Gross, sweaty, tired, knees weak, arms spaghetti, and I just got home from my third shoot for the interview. Again, shooting exclusively for the B-roll camera, I just spent the last 4 hours in a cramped rehearsal space, feebly attempting to move between them as to not disturb their playing and divert their focus from their goal of trying to deafen me. We were all tired and stressed, we had all traveled far to be together, and we had all skipped out on food and our personal time that would’ve otherwise been spent arguably more productive, but once again that didn’t seem to dampen everyone’s mood. Whether they were playing, listening, filming, mixing audio, fixing equipment or advising the band, every single person in that room was doing something that they loved, and that was fantastic. Despite our different passions and burdens we had upon us at the time, we were all drawn together tonight to pursue our passions, and we did exactly that.
Sure, some things did go wrong; the bassist was late, the drummer had the wrong snare, power cables were missing,batteries weren’t charged, lenses weren’t appropriate, and so on, but we made do with what the had and the result was more than worth it. I got some great footage, I got the band some decent pictures, their manager gave some fantastic advice, and the band got better and more confident with every song.
It just goes to show that there’s always another way and that you can work past your problems, and that while you may not be perfect yet, if you persevere and practice to be good enough you can end up doing something you love.

I should probably follow my own advice more often, but I treasure sleep too much. Oh well.

Fellow students. The posts are coming.

Far too long have I remained idle on this bless’d site, withdrawing mine tongue from the proscenium which is your gaze.
I have been told that the posts of my past have been known to resemble short stories-novels, making Tim Winton shiver in fear of rivalry. I would accept the challenge but after having read and way too closely analysed Cloudstreet, I want to be as far away from him as possible.
We were told today that we must broaden our horizons on our blogs; stray away from the norms of yesterday to which we’ve been adhering to and change up our formats – short posts (no), long posts (more likely), POSTS WITH PICTURES! All on a myriad of subjects. (Just some forewarning, in the event that I do post an image or GIF, which will become more frequent, they will likely progressively become weirder.)
And so I must do this! Starting tonight!.. well, it’s late and I’m a little tired.. Tomorrow morning! – wait, I have class… STARTING TOMORROW SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MIDDAY AND LATE AFTERNOON UNTIL I HAVE TO GO BACK INTO THE CITY, I will start my soon to be infamous blogging journey.
All I ask is that no one issues a restraining order due to the content of my posts, please. From time to time they may be concerning but there’s no reason to alert the authorities. Not that I imagine anyone reads this anyway, I could probably say anything I want and get away with it, like where I hid that Nazi gold, but that’ll have to wait for another time.

I’ve always been a big fan of drama and the performing arts, so I may have gotten a tad excited when I first saw the second part of our readings by M. Rabiger, focusing on a common story arc often used in theater.
Rabiger brought to the fore the importance of how we view our characters and how we want the audience to empathize with them; what makes them special enough to be worthy of our attention and to be deemed entertaining. In this we found the classical archetype of a ‘hero’, and more specifically, one whom adheres to the ‘three act structure’ of a play. The three act structure primarily focuses on the ‘hero’s journey’: rise, fall – redemption/climax, resolve. Facing and overcoming their hardships is what comes to define the hero as a hero, and which is why find this structure so inspiring and entertaining; we admire and want to be able to do the same as them. This structure has individually been around for thousands of years in hundreds of cultures for this very reason.
transitioning to television now, likewise this is the reason as to why someone with this sort of story makes an ideal interviewee.
In the past many typically “successful” interviews would also followed this format, beginning casually, slowly leading into more serious questions followed by reaching their intended point, the hardest hitting question of the interview (the climax), then to resolve it by wrapping it up with closing statements. these questions and answers being similar to ‘beats’ of a plot in a play, thus being able to follow a similar format.

“learning from experience requires more than just experiencing, you need to be noticing.”*
The John Mason readings highlights the tragedy happening both in practice and far too many classrooms; looking, but not watching, hearing, but not listening, thinking, but not understanding. Too many of us feel that merely experiencing the class or working in the field constitutes as enough as actually learning, however what many of us also fail to do is to pay close attention and notice what is happening around us to truly take in the information. To ensure that we may take further notice in our classes, Mason suggests looking at the finer details, taking note of a lecturers mannerisms or way of speech, something that we may easily connect to, can replicate, and/or associate with the learning experience itself. In a sense, by coming to reflect the styles and behavior of the teacher or experience itself, we may gain a greater understanding of the task at hand.
Whilst we can’t simply “decide to notice” as that it cannot guarantee noticing for sure, what we can do is decide to be more attentive and train ourselves to notice.

Last night was the night. After a 2 hour drive, 9 hour shift, and quickly piecing together the last of the questions, I was finally able to film the brunt of the interview.  An trust me, I took the advice from Friday very seriously to achieve maximum coverage. No more than 10 questions turned into 2 straight hours of answers. Being set up in a room where we literally had to crawl under a tripod through the door to get out it, it got fairly cozy in there, not that I’m complaining though, the interviewing process definitely had a few laughs in there, not to mention being someone I know I found it rather easy to engage with them to gain quite expressive responses.
The hardest part of the interview, other than having to rephrase an answer or question every 5 minutes/hurry it along to keep answers short, was definitely setting up. Using a new piece of equipment for the main footage and audio whilst using my own camera for the profile shots felt strange, but it made sense to do so, for quality reasons. Figuring out where to place the cameras and reflector  and chairs in such a confined space without having to compromise the shot seemed like a much easier task beforehand, but a mere half hour later I finally figured it out (sort of). Now to just go through all my footage and relentlessly judge every decision I’ve made! Happy editing days ahead!

