Assignment 3: Proposal

Assignment 3: Week 8

Assignment 3: Week 8

Assignment 3: Week 7

Assignment 3: Week 6

Assignment 3: Week 5

Assignment 3: Week 5

UNTOLD STORIES

ASSIGNMENT 3

PROPOSAL

Working title: Emerging Communities

Form and medium: What form will it take? Where will it be shown/experienced? How long do you estimate it to be?
Several (3-5) short documentaries, posted onto a video streaming service (Vimeo or YouTube) and onto the Media Factory blog and the Living Museum of the West website.  Approximately 5 min per video, 15-25 min in total.

Short synopsis:
The Walker Close Community Centre has been providing the Western region with an incredible amount of support without any recognition.  Join us, as we shed light on the stories of people who found their community within the Walker Close Community Centre.

Longer synopsis:
The Walker Close Community Centre was started in 2004, and has been supporting thousands of people since.  Providing services for people of diverse locales, educational levels, and socio-economic backgrounds, they have been able to grow their resources to be able to help hundreds of people every day.

Starting with an introduction to the centre manager, Mr Ayelign, we will journey through several of the centre’s many resources and hear the stories of people who the centre has been able to help.  Through their individual stories, the audience will get a sense of the greater scope of the centre and how many more lives they have touched.

FILM 1: Introduction
Mr Ayelign, centre manager, talks briefly about the centres beginnings, as well as the story of a man who was helped by the centre.  We get to see how caring he is and important he finds his work, as he gives the filmmakers advice for their own education and future careers.  The centre is full of colour and life.

FILM 2: Karate
George Irevski tells the story of one of his past students who came from a troubled background but found discipline, ambition, and friendship through the not-for-profit karate lessons provided by the centre.  We see how far this child could go, as the senior class performs incredible feats of athleticism.

FILM 3: Mothers Group
An anonymous new mother tells the story of her pregnancy and birth.  This beautiful and moving tale shows the isolation and fear facing young mothers, but shows what a difference support and friendship can make on the experience.  The centre is empty, but the toys, medical rooms, and support group set up tell a tale in and of itself.

FILM 4: Migration Services
The story begins with community members receiving professional advice and guidance on migration matters. This simple premise then evolves to a beautiful montage of belonging and togetherness. The film tells a tale of a small group of people who are seeking to learn of ways that they can best help their family and friends to join them in their life in the west of Melbourne.

FILM 5: Cultures and beliefs: diverse community group
In this wordless piece, people from many different cultural groups get together to celebrate life!  Dancing, singing, and food galore, the entire centre is alight with movement and excitement. There is a mix of languages, ages, and means, but in this moment, everyone is together and is the same.

What is your individual role or component of this project?
Lindsay: Producer
Bridie: Director
Katia: Post Production
Liam: Site Manager and Casting

Visualisation: What will it look like? Use location shots, archival material, other projects that are similar. Think about what you can achieve and what skills you might need.
Location shots of Walker Close Community Centre and Brooklyn Hall.  Archival footage not needed. Interview footage used sparingly, with shots of the details within the space and the participants used more.  We want to provide a close look at the space and participants to give more information than we could otherwise get. Bright colours and whimsical, flowy movement will be used to give off the feel of the centre.

Rationale: 1-2 sentences outlining the basic premise, philosophy and purpose of the work. What do you want to make it? What should it be made?

Our project is focused on highlighting the positive impact that a community centre is having on the people who interact with it. We want to discover the communities and groups that have formed, and perhaps give some insights on the human condition in 2018.

Archival Material: What do you want to use from the archive? If you are not using anything, what do you want to contribute to the archive?
Likely no archival material will be used, however we hope to provide the archive with a new resource of previously untapped potential. Though we will only be providing a few stories, there are thousands that live within those walls that future contributors to the museum could access at any time.

