Highrise apartment block in South Yarra (2015)
Piet Mondrian’s work catalogue has recently moved into the public domain as it is 70 years after his death. This building in South Yarra has snapped it up quicker than you can say ‘neoplasticism’.
Is this really the best way to celebrate such an inspirational artist?
The original hipster Piet Mondrian 1899
For Project Brief 2, our class has produced varied an interesting Media Self Portraits.
Some highlights for me were, Tim’s use of stop-motion, Aisha’s ethereal look at her literary inspirations like C.S. Lewis and Oscar Wilde, Siobhan’s creepy chime, Fabiana’s satirical subversion of vanity and dreamy violin, feeling like Genna’s housemate with her intentionally obscured song, Jen’s story of her short film, Alex’s creative use of the mise-en-scene where he cleverly initiated a conversation with himself, Justin’s reference to Bret Easton Ellis and Sally’s hilarious audio/visual editing.
I’m looking forward to hopefully working with these cats!
I should have prepared my presentation better because when it came to my turn to speak, I ploughed through my explanation like a bulldozer in an antique glass shop. I only mentioned about half of what I wanted to.
We finished off the class with a camera tech session getting accustomed to the resources that are at our disposal as an RMIT student.
I just thought I’d vent my spleen here… if by we you mean I think that Marlon Brando is an unrealistic actor (as described in the Mise-en-Scene chapter of Bordwell and Thompson’s treatise, pg.133), please count me out of the coterie.
It was a refreshing start to the class when fellow student Jen Farrow announced that her short film needed talent. With Jen’s courage and tenacity, I’m sure she will have no trouble summoning help from crew and performers!
As much as I would have liked to have heard more about Jen’s project, the first guest speaker was ushered to the stage; Adrian Miles, the personification of a human tornado.
Adrian touched on documentary, ontography, Rene Descartes, theory and practice, speculative realism, how ideas don’t mean squat without action and how only humans tell stories. He then presented a slide with the words ‘dog, bat, snake’, I thought that this was leading to a metaphor or some esoteric proverb but sadly, I never found out what happened to those critters. What I got from Adrian’s lecture was that ‘inbetweeners’ are the button pressers who are a dime a dozen and stories should be thrown out the window.
Short of decanting my scribbles over the soggy streets of Melbourne, I thought I’d take this as an omen maybe… a kind of an axiom, to be prepared to be quickly outdated, adapt accordingly and get ready to be stricken to the bowels of the industry’s pecking order.
Adrian abated to the exit spiraling toward Geelong leaving Liam Ward to present in the path of debris.
Liam reiterated a lot of what Jasmine covered in class like the Koulechov effect, Serge Eisenstein and how society shapes our perception.
All up and with regard to the latter two speakers, they were very passionate and knowledgeable chaps and I hope that I get to hear them speak again but in depth and with fewer time constraints.
The photo above is of an exercise where we were asked to create a narrative on sequence cards and ensure that a story could be formed with any combination.
23rd of March Practical
We often forget the importance of audio within a narrative. Having spent much of my waking life observing sound, I’m frequently frustrated by filmmakers depriving my senses. Today we were reminded that sound is something that cannot be overlooked. We learned about the different components of sound in film such as, delay, reverb, panning, looping, texture and silence… the latter, I have a particular interest in. In film, silence is often used to create tension and suspense, in podcasts, in can be seen as a time for momentarily a reflection; in art, one could consider the casting of space as silence like in Rachel Whiteread’s work.
Rachel Whiteread
One of my most favourite uses of silence in music is of a Deep Purple song entitled Child In Time. The sound moves beautifully from mayhem to sultry with a brief bar of silence being the crucial segue… and if you have an issue with rock and or roll please tune out now!
At 06:02 of this Youtube…
On Monday 16th of March, we had the chance to critique our work by playing ‘hats’ which is a game that removes the personal element and replaces it with subjective opinion. ‘Hats’ is a great way to avoid that internal apoplectic rage the simmers behind the eyes of ‘the judged’. It bypasses ego and scorn to become mutual discourse and because it is a requirement… you have to do it!
The way it works is that you wear one of four imaginary hats, each of which have a different colour representing your feelings about a piece of work; i.e. what’s good about the piece, what was your initial reaction, what doesn’t work about the piece and how could it be developed further.
My class mate showed me some of her pieces to which some were so damn good that I was clutching at straws to find something wrong with them!
This class activity proved to be a useful exercise that I will definitely use for future projects.
