Noticing and Non-Fiction are two things that before this studio, I would of never considered crucial aspects of any type of filmmaking. However, after completing Seeing the Unseen V2, these ideas and practices will stay with me forever, whether I’m making a film centered around these ideas or not. The term ‘non-fiction’ no longer just means factual or real to me anymore. Everything in filmmaking, whether it be narratively driven or not, focuses around aspects of non-fiction, and always need to be considered. Furthermore, for me, noticing is now about being present in something, whether that be in the shooting stage, the editing stage or even the viewing stage.
And it is the latter statement that has really been a big part about my creation of the Assignment 4 audio-visual project over this past month or so. Just watching how people experience your work, noticing what they react to and what they don’t react to. Whether it be when you’re pitching your initial idea, showing a demo or even the full project, just lingering on how a person interacts with your work has been so beneficial to my reflective and creative processes throughout this assignment, and is something I have never really considered to this extent before Assignment 4.
A prominent example of this for me was watching people interact with my Korsakow project Solace on the exhibition night. Just paying attention to how people maneuvered through my interactive world, how long they lingered on a particular frame, whether they just rushed it, what order they proceeded through and so on. As soon as I came up with and developed the idea for my final project for STUV2, I wanted each person’s experience with Solace to be different in some way, and to actually see that in person was really beautiful and inspiring. In a really wanky way, I wanted everything about my film to be self driven in the way of understanding. I want each audience member to form their own opinions and theories about what each scene means, the narrative of it all and what they noticed in each frame. I have an understanding of what it is about, but what I am personally really proud of about it is how i still pick up on little details in the shots that I didn’t necessarily before, and how that tiny details can say a whole lot about what you notice in a scene. This also allowed me to see some flaws in my work however, such as how the safety lives on the locations can confuse a viewer on if they are finished with a scene, or if there is more to discover. I couldn’t fix this ultimately, but it is impossible to get stuck now, unless you’re supposed to, so that’s good.
Something that was unlike my typical creative process that occurred during Assignment 4 was my lack of sticking to my original plan. As evident by my research posts, I originally wanted to create a traditional video filmed on mobile that had you viewing different things moving within a frame and layered on each other, similar to Midtown by Max Schleser. Pretty much the only aspect of my original concept that continued into Solace was my emphasis on stillness, and how you can notice so much through so little movement, as every change is heightened.
I was originally skeptical about this studio during the first few weeks. I felt like I had misunderstood what the classes were going to be about, as I have typically been a narrative film maker, both for school/university and for recreational tasks. However, as we started delving deeper into the ideas and patters of noticing, the different techniques to notice as well as the assignments themselves, I then started to realise that I had definitely made the right decision being in this studio. Seeing the Unseen V2 has taught me so much about filmmaking but it has also taught me a lot about myself and how I operate as a creative. It has given me insight into what I generally notice when trying to create, or what I tend to look out for in my day to day life.
If I were to create three learning outcomes that I have sustained from the class as a whole, it would be:
- Listen to the feedback of your peers and tutors. You’ve got a big head, and sometimes you miss the small things that someone from the outside notices.
- Try to do something new with each project you make, even if it is only something small.
- Don’t be afraid to scrap anything and everything if you’re not 100% proud of it.
- And a bonus one, sometimes, you just need to sit and let yourself absorb the world around you.