Main participants: briefly describe the participants and what they contribute to the project. If you have yet to locate them, who would you like to include?
Mr Ayelign: Centre manager, the “heart” of the centre.  He will be the human embodiment of what the centre is. We have interviewed him.
George Irevski: Karate instructor, he will provide the story of a past student and explain why a sports and kids focused program is important.  We have shot preliminary interviews with him.
Anonymous Mother: She will provide us with our third story.  Not yet found, we have an access point through Liam’s mum

Setting: briefly describe your locations where you will film, record, shoot etc.
Walker Close Community Centre: Colourful main venue that will be the central focus.
Brooklyn Hall: Karate video, a simple hall with flags and not much else. But we see it come to life when the people arrive and fill the once empty space with colour and movement.

Research video/photos/audio: provide embedded links with a short description of what they refer to. For example: test footage with one of your interviewees, location footage, editing styles and approaches etc.

Karate Action test shots

We were happy with the action shots we got of the class. A fair bit of this footage will be used in the final cut.

George Interview Raw

In this footage we interview George one of the teachers from the karate class. Due to the interview being conducted during the class George didn’t have much time for us. The lighting wasn’t great and his answers at times are drowned out by the background noise.

Inspiration: provide embedded links with a short description of what they refer to.  For example: other documentaries, photo series, journalistic articles, etc

Guns Found Here
https://vimeo.com/255517926

This film takes a seemingly mundane topic and makes it engrossing. We took a great deal of inspiration from this documentary. The characters, the subject and the soundtrack all combine to create an entertaining piece about cataloging guns used in crimes in the USA.

6 Seconds

This short documentary has had a big influence on our project. We want to incorporate the ‘voice over’ format of the interview where we never actually see the interviewee talking to the camera. Instead, the viewers get to enjoy beautiful shots illustrating the character’s story. This approach to documentary making makes for an engaging and captivating experience. It also allows us to explore more artistic non-traditional documentary as well as allows us to  steer away from the traditional layout.

Production timeline

Thursday 24.08– visit to the community centre, talked to the manager AU

Friday 31.08– group meeting for the pitch

Monday 3.09– visit to the community centre, filmed the karate lesson

Tuesday 4.09– presentation + group meeting  

Wednesday 12.09– visit to the museum, filmed interview with AU and B-roll

Friday 14.09– discussion and planning

Tuesday 18.09– booking the equipement, printing the release forms

Wednesday 19.09– filming the dance lesson

Friday 21.09-  booking the equipment, printing the release forms

Saturday 22.09- editing together the rough cut

Monday 24.09- filming the mothers group

Tuesday 25.09– rough cut presentation + booking the equipement, printing the release forms

Wednesday 26.09– filming the immigration services

Friday 28.09-  booking the equipement, printing the release forms

Monday 1.10–  filming cultures and beliefs: diverse community group

Wednesday 3.10– start editing

Monday 8.10– finish editing + colour grade

Friday 12.10– screening in the museum

Today we went out and filmed a really great interview with the community centre’s manager AU. And now I’m going to reflect the hell out of it.

I will start with what went well. First of all, I am so proud of us for figuring out the equipment. We had on us a SONY X200, a SONY A7, two tripods, a lapel mic, a boom mic, a huge lighting kit, a lighting stand, and reflectors. I am not even going to go in details on how we carried all of that to the community centre- our only team member who owns a car couldn’t make it that day so the three of us took a train and a bus while carrying ten megatons of equipment. And then, we quickly set it all up in a way that it actually worked, and filmed some great footage. Absolute legends. We had a few troubles along the way like we couldn’t fold the light stand for a good 10 minutes and at one point I nearly dropped the camera… But all of those issues for minor at best and we actually got ready very quickly and efficiently.

Secondly, our interviewee was awesome. We had a lot of questions prepared for him, but we actually only had to ask one: “please tell us your name and what you do in the centre?”. After that, AU kept talking for 15 minutes straight answering all of our questions one by one. I had experience interviewing people before, and normally getting them to talk is the hard part.  This time, the hard part was getting him to stop. We also shot a lot of quality B-roll both during the interview and after, and I got some nice shots of AU’s hands as he was speaking- he is really passionate about his job. So, we have tons of great footage and we can even afford to be picky. Yay!

