I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this semester’s studio ‘Room With A View’. At first I didn’t know exactly what I was getting myself into, I thought perhaps it was just a radio-style, podcast making studio. I was happily surprised when I got to class on the first day and found out we’d be in actual groups and going live to air at Triple R radio station as part of our assessments. My first interview that I did with my friend Jac who runs Newport Film Festival definitely highlighted for me how hard conducting an engaging interview discussion actually is. I realised how much you actually have to think about the questions you ask and where they will lead. On top of this, trying to keep the interview casual and non-robotic is also a difficult thing to balance. However, I think it went well for a first go.

Going live to air for the first time was an interesting experience. We had an interviewee drop out the morning of, which meant that we had to make changes to the run sheet an hour before going live and this made us appear quite unorganised. We managed to get through the show ok but there were definite things we could’ve done better. But overall, my panelling was good, our presenters had a nice chatty tone and good content and the interviewee who came in from WIRE was amazing and interesting to listen and talk to. Now that I know how everything works within a love show context, I’m excited to go back in and do a better job next time.

Our feature was focused around memes and how they affect news/journalism in current society. I enjoyed working on that task as we got to have a bit of fun with it but also deliver content that was interesting and informative.

I love that this subject is able to be continued after the semester is over. Radio is definitely something I want to do more of in future and I feel like I’ve gained a greater perspective over these last few months on what it’s all about.

Here is the link to my final film! I had trouble downloading it from google drive so hopefully clicking this link will work for you all.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4SxuV53-P2OcXd1U3NoOVJfUTA

Week 8 has seen us experimenting with different B-Roll exercises. One in particular where we went out in groups with a DSLR camera and aimed to shoot things that could potentially be seen as atmospheric or ambient and used in documentaries as overlay footage. On top of this b-roll has to be something that can be seen as a ‘visual metaphor’ and without this, documentaries would be very bland. I went out with Asha, Bliss and Ruby to see what kind of footage we could gather. It was a really rainy day which was kind of perfect in terms of shooting atmospheric footage. We got some shots of rippling water in puddles, close ups of rain drops on leaves, out of focus shots of people walking in the distance etc.

On Tuesday this week we viewed a few examples of of how to go about getting the best answers from your subjects whilst interviewing them. This is obviously an important part of documentary making and actually quite an acquired skill even though it may seem easy at first. I’ve still got a long way to go before I acquire this skill I think. I sometimes find interviewing quite daunting even though the spotlight isn’t on me. Im just overly wary of making my subject feel uncomfortable or overstepping boundaries etc. In saying that, we did actually discuss the ethics of interviewing our subjects as there is a line that can be crossed if you’re not careful.

In class on Thursday, we had a guest, Julio, come and give us an intensive camera-tech lesson. He taught us how to set up the camera, check the white balance, use a boom mic and adjust the aperture settings. It was extremely helpful and cool to be using a different camera to the usual DSLR.

This week we had to present our first assessment task for our studio which was to make a video essay. I wasn’t entirely sure what a video essay was so I was a little confused in the week leading up to this one. As it turns out, a video essay is essentially a just a film that incorporates all your ideas and concepts and combines them with accompanying footage, text and imagery. It’s essentially a trailer for the film you’re going to make. We made these video essays to demonstrate the direction we’re heading with our documentaries. Everyone’s essays films were really outstanding, making me wish I’d tried a bit harder with mine. I feel really unmotivated about my documentary topic this week, especially seeing all the different concepts everyone else in our class has come up with. My essay film didn’t really do a great job of conveying my ideas.

This week I feel like I’ve finally solidified my idea. Instead of just focusing on the people behind the scenes in the music industry I’ll also be focusing my attention on how the music industry has become more DIY and easily accessible than it was say, 20 years ago. I’ll be comparing it to the 80’s and 90’s and interviewing people to highlight the contrast between now and then.

This week in class Pete went around the room and tested each one of us on our ideas and challenged us to think outside the square a little more. After everyone had finished speaking he said “now everything you all just said to me, that’s your essay film” and we were all just like “ohhhhhhh” and it all clicked. I’m feeling pretty good about project brief 2 now and feel like my concept is coming together. I’ve got people lined up to interview and an idea of what I want my film to look like.

In week 3 we received the outline for our second project brief which is to create a video essay based around the idea we’ve chosen. I really didn’t understand what a video essay was at first but once I’d done the readings and watched the film Kim showed us in class it became clearer. A video essay is basically a collection of images, footage, text, music and even narration all put together to convey an idea or opinion.

In one of the readings, Lopate describes what constitutes an essay film in a clear and coherent manner. Lopate breaks down the essay film into 5 main points; these being 1) An essay film must incorporate words or text, 2) The text must be the voice of a singular person or represent one opinion, 3) The essay must portray the speaker’s want to resolve an issue or uncover and decode this issue, 4) The essay must deliver a strong point of view and 5) The format and text of the essay should be eloquent, coherent and sophisticated.

