies class, re-published here so all my work is in one place.

Broadly speaking, genres are part of a system for collating and categorising films of a similar type. Films belonging to a particular genre are linked by their use of one or more conventional elements associated with that genre, also called tropes. These tropes can take a number of different forms:

  • Subject matter or theme, e.g. westerns are often concerned with good vs evil
  • Plot patterns, e.g. romantic comedies often contain a “meet cute”, police thrillers often end with a standoff or shootout
  • Manner of presentation, e.g. detective films are often structured around the process of investigation
  • Emotional effect, e.g. comedies attempt to elicit humour, horror films attempt to shock or frighten the audience
  • Iconography, e.g. Roman costumes are central to sword-and-sandal epics

The utility of genres rely on wider cultural acknowledgement and understanding of these shared elements – an understanding which is developed by audiences seeing many films sharing particular tropes.

Marketing and promotion have a significant effect on genre expectations, because how a film is marketed (including the poster, synopsis and title) usually signposts what genre the film belongs to. This, in turn, governs our experience of the film because we view it with genre associations already in mind.

Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) predominantly takes the form of a vampire horror film, and was generally marketed as such. This genre is evident in the film’s subject matter (the central character is a vampire who preys on several victims), emotional effect (gruesome attacks are a hallmark or horror films), and in some of the film’s style and iconography (e.g. extensive use of dark shadows and high-key lighting, the vampire’s sharp canine teeth, etc.).

However, it also mixes in various tropes from other genres, notably the spaghetti western (e.g. widescreen composition with significant characters/objects at the extreme left or right of frame, tight close-ups of faces, sharp and dramatic shifts in focal plane, etc.) and some additional elements generally associated with Iranian cinema (e.g. traditional Iranian forms of dress, the central significance of cars and driving, etc.). Through its combination, conformance and contradiction of these tropes, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is both an excellent example of particular genre tropes as well as an example of a film that significantly rejects and remixes those tropes in a unique way.

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Media 1, Thoughts

Werner Herzog teaches filmmaking

The online education provider Masterclass has just announced that it has (somehow) convinced German filmmaker Werner Herzog to create a five-hour video seminar series on filmmaking. You can pre-enroll for the course now to get early access for US$90, which sounds pretty reasonable for five hours of listening to Herzog speak in his amazing German accent. I’ll definitely be signing up.

I can’t even imagine what he’ll be talking about, but if it’s anything like his list of advice for filmmakers it’s going to be amazing.

Werner Herzog’s Advice for Filmmakers

1. Always take the initiative.
2. There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need.
3. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey.
4. Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief.
5. Learn to live with your mistakes.
6. Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern.
7. That roll of unexposed celluloid you have in your hand might be the last in existence, so do something impressive with it.
8. There is never an excuse not to finish a film.
9. Carry bolt cutters everywhere.
10. Thwart institutional cowardice.
11. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
12. Take your fate into your own hands.
13. Learn to read the inner essence of a landscape.
14. Ignite the fire within and explore unknown territory.
15. Walk straight ahead, never detour.
16. Manoeuvre and mislead, but always deliver.
17. Don’t be fearful of rejection.
18. Develop your own voice.
19. Day one is the point of no return.
20. A badge of honor is to fail a film theory class.
21. Chance is the lifeblood of cinema.
22. Guerrilla tactics are best.
23. Take revenge if need be.
24. Get used to the bear behind you.

 

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Assessments, Media 1, Workshops

PB4 audio essay rough cut and feedback

In our Workshop today we presented a rough cut of our PB4 audio essay to our tutor. It was a valuable opportunity to have someone outside our group listen to it and provide unbiased feedback — and I’m glad to say that we seem to be on the right track. However, there are definitely a couple of areas we could improve.

Firstly, the essay is too long. Even without all of the elements we planned to include it was nearly 50% over the maximum length, so we’ll have to do some work to cut that down before submission. I think we can do this without compromising quality or clarity, even though we might have to say goodbye to some “good tape”.