Another aspect that I am really happy about is that we are on the right track. I’ve had experiences when a project was thoroughly planned and prepared but then on the first day of shooting, we realised that it just didn’t work out. I was a bit worried that it would happen this time, but it actually went better than I expected. Moreover, I had my concerns that what we are making is more of a traditional documentary, but now it looks more and more like an open space one. When I was doing week 7 reading and I found these 6 pillars of open documentaries (not sure if I can call is that but English is my second language, bear with me). Now, I think that our project corresponds with almost all of them!

1. It restores human-scaled, localised, social agency in new and unimagined ways. It invites new conversations and connects people.

Our documentary might not be completely unimagined, but it’s different in its own way. Our goal is to get people to see another side to the West and to the immigrants and to tell stories of real-life people. Hopefully, to connect someone in need to the centre.

2. It is a practice that drives people to convene in and pay attention to real places, and to understand together how to reclaim the pervasive social-media environment from global corporatism.

This one is spot on. We want to educate people on that community centre, a real place with real people, and to show a side of life that doesn’t get much representation on media. On the news and on the social media we mostly hear of celebrities, politicians, global news or at least something out of the ordinary. Our society is hooked on the extraordinary, jumping from one extreme to another, but a lot of reality gets lost in this swirl of entertainment. This is what we hope to bring to the world with our documentary. Escape from the big and the loud to the quiet and real.

3. By reaching out to contributors across disciplines and generations, a media project, in multiple versions, can live and evolve through expansive networks, communities and clusters beyond traditional distribution channels.

I am not sure about this one #englishismysecondlanguage. But from what I got from it, our project definitely stands out from traditional distribution channels like TV or social media. It will be screened on a private exhibition and passed on to a museum. And who knows, maybe in 20 years someone will find our project and will want to add on?

4. It is a practice whereby media practitioners and exhibitors become context providers rather than content providers, creating scenarios that facilitate dialogue, participation, collaboration, shared experience and interconnections across boundaries.

I feel like it’s true of our project as well. Our stories are not exceptional or tv-worthy, but they touch on important topics such as community, acceptance, safety, diversity etc. We obviously aren’t going to surprise anyone with unexpected plot twists or CGI fights, but we do hope to get people to reflect on their experiences and attitude towards life.

5. It is a practice grounded in micro-territories.

I’m sorry, I don’t know what it means. #englishismysecondlanguage

6. It is a practice of continual engagement between convener and participant. Practices of collaboration, contingency, horizontality, multiple agency, adaptability, decentralisation, migration across media platforms and through different communities, permeability and mutability are central.

This one is not really about our project, to be honest. Our documentary isn’t too flexible in terms of media platforms and engagement, but it’s definitely something to work on for our next projects.

Now for the bad part. What could be improved? Well, the thing that concerns me the most is constant uncertainty. Will the interviewee be there? Will they not? Are they going to talk to us? Where will we set up? And etc. etc. I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to organisation and I like to know for sure what is happening, when and where. I know that it’s an inevitable part of documentary making but it is incredibly frustrating for me. Second, it’s the challenge that we brought up in our pitch- geographical. 3/4th of us live far from the centre and it is excruciating to carry all the equipment on ourselves. My back is killing me already. So, we definitely need to work out a solution to that because I am not sacrificing my back for an HD (maybe). These are the things I would like to improve. I know it’s not much compared to the ‘good part’ but I feel like everything is coming together really well.

To sum up, I am really hopeful. Our project looks great so far and I couldn’t wish for a better team. Hope to keep up the good work and nail this film!

Works cited:

De Michiel H., Zimmermann, P. (2013). ‘Documentary as an Open Space’, The Documentary Film Book, Palgrave Macmillan. 356-65

This week we got our feedback for assignment 2, and I received several documentary recommendations that have made me very happy (thank you Kim!:)) I didn’t have time to watch the feature length ‘Sans Soleil’ and ‘Letter From Siberia’ yet, but I am definitely going to. I read the descriptions and it sounds like something I would deeply enjoy. Plus, with ‘Sans Soleil’ it’s a great chance for me to practice mu rusty French :))

However, I did watch the segment from ‘Letter From Siberia’ and it was amazing. The topic of manipulating perception and altering the truth is something that interests me very much, and this video is a perfect example of how a minor change in a video can radically change the message.

