Tag Archives: inspiration

Assessments, Media 1

PB4 inspiration

I happened to download this Planet Money episode on class action lawsuits the week we were choosing topics for PB4, so I listened to it with interest hoping to find formal elements we could borrow for use in our own essay. It turned out that Kat and Emily really liked the format too, so we decided that a Hack/Planet Money style podcast would be the perfect format for our PB4 audio essay.

Specifically, the elements we will be using in our audio essay include vox pops, a host providing context and driving the narrative, interviews with expert speakers, and sound effects/musical cues. With such a short production schedule and limited length our essay will necessarily be less in-depth than this Planet Money episode, but I think it’s still a handy model to try to emulate in limited form.

For the video component, Kat brought to the table a fantastic series of essays by PBS called Idea Channel, which “examines the connections between pop culture, technology and art”. There are dozens and dozens of such videos in the Idea Channel stable, and although they have a very particular style and personality (which we won’t be recreating exactly), some of the broader conceptual ideas on which Idea Channel is based will provide excellent reference for our own work.

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Assessments, Media 1

PB3 inspiration

I’ve started doing some research for Project Brief 3, after deciding on my subject: a local Melbourne sign painter named TJ Guzzardi, whose work can be found on hipster restaurants and barber shops all over town. I thought TJ would make a good subject because his work is visual by nature, allowing me to shoot some great B-roll footage of him at work, and from what I’ve seen he appears to be quite knowledgeable about the history and principles of his craft, which would make for a good interview.

My inspiration for this was the short film Up There, which is an amazing portrait of a group of American painters who hand-paint giant advertising murals on the sides of buildings. I saw it on Vimeo when it was uploaded (six years ago, apparently!) and it’s stuck with me ever since. I would obviously have to be careful not to actually replicate anything from this film, but use it more as a guiding light towards what’s possible in the medium.

But after a bit of Google research, I discovered that someone else made essentially the same film about TJ Guzzardi, only three years ago. It even utilises some of the shots that I had visualised trying to create for myself (shooting through glass, at work in his studio, slow pans of his previous works, etc.). This is a pretty frustrating development because I feel like I can no longer pursue this idea, and will have to find a new subject for my interview. But it’s a good little film that I think I can still get something out of, in terms of inspiration and example.

And now I have to pick a new subject – I think I have one potential option, but we’ll see.

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