For the mini individual project on Friday, I think I’d just like to film something ‘cool’. This kind of follows on from the expertise filming exercise we did, but it’s a much more common thing.

In films when the characters are not doing much and just killing time; the way they do it is much cooler, serene, sentimental, and charismatic than your average folk. What inspired this idea was some videos I saw on youtube. It was a short behind the scene video for a photoshoot. The model just posed, sat, walked around, tied their shoe laces, played with their hair, looked out the window – stuff that everyone does. But somehow, it was so serene and it really made me admire the cinematography and editing involved. How did they do it? I want to know and try for myself.

Also, the scene we saw on Friday of a man and woman conversing in a room is similar. All they did was talk, walk around the room, and sit. Yet the camera angles and movement, as well as the body language of the actors  and their interaction with the set made the scene more exciting. Actually, when I watched this scene, it reminded me of another scene from a film we saw in semester one, called ‘Red Desert’. There were two characters conversing in a room, but this room was completely bare. So the blocking of the characters and composition of the frame had to be more elaborate (not sure if this is the right term) in order to compensate for the plain set.

Content vs Camera vs Set Design vs Editing vs Character vs Audio

This week we did mostly technical stuff: on Monday we were in the editing suites, and Friday we started on audio.

While editing, I’ve been trying to use the shortcuts Paul recommended as much as I can. It’s still something I need to get used. Overall, I will need to improve my editing work ethic. Most times I’m too excited that I have footage to edit that I will jump straight into without going through all the housekeeping processes like labelling every single clip before I create the sequence. It is actually really helpful, I’m not sure why I didn’t make this a habit earlier.

As for audio, we began to learn how to operate the mixer. Paul went through all the basic knobs and buttons on the machine, but I found it way too much to absorb in go so it’s something I’m going to have to get used to with time. Actually, I think when it comes to handling the mixer and boom, I’m okay. It’s just the setting up and troubleshooting which is difficult.

All this technical talk reminds me of something that was discussed in one of our lectures last year. The lecturer said something along the lines of “the technologies you students are learning right now are probably going to become redundant when you go out into the workforce”. A pretty depressing statement. I really hope it’s not the case. Besides the apple can’t fall from the tree! I imagine the fundamentals should largely be the same, or at least similar.

A scarcely furbished room is warmed by the sun’s glow. The cool, borderline cold breeze is offset by thelight hitting her skin. The girl sets herself in front of a cardboard box. She begins arranging the things in an orderly fashion on the shelf to her left. She knows this organisation will only last so long, but at such times she finds herself to be a semi-perfectionist.

Some time passes before the cardboard box is empty. As a finishing touch she places a snow globe she received as Christmas present years ago on the first level of her shelf, her hands careful and delicate. More to the left. No, too left. Bit more to the right. There. In a couple of weeks I’ll forget all about this anyway she thinks to herself; a bittersweet smile inches across her face.

The silence which fills her room is rare. It is quiet but noisy. She hears the distant, short bursts of traffic outside, the wind strum through the mesh panel of her half-open window, the quiet creaks of the walls in her house. Her eyes wander from corner to corner, soaking in the details of the room. As minimal as it is, she finds a sense of affinity in it. Maybe it is this familiarity which conjures up feelings of nostalgia in her.

She reaches towards a particular notebook. As she flips through the pages, her face subtly twists in amusement and surprise. She finds that the same things offended her back then as they do now, the same things frustrated her back then as they do now, and she never did or will stop overanalysing things to her heart’s content. Her eyes halt at a certain line. It’s written clumsily, as if the writer were in a rush, but large and clear, as if in anticipation of audience. “You are all different but the same”. One can find solace in this idea. We need not think of others or ourselves as enemies but rather comrades. Even when we outgrow our clothes, outgrow our personalities, we are probably not much different to others or the past versions of ourselves.

Her pondering is interrupted by the sound of keys clashing against a countertop. Leaving her book, she trods downstairs.

I’ve procrastinated this initiative post for a very long time and was hesitant to do it because I didn’t know where to start. There are so many directions where I could take this but I have no idea where to go.

A lot of things have piqued my interest the past year and a half of studying media. More recently, I’ve had an inner conflict in regards to directors. Why are directors so important? Their names, dare I say, are the most prominent of the production crew. When a film is ‘successful’ they seem to be the most celebrated and when it flops, they seem to bear the brunt of it.