The fact that the whole outlook of a 30 second clip can be transformed completely by simply changing the voice over text is quite terrifying. It’s twice as disturbing considering that in this case it’s only the audio track that is manipulated- and we are aware of that manipulation- imagine what drastic changes can be forced onto reality when filmmakers are not exposing their biased colleagues but are trying to deceive the audience? When I think about it, god knows how many videos I have seen and believed in my life that have been edited to serve a certain purpose. People call journalism the fourth estate, but a camera is a much more dangerous weapon than a pen. It’s visual and it invokes deeper feelings.

This video had me thinking about propaganda and how a camera can be used as a powerful weapon. After all, information is everything and whoever controls information controls the world. So, I have done some research, have drawn connections from my personal experiences to  this new insight and have come to a shocking conclusion. I think I might have a massive example of how a camera has won the Cold War (at least partly).

If you watch pretty much any hollywood thriller or action movie, you can bet all your money that the bad guys will be Russian. Before I go any further it’s important to quickly revisit the historical background, bare with me! After the WW2 two allied powers- Soviet Union and the US- became enemies. One part of this confrontation was propaganda, which, in Soviet Union took form of documentary films. They were incriminating the capitalism and the western way of life by exposing it as wrong, nonsensical and just plain evil. Those films were full on propaganda, there was nothing subtle about it. They were presented as THE truth and THE reality, the end. I even managed to find a couple of those documentaries to illustrate my argument. These films are called “Spiderweb” and “Your brain is on the target” and they were seriously designed to rile people up. The second one starts with narrator saying: “This film is about a conspiracy. It’s a conspiracy against you. Against your family. Against us”. So yeah. Like hello, George Orwell called, he wants his book 1986 back?

The US propaganda, on the other, was way smarter. They didn’t stop at documentaries and used hollywood commercial movies to serve the purpose as well. These films were constantly communicating the message “we are in danger of a Soviet attack” and, apparently, commercial films do a much better job at convincing people than documentaries do. All these movies were showcasing the Soviets as evil barbarians who only wanted to attack the US, destroy all that is holy and dance on the ashes. It was all rather understandable when the cold war was still going on, but even after it ended the propaganda didn’t stop. On the contrary, the filthy soviets got even worse- they didn’t even care who to attack anymore or why. I mean they are evil, so they are gonna kill and torture because they are evil. Makes sense (not). A distinctive characteristic of these films is complete dehumanisation of the soviets- for example in Rambo 3 there was a scene where the soviets disguised grenades as toys to lure in children and kill them (what the hell?). Some of the films I am talking about are  ‘Invasion U.S.A. 1985′, ‘Octopussy 1983’,  ‘Rambo 3 1988’, ‘Born American 1986’, ‘Coordinates of Death 1985′,  ‘The Red Nightmare 1962‘,‘Red Dawn 1984’, ‘Red Scorpion 1988’, ‘Red Monarch 1983’ , ‘The Red Danube 1949′, ‘Red Heat 1988’, ‘Red Hot 1993′, and many more. They love the word ‘red’ don’t they? My point is, generations of people grew up on these films. And as we all know, the US is the main cinema industry export in the world, practically any movie made in Hollywood finds its way to every country’s cinema in the world.

Now, I am not claiming that this is THE reason the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, but it sure did play a huge role. USSR and the US had more or less equal weapons and technology, but this massive perception control was something that no other country could possibly match. It’s like a  PA system in any public place- you can scream on top of your lungs all you want, but people are gonna pay attention to and trust the person on the PA system, and it doesn’t matter how right or wrong you are.

To conclude, a camera is indeed a deadly weapon. It can change the truth and bend the reality, and people will listen to it. There are so many ways of altering people’s perception, and even though it’s not possible to remain completely objective we must try our best to come as close to it as possible. For out project, we discussed the threat of shifting away from reality and decided to give up the voice over narrative, letting out characters tell their story with their own words. Thankfully, none of us are radical communists or else and we have no interest in aggressive propaganda. We’ll try our best to stay true to objective reality and showcase people’s stories the most realistic way possible.

