Category Archives: UNCATEGORIZED

The Script

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Attached to this post is the first instalment of my dark adaptation Treehorn. It is of the moment when Beecroft, the story’s protagonist, and Harvey, a pivotal character, first meet on the grounds of Hazel’s Estate. This scene is intended to function as the beginning of Beecroft and Harvey’s friendship.

Within this sequence, I have attempted to address issues of mental health, human intimacy and  social acceptance all in the backdrop of a lush green garden which, in this world, is a luxury that only the wealthiest can acquire.

What I think works in this piece, is the protagonist’s shift in emotion. He begins with rage and defeat but then concludes his arc with hope. I also find Harvey interesting and can almost envisage his jocular jovial manner,  though, he is probably understated in this scene.

This script could be improved further with more set detail. Hazel’s Estate should be opulent and teeming with useless ornamental trinkets that overtly emphasise wealth and social importance. I also feel that the title of this piece should be changed to Beecroft which apparently means ‘bee farm’ in Middle English. I envisaged that our protagonist’s thoughts would sound like a busy beehive — hence the reason for Beecroft’s name.

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‘What an elephant isn’t’

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In a 1991 lecture, actor and comedian John Cleese states that, “I always find that if two (or more) of us throw ideas backwards and forwards I get to more interesting and original places than I could have ever have gotten to on my own”. Although this is a powerful statement, I kind of feel like Cleese is preaching to the converted somehow. It resonated with me far less than other moments in the speech. Though not because I didn’t whole heartedly agree with it, but because I feel as though collaboration is innate. Further, the passage where Cleese describes ‘what an elephant isn’t’ (03:36) took my thinking into far deeper and more interesting places than collaboration.

For instance, collaboration has been the cornerstone of my creative existence! For as long as I can remember, the notion of bouncing ideas off a willing friend or associate has led to some of the biggest accomplishments of my life. Through attending university, team work is as much a prerequisite as it is a necessity, be it academically or socially.

Just this morning, I ran into a buddy and class mate Brydan who roused me from my morning, sleep-with-my-eyes-open-keypad-mash at the RMIT Student Hub. The interaction was social until it soon turned into an invaluable meeting that would significantly enhance my assignment and the way I think about writing character

At the time, a tiny fraction of my brain that was awake was attempting to ascertain why Final Draft was exporting unreadable .sex files as opposed to PDF’s. Brydan offered some advice on the issue and at last! A PDF was produced revealing the first pages of my script. He then asked if he could read it and without hesitation, I handed him my computer so that he could view the page on the screen.

After thoroughly reading my short script, ‘Buddy’ Brydan discovered an important aspect to one of my characters that I hadn’t (and probably wouldn’t have) noticed. Through profiling the character Treehorn’s socio-economic status, we worked out that he was from a wealthier family than first thought. Brydan deduced this by noting that in the script, Treehorn had had a gardener working on his parents property in the past which therefore implies affluence as groundskeepers are costly. Brydan quizzed me on this and as I responded to Brydan’s query, Treehorn changed. Not into a different character, but rather into an enriched version of what I had already created.

And there you have it, through collaboration new layers have formed opening potential pathways for further narrative. But this is just one example of a collaboration! I feel as though collaborations such as this one happen all the time. What I think Cleese is doing well in his lecture, is instilling common sense. I feel as humans, we have an innate urge to collaborate which is possibly why we’re so glued to social media but I digress.

What I found most interesting about Cleese’s lecture was the deduction of what creativity isn’t rather than what it is. “It’s easier to say what creativity isn’t. A bit like the Sculptor, who when asked, how he had sculpted a very fine elephant, explained that he’d taken a big block of marble, and then knocked away all the bits that didn’t look like an elephant”  (03:36). This statement reminded me of the world that conceptual sculptor Rachel Whiteread forms in her exhibitions. Whiteread creates giant plaster casts of empty space. This concept of envisaging negative space, I believe, could allow people to get out of their heads, fret less about the unknown and stay true to the present and in turn themselves.

Though, as I am still exploring the affordances of such existential thought, nay… as I am still baffled with such existential thought, I decided to spare myself the brain-melt and delegate the  excursion to my characters. They can be the ones to explore this, somewhat Cartesian, thought labyrinth like Guinea Pigs that are alive but only on the page. If my character Treehorn applies the thought of negative space, to defuse his disturbing, turbulent, mercurial thoughts to calm the storm that rages within him, perhaps we will be graced with a blissful leitmotif that balances out the story’s overall carnage. Otherwise, there’s just no relief.

Overall, Cleese’s statement has contributed to the expansion of my creative thinking and could potentially influence significant components of the world that I hope to create.

