rmit

Interviews are the toast of the week and a staple meal to get me through a day.
A documentary a week helps to keep my mind working and an accompanying cup of tea to warm me up, now that the weather has turned bitter.
I think because we all collectively dared Melbourne (in jest) to get colder because we were sick of  sweating profusely at 10pm, she unhinged her jaw and decided that Winter was now here.
We beat Game of Thrones to the punch.

I cannot wait for Game of Thrones.

Where was I… Reflections, yes.
I’ve been watching a few interviews on Vice and i-D; both brands that are big on whitewashing publications.

I watched the docco below with Grace Neutral, interviewing different people in Korea on beauty ideals.
Grace goes to Seoul and meets with underground tattooists and a couple younger kids who are influenced by the growing K-Pop beauty scene.

I’ve watched this interview a few times and I believe that Grace is guilty of orientalism, although she means well, Grace is covered in tattoos; a stark contrast to the girls she’s interviewing.

Her eyes have been dyed purple, she has used scarification, body modification; skin grafts, had her tongue sliced in half, stretcher earrings all over her body – and while this is her choice it does mean that talking to a girl in Korea, with no tattoos, who also represents a Westernised beauty ideal, is a concept that she can’t comprehend.

I am with her to the point of disagreeing with young girls indulging in plastic surgery because they’ve been affected by unrealistic beauty ideals but around the 6:00 minute mark, the girl tells us that Korean girls tend to get plastic surgery just after they graduate from high school.
Around about the 18 y/o mark.
With a girl’s body fully formed at the age of 26, it’s a premature decision.
Skipping ahead a little, Grace then mentions that she feels uncomfortable being unclothed in the Korean bathhouse (where she’s interviewing the girl) because it feels like she is 14 again, showing her mother her first tattoo.

So, Grace was 4 whole years younger than a girl in Korea modifying her body.
Grace was no doubt responding to something societal by getting those tattoos, as we all inevitably do as we try to navigate our way through adolescence (and life), so she’s not doing something different.
She was rebelling against what was thought of as beautiful, or maybe she just had a group of friends who had tattoos.

I do wonder why it’s okay for her to have got a tattoo (without her mother’s consent, mind you) and the Korean girl is made to look like an air-headed princess for a single procedure.

I watched another of her docco’s on Brazilian beauty and how feminine ideals are being challenged more these days.
The girls she interviewed were a lot like her.
They had shaved their hair off, they were covered in tattoos and piercings and boasted a masculine appearance.
They looked a little punk and still fed an ideal. It just wasn’t typically westernised.

The bias wasn’t verbalised but it was definitely palpable.

 

 

 

 

I thought that these were interesting examples of an interviewee meaning well by exploring important issues but unknowingly judging a lifestyle just because it varied from theirs, or maybe it wasn’t what she expected.

I feel it’s also important to note that I find it incredible that women are fighting against what is seen as typically beautiful but I also think that beauty is personal, regardless of who you have been influenced by.
We are all influenced by something or someone, and so on and so forth.
It is the medical industries and their lax standards that allow for these premature surgeries on people whose bodies are not fully formed.
It is their lust for money that overrules morality.

Media that is released and disseminated within the populous, infects the minds of the youth who aren’t taught to think for themselves.
Instead, we’re told to look up and idolise those on billboard charts and advertising campaigns.
Reminds me of The perverts Guide to Ideology

We have to search for alternate media and information to furnish our minds with enough ammunition to be able to counter any and all bias’ we encounter.
It’s exhausting but it’s never dull.

I can’t wait ’til all this fighting pays off and my worth is no longer judged by my looks, rather my intelligence and sense of self.

Wanted to see where this thought led me – sorry if I rambled.

I considered not coming to the Thursday class, having to endure the film I had made for my first assessment.
Subjecting the class to my ‘girl gone abstract’ production.
#eyeroll

My themes were so bleak that I now look back and chuckle now that the nausea has subsided.

I’ve always had a problem with turning things on myself and then sharing it.
I don’t keep a journal, my hand gets tired from writing and I don’t like to type my feels because I find it too impersonal.
So I don’t write about my feelings, but I do take pictures of others who emulate the way I feel.
It’s my chosen form of introspection.

How many times have you had to share something personal with people?
How many times have you had to share something personal with a room of people you don’t know well?
It’s said that we find it easier to share with those we don’t know, as opposed to those we do.
I find it easier to talk to people I am close to because I feel it will be understood better than someone judging me on face value.

I think I was stuck in the middle of wanting to share myself with the class but also not wanting to share myself at all.
Adding insult to injury, I use an RMIT laptop which experiences separation anxiety from the campus server once I open it at home and proceeds to shut down my Adobe programs.
‘End program’ is the dialogue box from hell and has been the bane of my entire scholastic existence.
My project was shut down in excess of 5 separate times, forcing my soul to be crushed 3 out of those 5 times, my files to be lost, forcing me to recover and regroup.
I eventually ran out of steam and ended up submitting something I wasn’t proud of out of pure frustration, coupled with lack of motivational drive.