Watching this short video has let me to this huge realisation. It got me thinking, it sparked my curiosity, and one thing let to another. I have to thank Kim again- even though I hated writing blogposts in the beginning, it led me to really expand my understanding of documentary and I learned a lot. A LOT. So, thank you <3

What is open space documentary- how might it differ from conventional documentary?

Open space documentary is essentially a documentary without borders. Whereas traditional approaches to making a documentary come with certain guidelines and rules, open space documentary is, well…. open. It allows your imagination to run wild and tell a story in a way you deem appropriate. Open space documentary doesn’t restrict your creativity to certain length, structure or even platform. It can be a video, an audio, a photo essay, a website, pretty much anything you want it to be. Open space documentary is the entanglement of pure creation and storytelling.

Not so long ago, I found myself on a projections festival in West Footscray. Dozens of short videos were projected in hidden places around the neighbourhood. They were just short silent video pieces scattered around the place at night, but each and every one of them told a certain story in their own unique way. There was no voice over, no narrative, no dry facts, no structure, yet it was still a documentary. An open space documentary.

How can concepts from Open Space be applied to your project?

For our final project, we are working on a series of short videos based around a community centre in West Melbourne. To be honest, our project seems to be within the borders of traditional documentary. We are not planning on throwing a camera in the water or interviewing a dog. We just want to tell people’s stories,  communicate our idea and showcase the West as a friendly, accepting and rather underrated region. It’s more of a good old documentary than a daring artsy experiment. And to be honest, I prefer it this way. Maybe I am not artistic or sensual enough, but my understanding of a good documentary lies entirely within the more or less traditional approach.

Of course, we will apply some of the open space concepts. Firstly, as I mentioned above, we are going to make several episodes each exploring a different story around the community centre. Secondly, even though we are planning to include a lot of interviews, we want to make them voice overs rather than face to face conversations. And lastly, we are definitely going to experiment with different frames and shots as well as various colour palettes. We want our final project to be interesting and unique and without going into plain weird.

Why are some stories untold?

Millions of stories are happening at this very moment all around the world and they have been since the dawn of times. There are over 7 billion people in the world and every single one has many stories to tell. Every person IS a story. And not only that, objects, places and animals have their own stories too. How would it ever be possible to record and tell every single story there is? It would not. Most of the stories get lost in time under the seal of silence never to be heard again. As sad as it is, it’s true. Most of what ever happened in the history of human beings is forever lost. The least we can do is try and preserve as much as we can, although it will never be even comparable with the vast amount of lost, untold stories.

This week, I am focusing on choosing a topic for my final project. I want my final piece to be meaningful and at least a bit useful in terms of allowing people to see another point of view and rethink their attitude. As much as I enjoy atmospheric montage videos, I want this final project of this semester to be informative and important. So far, I think I want to explore immigration history in Australia because it’s a very relevant and engaging topic. With globalisation taking over the world, the immigration issue is more significant than ever and I feel like it’s something that should be talked about. Especially since it’s one of those topics that have devoted supporters from both sides and its sometimes difficult to see the whole picture. Plus, I am new to this whole debate and it’s a great opportunity for me to deepen my understanding of the concept.

So, to jumpstart my thinking process, I will be using this prompt from canvas. I feel like already covered the “topic +why” section, so I’m gonna jump right in and start from the second question.

Driving question to answer?

Well, first off, immigration IS happening, there is no stopping it and that’s a fact. Globalisation now plays too big a part in our daily lives and even if we wanted to reverse the progress and go back to living in more or less isolated communities it would not be possible. So, asking whether it’s something that we should allow or not is off the table. I’d rather focus on the attitudes of “locals” towards the “newcomers” and how homo sapiens’ primitive psychology of “us and others” is making thinks more complicated than it should be. So, the driving question would be something like “why are some people so reluctant to accepting new members of society?”or “is immigration a good thing or a bad thing?”.  At this point, it’s all hypothetical and I’m just exploring what I could potentially do, but I really like to include both points of view in all my makings.  As it said in week’s 5 reading:

 Beginning a documentary endeavour with a period rather than a question mark in mind dramatically curtails opportunities for growth, listening, complexity, and openness to the unanticipated gifts that inevitably present themselves during the production process.

