The main lesson I learnt from this week’s symposium is that k-films can change the way viewers see things, but they can also change the way makers see things. This is my favourite part of the IM1 course so far – I’m learning so much from expanding my thought processes and developing my lateral creative thinking skills. The content we’re talking about/producing takes the familiar and has a wonderful way of making it unfamiliar, or abstracting it. This changes how we experience our place in the world.
Documentaries all want to engage with the world, always having the ambition to change something (most often this is to change our understanding of something). Many of them can have a social purpose, and this can be utilised by Korsakow too (think Money and the Greeks). Kate Nash wrote a great post here about “[the] growing collection of works that marry the social, political and aesthetic ambitions of documentary with the forms and representational possibilities of digital media.” She talks about some of the social functions of documentary, including how to effectively engage audiences, as well as discussing their position within the documentary.
Interactivity is all about offering possibilities to your audience. As the architect of the work, it’s your responsibility to build your work in a way that allows these possibilities in the best way. All films rely on audiences to interpret them. However, experimental films (and their filmmakers) are generally made to explore something, so the conception of audiences tends to come later (which is the reverse of our traditional/commercial habits).
Seth encouraged us to think of filmmakers/creators as designers. I think this term is part of his PhD research, but I really like how it captures a lot more of the process around creating content. As a filmmaker, you have to design an experience for your viewers.