I wonder if they do as much work as I think they do. I don’t think one can really know how  much input the director has in the actors’ acting, the lighting, set design, costume, frame, and audio among other things. How much of a film’s ‘likeability’ is reliant on the direction of it versus the script/story. I can’t remember the last time I said that I hated the narrative of a film, but enjoyed the direction of it. When someone asks me who my favourite director is, I cannot answer anymore because I’m not confident I know what they’re really about.

This brings be me back to the auteur theory. I would have never imagined myself to go back to the auteur theory after studying it a bit last year, just because it seemed like common sense to know that directors ‘direct’ and that we can see their personality in their film.

The general idea of the auteur theory holds that auteur’s films will bear their ‘stamp’. An analysis of the body of their work will reveal their personal style regardless of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ the script they are given. “There are no good or bad movies, only good or bad directors”. The last time I read this it was an insignificant quote to me because I didn’t read much into it, or rather I couldn’t, because I didn’t understand it to begin with. But now, I think I understand it and agree with it to an extent.

A few years ago, I discovered a Japanese director called Shunji Iwai. I watched a few of his films: Hana and Alice, All About Lily-Chou Chou, Bandage, and Rainbow Song. It turns out that he is not only a director but also a writer. Back when I watched these films, I was not yet conscious of directing, editing, or film production in general. I watched them with a free mind so I didn’t engage myself anymore than you would with any other kind of entertainment.

After revisiting his films, I found that the narratives for his films are all so different. I cannot see a major common thread in his themes, well not an obvious one anyway. His concepts are quite scattered: friendship, coming-of-age, romance, melodrama. The film that stood out to me the most was All About Lily-Chou Chou just because I can’t even remotely decide if I like the narrative/plots or not. That aside, I enjoyed everything else about it – the cinematography, music, set design, locations, editing…etc. If my understanding of Truffaut is ‘correct’,  this would be an example that embodies his quote. Even though I’m on the fence about the narrative, I still found the film to be ‘good’. And if it has anything to do with Iwai’s direction, I guess that would make him a ‘good’ director, and one that I like. (But that’s not something I can judge…)

Of course the narrative of a film is still vital, and if it’s intolerable enough even the greatest of directors may not be able to save it.

This week, we shot things we found aesthetically pleasing without much thought, no theme or idea, purely something that visually interested us. My shot consisted of an extreme close up of the textures on a chair that had a nautical, summer feel to it. The drab lighting however was a contrast to the design of the seat so I thought it might be a nice shot. I’ve come to realise I like it when things contrast. For example, when I’m in a ‘quiet’ mood but the weather is nice and sunny, screaming for me to go outside and play (or do some kind of activity) or if I’m in a good mood but it’s raining outside – somehow I seem to enjoy that.

I think that’s why I enjoyed ‘Nostalgia for the Light’. The really nice lighting contrasted with the still images of furniture and shadows. Normally, that kind of nice sunny lighting I would associate with images of childhood, people having picnics, children laughing and playing, yet the mood is quiet, slow, and lazy almost. I have always felt this way about this particular lighting since I was young – not only when I see it in films but also in real life. It might be because when I was young, I was often ill and bedridden when the weather was so nice outside! Don’t know why I’ve come to like this contrast though.

At the end of class, Paul shared a story about a happening in his life he would like to recreate to give us some ideas about where we could gather our own ideas. The problem is, my life is very boring and not interesting at all – something that I’ve come to realise recently. Whenever people ask me, ‘how are you? what have you been up to? tell me story’, I don’t know what to say other than my life is really boring and that there’s not much to it. Even if there is something interesting that happened to me that I’d like to share, I don’t know how to go about it because I’m a horrible storyteller. Probably not something a media student should be saying, but I speak the truth. So then, where do I go to find the inspiration and ‘creativity’ that I seem to lack so much?

Continuing on from last week’s documentation exercises, this week we were instructed to film people doing mundane or everyday-life things like walking, sitting, playing a game. For my shot, there was actually direction involved. I asked a group member to to go up to a vending machine and act frustrated when his drink doesn’t come out. While reviewing the shot, we agreed that it was a tad ‘overacted’. Upon reflection, I don’t know what I was trying to do with the shot, or at least I don’t remember.

Since Film 3 is meant to be a blend of documentary and drama, I will make some comments with this in mind. If there are people in the real world who become frustrated when their drink doesn’t come out of a vending machine and I try to recreate that, however awkward or clumsy it is, does that invalidate my shot as a documentary? Does the directing and acting involved make it a drama? In this case, my shot is probably nothing; not a documentary, not a drama – probably not even a scene. I guess the point of the exercise was not for our shot to actually be ‘something’, but rather for us to get used to using the cameras – adjusting the settings and whatnot – and to encourage us to be aware of when people are ‘performing’, whether they are aware of the camera or oblivious to it,  when they dismiss it, as well as the differences between these.

On Friday,  we were told to film people do something they look ‘cool’ doing. Within my group, we didn’t really have anything to showcase, so again I chose to direct. The scene consisted of 3 simple shots. The actor walks down the stairs, opens the door, finds its too hot so she takes off her jacket, and continues to walk down the hallway – kind of like a catwalk. Without music or any ‘special’ editing, I suppose it looks really normal – but if I added some background music and maybe slow-mo she would probably look cooler. That’d probably defeat the purpose of specifying the action should be something we are skilled in or look cool doing, but since my group didn’t have any special skills to showcase, I turn to post-production to add coolness.

When I first listened to the sounds, I thought that the more abstract and simple sounds of just footsteps or the elevator’s suction noise less descriptive than that of the coffee cart outside building 8. However, when I thought about it some more, my way of thinking was reversed.

The majority of the sounds we captured had a ‘documentary’ feel to them as I found that rather than evoking a sense of space, they merely caught the sound of an action. For instance when we recorded the sound of the baristas making coffee outside – we could hear the sound of the coffee machine working away, the taps and clinks of the machinery, as well as the background music and some chatter. Even though there were quite a few layers of sound present, since the focal sound was the coffee machine it felt more documentary of an action rather than descriptive of a place. On the other hand, when the focal sound was shorter or even not apparent, I felt the sound evoked space in a more interesting way. Outside The Hub, there was a sound of an announcement for the ticket number which indicated the area, but then afterwards there was light chatter, footsteps, shuffling, and the sounds of these could be heard echoing and bouncing off surfaces.

It’s like comparing an extreme close up to a long shot. In the extreme close up, the focus in on that one subject. Although the background may still be visible or you can guess what kind of environment it is situated in by the lighting, sound effects, or composition of the frame, your attention will be focussed on the subject in frame. In contrast, when you have a long shot your attention will be dispersed over the frame, and you’re able to see the context. I guess place is evoked in both situations, just differently.

Actually, I changed my mind. I think the sounds were all descriptive but just in different ways. Now that I think about it, it’s probably not probable for a sound to be undescriptive. It’s like asking for a word that is not communicative; inevitably a word will communicate something. Even a single letter, a single stroke.

The Film 3 studio was described as ‘research by practice’, so I suppose the emphasis in our studio will be split 50-50 between theory and practice much like last semester. The modes we will be working in are drama and documentary – we will probably be ‘merging’ the two together as well at some point. Last semester I did the True Lies Documentary Studies unit, so I’ll be able to apply some of what I learnt during that unit here as well. I think the pattern will be something like practical work > reflection> practical > reflection. This semester I hope to expand both my practical skills, as well as incorporate research or theories of my own into production.

During ‘The Scene’ studio, I found that I lost my focus halfway through my project and fell into the trap of just wanting to do something ‘good’/aesthetically pleasing. Concept is something I always struggle with, and this will probably be the case in the Film 3 studio as well. ‘What’s the purpose of this?’ is a question I need to keep in mind and sometimes it’s not enough to just have an idea – it needs to be coherent and communicated in a way that is understood or at least able to be identified by others.

My goals and desire for this unit would be to: continue developing my personal style, or rather, establish a style since currently I don’t feel as though I have a distinct style that comes naturally to me, improve my work ethic, be proactive, advance my practical and theoretical work, and apply/consider what I’ve learnt from prior units. Finally: learn, learn, learn. There’s always something new to learn as long as I keep an open and alert mind.

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