(Fox,  2017)

I really don’t want to have a stand prior to even starting the research and the filming, I feel like I’m being unfair and close-minded otherwise.

World (where and when it is set, length or series)?

In terms of time, it would probably be the present. It’s the only time that matters, really. We can’t change the past and we have no idea what the future holds, so I’d much rather spend my time exploring the problems and stories of today. In terms of where, I’d say West Melbourne. Since it’s the focus of the studio and we are working with the Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West it just makes sense. As for the length, I would be interested in making short series. For this project, I’d rather investigate various stories/cases than go in depth with just one. But, to be realistic here, it’s difficult to talk about the world of the project before I even have a story or at least a character in mind. I can start planning a more precise world when I have an idea of what exactly I am doing and why. 

Our differentiations among theme, story, and plot should not lead to the misconception that the creative process of planning a documentary always begins neatly, with a theme falling into our laps from which we readily identify a story and make specific plot choices

(Fox,  2017)

Story (what happens in the film?)

Good question. I really can’t say yet, I am just exploring my potential interests hypothetically. I think I would want to find a person and follow his/her story through the film.

Modes- why this one?

I am mostly interested on observational, expository and participatory types of documentary. I think I would want to come up with some sort of combination of all of these and experiment. Interviews is definitely something I want to work with, but I don’t want it to be the typical face-to-face conversation. I feel like it’s a bit overused and boring. I remember I found this mini-documentary some time ago and it’s exactly the format I would like to adopt for this project. It is an interview, but it doesn’t feel like it. The main character is more of a mysterious narrator telling us about his life as we enjoy beautifully made shots. I very much prefer this to having poor interviewees sit awkwardly in a chair and not knowing where to look.

Audience

As I said before, immigration is a hot topic right now and I feel like the audience is rather broad. It would probably be the people with especially heated opinion on the matter since they would be the one googling it. Or quite the opposite, people like me know don’t know much about the topic and want to educate themselves.

Function (what will the audience feel, think, do?)

My hope is to always balance opinions and let people decide for themselves rather than shove my point of view down their throat. I would want people to feel compassion and sympathy, to see that people are not that different and that we can all live together in peace if we only try. Best case scenario, even change their daily behaviour and attitude towards immigration to the better. But I want the audience to come to this conclusion by themselves, without me spelling it out for them.

Position (what do you think about this topic, what are counter positions)

I don’t have a strong position and I think that it’s a huge advantage of mine. It’s really difficult to stay calm and unbiased when you get easily triggered by the topic. Not to mention, that when people are entirely devoted to a certain stand they become close-minded and often fail to even recognise the other points of view. As I discussed in one of my previous posts, there is no such things as the truth, and we must always keep that in mind, especially as documentary makers. I also kind of experiences both points of view: in Europe refugees is actually a big problem and since all my best friends live in EU I know exactly how much of a threat it is. Feeling unsafe in your home country is definitely not okay. On the other hand, I spend a year living in Singapore and now in Australia- both culturally diverse countries with a very high percentage of immigration. And both these countries are safe and developed, not to mention that Singapore is my #1 favourite place on Earth and I dream to live there one day. So, I think I would be able to explore the topic from a position of an unbiased observer rather than a devoted propagandist and investigate both approaches to the topic.

I’ve done some research to see if there are any similar works on the topic of immigration in Australia and I’ve stumble upon this great documentary called “The Immigration Nation”. It consists of 3 hour long episodes and I only had the time to see one so far but it’s definitely something to watch. 

I just want to say one more time, that this is all purely hypothetical. I am just exploring my potential interests and trying to figure out the topic area for the project.

