Developing my skills for mindful noticing was a difficult task when I began thinking about it too much.
I’ve found that knowing how I notice already meant that I just took out my camera, iPhone of DSLR and I allowed myself to capture whatever my senses directed me to.
Pulling focus to things that I was forcing myself to notice muddied the waters too much, so allowing my organic perception of space was a better way for me to gather my media.
Of course, knowing the base of my interests also helped me in accumulating the information that I was looking for but ultimately, I enjoyed the nature through which my media was collected.

Is noticing negative?
Noticing in a creative capacity isn’t negative but it does beg the question, as discussed in class, whether or not the things we were noticing for the projects would be things we would have taken note of, had we not have been actively engaging with our environments more so than usual. Did I pick up on paint strips, puddles of water, reflections and lines in the sky more than I would usually? Yes, of course but it’s not a negative thing, it’s just that depending on the sort of noticing you’re wishing to explore and evolve, it may not be as organic as an endeavour as you may have imagined it to be.
Being aware of our environments is a survival instinct, it’s innate, so we’re not venturing too far from our biological imperative.

As a result of these internal drivers, I did feel that because of my understanding of self, having already been an observer of particular things – (the reason I wanted to take this studio in the first place), I did have the ability to ‘deatch’ so to speak, and to notice things without a sense of urgency or need. I do feel we notice things because of something inside of us that is drawn to something in particular and I did find the early explorations of noticing in a group partner’s environment to be interesting in a comparative sense.

My final work drew heavily on this comparative element.
When I was in the country, I was always finding elements of the city.
When I was in the city, I was finding the country and then sometimes I didn’t and I embraced the discordance.
The jarring effects were interesting to create in the editing process, audibly speaking. Sometimes, the poetics I had been actively looking for weren’t there and so the space between the imbalance was interesting to explore.

I began noticing the way the trees would move, sometimes swaying in the breeze. I distinctly remember looking at a bush of yellow flowers against fence posts in a field, with Melbourne in the background, thinking that the posts reminded me of the buildings and that the audio I had recently collected in in Italy of women squabbling in the streets could be a great overlay to the aggressively moving flowers in the wind – it was already coming together in my mind.

The challenges of creating a non-fiction and non-linear piece of work was a difficult task.
Movies, stories and life in general are built on the foundations on a beginning, middle and an end and through my editing process, I grappled with whether I was ‘doing it right’ or not.
I still think to myself whether I feel I have done it well enough but having worked on it and played it back to myself a lot, I just had this feeling that it fit – it works for me.

I like the harmonious interludes that are conflicted by the city noises, the hums of engines, the bike bells, trams and people.
The country overlaid with city noises creates an interesting perspective of these spaces and opened up a new layer of noticing for me once I tapped into the idea of contrast vs poetics, from my original prompt.

Above all, I feel that working on this studio enhanced the way that I see things that were already in my peripheries.
The way I view my surroundings has increased and my sense of awareness has heightened too.
My appreciation for the simple things, especially the audio aspects to the work; wind through the grass, people’s chatter, hums of the atmosphere, have increased and its been nice (and a little anxiety inducing) to have those mental reminders to notice over the course of the semester.

How will I apply this to my work as I continue?
I genuinely feel that the fundamentals of this studio have been really important overall.
While they were difficult to grasp in the beginning, my understanding of what it meant to really ‘see’ began to take shape the more I got out into the environment and engaged with it.
Talking about it was a little too abstract for me but seeing the footage in front of me, setting up the shots, walking the streets knowing I was recording it all, led me to understand the greater purpose of it all – especially on playback.

I’ll be taking a lot of the base of the works, longer shots, remembering to pause and take in the surrounds, more of a European approach to filmmaking (Tarkovsky) will be woven into my future projects.
Reminding myself to continue to make will be the first hurdle to overcome but I’m sure I’ll begin to notice the changes from there on in.