– Cleese, J 1991, A lecture on creativity, https://vimeo.com/18913413//.

– Parry, F 1971, The Shrinking of Treehorn, Holiday House Publishing.

– Whiteread, R (last accessed 23/3/2017) – http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/rachel-whiteread-2319

A telescope, a microscope, a camera lens, a piece of warped glass. Now, write what you see when you look through each one. GO!

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With the aid of this week’s reading by Adam Ganz, we are looking to explore lens based writing. Ganz revisits its inception by speaking of past practice from Galileo, Darwin, Defoe, Cook, to contemporaries like Freedberg, Leeuwenhoek and Hochschild. This paper alines  these scholars and scientists with a notion that the lens is the yardstick for concise explanations devoid of ornamental and abstruse language (as beautifully put by Robert Boyle) (p. 11).

I am especially interested in Ganz’s attempt to codify lens based writing and its affordances.

  • Prosthetic: the heightened perception of an object through extensions of a sense, such as a telescope for visual or speaker for audio enhancement
  • Historic: relaying what has been perceived before should a willing observer be unable
  • Analytic: cut and dry description of what is perceived
  • Aesthetic: viewing and framing simultaneously
  • Diachronic: the observation of the effects of time
  • Scopophilic: offering voyeuristic pleasure from examination (p.10).

For me, this made the art of lens based writing easy to understand and thus apply to my own practice.

However, I was somewhat confused by Viktor Shklovsky’s take on ‘the purpose of art’ and the defamiliarisation of the observed (p.19). Shklovsky’s factive, definitive language on such a nuanced topic as art, makes me question whether this entry is a useful contribution to the argument or not. I would be interested to see what others took from this passage.

Instead of getting too caught up in this, I moved on with the presumption that Shklovsky was merely highlighting an artist’s ability to alter one’s perception.

Overall, this paper has given me a new appreciation for the scripts and science journals that I have read through my life. It has sparked a new enthusiasm for lens based writing, in particular, for the scripts that we will produce in class. By extension, it has given me some  new tools to construct my ‘world’ for the next assignment.

Ganz, A 2013, ‘To make you see’: Screenwriting, description and the ‘lens-based’ tradition, Journal of Screenwriting, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 7-24.

THIS WORLD IS NOT OUR FRIEND

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I honest to god had my first light bulb moment today! Probably the first of its type for the year. It was in response to one of the five questions that we have been asked to ruminate on until the next class.

How does the world affect the tone of what we see?

The dreariness of the weather, the cold colour tones, the air of hopelessness all contribute to a sense that we will be pushed to the threshold of our mental wellbeing. As viewers and as characters, this world will be the impetus for us to either fight or fly and overall, stay glued to our objective.

Had the character Ray been placed in a tropical environment to tell her story, her urgency to acquire a house out of the elements mightn’t have been as palpable. She may have rethought her decision to pull a gun on Lila. She may have sort shelter elsewhere.

This world is not her friend no matter how caring she is toward her family.

We as viewers, we are drawn into her plight and with the realistic production are reminded that this could be our plight too.

Continuing on from my previous (somewhat tangential) blog…

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Continuing on from my previous (somewhat tangential) blog…

We were asked to write something we like, then something we hate. Then we were to add five reasons why we like it, five reasons why we hate it. Then, we were to write five reasons why someone might like what we hate, and why someone might hate what we like. Who would these people be?

What stories could we tell?

So…

I like sound/audio and I hate how I have to pay $9 to the government for a concession card.

In applying the exercise…

I like audio because;

  • it can be sculpted
  • audio technology has surpassed visual production
  • it is difficult to block out
  • it tells a story
  • the principal of sound can be paralleled to the existence of the universe

I hate having to pay $9 to the government for a concession card because;

  • it doesn’t seem justifiable
  • the government don’t need my $9
  • government money may go toward the military which I don’t mind to a degree however they aren’t using tax payers $$$ efficiently. For example, the JSF which is a contract that has been on hold for nearly 10 years and tax payers have been paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the licensing
  • I have very little voice to contest this
  • That could be spent on my lunch or toward the money that I save when I use my concession

The reasons why someone might like what I hate could include;

  • one may believe that the $9 concession card fee goes toward the teller’s wage
  • they may also believe that the fleet of JSFs will be delivered this year
  • they may enjoy airshows
  • Their boss told them to charge $9 and if they were to consider wavering it, they won’t get their promotion
  • They are malevolent to the core and revel in the thought of societal struggle

Someone may hate Sound/audio because;

– it can hurt your ears when near a construction site or an airshow

– people can use sound offends

– some may prefer vision

– they may be hard of hearing

– the thought of sound/audio may evoke a bad memory like an ex or a bad performance

Finally… 

This exercise has been a lot of fun and it has contributed to the first 2 characters in my story!

