MONDAY
12/9/2016

Today we started off the class by watching peoples street art videos which they had completed. I was rather impressed by some of them and thought about whether the footage which I captured with Louise and Jasmijn at Hosier Lane was going to live up to the same standards as these clips had. Eek! I still haven’t managed to do the edit on my street art video unfortunately. Too many other things which are holding higher priority have been piling up around me at the moment for me to work on my clip.

After watching the street art clips was spent talking about copyrights when filmmaking, making sure we have the right to use different media materials in our videos. We also spoke about making sure that we correctly fill out personal and location release forms when dealing with other people and their properties in films which we have created as RMIT students. We also were informed of ‘Risk Management Safety Reports’ which was a foreign concept to me at first. Now I know all about them! It’s basically just a list of possible hazards / risks which need to be considered for any particular film-shoot at any given location. Once the risks are listed, you must state the location which the risk may occur, and how you’ll deal to the situation. This is so that all crew members can refer to this sheet if anything were to go wrong. This is to that no one makes a different choice from what’s already set and therefore, will not get into any trouble for doing the wrong thing to help.

As I had serious setbacks with brief #2 due to my last minute artist fall-through that occurred, Louise granted me an extension for brief #3 which will be really helpful as I was a little concerned I’d not have enough to present for it at this stage.

WEDNESDAY
14/9/2016

Today in class we had a social media strategist come in to explain ways of getting our artist profiles off the ground and seen by people. This was interesting, but we sort of just talked about social media elements which I’m already pretty familiar with. Perhaps other members of the class are not so familiar and it would have been good for them to learn about different ways to approach using social media for publicity. We went over use of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine etc. and discussed using hashtags and ‘buzzwords’ for the publicity pieces.

buzzword

noun

informal

1. a word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context.

   “the latest buzzword in international travel is ‘ecotourism’”

After this mini-lecture, as a class we had a group talk and decided that we’d create a website and an Instagram account for our artist profiles which is pretty exciting!

MONDAY
5/9/2016

Today in class we worked through looking at the progress on our artist projects with Louise. I think almost all of the class except Rob and I got managed to get some good communication rolling with their artists. Unfortunately for me, my artist, Nikos Pantazopoulous, (rather late in the game) he realised would be too busy to take on being in a project like this which was a real bummer because I was very interested in his work. Over the break it was decided that I would not be having Nikos as my artist anymore and that I could switch. It was suggested to me that I could have another of the artists who were willing to partake in the project. However, because of the previous fall-through I was far more confident suggesting that I source my own artist to work with. I asked my mum and she immediately rung some names off for me to look up. As she is an artist herself, she knows several other creatives – so this was really helpful. This muck around has been quite a time-eater and I almost had entirely completed my Project Brief #2 on Nikos when I found out that he wouldn’t be partaking. This made me lose hope, so I didn’t really want to complete this background research project off on him and not do it for the new artist to work with.

The artist I’ve chosen to work with is named Spencer Lai, he works across quite a few mediums and makes these really interesting, pretty, tasteful-tacky, fashion reflexive installation pieces. He seems to use high-fashion items in the works, in a deconstructed form and woven with other materials. I’m really excited to meet him – we’re aiming for Thursday between 1:30-4:30pm. He has a/a few works exhibited at the TarraWarra Biennial currently – it’s a bit far out, but hopefully I’ll be able to check it out. All of the interactions I have had with him have been really pleasant so far. I am much less stressed now that I have the comfort in some level of connection between myself and Spencer as well! I think it really helps to have a connection a little closer than what was had with Nikos, as people are often busy and on different schedules and meeting up initially can be a struggle to arrange swiftly and the less they know about you – the less likely they will be to want to participate.

WEDNESDAY
7/9/2016

Today we have been looking at sound equipment for the cameras. Including Zoom H4N recorders – which I’ve used a little over the course of this degree so far, we then went over using the radio mic recorders but didn’t have time to get very far into anything else unfortunately.

FRIDAY
9/9/2016

Initially I was meant to film yesterday. However, Spencer was not able to meet up in the end so I had to switch my equipment booking yesterday. This actually worked in my favour as there weren’t any radio mic sets available to use yesterday and I would be using a corded mic I hadn’t really used before. Unfortunately, Serena and Fiona weren’t able to come today. Rob was there to help though which was really helpful in getting more than one angle and a few more ideas and discussions flowing. I used my DSLR, my headphones and Rob’s DSLR with a hired out mini LED light attached. I also hired out a zoom and the radio mic set from RMIT.

