Monthly Archives: April 2015

Mindmaping

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Brainstorming done in todays tutorial about institutions.  We as a group started with the two institutions that interested us, Cinema and Network TV. We began to list different forms of cinema and tv and connect issues to them under: economical, political, cultural and social brackets. Some of the ideas and issues we came up with are:

– What are the benefits of watching movies at an institution?
– Censorship and cultural control
– How cinema is used to breach cultural gaps
– How cinema uses it’s practice to target it’s audience

From here after a discussion with Dan we were able to narrow down our focus and look at how Film Festivals as an institution capture a lot of the ideas we were toying with above. We as a group are looking at how Film Festivals are an institution and what role they play politically, culturally and socially. A good starting point for us, when looking for articles would looking at how film festivals are defined as institutions, what they afford and prohibit their audiences or a good case study of how film festivals are used in Melbourne to cover the four main issues we’ve identified.

To start we’re each going to look at least five articles around film festivals before we meet on Tuesday where we will then see what we’ve found and what we can add. Overall I’m pleased with how well we all worked as a group today and excited to continue our brief.

Narrative and Non Narrative

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It’s very often asked if experimental films have form or narrative? At first glance it’s easy to dismiss an film without words, characters or a clear conclusion. However I believe that it’s through pattern, and repetition that form and narrative can be conveyed in films that are more abstract. For example in the film we watched today ‘We Have Decided Not To Die’  I think still has a narrative that runs through it, even if it wasn’t it’s intention. The act of framing the the film into three separate rituals gives us the impression of three acts, or in this case there are three different stories being told. Even the title seems to give the three protags causality they have all chosen not to die so it’s a way you can make sense of whats happening to each of the figures in the story, it also seems like the characters go from one state to another mimicking that of a journey.  In class we came up with our own reasons as to what made this film narrative and non-narrative.

Narrative
-the film is broken up into parts to follow (each ritual)
-the characters seem to go from one state to another
-the title explains the will behind the three protags
-each part has an emotion low follow be an emotion high

Non Narrative
-visions of weird stuff happened, no representation, nothing is said
-whole piece is in a state of chaos
-lack of conclusion
-characters are props, no motivation

Although I agree with a lot thats said here, but I still believe that just because there seems like there’s nothing literal going on a narrative can still be conveyed in ways that’s abstract, because there are many different ways of story-telling. Even though it’s not clear it still shows the journey of three different people who are choosing not to die.You can view the film here.

We Have Decided Not To Die from Sion Roberts on Vimeo.

An Experience

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Last night I was dragged along to a Spanish Film Festive with a friend to see the movie: They are all Dead.
Not only was the movie enjoyable but I was able to sit in on a Q&A with the films star, Elena Anaya.
Here are some of the things discussed that I thought could be helpful for me in the future:

– when asked if the year the film was set in was chosen for a particular reason “every story is different, it depends on the moment and for [They are all Dead] that moment was right.

– one first time directors and actors they are so pure and have been waiting for so long, theres something so genuine about that

– the house (where the movie was mostly set) it’s self was another character, if you’re going to have a busy set: everything tells. – know your set, know when you have to take away, when something is going to distract from the scene rather than enhance it.

– “when it’s real it’s easier, it helps so much when it happens” – don’t skimp on authenticity because everything it ties everything together for a more genuine movie.

– “we went through things over and over, but everyone thanked her [the director] for making them work so hard” -it’s good to know what you want and don’t ever slack off.

Textual Analyses

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Source

In class we did a textual analyses exercise with this advertisement:

Denotation (literal meaning) : people going about their day at a local train station

Connotation (cultural or 2nd order meaning) : urban jungle, (lion is in the certain of the photo, the photo has a very urban look about it), adventure (train station with no name and lion), pride (also a symbol of the lion), skin heads (working class)  real experience (the photo is shot to be candid rather than posed it feels more truthful) phantoms (something scary and exciting)

Codes: Isn’t a place to go for luxury but rather adventure, This is a place to go for the working class man as an escape, people looking for a thrill rather than to sit poolside.

I was also able to come up with a lot of these analyses, because this image was shown in contrast to another advertisement which showed a father and son playing by the pool. It was from comparing the two images I was able to draw a lot of the adventure vs luxury, get away from the urban grind vs the urban lifestyle comparisons. 

Breaking Down a Sound Scape

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In this weeks lecture I was introduced to the concept of sound having two crucial codes. Perspective and social distance.
Perspective ‘hierarchies the elements of what is represented’ into the three categories:
figure – the focus of interest
ground – the setting or context
field – the background/ambient space

While social distance ‘creates relations of different degrees of formality between what is represented and the listener.  For example relations of intimacy/informality and formality.

What really interested me this week was how we as a class were able to breakdown a photograph through ‘perspective hierarchies.’  Even though we couldn’t hear what was going on in the picture we were able to imagine what the figure, ground and field sounds of the scene would be.
Not only did this make me aware of the codes around sound, but made me think of how important sound is in media production as we are so easily able to imagine it and the fact that we are around it all the time.
For example; what does silence do for a film where we as a society are more comfortable with a constant white noise and field sound.