Advancing to this inspiration came on a night out watching Andrew Knight and Jan Sardi speak about film writing, I observed several platitudes that seemed to function as space-fillers.

At Etihad Stadium that same evening, I conversed with many people who spoke mechanically as though they were automatons in a Stepford nightmare. They were trialling a rotoscope camera which delivered impressive images though those I spoke to couldn’t seem to answer simple questions such as, ‘whats your involvement’ without looking as though they had just inserted a floppy disc into their brains.

It reminded me of Jacques Tati’s 1967 film Playtime where humans became secondary to the cold complicated machinery that ruled their lives.

From here, the first character B was born. B is a surviver who craves the human touch and is the personification of the lack of societal intimacy as a result of advancements of technology and bureaucracy. B’s antagonist is H. H who is malevolent to the core and profits off the fear of others.

Fired from a Machine Gun to Worlds That Never Were

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It’s hard not to be sentimental while writing my final blog of 2016. So instead, I’m going to be cold and clinical.

Here is a transcript of what I said for the final presentation (27/10/2016)…

“The participatory mode, which we’ll be talking about, blurs the lines between producer, distributor and  audience. But this is only a cursory glance at the concept… Bill Nichols argues that 1960’s sync sound marks the inception of this mode. Nichols also attributed participation to talk-back radio, host-television and even computer platforms. However, since Nichols’ quasi-monopoly of key filmic terms, many have applied their own interpretation to this Mode. Claire Bishop and Patricia Zimmerman are exemplars of this.  Zimmerman’s work has been described as virtual, public, social, hand-made, machine generated, community focused and delivered in a staccato style… as if fired from a machine gun. This is kind of what we have been aiming to achieve in this class. For me, having spent days and nights with the homeless community, with the look to having them contribute to my project’s website, has allowed me to reveal the possibilities of audience guided content. Our class has encouraged an emersion into a new way of social interaction and human exposition”.

Here is what I produced for my final PB4 documentary…

Here are my true feelings about participatory practice….

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Here is the path that I’m on…

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Here… I am truly grateful for the support and encouragement from my peers but more so, the talented Kim Munro.  I should hope to see your creations in the halls of greatness and I trust that they will help me to confide in the notion that “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were” (Carl Sagan).

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The next best thing

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Having had one hell of a mercurial ride on this documentary project, it is a wonder how I’ve made any progress at all.

After an altercation with the authorities and a dispute with the residents of the area, my key participant vacated his turf leaving no indication of where he had gone.

However, it was just a few days ago when I got a messenger note from him ensuring me that he was safe and well and that he is looking to get clean again. With this in mind, my original project has again taken a new direction but this time, one that I cannot begrudge.

I was hoping to talk about this face-to-face  with my class mates but due to  parenting commitments, Skype would be the next best thing.

Attending the class as a computer screen was actually not too bad as I was a witness to Matt’s production methods and project trajectory for his piece,  I was also able to talk to our lecturer Kim about improvements to mine.

Skype’s obviously not ideal but when you are driven to distraction by your own platitudes of why you can’t be available for class again, Skype is really the next best thing.

 

How do I leave room for serendipity like this? Just keep shooting b-roll?

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After washing my hands of getting further interviews for my documentary, I moved on to capturing b-roll vision. This consists of day and night shots of the area.

The night-time b-roll is lovely and I’m looking forward to putting it all together though, I would definitely benefit from having a second opinion on the storyboard as I’ve just been ruminating as if my project was on the meaning of life or something!

While I was shooting last night, serendipity would come my way. On the Chapel St and Toorak Rd intersection, a woman approached me and asked if I had dropped some money. She revealed two $50 dollar notes and asked if the $100 was mine. I replied, “No, it’s yours now”. However, she insisted that we split the finings and on that, she handed me $50 dollars, smiled and walked into the sunset. . . well, the sun had already set but that’s what it felt like!

How do I leave room for serendipity like this? By just keep shooting b-roll?

Maybe.

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B-Roll bonanza

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Today, I wanted to get some b-roll establishing shots for my final production. I thought I’d also pay a visit to Duncan, my key participant on the off chance that I could interview him further about music, life and living on the streets. However, he wasn’t at his hovel where I normally find him. In fact, all of the people in the area told me that he had gone AWOL after an altercation a few days earlier.

Great. Fucking great.

I’m obviously pissed. I’m pissed that I could’ve been doing something different with my time. I’m pissed that he has seemingly slid backwards, so to speak, from finding a home and developing some sort of modicum of stability in his life… if not for himself, but for his daughter. And I’m pissed that I can’t help but speculate as to how this will affect her in years to come.