Spencer invited us over to their house to do the shooting, there were roadworks happening outside their bedroom window where we were initially going to film – as their desk they work at is in there. I decided we would move into the living room as the sound of the roadworks didn’t travel in there that heavily at all. Once we got around to filming after set up – the roadworks had pretty much stopped. This was good! It was so lovely to finally meet Spencer and they were very easy to talk to and had interesting topics to talk about and was a natural being interviewed in front of the camera. I’m so glad to have gotten some of the shooting out of the way and done early as it will help me to build on what I want to get out of the next shoot. This was an initial shoot where I interviewed and captured some of the work and items around their bedroom.

I was really worried about the zoom recording and the mics as I haven’t used them much… I couldn’t figure out how to record out of only the left line which was really annoying, I hope that I can fix this somehow. Possibly not though… I will have to speak with Louise. I looked over the sound recordings and some have a lot of background noise and I am so unsure about where they were being picked up from. I think possibly the zoom was recording through both the radio mic and the zoom? I’m going to have to run through this with Louise and see if it can be fixed. Otherwise, we’ll have to do a re-shoot of the interview process!

Here’s this week’s video update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjmVJoygn08

This week, Rob and I have been assigned the weekly update task. This means we will be documenting the happenings in our class for the week and presenting this information in a 1 minute video for the rest of our media school to see what we’ve been up to in this studio (video will be linked at the end of this post).

MONDAY
22/8/2016

Today we worked in a different room which was quite strange. The room was a lot smaller and we had a lot of equipment to use in this instance. Cameras and lights! Today’s class was focused on trialling three-point lighting when filming for an interview. Despite being extremely confused about which light went where and why for quite some time, once I got the gist of why certain lights needed to be in certain places, I was able to work in getting a nice clean shot of the interviewee (/classmate). The lights which we used are LED lights (which you can put tungsten filters on) and dedo lights.

LED

DEDO

The three-points of lighting are the key light, fill light and back light. Key Lighting is usually at 70-100% brightness, fill lighting which is at 50% brightness, and backlighting which is usually at 5% brightness. This allows for appropriate contouring of the subject’s features.

I find this video helpful when needing to recap on the lighting techniques which we were taught in today’s class, you may too.

WEDNESDAY
24/8/2016

Today, one of Louise’s old work colleagues, Jenny O’Meara, came to speak to our class about the work she’s done in the media industry and to help with feedback on our artist pitches which we compiled. Below is one of the short documentaries which Jenny made about a body painting artist, Emma Hack, who painted the bodies in Gotye’s music video to ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’.

Thankfully, my artist pitch seemed to get good feedback, but it was definitely too long. I’m also not really certain what’s going on with my artist at the moment as I have been trying to arrange a time for us to meet, but he’s not really cooperating in order to do so, at the moment. Hopefully things will smooth out and he’ll get in touch with me soon.

Here’s this week’s update which Rob and I compiled
Narration and filming – Dusty
Narration and editing – Rob

MONDAY
15/8/2016

Today we’ve been assigned our artists which we will be making video profiles on. My artist is Nikos Pantazapolous. I’m really excited about this project and upon looking at the work he has on his website, really excited to get to know more about it!

I missed today’s class as I was coming back from a trip in Sydney to see my friends who are touring with their band. It was meant to be a trip where my friend and I were going to film their gig that we went to, but our flight got delayed and we missed the support acts and half of their set. So that fell through entirely, which was a major bummer!

So far I’ve created a little bio as research on Nikos to get the ball rolling and make up for the time I lost missing today’s class. Next class I’ll be thinking about and noting down initial questions I can ask him about his practice.

WEDNESDAY
17/8/2016

Today’s class time was spent conducting vox-pops among random passers-by about ‘graffiti’ and/or ‘street art’. We set out three questions which we asked people at random. As I mentioned in my previous post, I really don’t like conducting vox-pops with people off the street, I find it invasive and awkward. However, it definitely pushed me a little further out of my comfort zone. Which is something that I’m working on this semester!