It can also be considered as a sort of trailer for your final piece of work. For my video essay I plan to compile a bunch of stock footage and images of the people I have lined up to interview and do a voice over as the film runs outlining my concept and the aim of the final product. I’ll also incorporate music which I will either make myself or source from one of my interviewees. Im treating my video essay as a sort of collage of all my ideas, so it will be slightly hectic in places but still coherent.

In the second half of week 2 we had to present three main ideas that we could potentially base our documentaries on. My concepts were 1) The faces behind the modern day music industry, focusing not on bands but on the young people that make music a possibility such as publicists, managers, booking agents etc. 2) The phenomenon of Pokemon Go and how technology has made a virtual game into a social activity. I still wasn’t entirely sold on either of these ideas and was really struggling to pick an idea that I was passionate about. But by the end of the class i think I had pretty much decided to go with the music industry concept as I play music and know a lot of people in that world meaning that it would be easy to find interviewees and information that I needed. Plus it’s an area that I am inevitably interested in.

The first week of our studio saw us running over what we could expect from this class over the course of the semester. From this we gathered that we would be making short documentaries about a topic of our choice, but that topic has to be something that fits in with the brief of the studio; which is “to go out into the world and do great things”. I had absolutely zero ideas of what I wanted my documentary to be about.

We were also shown a bunch of clips to spark ideas about the sort of work we can produce ourselves this semester. One video that stuck with me was a clip about the legend of shoes hanging over the telephone wires. The video compiled a bunch of audio recordings, stock footage, pictures and more to collect answers as to what the legend of these flying kicks meant to different people. The overall result was really interesting to watch and hear and everyone seemed to have a different interpretation of what it meant to them.

We also spent a bit of time using the zoom recorders and other equipment to practise our vox pop skills. Kim sent us out to go and interview pedestrians and passerbys with the aim of starting a surface level conversation and by asking a series of questions, have the conversation take a deeper turn. I think I failed at this because nerves got the better of me and I ended up just asking people what they ate for lunch and that was it. So this is probably something I need to work on if I’m going to deliver a quality documentary.

So we finally finished the music video! It’s been a bumpy rollercoaster ride and I’ve discovered many things about the world of music video making and my assumption making tendencies that need to be stopped. I have to say that I went into this project thinking it would be a lot easier than it was and I think had I planned better, and not been so pig-headed, we could have come out with a much better result. However, after being unsure about the quality and standard of our video for many weeks now, the final result has made me very happy and I actually think Jac and I have done a wonderful job, even if most of it was…by accident.

Our main hurdle that we needed to overcome during this process was actually our camera settings on the day of shooting. Our ISO was mostly incorrect the entire time we were filming. We had so many different locations and I’ve learnt now that you NEED to continuously reset the ISO especially when changing locations. We also bumped the levels of the ISO up too high a lot of the time so many parts of our footage were over-exposed when we looked at it on the computer. Jac and I were pretty bummed when we realised all of this, thinking we’d just have to put up with grainy footage and try our hardest to make it work, WHEN SUDDENLY Jac clicked something wrong on the screen whilst editing and all of a sudden we had a tiny screen on top of an enlarged screen and it happened to look rather aesthetically pleasing. This then determined the entire theme and aesthetic for our whole video clip and essentially saved our lives. From here we decided we could use the grainyness of the footage to our advantage (kinda) by making the whole thing very 90’s looking. This wasn’t very hard as Conor’s clothes (lead singer) in the clip already looked like something straight out of Degrassi High. Throw in some static and a VHS sound effect at the beginning and we had what looked like an intentionally low quality/ home-made looking video clip.

Halfway through the editing process we realised we actually needed more footage. Yes, we already had heaps of footage already, but not the right kind. We tried to call in Conor for another shoot but it wasn’t possible so Jac and I headed back to Footscray to film some stuff ourselves. It was this day of shooting that in the end, took our clip from being mildly enjoyable to watch to quite visually entertaining. All we did on this second shoot was film more graffiti walls and $2 stores, but this time we went in with the knowledge of what it was going to look like in the editing suites and where it was going to be used within the clip so it was much easier to gage what to film.

Jac and I spent so much time in the edit suites we might as well have signed a lease and moved into suite #07 but it was all worth it. Funnily enough, after exporting the final video clip and watching it back, a lot of the grainyness actually disappeared? We found this to be quite odd but also a nice little surprise. Making the clip has been such a great opportunity and I definitely want to make more music videos in the future.

Today’s director in focus was Chris Cunningham who was actually quite a young guy when he started directing music videos. He started out in robotics and you can see a lot of how that influenced him within his works. He’s done clips for artists such as Bjork, Portishead, Aphex Twin and more. This was one of the clips we were shown today and even though it’s really creepy, I couldn’t look away. Most of Cunningham’s work has this aesthetic.

I hadn’t heard much of Goldfrapp before this class so I didn’t know what to expect from her music videos either. But what I have since learnt, is that her music clips are absolutely mesmerising to watch. We watched at least 4 of them in today’s class and they’re extremely cinematic. This was my favourite, purely because it was so captivating and once it had finished, I had this weird sense of timelessness like I’d been watching the clip for hours rather than just a few minutes.

Jac and I started editing today! We realised our footage is a little..um…grainy. Not too sure what to do about that. Jordan happened to be down in the edit suites when we discovered this and he thinks it’s happening because our ISO was too high….which he is probably absolutely right about. Boujee Jaq and I are quite clearly, a bunch of nobs but I’m determined we will fix the issue somehow. Not sure how, but somehow.

The good part is that the colours in the pool sequence look really good. The actual water inside the pool is full of vivid purples and pinks which is great because they’re two of the main colours we’ve picked for the clip’s colour palette.

If we can deal with this grainy issue then I think we might have a good-looking clip ahead of us. Fingers crossed.

We had our filming day today! Three different locations over 12 hours, we were SO exhausted afterwards. We began filming at Conor’s house near the city at 11am, moved onto Footscray streets after that and then finally arrived at our pool location. We officially finished filming at 11pm. We felt pretty accomplished afterwards though. Everything seemed to run pretty smoothly and all of our extras turned up for the pool scene which looked great on camera. We had a bit of trouble trying to get the $2 stores to agree to letting us filming inside but finally found a few that would let us. I’m keen to see how this is all going to look when we edit it!

‘JUSTIN BEIBER’ – FORTUNES SHOT LIST

Fortunes – Justin Beiber

Concept

The video opens with introductory shots of a pool party, lots of people and bright colours. This cuts to the lead singer of the band, Conor, walking down the street at midday as the song starts. Conor goes to cluttered $2 stores to shop for party supplies including streamers, plastic cups, party poppers and other classic party essentials. This is intercut with Conor singing and dancing in his own style in the store.

Returning home, Conor begins to set up for the pool party, decorating the space and trying on outfits, this will be edited using fast-paced cuts and close ups.

Finally Conor is seen floating in the pool on an inflatable pool toy, alone. It seems no one will actually arrive and he has set up this party for himself only.

The band, Fortunes, are an established Melbourne duo whose musical genre is best described as RnB electronica. Their aesthetic style matches this genre, a heavy emphasis on urban streetwear, often dressed in Adidas hoodies, Nike sneakers, buckets hats, etc. As clothing is such an expressionistic element within this music genre the video will showcase particular styles Conor dresses in. This particular style is experiencing a steady rise and is evident in other bands such as MØ, ALTA, Habits and more popular celebrities such as Miley Cyrus.

Production

The film clip is basically divided into three sections; The Introduction, Part 1, 2, and 3. The Introduction will occur before the clip begins and shows a number of people splashing about a pool and taking part in a pool party with Conor at the centre of it all. Part 1 features Conor walking to the shops to purchase party items as well as playing around with these items within the store. Part 2 will show Conor setting up for the party and Part 3 shows Conor floating in the pool by himself as it becomes apparent that the party he is throwing is just for himself.

Locations

Each section of the clip has its own location. The Introduction and Part 3 are set in a private home pool. We’ve already received permission from a family friend to use their pool in Yarraville for these scenes. Part 1 will require us to gain permission from one or two $2 stores around our filming location in Footscray/Yarraville and Part 2 will be filmed inside Conor’s house as well as around the pool.

Inspiration/Similar Style

The concept for the video was partly a leftover idea from a previous music video concept and partly brainstorming with the client to create a tailored idea for their particular song. As this was the primary method of development there was no major inspiration as such. However we developed some aesthetic ideas on how to film various locations from other music videos, such as Banoffee’s With Her and Lorde’s Yellow Flicker Beat for the pool scene, ALTA’s Stay Awhile for the urban scene’s and Jungle Giants’ Any Kind Of Way for the party scene. These video’s all in some way express a similar style that we would like to achieve. We also looked into other music video’s that involve pools and parties and discovered style’s that we wanted to avoid, such as Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry.

Michel Gondry was today’s director in focus. He’s a quirky sort and clearly quite an interesting and vivid thinker. Here’s a clip he directed for Bjork that we watched in class and the entire thing is like a mini movie. It made me realise how much can actually be crammed into 4 minutes and you can tell an entire story in such a small amount of time. Also the set and the production element of this vid are exceptional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJnhaXwK86M&list=RDXJnhaXwK86M#t=13

So we still really like the idea of using a beach or pool for our video clip. We’re beginning to establish our concept. Because the song is so fun, it might be nice to have some kind of pool party occur, however we don’t want it to be too cliche. So maybe a pool party where no one turns up? That might be cool. Also Conor has some rad dance moves so we definitely want to show those off within the clip.

Flesh Without Blood was entirely directed, edited and coloured by Grimes herself. On top of this she not only wrote and sings Flesh Without Blood, but produced the song herself as well. This is one of the main reasons why Grimes is one of my favourite artists, because she literally is an artist in all aspects of the word. As discussed by Railton and Watson, the music industry is full of sexism and women still struggle to be taken seriously within it. Grimes is overly aware of how female artists are depicted in the music industry and this is a driving force behind her creating everything herself.