We then moved onto an iMovie ‘power editing’ session where the class was again divided into groups and given a theme to create a short film using found footage from the archives. Our group had been assigned the theme of movement.
The piece that I have imbedded is short story about the big dreams of a snail.
Guest speaker Anne Lennox gave a presentation on copyright beginning with the 101 basics. Anne reminded the group that copyright is automatic, there are no registration requirements in Australia and ideas and facts are not protected. Rights of ownership, duration of copyright, infringement, fair dealing and music were also points that were explored. I was particularly interested in the rules and complexities of copyright law with regard to social media, specifically, with Pintrest. About two weeks ago, I was politely asked to remove a pin by a British photographer.
Another interesting fact that was mentioned was that anything created on behalf of the government is owned by the government. They just have it all!
Rachel’s input is always valued; she interjected with a statement about how film festivals will not take submissions if the proper copyright steps have not been taken; this is definitely food for thought.
The second guest speaker was Kyla Brettle who must have inspired everyone in that room. With her butterfingers style discourse and ‘cool as shit’ mannerisms, Kyla explicitly and implicitly relayed that, if you’re passionate about your work, you too can travel the world, party hard and document new and interesting stories… but just make sure that you endeavour to use a telephone and not email when communicating with participants.
Kyla presented a Venn diagram that cleverly illustrated the roles in documentary production; they were, text, funder (spell check hates that word), producer, participant and audience; however, as Kyla had only limited time to speak and the Venn diagram was only touched on; I feel that I’m needing more clarification on this.
Finally, why does Paul Ritchard remind me of all of my uncles?! I really look forward to picking Paul’s brains about film and television.
The revered badge of the GT Falcon
Despite a multi-sensate increase, this sense impression overload doesn’t necessarily mean the information will stick. Mason, J (2002) The Discipline of Noticing, p31
On Tuesday the 10th of March were set the task of observing media around the city. Rachel divided the class into groups according to the geography of room 80.11.10. and assigned each group a location. Our group was number 4, there were 6 of us and we were sent to Federation Square.
As I was on my bike, I had to split from the group and make my way solo. 
My iPhone was on shuffle and 2 songs came through my ear buds in transit, Prisoner by The Jezebels and Release Your Problems by Chet Faker.
On arrival, I texted a group member to see if they were there yet. I got no response so started looking around without them.
I saw Daniel Ricciardo’s – Red Bull advert and immediately thought of Alexander Rodchenko and the propaganda artists of the 40s and the 50s. On researching those images further, it seemed that a raised arm was the pose of choice if you wanted to sell an idea.
There was still no word from the group so I continued perusing the site.
Viktor Borisovich Koretskii Moscow 1941
The advertisement on the church at first glance seemed sacrilegious until I realised that it was a cause for the refugees.
Eventually, I was flagged down by a member of our group and this was without the aid of mobile phone correspondence. The group had been whittled down to two thirds of what it was, perhaps distance and lack of communication had resulted in the dispersion of our caravan.
I wasn’t happy with the audio at the time so I revisited the site that evening after work and got this an esoteric Fed Square freebie gem! It was music to spoken word… another reason why I live in Melbourne.
Later that night I realised that for some reason, I had set my phone to airplane mode and when I got home, I began receiving messages from the day. It was gratifying to think that the outside world wasn’t trying to snub me, it was just me that needed to be a bit more on task with technology.
All up, it was an enjoyable experience as I got a chance to get outside and exercise my observational skills and ascertain which media items resinated with me the most.
The cool esoteric performance may have stood a chance but if it weren’t for this conscious media documentation process, I can almost be certain that these sounds and images observed throughout the day would have been discarded and become a victim of the ephemerality of my short term memory.
Nuzzling into the bosom of a sort of set typography in my brain, I seemed to have forgotten that wonderful human capacity to learn at such a rapid rate as I have done in the first 2 weeks at RMIT.
My 3 chosen subjects have delivered a tempest of knowledge.
So far, Sound Design has had me observing my sonic surroundings in ways that I have never would have considered. Cinema has allowed me to tear apart the elements of film narrative and investigate how the 4 meanings are categorised; Referential, Explicit, Implicit and Symptomatic. Media felt like a chummy old pal who has returned to dazzle me and at the same time, steal my money but with a budding new awareness, I’m viewing it in a new light.
I must have fallen to the side of observing Media as an automaton in recent years, like a slave to its machine, up to my neck in a cesspool of useless information. I sense that I’m being more selective with my Media consumption and it feels good to be wading out of the barrage at last!