Here’s our studio’s weekly update:

MONDAY
8/8/2016

We began our class by watching some more of the artist profiles which Louise was showing us to give the class a better idea of the kind of videos we will aim to make with our assigned artists. Here’s one of the artist we looked at (but not the orginal video we saw in class), Slinkachu:

In the rest of our class time today, we spent it adventuring through nearby lanes of Melbourne which were filled with graffiti / street art. We were split into groups of three or four, and dispersed into the city. I was teamed with Jasmijn and Louise and we ended up taking the tram to Hosier Lane for filming. Even though I have been living in Melbourne for five years, this was the first time I had actually seen Hosier Lane. We decided as a group that this would be an easy spot to film at, as there’s a lot of art to look at. Even if it is stock-standard. It’s a pity that I really don’t like graffiti. However, I don’t mind certain street art. What I really don’t like about it, is the culture behind it. The idea of tagging a scribble over someone elses thought out piece just seems idiotic and disrespectful. If its aesthetic were a little more permanent (until someone went over it with a work just as thought out) I think I’d appreciate it more.

We used the Sony X200 on this little expedition and I filmed most of our footage. I was happy doing this though. I just hope that Louise and Jasmijn were satisfied with the time that they had using the camera and I hope that they found me helpful to work with.

WEDNESDAY
10/8/2016

Today’s class time was spent learning all about vox-pops and how to get people to stop and talk to us. We watched videos on how to engage with people who pass by in order to get them to participate in the work we’re conducting. I really don’t like doing vox-pops so I am not looking forward to this task. We also spent some time setting up the cameras an boom mic appropriately in order to successfully conduct them.

I did find this clip on vox-pops which I watched in my own time, quite good. Entertaining as well as reminding me to rid myself of my fears of talking to strangers on the street!

Here’s this week’s video update:

MONDAY
1/8/2016

Today, we decided on the groups we would be in for our artist projects. I’m really keen to get the ball rolling and I feel like my crew mates are too. I’m in a cohort with Serena, Rob and Fiona. Rob and I have worked together on a lot of projects and do so, because we work well together as a team. Both of us have similar creative ideas but also are able to constructively criticise each other’s ideas or work to create a well-rounded final product. Serena, both Rob and I met last semester in our studio where we focused on the practical use of the cameras and sound equipment we are able to use through RMIT. It’s really reassuring to have another person in our group who we know is fully capable of operating the assigned equipment. Fiona is a student who we have all met in this semester’s studio, I’m not certain of how much equipment knowledge she has but I think we’re all really keen on sharing our knowledge with both her, and whoever else needs a hand in this class. As a team, I have a good feeling we will produce entertaining works and I’m looking forward to getting to know my group and the rest of the class better as we progress with our projects.

WEDNESDAY
3/8/2016

Today, we thoroughly ran through operational aspects of the Sony X200 camera which we are able to hire and use through RMIT. This camera is much like the Sony camera we were using in my previous studio. However, over the course of this lesson I realised that it actually seems a lot more straightforward than the last. Fantastic! I was really glad that I was able to help both Louise and Riah (who I was partnered with today) with getting a better understanding in the operational department with the camera as I was already familiar with a similar model. We then ventured out of the classroom and took long, wide and mid-shots from different angles and had Riah walking up/down the stairs in these. These seemed to turn out pretty well – yet we don’t seem to be doing anything with them, Louise just wanted to see them played on our cameras to make sure we knew what we were doing.

Here’s this week’s video update:

MONDAY
25/7/2016

Contemporary art is a culture that matters -to itself, as its own sub-culture, to the local cultural formations in which it is embedded, to the complex exchanges between proximate cultures, and as trendsetting force within international high culture (pp. 242).

The quote above is pulled from our reading which was set this week, Terry Smith’s 2009 piece ‘What is Contemporary Art’. I found this was an important quote to briefly draw on as it expresses that Contemporary Art is important in the way that it encapsulates and reflects certain point, change or ‘trend’ within an era. Contemporary Art acts as a device to maps out moments in time in the form of art.

Today we talked about the differences between traditional art and contemporary art. We had a strong focus on thinking about the art which we saw at Gertrude Contemporary, which was clearly more modern day, despite having elements of old technological advancements in some of the works.

We also watched the full-version of the second half of The A-Z of Contemporary Art, which was both informative and amusing.