As I sat in class and watched others share themselves with us, I realised we have a diverse mix of creatives, each individually interesting and each video served as a teaser or trailer.
A lot of people were left to be continued and in a strange way, regardless of how each of our videos turned out, it did familiarise us all with each other a lot more.

Brian put us into groups again and showed us how to use the filming equipment.
I felt like a kid again, the cam-corder reminded me of the family recorder we’d take out on special occasions/everyday.
I’d never used the video recorders from RMIT, opting for a Canon 5D3 for all my filming work, I prefer the Canon glass, the film quality and the smooth auto focus.

I suggested to the group that we take to level 12 of building 8 to film, as they wanted somewhere sound tight.
We decided who would be interviewed, what the questions were and how we were going to frame it.
It was a quick job with the little time we had and we took the mickey out of it, as was to be expected.

It was great to put filming into practise as my contextual class is Cinema studies and we’re discussing mise en scene, editing and cinematography on a weekly basis.
I began to notice the 180 degree rule when we had to film the ‘nodding’ reaction cut-away shots, making sure we stayed on the same side of the imaginary line, so as not to distort perspective when it came time to edit.

Looking forward to editing the footage (on campus, as close to a server as humanly possible)

The Five why’s; Who, What, When, Where, Why?

Who.. Someone of interest, someone who has a story to tell, someone who you can look at and that in itself is enough to draw you in.

What.. Perhaps they are working towards something to no avail. Their story is of despair or overcoming weakness. The most important of all the questions; what makes them worth listening to.

When.. Their story has been taking place since they were young, working tirelessly towards a resolve. Tirelessly they persevere..

Where.. Melbourne? Internationally? Are they local and where have they gone? What environs have informed their life and work? Where are we?.. Where are they going?

Why.. Is it important? Why do I care? Why are they worth talking to? Can I bring worth to the character, or am I merely a surrogate..

I’ve had to interview a lot of people and I will not say that I have by any means done it well.
Most of that is largely due to the direction that I was given and my uncertainty in my own abilities at that particular moment in time.

Last year, we were working on a project for the Alessi Mutants exhibition at RMIT.
I was new to my role in media and marketing, having worked as an exhibition designer, fresh from architecture, I was in new territory and under new command.
My advisor was a media and marketing coordinator, an RMIT alumni who took on my suggestion of interviewing and photographing students who had designed products for the exhibition – personalising the products.

She insisted that we film the interviews on iPhones and minimise the amount of post-production.
We sent out emails to students with questions, prepping them for what was going to be asked of them upon arrival at the studio.
Each showed up unprepared and unaware of the email – it was a mess.

The students transformed into completely new people as soon as the camera was pointed at them.
They couldn’t describe their work, they became tongue-tied and the process dragged on and on.

We were making a short 30-50 second video for social media, back when Instagram only allowed shorter clips to be posted and before Instagram stories hit the scene. We worked with what we had and on our 3^rd hour at the studio, we had to pack up shop and make times to interview the remaining students at a later date.

I had prepared release forms, a photographer, the interview questions and some food and drinks while they waited for their turn.
I do wonder how I could have improved the session. Perhaps I could have been more cut-throat and given each student limited time to speak, then move on to the next one if we didn’t see any results.
Or, I could have requested that those who wanted to participate would be required to send in written answers to my interview questions, along with a printed copy, showing they have read the Q’s and had something to refer to.

Although, I do just think it comes down to what Louise said about talent.
It’s not just a term they use to describe the subject they’ll be interviewing in industry but also a means of discerning whether or not this person is someone interesting enough to draw in viewers.
Does the talent have anything worth saying? Can the talent deliver their information with enough interest to hold attention or create it?
– I believe that’s where we went wrong. We wanted to be inclusive and make sure everyone had a say but should have focused on those who had strength in tone and let their accompanying designs speak alongside them.

#lessonlearnt

Today’s workshop was centred around getting us to network within our class and become more comfortable with sharing personal work.
Brian mentioned in the lectorial on Wednesday that he doesn’t expect that people will ever really become comfortable with sharing work but that it’s good practice and I agree.

I still remember the first few times I presented in interior design to my classes.
It was frightening and I remember getting choked up, my face flushed red, I was in shambles and I forgot my name and what year it was.
More than once.
<— me

We sat in groups, playing the game of hats again, offering garlands of compliments to our classmates who had taken to blog writing like fish to water.
I felt the blog I shared was too formal but I persevered and went head first into the pit of compliments and helpful criticism.
We took a quick full format picture to mark the occasion of the second coming of the hats, pictured below.

My writing style is much more relaxed and playful and this feels a lot more natural to me but I’m so accustomed to writing formally (plus I’m getting older..) that I struggle with the transitions.

I thought the blogs were really informative and the general consensus was that we were all enjoying the content and the course as a whole.
We were waiting with bated breath to see one of the group members’ videos but it wasn’t exporting properly, so we decided we’d just have to wait until the film festival next week.