1:
I thought the quality of the video was quite decent and watchable. The shots Jia Jia and I took were mostly quite random. Putting them together and rearranging them still does make an interesting abstract video. In this particular one, my arrangements of the video shows from a busy city to a slightly rural area, although the last shot was filmed in RMIT. I was trying to get an indication of somewhere quiet and peaceful. The first shot however was a shot of a sky which I thought it could be an establishing shot for the film. The shot from the State Library towards the crowd of people was layered with the audio of the tram’s bell, although there were no trams seen in the frame. I thought this would work as if the people look busy and heading to their work place or University. The shot of Bowen Street where students walking out was layered with the sound of the traffic light taken from Swanston and La Trobe Street. The little pole on bottom right of the frame was not intentional, but I thought the sound fits the shot. It makes the scene look a little bit ‘busier’ than it is.
From this exercise, I think I’ve learnt that video and audio can be combined together and form a new indication of something. It could enhance it if it fits but it will look awkward if it doesn’t. It taught me a lot more about the importance J-cut and L-cut eventhough there is no use of it in this video. What I’m trying to say is how the video flows smoothly and it doesn’t look and sound ‘choppy’.
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2:
One of the interesting things that I got from the reading would be how documentaries engage with history and constructions in the past. Documentary is drawn mainly from four root words – “documentary”, “drama”, “fact”, and “fiction”. “Dramatic reconstruction” can be included in this list as the term construction identifies ‘a documentary claim’. The next term will be ‘drama’ and ‘documentary’ which plays sense of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ to draw out much the same tensions as the other categories ‘faction’, ‘fact-based drama’, ‘based on fact’, or ‘based on a true story’
Another point that I picked up from the reading will be the real life re-enactment of a documentary. In another words, it means to contain a little bit of acting in it. It helps the audience to visualize the scene or a scenario. “Acknowledged reconstructions do not deceive… but they short-change us, deal in a currency inferior to the truth.” The interesting thing about this is that they can be considered as ‘dramatised’ documentary, where ‘drama’ and ‘documentary’ as modes are perceived to play off one another in some shape or form.