In the first ‘New Documentary’ studio for the semester, the class decided to immediately hit the streets. We first had a coffee and discussed the course, whilst introducing ourselves to one another. Following this, we each broke up into pairs and collected both audio and visual footage around the city of the theme ‘bicycles’. We plan on collating these into video clips and then assembling them together as a class on Korsakow, a new piece of software I am unfamiliar with.
At first, me and my partner did not know specifically what we needed to capture as the theme ‘bicycles’ is very broad and the footage got repetitive very quickly. We soon realized after taking lots of shots of bikes that there are things outside the box like signs and green/red lights for bike riders that show how bicycles are entrenched in everyday Melbourne life. We also notice a number of safety measures such as locks on bikes and specific bays with poles for holding them throughout the day. One picture shows the fluorescent reflector on a bike, another measure to protect riders. We really are a bike friendly city, but I know that there are many people who do not feel this way towards them so it could be interesting to delve further into Melbourne’s culture on this topic. We only collected 3 pieces of audio but one involved street sounds of cars intermingled with bike rider, something very telling.
The task was successful in enabling me and my partner to work as a team, while also engaging us with the topic at hand. We could have spent more time collecting audio however. It will be interesting to see how the audio we found will mesh with the pictures, only time will tell. Like my tutor, I did not take any pictures of people specifically, as I would have had to ask permission. Overall, I felt I did a good job but could have collected some more threads/strands of thought for further investigation.
Below is some of the footage(which I will use to make clips) collected in the first seminar.
Leave a Reply