WEDNESDAY
27/7/2016

Today was a little bit of a blur, I didn’t realise that I had this class today and thought that I had my Australian Cinema class instead. Turns out, I had this studio AND a presentation due in it about my chosen artist, David Cross. I hadn’t completely prepared for it as I was very sick all of Monday night and slept all of Tuesday and lost track entirely! But I managed to rustle up my ideas of what to tell the class about David Cross and ended up presenting anyway which was good. It all went smoothly as I am interested in his work anyway, so I knew what I was talking about. Luckily they were just a warm-up to our actual project briefs and weren’t marked, in that case, I’d have been rather anxious – as well as feeling the post-stomach-bug still lingering.

David Cross is a New Zealander who now resides in Melbourne, Australia. I remember him from when I was much younger going to art exhibition openings with my mother. I always really liked his work, a particular favourite was called ‘Tear,’ which you can view on his website which I linked above in this post.

Here’s this week’s video update:

MONDAY
18/7/2016

Today was our first class for this studio, so it was a run-of-the-mill getting-to-know-classmates scenario. A lovely girl called Ariani and I were paired together for an introduction task. In this task we had to discuss with one another facts about ourselves and what we were doing in our course etc. and then introduce one another to the rest of the class. We learnt a lot of basic knowledge about each other. Where we were from, where we lived, what we liked about media and what drew us to media studies. Good to break the ice, no matter how mundane the process may seem – they always seem to spark up conversations. For instance, when someone began talking about how their partner was into Pokemon Go and our tutor asked whether anyone else played, almost everyone put their hand up. Ridiculous! I’ve tried to play it, but I find it boring – plus, the battery life on my phone is shocking.

Our tutor, Louise Turley, told us a bit about the associations she’s previously had in the arts and the media realm, including working for ABC. Very interesting to see how much she has accomplished and definitely gave me a sense of enlightenment of what can be achieved when you’re really passionate about what you do. We spoke about Artist Run Initiatives (ARIs) which is “any project run by artists, including sound or visual artists, to present their own and others’ projects. They might approximate a traditional art gallery space in appearance or function, or they may take a markedly different approach, limited only by the artist’s understanding of the term” (Wikipedia). We’ve been asked to find out what some ARIs in Melbourne are that we can visit in our own time, and we’re going to Gertrude Contemporary for Wednesday’s class to see the current exhibition about “the internet age” called ‘Antiques Roadshow’.

As well as forming initial association with class members and Louise, we were asked to consider three goals we want to accomplish over the course of this semester’s class. I had a little bit of trouble trying to accumulate these as I tend to take things as they come – in almost all aspects of my life. This is perhaps a mechanism I have to avoid letting myself down, who knows! However, I have thought of a few which I have good feelings about – because I already have a good feeling about this class!

1. Consider appropriate aesthetics when filmmaking and editing
2. Gain better editing skills by spending time in the edit suites trialling Premiere Pro’s tools and effects etc.
3. Get out of my comfort zone more in consideration of the entire filmmaking process (networking, researching through physical exploration / gallery visits, testing my technical abilities etc.)

I feel that these goals are achievable and I have chosen them specifically for the content which the course will hold – creating artist profiles!

WEDNESDAY
20/7/2016

Today was great, our class ventured to Gertrude Contemporary where we saw the Octopus 16 show called Antiques Roadshow. There was a lot going on in this particular gallery space, so it was pretty difficult to concentrate on one particular piece at a time. I felt that it did not need as many pieces of art showing at the one time as it had. I felt like possibly it was the sound works which were overlapping one another which was the main problem for me in terms of trying to focus on the works appropriately.

The exhibit focused on the “internet age” which we live in. It had some older works which presented features of previous technological advancements as well as some video works which were recent but explored previous internet fads. My favourite piece was the sculpture/installation artwork which was a scent diffuser that emulates the smell of a new MacBook Pro. Crazy that people actually have the ability and technology to create this kind of work.

This was another favourite. I’m not entirely sure why, I think I just liked that it was created when webcam features such as the ones featured, were just being introduced – and now, we have apps such as Snapchat which you can get on your smartphone which harbour an array of new decorative filters as well as newfound, face-enhancing filters. So this piece stood out to me as it jolted some kind of nostalgia as well as acting as a trigger to realising how much creative technology has advanced.

Here’s this week’s studio video update: