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.

For your viewing displeasure I present to you the cinematic version of my haiku that I spewed up in about 20 minutes. Enjoy! or not, whatever, I don’t care.

Purely out of general interest and totally not trying to fill up my blog quota, I thought I’d go back and look at Monday’s lecture for ideas, and one that keeps jumping out at me, was the one regarding sounds we love. It’s fascinating how certain sounds, for seemingly no apparent reason, can greatly affect us. For example, personally I love the sound of rain and crashes of thunder, I find it soothing. In terms of sounds I hate or sounds that annoy me, not much phases me, I’m pretty chill when it comes to most things. You get that when you grow accustom to having an Age of Empires Builder as a father who goes on 14 hour angle grinding, spontaneous hammering and screaming sessions, however there are a few sounds that irritate me to know end, and one that you hear being emphasised in movies all the time. Sorry Wilhelm Scream, I’m not talking about you, even though you are pretty damn annoying, I’m talking about the sound of water/other drinks being poured. Why directors/foly artists feel it’s necessary for it to sound like there a freakin’ boom mic inside the jug/original vessel, I have no idea why, all I know is that I hate it. The one thing I despise more than that though, are mouth sounds. Not those ‘words’ things, I mean chewing, swilling, beat boxing, gurgling, smacking lips/gums, that weird licking sound – you know the one, all of them. Any guttural/mouth based noise is just ewwies.
I’ve told some friends about this before and they thought I was some sort of a sociopath because of this. How dare they? hating gross sounds doesn’t make me a sociopath, vivesection does. Geez, judgemental much?

Come join me and see how we can detract meaning from something seemingly poetic! Yay for perspective!

Also tune in next week for the cinematic version when I can actually post it without passing the upload limits on Vimeo.

To me, this video was less about what’s in the image, but more how the image is presented. Whilst I I try to offer things in my video which I believe to reflect my character, being a reflection of what I love, I wanted to portray my video in a way in which my ‘style, or personality, can be seen.
In order to display my love for cheesiness and the terrible, I had to make my video exactly that, and what better way than to give a Grade 3-personal-introduction-to-class’ type of video?
It was a lot of fun toying around with Premiere in the process of making this film, seeing just how bad I could make it. I owe a lot of it to the music which was composed by a good friend of mine after I gave him the inspiration of ‘70’s electro funk elevator music’, which I found suited the style of the video quite nicely.
Part of the terribleness I feel was heightened by the fact it was just me… in both a good and bad way.  I felt somewhat limited and frustrated having to constantly be setting up a tripod, sit down, pose, then see it as all wrong and try again, but I think it just adds to the cheap look I was after. Although, purely having static shots was not fun to work with.
In hindsight though, I do believe the process of my editing was rather rushed, even more so than the entirety of the project. In the end it didn’t quite get the right effect that I was looking for, close, but no cigar. It was bad, and not in the good way. I would have loved to have had spent more time on the project, but unfortunately compromises had to be made. Being so far away from my family, friends, and a large portion of my belongings, I found it difficult to think of some concepts, so I thought this one would suffice.
Though dissatisfied with the final product, feeling it doesn’t quite reflect me in the way I wanted it to (oops), ultimately I’m not disheartened by it, more looking to treat this as another learning experience.

In the words of not Jaden Smith (probably) “there are no earlids”, and by golly gosh is he right! (Although there is tinnitus, so watch out!).
We live in a world where we are constantly surrounded by sounds, and all of these combined do take a toll on us, consciously or not. Due to the fact that we don’t ‘have earlids’, even sounds that we may not be intentionally trying to listen to may still be heard. This can be anything from that one terrible neighbour you have who likes to mow his lawn at 5 in the morning, just when you got in bed from a Netflix marathon, to the chirping of birds on a sweet Spring afternoon, or even that little shrew Ashleigh in grade 3 who you accidentally overheard her talking about you on the bus (I HEARD YOU!!!). Though we may not actively paying attention to the aforementioned things, we still do hear them and they do take their toll on how we interpret things around us. This brings us to the identification of ‘listening vs hearing’. Hearing can simply be described as background noise, the ambiance track to our lives if you will ( probably doesn’t apply to Ashleigh, but still), whereas as listening is what we intentionally focus on, the foreground of our hearing, such as speech or music.
As I sat in class taking notes, I realized one of the secondary teachings of today’s lecture; some of us goof up and overlook non-diegetic sound and its value in the production of our pieces. It makes a difference. Let us rejoice in this wondrous knowledge bestowed upon us, let’s give them films some feeling, yo! Peace.