Today Imogen, Ren and myself met for our first brainstorming session in the class lab for our final Korsakow project. We began by individually brainstorming our initial ideas and thoughts, before pitching five of them to each other and finalising a concept for our final project. Below are our individual brainstorms:

Emily:

1. Contrast of business/urban life (buildings, roads, suits) Vs. natural spaces (parks, recreational areas, greenery) in Melbourne.
2. Bicycles – different viewpoints as cyclists navigate a city. Difference between recreational riders and commuters (cycling perceived as dangerous in the city, but relaxed and leisurely in the suburbs).Could explore helmet fashion, or the politics of bike lanes.
3. Weather, and how it’s going to be changing in the next four weeks while we film. Fluctuations in temperature, landscapes, clouds, skies, colder mornings, more heating, more blankets on beds, etc.
4. The process of making something – not sure what (a magazine? A meal? A house?). Concerns about how this would translate into a multilinear non-narrative as it could be confusing if not presented chronologically.
5. In focus – using depth of field to show abstracted images, objects and places before gradually shifting them into focus to reveal what it is. This will encourage the audience to look at familiar things in new ways.

Imogen:

1. Creating environments without showing people in them. For example, a person’s happiest moment of the week (whether that be pub on a friday night, playing with their kids on the weekend, etc). Using recorded sounds and footage from the locations, along with short interviews with different people, to create atmosphere without ever showing them. Could also contrast with the worst moments of a week (waking up on monday morning, etc). A similar documentary is Body of Memories which asks people about their personal memories.
2. Filming feet – a walk in someone else’s shoes. Using footage of feet to describe people by showcasing the movements of their feet, the footwear they choose, and the location they’re in.
3. Noticing Art in the Ordinary. Seeing everyday art in things that go unnoticed, such as floral displays, baristas and their coffees, etc. Focusing on visually beautiful things.
4. Ageing – Contrasting footage of old people, children, adolescents, adults, to question what it means to be a certain age. Also using challenges to stereotypes to get a wide picture.
5. Habits – both good and bad. Capturing people fidgeting, procrastinating, nose picking, etc. Looking at body language and every person’s little idiosyncrasies.

Ren:

1. Depth and distance through perspective. Using wide-angle shots, still frames, constructed angles in complementary and opposing ways.
2. Movement – through vehicles, humans, animals, and imagery (such as wind blowing through the trees).
3. Man and Machine.
4. Speed – slow motion, fast motion, and time lapse.

We then discussed all of the options we had, and rearranged each post-it-note idea into piles which had similarities. We realised that we were going to be able to incorporate elements from all of our favourite ideas into one of two ideas. These were:

• Man vs. machine (contrast between nature and urban life)
• Footsteps (following the lives of individuals and creating portraits through their feet)

We settled on the latter idea, and began speaking about the possibilities this option could give us, and exactly how we would do it. We want to use low-angle perspective to document 60 individual’s feet to provide a glimpse into their personality without every showing their face. We think we will choose one question which we can consistently ask each person we film that will offer an insight into them. The more we thought about it, the more we realised how much you can tell about a person from their shoes.

To further focus our work, we set some preliminary constraints that each clip will be less than 30 seconds, will be a single take, and have brief voiceovers to explain an element of our ‘characters’. We agreed that we all like stylistic qualities such as consistency (where shots have a relatively easy to understand relationship with each other), and visually pleasing aesthetic shots. We decided to film all of our clips on our personal DSLR cameras. We foresee that our keywords will end up being about body language (grouping together all subjects with crossed legs. or all subjects who fidget, etc).

Seth and our classmates had come great comments about our idea, which helped us to further define our prompt. One person suggested that we will almost be creating a typology of feet, which was an interesting notion. One response was that it was going to be hard to find 60 different people and still have them be distinctive, however we think that this could ultimately contribute to the overall point of the piece. Someone else likes that it will get us out of our comfort zone to interview and film people we don’t know. In this way, it will be an exploratory process not only for the viewer, but for the creator as well. Seth thinks the fact we have strong, defined constraints will help us, but asked us to consider what the work as a whole will be doing – whether it is specifically about shoes individually, or more about the shoes’ relationship to the people.

We are now going to research some documentary examples which will align with our project and start thinking about a digital mood board on which to collate our research. We will aim to have some test shots ready for next week’s class to see if this will work.

(Image via flickr)