WORD COUNT: 1259
In writing a summary of my personal reflections regarding this semester’s learning outcomes, it is helpful to highlight some of the key moments of personal and collaborative breakthroughs. As such, this reflection will feature several links to my own previous blogposts as the basis from which I will retrospectively analyse my personal and cumulative learning process.
Significantly, throughout applying experimental sensibilities to politically themed documentary films, my media skills and collaborative practices were enriched in three key ways.
Firstly, through my theoretical and practical introduction to experimental filmmaking tactics (as outlined in both Project Brief 3’s criteria), I discovered new critical frameworks from which to review non-narrative documentary films, and further yet, create my own content from,. This was evidenced specifically in my blogpost for Project Brief 1, in which I applied a critical understanding of the indexical relationship between film and events as a springboard to identify the underlying political ideologies informing formal choices in films- experimental or not. Such a point was quite revelatory as I had not previously applied this understanding to my perception of Ron Fricke’s Samsara (2011); a film I can now analyse both formally and ideologically with substantially more nuance.
Further yet, through consistently attending tutorials twice weekly and critically reflecting upon the films presented in class by Liam and blogging my contributions to in-class discussions I was able to form a theoretical understanding of the critical discourses surrounding experimental documentary films. Most notably, in my Week 4 blogpost I critically examined the indexical relationship between direct cinema filmmaking practices and the ethics of representation. A key finding resulting from my reflection was;
….the idea that perhaps in recognising the subjective and often underlying ideologies which inform our artistic motivations and inclinations, we can in fact move beyond the ostensible barriers which bar us from a ‘truth’ to more readily and savagely embrace a truth that is, in fact discernibly, ours.
This sentiment is significant in the context of the studio’s aims, as it allowed me a critical understanding of the necessary placement of the director(s) within the film as a key component ensuring truth claims are not didactic or insidiously embedded, but rather, specifically contextually developed.
Additionally, my ongoing engagement in class discussions and debates further enabled me a sound dialectical basis from which to scaffold my film praxes. Directly evidencing this is my blogpost in Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, and Week 7, which explicitly document my application of critical feedback provided in class by both Liam and studio peers.
Most notable of these reflections is Week 5, in which I reflected upon our colleagues’ lukewarm and confused responses to initial demonstrations of our film approaches. This moment marked a fundamental shift in tone for our Project Brief 3 found footage film, as we adopted an entirely different critique on technology- one more politically critical of its wasteful consumption and facetious imagery (vis-a-vis pervasive Capitalist media forms such as advertisement) rather than socially oriented in a conventional Gen-Y finger-wagging critique.
Such a change in tone, from the microcosm of individual social behaviours to the macro lens of institutionally-incentivised unethical and unsustainable practices, is significant in the context of the studio’s overall aim- to create both political and experimental documentary films. Readily then, in drawing from key feedback provided in class and reflecting upon it through discussion and blogging, our final film Tech-No-Logic was made more efficative as a working critique of a political issue which for a moment, seemed as if it was inclining towards a narrow understanding of the political problems surrounding technology in contemporary society.
Secondly, through Project Brief 4’s construction over the course of four weeks, I learned to more effectively communicate and share skills within a small group work structure. This is directly evidenced in my Week 10 blog post which outlines the beginning of our group’s delegation of tasks and responsibilities. Building upon these initial plans and delegations, the following weeks saw all group members having to undertake more work than initially planned on. In my Week 11 blog post, I reflect upon some of the specific formal problems we faced in the editing process, such as the difficulty of cutting down the audio tracks, and the pairing of imagery with specific anecdotes.
In retrospect, many of these problems arose due to the fact that despite fulfilling our tasks individually, we nonetheless were confronted with several filmmaking challenges such as the anticlimatic fruition of my projector footage (as documented in this Week 12 post) and the ambiguity of pairing visuals with audio in an associational composition (written in the Week 11 post). Such moments were pivotal in the filmmaking process for Project Brief 4, as we had to directly troubleshoot in both our in-class editing processes. Evidently, I learned the critical merits of cutting my losses / ill fitting material and footage, despite the hours I’d initially put in; a factor which enabled our film to transcend our initial ideas in more creative and workable ways.
Thirdly, throughout my central role as a website designer for the Art of Persuasion Media Studio 2016‘s website, I learned the importance of personal initiative, sustained work ethic, and lucid communication skills within a time sensitive and lateral hierarchy structure. For example, despite being initially only listed for the role of maintaining and publishing the website I found I had to adopt other roles such as producing content and collecting in, in conjunction with publishing it before the due date in Week 14. Additionally, as the main administrator of the site, I learned to delegate tasks to others, such as asking peers to remind their group members to reply to my messages and so forth. This was a new skill for me as I often have a tendency to take on too much work for myself,
This was mainly due to the fact that during the final weeks of Semester 1, many class members were absent from scheduled class and as such, much of the original content (i.e. documentation and vox pops) was not able to be made by the content producers in time for the website. In troubleshooting this, I was able to assume a more organisational role in delegating ‘Question and Answers’ written components to each group, while publishing and overseeing the editing of copy for the online publication. Additionally, I developed my ability to present a comprehensive set of varied student approaches to the studio, a skill that enhanced my ability to collate together a range of political themes and formal approaches while underscoring the online project with a sense of unity.
As a result of managing these varied set of roles, I learned to more readily accompany a dynamic group working situation in which deadlines are sometimes renegotiated for a variety of reasons, and roles and responsibilities are not always adhered to in didactic or neatly delineated ways. Indeed, this furthering of my online publication skills will be significantly helpful in future filmmaking practices where increasingly interdisciplinary collaborations are curated together under similarly complex working structures.
Such vocational skills will also be valuable in the media industry (specifically regarding one’s personal practice in filmmaking or critical theory), as both the film and academic industry both require an experience in juggling a multitude of different skills; from researching to writing to time management and vertical or lateral workplace hierarchies. As such, despite the situation being quite challenging and at times seemingly overwhelming, having contributed my skills and adapted my responsibilities accordingly to fulfil the final brief I can now gauge my capacity to communicate closely and respectfully with collaborators under high pressure situations, in order to deliver online content and reflective outcomes.