Works cited:

Fox, B. (2017). Documentary Media (2nd edition). Melbourne, Australia: Taylor &Francis.

This post is just a little addition following the yesterday’s one.

I was really inspired by “the art of nonfiction” and the idea of invoking feelings through montage, so I found several videos I would really like to share. They are beautiful and captivating in their simplicity. Enjoy!

Today, I watched a video ‘The art of nonfiction’ from the course guideline. I deeply enjoy videos that create meaning by combining a bunch of diverse footage, that are rather incompatible if you look at them separately. The art of evoking emotions and touching people’s feelings without a depressing plot or a gloomy dialogue is something I have great respect for. But what really got me thinking in this particular video, is the words:

The art of nonfiction lies in the tension between chaos and structure.

I feel like maybe that’s what I find so appealing about atmospheric montage videos – they are pure chaos that has been structured to make sense. “The art of nonfiction” video itself is a great illustration of these words- it’s just a contemplation of random videos that manage to create a story when put together. In my contextual studies, we are now talking about semiotics and how people are constantly creating, extracting and reshaping the meaning of pretty much everything that surrounds us (Danesi 2008). That’s how videos like that come alive – when a person watches this video sequence they fulfill it with a meaning of their own.

Now that I think about it, that’s how most of the fan-made videos are structured. Of course, its a different story since these videos are fictional by definition, but it doesn’t change the fact that they still conform to the chaos-structure paradigm. I am a follower of more fandoms that I want to admit, and all those videos that make a fan’s heart beat faster are almost always a contemplation of random movie/series scenes that create meaning when put together. It doesn’t have a plot, a narrative, sometimes not even a dialogue, yet it overwhelms people with feelings and emotions. It creates a meaning from chaos because its structured to make sense. Have a look at the video below:

Once again, it’s just a bunch of random videos that are in no way connected. They are even from different movies/series. Yet, when put together they tell a story of friendship and loyalty, they invoke strong feelings and send shivers down your spine. They create an atmosphere and communicate meaning. For me, this is incredibly powerful and important.

I don’t think that for our final project we will be doing a montage. I had fun experimenting with it for assignment 2, and I feel like I should move on and explore different approaches to documentary. However, this little discovery I made is really meaningful to me and I will definitely keep making montage videos later in my studies and personal life.

Assignment 2: Week 2. The truth?

Assignment 2: Week 3. Inspirations.

Group work reflection

Assignment 2: Week 3: Soviet Montage

Assignment 2: Week 4. Keep on expanding borders

Assignment 2: Reflection + the Videos

My community of practice and literature

Thanks to my far from perfect english I didn’t really understand what this question meant and had to resort to help. Dream Team kindly explained to me that it means “general influences from things I’ve seen and read”, so that is what I’m going to do. I love asking advice- now if I get a bad grade I can blame them! 🙂

I feel like my work was primarily influenced by the readings and by the documentaries I watched. I have been reflecting on these new insights for the past few weeks, but I guess it can be summarised in three main revelations:

1. The idea of clashing the incompatible (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/ekaterina-borisova/2018/08/05/assignment-2-week-3-soviet-montage/ and http://www.mediafactory.org.au/ekaterina-borisova/2018/08/02/assignment-2-week-3-inspirations/)
2. Fluid borders of the concept of documentary (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/ekaterina-borisova/2018/08/08/assignment-2-week-4-keep-on-expanding-borders/)
3. Impossibility of the ruth  (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/ekaterina-borisova/2018/08/01/assignment-2-week-2-the-truth/)

Those new understandings have heavily changed the way I would have approached this project otherwise. I would never even think to make a documentary without a voice over or an interview, or at least some in-text subtitles! Not to mention that a documentary had to be true and unbiased, otherwise what’s the point? I though of a documentary as of an educational film that lazy teachers show the first graders. Over the last month, I came to realise that a documentary is so much more than that- a form of art that can take any form (forgive me this tautology). These two particular insights have developed through class discussions and Broderick’s reading, and I’m very happy that it did.

