MONDAY
26/9/2016
Today was an extremely busy day! Had an early start, straight to uni in the morning to finish off the final touches on my street art video. The street art video really shouldn’t have taken this long, but the footage wouldn’t sync to Premiere Pro on my laptop so that meant I had to do it all at uni in the edit suites. Fortunately, the Premiere Pro we have at uni is really responsive and I don’t get frustrated with it, like I do with my version. So, I finally compiled the footage I wanted to use and I will make some time to run down to the edit suites and export everything tomorrow or Wednesday when I come in for my next classes. Lucky for me, Louise understands how stressful all of the other happenings and mess-arounds with my artist documentary process have been, so she has given me a little more time. Very simple task, but meant that it was lower on my list of priorities.
Once I finished off in the edit suites, I went to class to present my information on my artist, Spencer Lai. I feel it went really well and that the class could definitely see the kind of vibe I would be aiming for within my work – playful, vibrant and (possibly) experimental. In my presentation, I explained to the class that I have two other subjects who I would be interested in filming to talk about Spencer’s work. A friend of his, Jake Swinson, who he works in collaboration with under the hood Monica’s Gallery. As well as him; photographer/stylist, Rose Ng, who has done a photoshoot with Spencer and is actually a friend of mine from a studio which I took part in, in Year 1 | Semester 2 of last year called ‘Specific to Site’ (with Robbie Rowlands). I was hoping that one of them would be available at least, but Jake is unfortunately working full-time and very soon will be moving to America! Rose is currently extremely busy with uni and photography projects – as well as travelling to different cities/countries for them. It would be really good to have them as part of the documentary to give it that little bit extra, but the actual video is not very long anyway.
An afterthought also; getting in touch with Spencer’s best friend and fashion designer, Jessie Kiely, would be amazing as they worked together for a piece in the exhibition showing currently at TarraWarra museum – Spencer has discussed this in the shoot today. However, I may have left this too late to arrange.
During the interview there were a lot of annoyances in terms of the audio recording. I changed the batteries about 3 times and every time the recorder still died on me! I didn’t even think to plug it in at the wall… that would have worked. But I was also in a spot which didn’t have a plug nearby. Thankfully this was toward the end of the interview section and I had collected almost all of the information I needed, bar one segment on Spencer’s recent work at Fort Delta.
When I got to the tech office to load my footage on to the server I was shocked to see that the Zoom read ‘no data’ on its screen… this gave me a minor heart attack to say the least. Turned out that there was still footage on the SD card and that was some kind of malfunction. However, my audio was cut off toward the end! So upsetting.
EDIT: THE AUDIO WAS ALL THERE! I FORGOT THAT I HAD CUT IT OFF AT THAT PARTICULAR POINT! YAY!
WEDNESDAY
28/9/2016
Today I could not make it to class as I had a job interview in the morning. However, once I had completed my interview, I went to the Abbotsford convent to check out Robbie Rowlands’ exhibit for the Fringe Furniture Festival. I went to have a look at this exhibition because on Friday, Rob is filming an interview with him for his documentary. I figured it would be a good idea to see his current work as I am going to be helping with the filming process on Friday. Robbie Rowlands is both an artist, and tutored Rob and I in semester 2 of last year. I loved that class and therefore, I am very interested in seeing his artwork as well as helping out on Rob’s documentary. Unfortunately, neither Serena or Fiona can make the shoot on Friday as we will be filming all day in Ballarat, looking at an old house which Robbie has been asked to create an installation piece in.
Once I had finished exploring the artworks which the convent had to offer, I journeyed to the edit suites to put final touches on my street art video component of brief #3 and export and upload it accordingly. It’s definitely not my best work and was very rushed as I have been prioritising more pressing tasks which uni has been demanding. After finishing up on my street art video, I managed to begin editing my documentary footage of Spencer Lai. Finally! I’ve decided it’s a lot easier for me if I use the edit suites at uni rather than putting myself through so much pain and suffering using my slow laptop in an attempt to create a satisfying end product. Just not worth the frustration of trying so hard to get the cuts perfect and failing miserably because of the lag.
FRIDAY
30/9/2016
Today Rob, Robbie (his artist) and myself went on an adventure to Ballarat to film for Rob’s documentary. We did this because Robbie has a site out there which he will be working in as it will be renovated/demolished. Once we got to the house, we explored it and found an space near the venetian blinds to interview Robbie. This stylistic choice worked really well with his artistic aesthetic of making a series of parallel cuts into objects, moving and reshaping them into another form. The light shone through the blinds and casted lovely lines of light across his face. It’s not a traditional aesthetic, but it looked really nice in my opinion.
When Rob and I had gotten the camera positioning and lighting correct, we got Robbie to sit in the space we had made. I talked Rob through the Zoom settings he needed for the interview, as I had gained a bit of experience with them after my previous disasters with them! Got to be really careful with sound. Definitely learnt that the hard way!
Robbie’s work is mainly site responsive work and after we had interviewed him, packed up and began heading home, we stopped by a big abandoned TAFE building and decided to explore it. The waterlogged building held many smashed windows, graffiti, rubbish and broken features. It was actually a little bit scary being in there, particularly when I lost the others occasionally after getting lost in my own exploration. Leaving that site, we went to an abandoned heritage house. This was really beautiful. It actually reminded me a lot of the house I lived in for the first 12 or so years of my life – obviously a much older and deteriorating version, but similar features. The hessian we could see under the peeling wallpaper layers were nostalgic, as were the fireplaces in all of the bedrooms.
Made for a long, but fun day of travelling, exploring and filming (9am – 6pm) for Rob’s documentary!
Here’s this week’s update: