Category / Media Studio

by harrietread

MOI Wk 9

This week has been an adventure in prepping my final piece. My script is written up, my cast sorted, and I’ve started storyboarding.

One thing that I am struggling with in terms of storyboarding is figuring out how I am going to present this story. I want it to be immersive, engaging and intriguing but that’s easier said than done. I don’t want some cliche hippy dippy hipster movie. My limitations are going to be camera movement if I want it to be smooth.

Another limitation will be my cast. They aren’t all professionals, only one has had really serious training. That being said, I have made dialogue as minimal as possible so I think I’ve lent myself a hand there.

From now, my priorities are:

  • Get all actors on the same page in terms of what is happening
  • Find a good, relatively quiet beach to shoot
  • Sort out storyboard
  • Sort out audio recording and such
by harrietread

MOI Wk 8

So this week I’ve been getting ready to pitch my final assessment piece for this studio. I have decided to do a single short film. At the moment I’m not sure how long it will be, or even specifically what is going to happen yet. I have compiled a moodboard though and an idea of what will generally happen.

In terms of what immersion means to me throughout this semester, I would say immersion comes down to how we can be emotionally affected by aesthetic and aural ideas coming together. I want my piece to reflect a whole lot of ideas from classical and modern artworks, like Boticelli and Yves Saint Laurent. I also want to play with how I write dialogue and create something as minimal as possible.

by harrietread

MOI Wk 7

This week in class we are looking at Virtual or Augmented reality and 4D cinema.

I think that for VR, in the context of storytelling and not medicine or anything else, I think that there is potential for it to become a platform for great visual narrative like cinema has. But I don’t think it’s going to happen too quickly. Cinema at the moment is based on a single plot or story, constructed as the director or studio chooses, but we follow the motivations of the protagonist(s). VR and embodied storytelling would demand so much suspense of disbelief in the audience, trying to put them into a context or a world and that might not work too well.

I just don’t think it will be that easy to get a sense of empathy out of these stories until their content is well constructed. I like the idea of challenging audiences through VR, but I believe using its full potential as an empathetic medium is going to be a very tricky thing to accomplish.

For 4D cinema, detached observation demands that an audience be held back a distance in order to actually appreciate a text. From this, we can assume that 4D cinema is breaking this idea. I think that 4D cinema is a pretty full on idea because watching a film can be a nice escape, but what if it gets too much for a viewer? If you think of Saving Private Ryan, many WW2 veterans in the audiences of the film had to leave their screenings to avoid PTSD flares. That’s not to say that 4D will give people PTSD, but considering a 2d film is emotionally powerful enough to trigger people, what if there are emotional or physical side effects to 4D storytelling. I probably sound like a soccer mum crying AntiVax, but I know when I want to be immersed in a film I still want to be present physically in the real world. I don’t want to be stuck on Sauron’s turf in Mordor and get mauled by a bunch of Uruk-hai.

by harrietread

Dark Zone Laser Tag

This was a very different experience to Strike Laser Tag. I’d say that the biggest difference was how we all felt before we went in to play. Firstly, the place was incredibly quiet, considering it was a weekday during school term.

I was very hungry beforehand and lost my touch pretty quickly after a couple games. Made me consider how immersion can be affected by your state of mind before you go into an experience of any kind. I was keen for the first couple games, then I got pretty weary pretty quickly.

Another big difference was the general structure of the place. The Dark Zone course was enormous compared to Strike, and I think I liked that better. I definitely felt like I was in a video game at Dark Zone, the course reminded me of courses in Call of Duty. Like last time though, I was not very good at the game.

The music choices at Dark Zone were more fun as well. The place didn’t seem to take itself quite as seriously as Strike, save for the very serious video brief set up before we started playing.

by harrietread

Strike Laser Tag

For the immersion audit, I have decided to explore laser tag with some of my classmates. At first I wanted to explore spiritual places, but I chose not to because it feels cliche. That’s not to mean anything bad against spirituality, but I explored it a fair bit through the year in other projects, uni or otherwise, and I feel like literally playing around a bit with this one.

Laser tag at Strike was a lot of fun, and interesting since I haven’t played laser tag before. It felt very night clubbish, and I think it was the techno music and the LED lights. It was definitely a workout. The most immersive thing about it was I don’t recall thinking too hard about the assessment, I just wanted to win.

I definitely had a struggle during the game itself, which disappointed me since I thought I’d do better.

by harrietread

MOI Project Brief 1

This semester, I am looking forward to practicing my technical skills in visual and audio media. I mostly want to improve my skills in Creative Cloud, especially Adobe Audition. I also want to broaden my understanding of the definition of immersion, and get a better sense of how I can apply this knowledge to my creative practices.

 

Recently I watched Baby Driver from director Edgar Wright, whose films I adore. It was so much more subdued in comparison to his other works like Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs the World, but I felt that it was as immersive as his other pieces and probably more hypnotic. Especially in diner scenes with Baby (Ansel Elgort) and Debora (Lily James), I felt a sort of mellow lulled feeling that drew me into their world.

There is also a moment when Baby and Buddy (Jon Hamm) share headphones to listen to music, and the music literally surrounds the audience in the cinema. It was incredibly effective and really immersed me in the world of the film. What I want to get out of this semester is a stronger sense of how to use technical skills and understanding to create an immersive experience.

 

Firstly, I want to improve my skills in audio. I’m not very confident, to say the least, and my understanding of sound design is not as strong as my understanding of visuals which I have from film and photography. I want to get better at using Adobe Audition, and I also want to get a better understanding of how to use sound design, ambience, dialogue, foley and soundtrack to immerse an audience in my work.

 

Secondly, I want to be a stronger storyteller. What I want out of this semester is the confidence to use less cliches and veer away from being too expositional and too hand-holdy in the media works that I make. I love storytelling, and I want to get better at it through sounds and vision.

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration.

by harrietread

Week 12

Finishing up my photo compendium this week, I made a couple of changes to the final construction of my photobook. Firstly, I chose not to print a book out. The final day that I had to shoot, at the Dutton Garage in Richmond, was yesterday. That gave me one day to shoot, pick and edit the photos that I would need for my photo, and I also knew I would be taking a lot of photos that I would need to choose from.

I also chose not to have interviews for my compendium. The main reason that I chose to do this was firstly because the salespeople at Dutton Garage told me that they would be too busy to be interviewed on the showroom floor. Secondly, I chose not to have interviews because the process of approaching strangers, especially at the Benalla Historic Car Races, would be confronting and challenging for both me and the interviewee.

To compensate, I have chosen photos from my collection that link people and cars together. I had a fair few shots of both people and cars in frame. I was concerned about privacy and consent, but the figures in the photos are unidentifiable so it’s appropriate to use them. I also tried to focus on making connections between cars and people over a period of time. There are a couple of photos of older people admiring cars at the car show, and at the Dutton Garage there was a display up on the wall of young people admiring them as well.

The most difficult part of my experience was working out where to go to take photos. There are not many car meet-ups happening locally at this time of the year, and most car shows that are on are in other states or simply to far away. Fortunately, I was able to make it to Benalla and I managed to gather strong material at the Dutton Garage. I also had help from the official photographer there who toured me around the showrooms and gave me help and advice on technical and aesthetic concerns when photographing vehicles.

by harrietread

Week 11

This week has been about thinking more closely about our photobooks. What I have been considering and planning has primarily been what kind of story I want to tell about cars through photography, and also how I will improve my technical and aesthetic practice when photographing cars.

So in my consult with Brian last week I was thinking about presenting my photobook like Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York, in the sense that I wanted to go up to strangers with their cars and have a quick 2 min interview with them about why they like cars etc. What I want to get out of this approach is a humanising perspective of car culture.

In terms of my technical skills, this week I began doing some practice photography of cars. I practiced light painting, which i mainly done at night and involves having a really long shutter speed and then literally painting the car with light from a torch. My practice has proven effective so far. Now I need to practice composition and framing.

by harrietread

Week 8

This past week has involved finalising our photo essay projects for this assessment. I went into the Laundry Station this week for my photo essay, which is owned by the friend of my classmate Chynnae’s mum in Wyndham Vale.

What I wanted to convey in my photo essay was this notion that the laundry is a private space, but when we make it into a public space like a laundromat humans tend to find little bits of community and friendship even though they don’t go to the laundry to do so.

Technically, I chose to use a fixed 24mm lens for this shoot. The reason for this is that I wanted to expand the space that I was in and a wide angle lens tends to do this well. I wanted to create a sense of depth in the space. Additionally, I chose to use a fixed lens because I wanted to create an aesthetic consistency with my shots; I was aiming for a cinematic appearance to this photo essay. This created a difficulty for me in that I was more aware of how close I was to people, since I could not zoom in on figures. I noticed in editing that the edges were often more bowed out like a fisheye lens that I originally intended, but I find that aesthetically this creates a Wes Anderson-ish, quirky mood.