For Assignment 4, we have been asked to acquire and discuss two pieces of visual media to research and discuss how it will help and influence our final audio-visual Assignment 4 product. A piece that inspired me is ‘MIDTOWN’ by Max Schleser. Max Schleser is an experimental and abstract filmmaker who is known for experimenting with smartphone cameras to create short film clips. Recently he has been lecturing at Swinburne University. The piece that was most inspiring and intriguing to me was the previously mentioned ‘MIDTOWN’, which is linked below.

This short film is, to my knowledge, is shot in midtown New York City, on a primitive smartphone at night. The project opens to a shot of an LED American flag, with cars driving past it. Schleser then cuts between the footage he captured of that flag, disorientating the viewer and distorting the image. We then cut to various other shots of the iconic central LED central of NYC, with shots overlapping each other to distort the image and change aspects of it. For example, a shot of the iconic line of LED ad boards in that central area of New York City was overlapped with another shot of the line, but with different ads, changing the image slightly.

This film as somewhat influenced what I want to produce for my audio-visual aspect of Assignment 4. I’ve always been interested in producing an Instagram for the project. as that’s something I’m personally interested in. However, the idea of looping, overlapping and cutting between shots of a single area in a disjointed and connected way is something I now want to produce for that Instagram. Short, 15 second videos of a space, spliced in a disorientating way. I’ve been looking through his other works to find any other inspirational aspects of his filmmaking. This is just an idea though, anything could change.

Schleser, M., 2013. Midtown. https://www.schleser.nz/video/short-films/midtown/