Secondly, we were also advised to include more sound effects and musical cues, to break up the monotony of hearing a single voice talk at length without a break. I completely agree with this note and I’m glad it was brought up at this stage, because we still have plenty of time to search for the right sound effects.

Overall our audio essay is progressing well and we will have the whole thing completed next week. I’m really proud of how it’s turned out and Emily and Kat have been really great to collaborate with — surprisingly, my first group assessment experience has actually been pretty positive!

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Lectorials, Media 1

Medium theory and technological determinism

In today’s Lectorial the concept of medium theory was introduced, as well as the role technology has to play in wider social and cultural development.

Medium theory is the study of particular types of media, and the way they differ (physically, psychologically and culturally) from other types of media. To me it seems related to the idea of media affordances, but on a much broader and more philosophical level. There are three main metaphors that are used to answer the question “what is media?”:

  1. Media as conduit, otherwise known as textual analysis (i.e. media contains codes and messages that can be decoded and analysed)
  2. Media as language (i.e. particular forms of media have a unique language and grammar)
  3. Media as environment (i.e. the analysis of media without regard for content [textual analysis] or grammar [affordances])

Technological determinism is the idea that shifts in society and culture are caused by technological advancements. This theory contrasts with an instrumental approach, which says that a society develops and uses the technology it needs as it needs them.

I can see how technological determinism might be an attractive theory in consideration of the industrial revolution, when advancements in manufacturing, transport and communication revolutionised many aspects of society and brought with them large-scale changes to the way society is organised in a relatively short time (i.e. modernity). But is it still applicable today, where the pace of development has greatly accelerated and is more or less continuous?

I remember before the iPhone came out – the mobile web was still in its infancy (text-only WAP browsers), and apps were basically not a thing. There was a strange year-long period there where you could actually SMS questions to a service and some person in an office somewhere would research the answer for you and send it back. Weird times. Did the introduction of the iPhone, arguably the most significant technological advancement so far this century, cause the rapid improvement of the mobile web, a shift to the app economy, and related developments? Or is it that there was an invisible, unarticulated demand for these things, and the iPhone just happened to be the first device that managed to satisfy that demand? It’s probably an impossible question to answer, which is what makes gauging the validity of technological determinism difficult.

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Media 1, Thoughts

Human Rights Arts & Film Festival

Since January I’ve been volunteering on the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival team as Awards Coordinator. It’s been a great experience, working with a very small team with tight deadlines and a lot of hard work required, and since I believe strongly in the ideals of the festival it’s been rewarding on a personal level too.

For months now I’ve been organising and facilitating three jury panels of industry experts to determine the winners of HRAFF’s annual awards: Feature Film, Australian Short and International Short. The panels are made up of representatives from the world of media and human rights, who each bring their own unique experience and knowledge to the table helping to amplify human rights issues through film and art.

Last Friday we presented the Best Australian Short Film award to Darlene Johnson’s Bluey, which is a spirited film about redemption and courage. Darlene was absolutely stoked to receive her award, which was a particularly joyful moment for me.

The festival continues in Melbourne for another week, so I definitely recommend you check it out if you have the time.

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Cinema Studies

Documentary and Grizzly Man

The following is a blog post written for my Introduction to Cinema Studies class, re-published here so all my work is in one place.

Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005) presents itself as a documentary portrait of Timothy Treadwell, a nature filmmaker and self-styled friend of grizzly bears in Alaska’s Kodiak Island national park. Using Treadwell’s own material, which he recorded over many years camping in the wilderness, the film sets out to discover what made Treadwell tick and the circumstances leading to his death.