What makes this video clip extra unique is that it actually encompasses two songs within it. The first track and first half of the clip is ‘Flesh Without Blood’ and the second track and second half of the clip is a song called ‘Life In The vivid Dream’. Both songs entirely juxtapose one another but fit extremely well within this doll-like, somber fairytale world that has been created in the video. In an interview, Grimes outlines how she chose to incorporate these two songs into the one clip to accentuate the fact that every song on her latest album are entirely different from one another. So the making of this clip was a somewhat strategic move on her part. The best part about this clip is that it provides so many different genres and styles which is exactly what Grimes new album offers. This was released as a teaser for her new album ‘Art Angels’, so it makes perfect sense that the clip reflects the structure of this new album.

The clip essentially showcases a series of Grimes’ alter egos who are even listed in the credits at the end. We see her dressed as a cowboy angel, an Edwardian dutchess, a Michael Jackson-type swinger girl and a hipster gamer playing video games in her dungeon. The overall vibe is a Mary Antoinette meets gothic fantasy type aesthetic and it’s beautifully mesmerizing to watch. Everything from the colours of the costumes and the sets to Grimes’ dance moves to the captivating shots of her dressed as a bloodied fallen angel perched on a branch all meet together to create a real work of art.

The clip was shot in Vancouver over numerous locations which is also the hometown of Grimes. She enlisted the help of her brother to help her film the clip and act as assistant cinematographer. It’s interesting to see that in some shots, you can actually see cars and trucks passing by on a nearby highway, especially during the tennis courts scenes. Usually this kind of thing would break the world that had been created within the video clip, but in this instance, I think it actually enhances it. In the clip, we are offered various different types of styles and genres and see a mash-up of eras, so the cars almost serve in creating a new world where all these eras and genres co-exist together. In comparison to her previous clips, this one is quite extravagant and steers away from the simple ‘girl sings to camera in one outfit’ type that we would usually expect from her. The clip reads like a short film. It screens a title, a first act and a second act (which is something usually only seen in plays) and features credits at the end making it not your typical type of video clip. For me, the clip is actually quite reminiscent of Baz Lurhmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ due to it’s eccentricity, extravagance and playfulness.

WE HAVE A BAND! Like actually though, Conor from Fortunes said yes and is really keen, SO IT’S OFFICIAL. We’ll be making a music video for their latest single titled ‘Justin Beiber’ which was released only about a month ago so the hype is strong, weeeeeeeeeeee!  It’s a fun track and you can here it here:

SO WE AREN’T WORKING WITH LEISURE SUITE EITHER. This obtaining a band thing ain’t as easy peasy as me and Boujee Jaq first anticipated. BUT WE WILL GET THERE. We’re going to contact my friend Conor who’s the frontman in a band called Fortunes who have been doing rad things lately.

FINGERS CROSSED HE’S KEEN TO WORK WITH US.

In the mean time, here’s one of his songs to brighten the mood:

So we still haven’t heard back from our potential artist ‘Fontine’ so I think it’s fair to say that he isn’t going to be the one we’ll be filming a video clip for. It would’ve been great, Jac and I had come up with quite a few ideas already for it, but we’re not overly fussed. If Fontine does eventually reply saying he’d like us to do the clip but we’ve already confirmed another band, Jac and I were thinking of just taking on both projects.

We sent a message through to Leisure Suite and they’ve already responded with a yes so we’ve got that part sorted now. The song of theirs we’ll be using is really slow and sexy so Jac and I were brainstorming ideas about shooting it in a pool or beach at night time. I have this image of the lead singer, Bridgit, smoking a cigarette whilst standing up to mid-waist in the water and the cigarette smoke is swirling around her in slow motion. We don’t have the technology for under water filming which is fine, I’m pretty confident that we can deliver something outstanding without the use for under water technology.

At this stage we haven’t met with the band to discuss anything in detail yet, but are planning to meet them on Wednesday. We can pitch to them some of our ideas and also get a gage on what they would like aesthetically. We also thought it would be a good idea to look at their previous video clips so that our own video clip will be similar, but also distinctively different. However, none of their video clips have been released yet so we’ll have to wait until Wednesday to view them. I’m really looking forward to getting all of this underway and producing something amazing.

Today we watched ‘Control’, a film by Anton Corbijn that was released in 2007. It’s fair to say that I absolutely LOVED the film. It’s been forever since I’ve seen a movie that captivated my attention so wholeheartedly for the entire duration.

The film was about Joy Division’s frontman Ian Curtis, his life, struggles and eventual demise at the young age of 23. The whole film was shot in black and white, which was stunning paired with the bleak streets of England and the minimalistic way in which the shots were set up. I definitely had many little moments of video clip inspiration come up for me whilst watching the film, some of which I’ve listed below:

• A slow, close-up pan of a crowd that looks sweaty and entirely hypnotised by the band that they’re watching play at a live gig. This came about from watching the scene in ‘Control’ where Joy Division play their first live set I’m pretty sure. The shot of the crowd just perfectly captured what seeing Joy Division for the first time would feel like.

• A mid-shot of a person sitting on an off centre couch with a wall light or lamp dimly glowing above their heads while they sing. I thought of this in the scene where Ian is writing the lyrics to ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’  sitting on a couch with a light just like I mentioned.

