Tag Archives: korsakow project

Week 10: Meeting notes

During class, Imogen showed us the Gantt chart she had prepared using the software SmartSheet. We all agreed on the timelines, even though we set them quite early to allow for mistakes and competing pressures from other projects. We continued discussing project management and how we were going to share the tasks we have left to complete for the project.

We assembled our skills matrix after discussing each team member’s strengths, weaknesses and what they have to offer. We believe that we have delegated the tasks in a balanced and efficient manner in order to produce the best outcome.

We have decided that we are going to try and embrace the spontaneity of our project. The entire point behind it is to explore the diversity and intricacies of life, so we have to try not to stage, create or stunt moments from happening.We want to try and capture as many characteristics from each person including all of their nuances and flaws.

The three of us have began thinking about keyword ideas we might use, despite only having a limited number of clips. Our ideas so far are:

  • family
  • love
  • trust

We are going to try and have the shots done by next week so that we can focus on the editing, essay writing and keywords (which are contingent on the footage we record).

The rest of the lab was dedicated to listening to presentations from other groups, as well as getting some preliminary feedback from Seth and our peers after our first prototype presentation (for a bonus 5%). Seth had concerns about whether the content was complex enough, and asked if we needed to refine the question yet again. He reminded us that we need to get something ‘interesting’ out of each interview, so we might have to ask our subjects to elaborate and give personal anecdotes behind their life lessons. He also got us to consider whether we were ‘close’ enough to the subject in our filming. He suggested that we could use more extreme close-ups to make it more intimate. We did question whether he was asking us to treat each fragment too individually, as opposed to concerning ourselves with what the cumulative effect of the work will be.

We had a really interesting experience separating the video footage from the audio for the first time and listening without the visuals. It was a very different experience with the artefact, which I think helped us further open our eyes to what we are trying to achieve with the work – insights into people using only their voice and feet.

We then went outside to shoot footage for about two hours. Ren was our wonderful cameraman and got some amazing footage. I found it very intimidating approaching strangers and asking to film their feet, however we quickly learned the best way to approach and phrase our invitation. We also discovered that approaching groups of people made them feel more comfortable as they could bounce off their friends and didn’t feel so under pressure. We decided to focus the question a little more towards the notion of what advice you would give someone as a life lesson. We found that probing the question got more interesting, personal answers. We’re really looking forward to seeing how this project comes together.

(Image via flickr)

Week 09: Meeting notes

This week we met to show each other our test clips and discuss which direction to continue taking our idea for the final Korsakow project. We decided to refine our prompt to “filming individual’s feet while interviewing them to get a glimpse into their lives and how they’ve found their feet, without ever showing their face.”

We established some more constraints in order to ensure that our project will run smoother. We agreed on a file management system, which includes how we label the clips and where we store them (on Imogen’s external hard drive). We also decided we could compress our video and thumbnails as we go, aiming for the former to be under 8-10MB each.

We arranged to meet after class next Tuesday (13 May) to film a selection of shots together in various locations around the city. We created a final deadline for all shots to be Monday 19 May.

One challenge we are facing at this stage is finalising the question which we will ask our sixty participants. For our test clips, we began with two questions which were:

  1. What excites you/gets you going/get you up on your feet and why?
  2. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned (and how has this helped you find your feet)?

After speaking with Seth to get some preliminary feedback about our idea, he suggested we continue trying to refine this question in order to come up with a perfect one-liner we can ask all participants. He pointed out that the success of our piece will be entirely determined by our interviewing techniques, which is important to keep in mind as we go along.

We agreed to try and incorporate as much variety in our fragments as possible – through things like movement (to keep the eye engaged), a variety of interfaces (which we will talk about and design next week), and variations of different feet in different situations (which aligns with our goal of showing that a person’s feet and environment can tell a lot about them. We also talked about whether we want moving or static previews, which we are going to experiment with once we have started filming. We discussed the use of text in our project and whether it would add or detract from what we are trying to do. We ultimately decided to leave the project as a visually-driven piece that doesn’t spoon-feed its viewers with text cues.

Imogen presented the visual research she had conducted by showing us some examples on vimeo which she was drawn to (including ‘Hands + Feet’ by Jeremy Snell, and ‘Looking Down’ by Hrrrthrrr. Ren also discussed the Polish film ‘Talking Heads’ (1980) by Gadajace Glowy which has a similar interview style which we are attempting. Seth also pointed us in the direction of Gillian Wearing’s works to further our research. He also suggested that we could use lapel microphones to get the best sound quality we can, and create another layer of intimacy with the interview subject. He thinks we should conduct the interview first and then record the footage, as this may help us get an idea of the visual footage we might want after hearing the content of the interview.

We are now beginning to think of how we will keyword our Korsakow project, and whether this will be thematic or visual. We like the idea of using the responses of our participants to categorise the clips and group together certain emotions and ideas (i.e. love, family, success, etc.). We also have a very rough working title which is ‘Finding Your Feet’.

(Image via flickr)

Week 08: Meeting notes

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)