As for the clashing of incompatible, my documentary is basically build around this new concept. I really liked this idea and it was my main inspiration for this project. I owe this exciting new understanding to, once again, Broderick, but also a film I discussed earlier- “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten”.

What did I discover through making these videos?

First of all, I discovered a pretty cool projections festival that I would never otherwise visit. Outdoor art for the win! More seriously though, working on a montage documentary, as opposed to a strictly structured plot line, I found myself noticing more and more interesting shots that I didn’t plan on filming. In my previous courses I was mostly working with a throughout storyboard and all of the creative work was done in the pre-production process. Once you go out to shoot, you just focus on what you already planned to film and don’t really pay attention to many beautiful shot possibilities around you. Working on this assignment, however, I didn’t know what I was going to find in the museum and I definitely had no idea of what to expect from the projections festival. I had an idea in my head and a vague vision, but not more than that. When I was out filming, I was on a constant lookout for a good shot, always aware of my surroundings. I discovered a whole new approach to creating a video: just grabbing a camera and hunting for a good shot! And what’s more importantly, I really liked it. Such creative freedom is intoxicatedly liberating.

Second, and that’s a quick one, I rediscovered the hellish frustration of editing. Last semester I was doing a live television studio, which spared me of torturous hours in the editing suits. This time the pain was full on. Oh, did I mention that Da Vinci Resolve decided to freeze and I lost my nearly completed project? Yeah.

What did I think went well?

For me, this is the most difficult question. I can never assess myself, and it’s impossibly difficult for me to say if I did well. No matter how hard I work or what others say, I rarely ever like what I did. I can’t explain it, but whatever I do is just never good enough for me regardless of how much time and effort went into it. Sadly, this goes far beyond university assignments, but hey, anxiety never sleeps, right?

From where I stand, I’d say everything went relatively well in terms of the process, but, as always, I can’t say if the overall result is good. I really liked my group: we always helped and supported each other throughout the project, and Bridie and Lindsay are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. So, I guess I can say that the collaboration and the team work went very well. I also liked the new “minimum pre-production” approach and I think it worked our quite well. I really enjoyed filming for this documentary. I hope that the filming went well in terms of quality, but I definitely enjoyed it very much.

Another aspect that I think could have gone worse is editing. It was excruciating and I was on the verge of throwing the computer out of the window several times, but the overall video montage is not bad. Especially considering I’ve only had two days to put it together after the festival. Just for comparison, the last time I did editing it took me and my classmate 2 weeks.

What didn’t succeed as I would have liked?

Firstly, I messed up my life-work balance. Some personal problems got me distracted and I completely lost track of time. I am ashamed to admit it, but I only remembered about this assignment on 9th August- 4 days before the due date. In my mind I kind of remembered that it exists, and that we have to hand it in in a couple of weeks, and than it just hit me- not week, days!!! To be fair, I couldn’t have started sooner anyway- the projections festival took place on 10th August, but it still was a highly unusual for me situation. I will try very hard to never let it happen again.

Secondly, as much as I enjoyed the “go out and film” approach, I would really prefer to have a more solid understanding of what material I am going to shoot. The projections festivals was beautiful, but very different from last year’s videos I found on their website and I had to change the video I had planned quite dramatically. As much as I would love to be, I am not an adventurous risk taker and I prefer to have at least a basic understanding of what’s happening.

How has my work so far influenced my future work in this studio (what’s next)?

This project reminded me of importance of pre-production and time management. As I said, in the future I will allow myself more time to get ready and plan ahead. In terms of choosing a topic for the final project, I can say that I 100%will not be doing a montage documentary – I liked it, but one time was enough. So far, I am thinking of doing something for their website- several articles with material from the museum or maybe a pamphlet. As for a topic, I am really interested in looking into local history of feminism or discrimination against the aboriginals (if it’s not a politically correct word I’m sorry, I’m still new to this continent). I’m going to focus on choosing a topic in the following weeks- I don’t want to quickly pick a random topic and then be stuck working on something I am not interested in.

Finally, there are our videos! Enjoy:))

References:

F. Broderick (2010). Documentary Media : History, Theory, Practice. Taylor and Francis.