• A person’s lips are all you can see moving against a frosty train window as they sing. This from a scene where Ian is arriving at a destination where Annik soon comes to meet him as well as his band members.

As sad as the story behind ‘Control’ is, the film offers many points of inspiration and will definitely be one that I keep re-watching over and over.

Today’s first class proved that I’d definitely made the right choice in picking this summer studio. Making music videos is the perfect combination of two things that I love and adore: music and film and this course is going to teach us how to go about doing that.

In the second session we watched a few music videos made by Anton Corbijn. I hadn’t heard of him before now but I really should have. He’s the guy behind the clips for bands like Depeche Mode, Joy Division, U2 and many more famous bands of that era. His work is cinematically beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. It was also interesting to see how his video clips; which were made many years ago with older technology can still be praised and highly appreciated by the masses. I went home to watch the rest of the video clips that he did for Depeche Mode because they’re one of my favourite bands.

I didn’t realise that we’d be making a video clip for an actual band that could potentially be accepted by Rage. When I realised this my excitement doubled. that’s definitely going to a goal of mine within this course. We spent the end of the afternoon session sorting ourselves into groups and figuring out which band/artist we were going to email. I could’ve put myself with a larger group but I chose to just have a team consisting of Jac and myself because we have worked together on music media things before and plan to in the future. It’s also extremely rare for us to disagree on creative concepts which is a hard thing to find. We emailed an artist called Fontine who I’ve done an interview with before, asking if he would be open to us filming a clip for his song ‘New’. His manager replied sounding keen but we’re just waiting to hear from Fontine himself. If he says no then we have my friend’s band ‘Leisure Suite’ as a back up hopefully.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7nVr4Ys8zKM

For our final assessment of the semester to come together, our exhibition at Signal and the media day, we needed to work as a team and delegate each other into roles to ensure that all grounds would be covered and that the exhibition would be a success. In order for this to happen, we needed a tech team to oversee and conduct all technical aspects for the exhibition. We needed a documentation team to document and record all of our progress as well as present it to an audience. A public relations and web design team was necessary to create the website, flyers, bios, pamphlets etc that would help to promote the exhibition. And finally we needed an installation team to make the actual exhibit come to life. I was allocated to the documentation team along with Dea and Amalina. To be honest, at first I didn’t really understand what my role entailed. I knew I had to document things but I wasn’t really sure as to what the purpose of this would be and we were all still figuring out what our exhibition at Signal would actually be about and what it would look like. After a week or two I began to understand. I saw everyone around me delving into their separate roles and begin to get things underway and it finally clicked that I must do the same. So for the next week I spent some class time taking photos of everyone editing their clips and preparing bits and pieces. I helped gather shots of ‘behind the scenes progress’ so we could add them to our exhibition portfolio and track our progress as well as install them into our assigned room for the media exhibit. It wasn’t until about the third week that I got really excited about what we were creating and immersed myself into my documentation role. If I’m to be honest, I think this also had a lot to do with the fact that I had re-shot all of my footage and entirely changed my concept for the exhibition. My new concept revolving around the use of avocado and egg excited me because I knew I would be showing something at Signal that I was actually really proud of. Making the trailer was a big part of our role in documentation. This is also where I figured out how valuable our group page on Facebook was as a means of communication as I had to make several posts asking other classmates to upload their footage to the drive so that we could actually make the trailer. Amalina, Dea and I really worked as a team on the trailer and communicated our ideas to each other quite effectively. We didn’t go ahead with any decisions unless all three of us were in agreeance as we wanted the trailer to be something that we were all proud of. My role in helping the exhibition along grew from here. I took headshots of our class members so that we would be able to put them on the website and I got really involved in our Facebook page. I posted in it quite frequently to check up on the progress of others, to ask questions relating to my own role and to organise things. I volunteered to speak at both the Signal exhibition and media exhibition even though I completely dreaded the idea. Public speaking isn’t my strength. I think I managed to at least pull it off but next time I think I’d like to prepare myself a lot better presentation and speech wise. Towards the end of the whole process I felt like the individual teams really just became one big team and we all ended up helping out with whatever needed to be done regardless of whether we had been assigned to the role or not. Everyone really stepped up. I’m so grateful for this entire assignment, it’s shown me how much work and effort it takes to create an exhibit and I now know how to recreate this in the future. Before this task, I really underestimated the workload that would be required to pull this assignment off and had no clue how a public relations team worked or how to edit on a template in Premiere Pro. The skills I’ve obtained because of doing this are so valuable and practical and something that I can take with me into the real world. I feel like I’ve achieved a whole lot this semester and the fact that our exhibition was so well received by the public speaks volumes as to how far we’ve come.