What a joy it was in the week 5 workshop to open up the lesson with my somewhat rushed shitey  audio interview. Although not exactly humiliating, if only temporarily embarrassing, it did make me want to strive to do better to prevent such occurrences happening in the future, but I digress. That lesson was a head case. So much information to process at once.
HERE’S A CAMERA, IT’S NICE. DON’T BREAK IT. ADMIRING IT? GOOD! YOU’RE GONNA FILM WITH IT…TODAY! NOW FLEE LITTLE SPIELBERGS, FLEE! – Cody’s summary of the day for those who were physically or mentally absent. 

More seriously though, the lesson was rather fun and quite an experience. It was a delight to get out into the city with classmates and just experiment around with new and unfamiliar gear, having to work it all out together and overcome any road bumps along the way. Strangers walking and talking in the background of shots was a major one we encountered, however, I personally found that by making loud and unexpected noises they will promptly leave the area, likely in fear. The more you know.

GOD DAMN! So I started the first step of PB3 on Thursday night by doing a photoshoot. At approximately 6:17PM I arrived in Cranbourne to witness by interviewees band rehearse, and what an experience it was. Seeing a band rehearse and go through the trials and errors of creating is like nothing else in music. I’ve always been a lover of music, having dabbled in guitar and theatre, and also having been to numerous gigs, but this to me felt special. I was so in awe of the comradery they had that at moments I forgot that I had one camera rolling and was meant to be taking photographs with the other. Safe to say though, after 12Gb of footage, 3Gb of pictures and 3 hours later, I had had my fill for the night, though it was great fun! If anything, the shoot had only made me more keen to get on my way with completing more of the project and turning in something half-decent!

I know this blog is a little late, something happened to get in the way… LIFE! but isnt that why we’re here? IS THIS NOT THE ESSENCE OF OUR STUDIES!? But I digress.

OKAY KIDDOS! LISTEN UP! After being without internet access/a computer for several days (post-procrastination), my blog is back, and with a vengeance! So sit back, relax, and prepare yourself for what is most definitely too many blog posts for one night!
Let’s begin with the long overdue response to the week 5 readings! Beautiful. Powerful. Inspiring. And somewhat relevant. To me this piece really ddelineated the importance of photography as a text we use in modern day society, and how we’ve come to take it for granted. Many of us will see and walk pass hundreds, if not thousands of images every day without so little as a second glance, yet despite this, photography has still remained key in influencing media today, and remains prevalent in society.  It’s true, a picture speaks a thousand words, but in a lot of pictures these words are either rubbish, repeated or irrelevant. But for that one in a million, the diamond in the rough, the light in the dark of pictures, a fluent, coherent and meaningful essay is constructed in just a single frame. Having been desensitised to so much and ignoring so many supposedly important texts each day, for a single photograph to have such an effect really speaks for itself, in terms of how powerful imagery can be. Whether it be a staged photograph, a snapshot of a moment, a propaganda cartoon or a painting encapsulating one’s ideals in a heroic light, pictures have the power to change peoples’ lives, inform, communicate meaning and sharing someone’s point of view, even battles, whether they be personal, intellectual or literal.

This weeks lecture clarified more than I ever needed to know in preparation for PB3, it got me thinking of what to do next, it got me excited for the what I could created, so I started writing down ideas in class – listing all the possibilities!… then they were promptly crushed. Not being able to film in public without having to go through the arduous task of gaining permission from the local council, of which could take weeks, was a real bummer, basically eliminating %70 of my shots. So unless I happened to personally own a small rural town or a stretch oh a suburban street in my backyard, I was essentially limited to places I own or can easily* gain permission to. But even then, my own car was off limits due to ‘safety’, even if I promised not to hit many people this time.
Whilst disappointed with some of the strict rules and guidelines, I can see where’re there coming from and how they make sense.

Right! Now that my little bitch about that is out of the way, this weeks lecture was fantastic! After hearing about how and what we will learn of textual analysis, I can positively say that I cannot wait to not enjoy every movie I watch, but rather critique every frame, followed by annoying all non-film-orientated people about it. A disaster for them, fun for me.

Well that was…. interesting to say the least. For me the workshop served two purposes: to intimidate the ever-loving sweet bajeebus out of me in awe of everyone else’s works, and to cause me to shrink into a shell of embarrassment over mine.
In all seriousness though Friday’s class was great, being able to see everyone’s work and to see how they think and construct their films was very eye-opening and simply wonderful. It’s always fun to discover the learning and creating styles of your classmates, and there’s certainly a few varying styles to say the least. It’ll be fun to collaborate with everyone, blending ideas and styles to create original content.
So whilst I hated having to sit through my sad excuse for PB2, the class made me look forward to the future and working with different people as the course progresses.
Good job everyone, super dandy stuff you did there.