It is a synthetic documentary that blends many different types of documentary form: there is a framing narrative that occurs in “current” time (following Herzog as he talks to Treadwell’s friends and coworkers, watches Treadwell’s footage, etc.); talking heads interviews with people speaking generally about Treadwell’s life; and archival footage and images captured by Treadwell himself during his summers in Alaska. The story is not told in chronological order, nor is it governed by cause and effect, and it contains no fictional reenactments or recreations (with actors, staged lighting, etc.), but it does contain several sequences where real people explain to the filmmaker certain events in current time, such as an aeroplane pilot walking through the wilderness and pointing out the location where he discovered Treadwell’s body.

By manipulating Treadwell’s footage — deciding what to present, and how it is presented, as well as narrating the footage with his own words — Herzog articulates his own thesis about the nature of humanity using Treadwell’s life and work as supporting evidence. Though it presents itself as a portrait of Timothy Treadwell, Grizzly Man is actually a more nuanced and complicated essay film, with some similarities to the rhetorical form of documentary that sets out to convince the audience of a particular viewpoint.

This is a particularly subtle demonstration of the idea that documentaries are never true depictions of reality, no matter how convincingly they present themselves as such. Herzog manipulates the objective reality of Timothy Treadwell’s life and death, and uses it to craft and present his own worldview.

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Lectorials, Media 1

Institutional values

In today’s Lectorial we discussed institutions, and particularly the way that institutions can represent extremely different things to different people. To demonstrate this, we completed a little exercise where we came up with some attributes for a particular institution, for example:

Facebook:

  • What is their relationship to their audience? What is their mode of address? Facebook is a platform that in some ways attempts to be “invisible” (i.e. Facebook is your friendships, not just the platform on which you maintain your friendships). Facebook also uses inclusive, informal language to encourage casual everyday use.
  • What are their core values? Sharing, openness, building social ties and networks.
  • What is their status? Facebook is a trusted Silicon Valley success story, enabling revolutionary forms and levels of communication around the world. But in some circles Facebook is seen as a monolithic overseer selling its user’s personal data to unscrupulous advertisers.
  • How are they more than a business? To many people Facebook is a news source (for some, their only news source), a social gathering place, an indispensable communication tool, etc.. Facebook performs many functions outside their core money-making activity.
  • What forms of regulation constrain their activities? Laws and codes of conduct restricting the use of identifying information (cookies, Do Not Track, etc.) could affect their ability to use targeted advertising. Privacy legislation is the primary way that Facebook would come up against regulatory activity.
  • In what sense are they conduits for flows of power? In localised social groups (e.g. high schools, groups of friends, workplaces, etc.) Facebook either enables or denies certain people power. It is also big enough that it can affect real-world political issues, such a same-sex marriage debates in the United States.
  • What other institutions are they related to, engaged with or aligned with? Facebook owns Instagram, another major social networking website/app. It also maintains relationships with major advertisers, governments and regulators all over the world.

I also completed the exercise for NPR, which is an institution I’m personally interested in and contrasts in many ways to an organisation like Facebook.

NPR:

  • What is their relationship to their audience? What is their mode of address? NPR is primarily a broadcaster – traditional radio stations, plus creating content for syndication and online streaming. As a public broadcaster it retains a certain level of trust as it is less beholden to commercial imperatives than other major networks, and in general it is seen as an authority in the world of news and information exchange.
  • What are their core values? Community, inclusion, education.
  • What is their status? As the major public broadcaster in the American radio sector, NPR is very highly respected. However, it also garners criticism of left-wing bias, and as a (partially) publicly funded organisation it receives periodic accusations of being a waste of taxpayers’ money.
  • How are they more than a business? NPR contributes to the ongoing cultural conversation in the United States, and also exports its ideals and values internationally. NPR is also a training ground for presenters who go onto perform on higher profile platforms.
  • What forms of regulation constrain their activities? Broadcasting laws and regulations constrain.
  • In what sense are they conduits for flows of power? As a mass media broadcaster, NPR’s inclusion or exclusion of particular people/groups/communities from its airwaves gives them great power to influence discourse.
  • What other institutions are they related to, engaged with or aligned with? Partner radio stations, content providers, sponsors, other public radio organisations like PRX and Panoply.
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