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/elle-sablotny/2015/10/15/signal-head-shots/

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/elle-sablotny/2015/10/12/signal-editing-and-progress/

THE EXHIBITION WAS AN ENORMOUS SUCCESS. So many people turned up and everyone was so impressed by our work, it actually went a lot better than I thought it would! Most people had arrived by 7:45pm and Jeanie from Signal was worried about the fact that there was nothing showing on the screens yet and kept asking em and Claudia if we wanted to turn the projections and sounds on while people were arriving. We kept saying no and that we wanted to wait so that we could officially open it with our speech and then everyone would watch the first 13 minute loop together. I AM SO GLAD WE STUCK TO THAT because the final result was us opening the exhibition and everyone standing in complete silence and awe for 13 minutes and it ended up being such a special moment. Literally wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I feel like I might actually live in the edit suites now. I’ve come back in to download the final 13 minute sequence with everyone’s footage in it and hand it in to Signal as well as the audio so that we can do the test run tonight. OUR EXHIBITION IS TOMORROW NIGHT, HOW HAS THIS HAPPENED SO FAST.

So for some reason that I cannot fathom I decided it would be a good idea to volunteer as speaker for both the Signal exhibition and the Media exhibition. I think my main reasoning is that it will further my skills. I’m generally quite a confident person so I’d like to try and be confident in front of a crowd too. Claudia and I met up today to outline what we will say at Signal. We decided it would be best to just talk about the process we’ve gone through to make this happen and then do a round of thankyous. We don’t want the speech to be very long at all.

Now that I’ve finished and edited my piece for the exhibition, I can focus more on my role in helping the exhibition get underway. Today I feel like Amalina, Dea and myself completed our first official task as a documentation team which was to create the trailer for the exhibition at Signal. We went into the edit suites at around 11am and didn’t come out until around 5pm. Making a trailer is generally pretty easy but we had to wait for everyone to upload their footage to the drive, we had to put all of that footage into Premiere Pro, arrange it around numerous times until it was in an order that suited what we wanted and we also had to pick the right soundtrack to go with it. On top of this, we didn’t want to leave the suites until we were completely happy with what we had created. The final result was a cool, modern glimpse of our media class’ projections that advertised ‘Obsession’ being held at Signal towards the end of the month. Can watch below.

So, on the day that we were supposed to view our final draft, I decided to change my entire concept and reshoot everything because that is how I roll apparently. I just wanted to make sure that my final product was something that I was proud of whilst also being visually pleasing. My new footage revolves around the textures and properties of egg and avocado, two foods that I am completely obsessed with and so is most of Melbourne’s cafe culture. I shot these clips in a way that plays with the idea of our consumption culture whilst also re-imagining the way we might use these foods.

I’m no photographer but part of my role in the documentation team has been to take head shots of everyone in the class so I can send them to Rose to put up on the website. I took photos of as many people as I could today but not everyone was there. I’m hoping the photos look half decent and that I can chase up those that i didn’t get to photograph at a later date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsnqXkGZUag&feature=youtu.be

My first sequence.

These are just a few shots taken today of everyone working on their final sequences! It’s exciting to see it all starting to come together. I’m thinking it might be nice to get some mini interviews of classmates talking about their concept perhaps? Just an idea

So my concept has evolved quite a bit. To broaden my idea, I’ve decided to base my projections around the idea of social connection and little moments that involve this. I captured some great footage on the weekend at my friend’s party and have put it together to make my first sequence. It actually looks better than I expected! At the time of filming, I really didn’t think I’d captured

I think I had  a spark of genius! Ok, so I want to explore movement/dance. I also want to link it to site. We’re working with Signal and The Yarra runs alongside it. I had the idea of filming my subjects dancing, but filming their reflection in The Yarra instead. This creates an entirely new place within a non-place. This will be quite tricky and I’ve never really worked with filming reflections before. I’ve done a bit of reading on the best time to shoot a reflection and some techniques to use. I’ll have to conduct a bit of trial and error until I get it right.
http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2013/11/06/water-reflection-techniques-how-to-increase-the-impact-of-your-landscapes/

I’m really inspired by the idea of music video. Obviously for our projections at Signal, our soundscape has to be seperate from our clips, but I will still draw my inspiration from the idea of movement in music video and dance and try and incorporate that into a non-place setting. Looking at Banoffee’s new video clip for her song “With Her”, I really enjoy the simplicity in colour and movement within the clip. I’d like to do something similar with my projections. I had the idea of having people move to different styles of music against different backdrops and somehow layer it all together. I’m still trying to figure out how this might all work, but at least I’ve got something to work with so far.

Today marked our first official meeting at Signal. This is our last project for this class and also our most important. It will be up to us as a group to come up with a concept and create a series of short clips and soundscapes to project from Signal as a final exhibition. We spent the afternoon brainstorming ideas. A lot of what we came up with involved the idea of Melbourne, light, shapes and movement. It was a bit hard to get the ball rolling with these ideas at first I guess because our brief is so broad and can pretty much encompass anything we like, but still in regards to to non-place. I’m going to spend the next few days refining my idea for my clips.