Peer Feed Back

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Emily

– I really enjoyed how Emily used camera shots to capture her subject. She focuses on shots of the hands, eyes and lips to capture body snippets of body language and character rather than letting it go unnoticed. This allows a more intimate relationship with her subject resulting in the viewer to more readily connect to her story.
– With the footage Emily used I felt that because she had a lot of stuff recorded and found, she wanted to use it all. Her film wasn’t overly cluttered or hard to understand, but could have been tightened up with a little bit more self editing.
– Otherwise I really enjoyed her film and the story she was able to capture.

Georgina

– I was effected by the powerful juxtaposition of the clinical images and the homely family conversation at the dinner table. I thought it was a powerful way to capture both sides of the subject and the situation.
– The sound was sometimes distracting as it would cut out at times and bits were louder than others but that’s something that can be improved on over time.
-I really connected emotionally with the story being told and thought she did a great job.

Project Brief 3 Media Portrait

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Maria from Chrys on Vimeo.

At the start of this project I found myself apprehensive about working with the Sony MC50 video recorder. I think my inexperience shows as I knock the camera a few times and shaky cam rears it’s ugly head. In continuing in this course I would like to get more comfortable around the equipment I am working with and become more confident holding a camera.

I tried using a tripod to limit these  errors however I found it better hold the camera across from Maria, chatting like we usually do. Not only did it make her feel more comfortable but it allowed the piece to become more of a conversation rather than a questionnaire.

I chose Maria, for this project because whenever we talk I can’t help but listen to whatever she has to say. I thought this was an important quality to capture in my piece. I achieved this by using found footage to enhance her story rather than distract from it and using a series of close ups to really draw attention to what I felt was the most important parts of her story, focusing on her mouth.

The found footage I used was a mix of old animations and burlesque. Burlesque not only being something my subject was very interested in, but I felt fit the themes of sexuality. The old animations I used, helped me show things I wanted to be less literal things like fluidity or the act of vomiting. Overall I am mostly happy with my combination of found footage and actual footage to tell a story.
I also found myself experimenting more with sound this project, using music over vocals rather than being to timid to combine the two in project brief 2 and editing with things such as volume and fade ins/outs. I am pleased that I have spent more time working on sound this brief even if I still have a long way to go.

A big challenge that came with project was how much footage I had, and choosing when I had to cut back. This is still something I need to work on as portraits need to really speak volumes about a person and by adding to much footage your best pieces can get lost.

I also want to improve on titles and credits in my next piece.

Dummy’s Guide to the Zoom Handy Recorder H2n

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During our ‘in field’ recording experience, we encountered the following problems when it came to the quality of the audio. The first problem was setting the setting the input sensitivity as a lot of the first recordings I took could not be heard over the white noise. In the future I need to be more mindful of the recorder and adjust settings when something is wrong with the playback. Playback was also another issue as I found myself to eager to find sounds rather than check the quality of the ones I already had.

The second problem we encountered was proximity, a lot of our recordings could have been louder and clearer had we positioned ourselves correctly to what we were trying to record. For me I found myself timid to really get up and record things I wanted to, so this is something I’d like to correct the night time I work with sound.

Apart from proximity affecting our recordings we also were interrupted by a lot of unwanted city sounds, or even just us communicating when someone else was recording. To fix this, it was suggested that we, go somewhere remote for our sound effects, and make sure everyone knows that it’s “quiet on set” before the recording begins.

Pros and Cons of Group Work

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My Good vs Bad Experiences when Working in a Team: 

Bad: Members drop you without warning
Bad: Members let their egos get in the way of work
Bad: You don’t feel comfortable about expressing your opinion
Bad: Members don’t compromise

Good: New idea, and different ways of thinking are introduced to you
Good: The feeling of overwhelming accomplishment
when you work together to achieve a goal
Good: Support from other members

Group Genius

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When reading Keith Sawyers, “Group Genius” it never occurred to me that within work and play there is a state of or feeling called the “flow.” I have certainly experienced this feeling but I never knew it was a state that could be achieved as suggested by Sawyers in his work. To achieve this flow there are four simple principles you and your environment must uphold such as; your skill must be equal to your environment or that you are free to fully concentrate on the task. However when it comes to group flow it’s suggested that there are 10 conditions that groups must follow to achieve this flow. One that practically stood out to me was the “Close Listening or Deep Listening” condition. For myself I find that listening is something I really need to work on, when working with my interviewee I often found myself to eager to ask the next question rather than listen to what she had to say, it wasn’t till I stopped myself from being so ready to talk and actually sat and listened to what she had to say I found that it was very easy to get lost in the task and what she had to say.
I feel like the ten conditions are good qualities to uphold when entering group work, however some of them seem hard to obtain through current university collaboration.
I am also curious to find out through further reading, how to deal with situations where the “creative genius” might not fit into constraints and how to work around that.