When I first heard that our task for Project Brief 3 was to interview an artist that had worked with Testing Grounds and make a 5-7 minute doco on them, I was super excited! I love doing that kind of thing but haven’t really done too much of it before. We were put into groups of three and each assigned an artist, ours being Arie Rain Glorie, which just happens to be a super artistic name. In that first lesson that we received Brief 3, I had a quick research of who Arie was and he turned out to be a video projection artist not too much older than ourselves.
Over this semester we’ve been obviously focusing on site and how meaning can be derived from a particular site or non-place in different ways. We found out that Arie curated an exhibition at Testing Grounds in order to counteract the idea that exhibitions should be held in a specific place like a gallery. I thought this tied in well with Bachelard’s chapter ‘The House. From Cellar to Garrett. The Significance of the Hut.’ In it Bachelard talks about our attachment to a particular place, specifically our homes. Although this project brief is very different from analysing our ‘first universe’, the concept tied in well in the sense that Arie was trying to challenge the idea of attachment to a certain place such as a gallery and replace it with a non-place such as Testing grounds. And in looking at the result, he was quite successful and plans to curate another exhibition at Testing Grounds next year.

My group and I mostly discussed things for our project in a group chat on FB. It was often hard to organise meet up times where all 3 of us were available so this way worked best for us. We all individually researched Arie and his works so that we knew what he was about and grasped a feel for his works. We gathered that Arie’s works were all quite simplistic yet the ideas behind them were quite complex. For example his video ‘Ascension of the Fool’ displays a long shot of a man trying to climb a ladder without it leaning against anything and he continues to fail. The video is intercepted with shots of flying birds. When I first watched this I really had no clue what it was about. So we made sure to ask Arie the meaning behind it in his interview. As it turns out, the film is about fear of failure and taking flight I guess both metaphorically and physically.

Nicolette couldn’t make it to the conducting of the interview so Gianna and myself headed to Arie’s studio at RMIT with a load of equipment and set the interview up. We had a list of question that we’d all compiled which I thought would help a lot. However, I don’t think it did. I mean yes, it meant we were well prepared but it also meant that the way I interviewed Arie broke the flow of conversation and ease because I had to keep going back to my list of questions and checking what was next and what I’d already asked. I think I would’ve preferred to just have sat down with Arie and previously memorised some questions to ask him. I feel like that probably would’ve made him more comfortable with the situation also.

But on the other hand, when we watched all the footage back, we had 18 minutes worth of responses from him, which was more than enough to work with.

To make up for not being there for the interview and filming, Nicolette did most of the editing and she did a really great job. Obviously she consulted us a lot of the time and we put in our ideas and thoughts too. I kind of wish we had used footage from Testing Grounds to break up the standard ‘sitting in a chair’ interview stereotype though. We did attempt to go to testing Grounds and film, but every time we tried it was raining and impractical for everyone. We did use footage of Arie’s works though and this looks great combined with his interview.

Overall Nicolette, Gianna and myself had a pretty good group dynamic. We were all quite diligent and on task with everything. We solved problems well and communicated effectively with one another too. I’m really glad this was the case because there’s nothing worse than being stuck with a group that don’t work well.

Gianna, Nicolette and I spent a few hours editing our doco in the edit suites today. We went through all of the footage and chose the most important bits to keep. We had to keep in mind the fact that we wanted to keep the responses that were linked to site and the idea of non-place, so we deleted any answers that seemed irrelevant. We also discussed the idea of making our own track for the doco. Arie (our Artist), makes his own soundtracks for his video projection using his voice. He then distorts it so that his voice is barely recognisable in the track. We thought that maybe we could edit out all the times Arie says the word ‘um’ in his interview and do a similar thing? Just an idea.

We met with Arie today! It was raining so we couldn’t film at Testing Grounds. We quickly changed our plans and luckily Arie was great and let us film him in his studio. It was a bit daunting conducting the interview, I thought it would be a lot easier than it was but it was very stoppy/starty and there were a lot of silent moments. But it was a very good learning experience and we got some great footage.

Last night was so lovely! Instead of having classes for the week, we had a dinner/ hang out night at Testing Grounds. We’d spent the past few weeks planning the night so that everything ran smoothly and it really did! the best part for me was the projection backpacks which Joseph showed us how to use. We ventured out with them, one backpack per group and projected our short films and photos all along the Yarra and Southbank. It was a really beautiful, ambient night.

Here’s a little video I made from my footage on the night.

We sent some interview questions to our artist today so that he’s prepared for our upcoming interview.

http://www.arierainglorie.com/

Today we watched the rest of the class’s films who hadn’t showcased them yesterday. As well as this we discussed arrangements for Monday’s dinner and projection night at Testing Grounds which i am really looking forward to! I’ve really grown to enjoy the company of everyone in the Specific To Site class and I’m so excited about the work we’ve been doing and will be doing this semester. Hopefully Monday night will be a success and something we can be proud of. We were also given the brief for Project 3. For this task we have been split into groups and assigned an artist that collaborates with Testing Grounds. From here we must make a 5-7 minute documentary on their works and persona as an artist. I can’t wait to do this project, I love  documentaries and have been wanting to learn more about how they are constructed. So this will be an exciting task.

Wednesday’s class was a huge presentation of everyone’s Project Brief 2 films. It was amazing to see the different ways in which we each analyse a space and how we differ from each other artistically but also how we can be quite similar in our approaches. Rose’s film was a highlight for me. She really took the task and completely put her own style and creativity into it and made the project her own. She chose a public bathroom as her non-place and placed an actor in it to eat various different kinds of foods, challenging the idea of a bathroom being just a place to use the toilet.

Upon seeing my film up on the big screen and projected in front of the whole class I actually felt like it was really boring. I hadn’t felt that beforehand. However, the feedback that I got was extremely positive. Apparently the pacing was really well thought out, slow and even and my sound effects really aided the idea of the drains being an in between place amongst surburbia.

To me this project was about finding an in-between location, a non-place and exploring it in order to derive depth and meaning and perhaps see it as it usually wouldn’t be seen. We’ve been spending our Thursday classes visiting different sites. With The Percy Granger Museum we looked at how people can put themselves into a space without specifically inhabiting it. With Testing Grounds we analysed the space and looked for things that may not have been obvious at first. In doing this task, I took what I had learned in class and from these excursions and tried to recreate them in Project Brief 2.

For this task I was lucky enough to be paired with Claudia who has a very similar mindset to me and so we were able to brainstorm ideas quite well. We quickly decided that film would be our main medium used in creating the 3 minute product. We also decided that photographs would also be a good idea, but would only use a few intercepted throughout the video. On top of this would obviously be our soundscape, which I was quite interested in having a play around with.

In our first brainstorming session, we chose the South Yarra Drains/Tunnels as our location. Both of us had been there before and thought it would be a great place to explore as it has quite a bit of history in the form of graffiti, old belongings left behind and even parties and events that have taken place there. We thought it might be a cool idea to bring along some small dolls and lego and perhaps shoot our footage down there in a way that made the leggo look life-size. But after a while we decided that perhaps this wasn’t the best idea as it might take away from the space itself. After all the space was to be the main focus of the project. So when it came to filming day, we just brought some tea lights and a lighter along with us. We weren’t really sure what we’d use them for but knew that they would come in handy. However when we got to the South Yarra Drains, we found that the entire thing was flooded and there was literally no way of getting inside, so we had to change our plans last minute. It worked out super well as we went to the St. Kilda drains instead, which were just up the road. The drains here ran directly through the middle of housing and roads, which mde the drains really resonate as a non-place to me. The footage that I took focuses on how a space can be altered with each person that sets foot inside it. This was where the candles came in handy and ended up being an integral part of my concept. A lot of my footage showcases the graffiti done by others that have entered the place and even webs made from spiders that have lived there, or the miniature creek with debris/belongings trickling through it. I think that the lit candles inside the tunnels captured my presence inside the space and added a sense of life to an otherwise desolate place.

In yesterday’s class we spent a while trying to edit our sounds from Project Brief 1. We used GarageBand to shorten the sounds and add effects like reverb and distortion. I missed the end of class but apparently everyone played their sounds from their laptops at once and walked around the building. This was done as a way to test the effects of sounds in different spaces. This class got me thinking about how I can make my sounds more creative and interesting for my upcoming Project Brief 2.

Last Thursday saw us checking out Testing Grounds as a non-place. When we got there I realised that I’d passed the place many times and always wondered what it was. Testing Grounds is located on City Road towards the back of the Arts Centre. Amongst skyscrapers, offices and busy traffic, the open industrial site exists purely for artistic operations. We received an in depth description of the site’s history and how it came to be. The most fascinating thing that I found out about the site is that the council actually ensure that Testing Grounds is only used for arts purposes. This kind of thing is quite unheard of, especially when the location is perfect to build another skyscraper of large building. This fact makes the place somewhat sacred in a way. We also spent a while exploring the place. Everywhere you look there’s little trinkets to be found and objects to ponder. I particularly liked the crate that encompassed an old piano. To me it looked like a stage and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I’d love to perform there, to hold my own gig there. Definitely going to put that one on my goals list.

When I first heard about this project brief, I wasn’t overly thrilled about it. How was I supposed to explore the space that is my home when it is so tiny and run down, and really, a place that I don’t actually spend much time in? I also don’t like creating pieces or projects that focus on myself in any way. I always find it challenging and quite confronting.  I began to think about how I could go about this project in an interesting way, and seriously, nothing was coming to me. I eventually thought that maybe I could focus my photos, sounds and videos towards the flaws of my apartment. I was planning to do this through a series of close-ups that would expose fine details of in each individual surface or texture. But even the thought of that didn’t excite me. However as I began taking this angle, regardless of whether it excited me or not, I came up with another idea. This being that all the photos and videos should be from the point of view of my dog, as he inhabits the household more than myself. So most of my photos and videos I’ve taken have been by lying down or crawling on the ground. The result is a perspective of my apartment that is quite askew and at times blurry and random. I realized that in doing this, I actually discovered parts of my home that I hadn’t really paid much attention to previously. Such as the way the oven looks when you’re looking up at it from the kitchen floor, or how big the balcony door seems when you ‘re only a foot tall.  Some of the photos are also quite blurry. Iw as planning to go back and retake them but it then dawned on me that that might not be necessary. I chose to use them as they were due to the fact that Mo (my dog) doesn’t have the same quality of eye sight as humans and therefore the blurriness actually worked quite well with my subject matter. Overall, I wouldn’t say this is my finest work, but I do think I’ve come up with something interesting at least.