In class today we looked at a few examples of how we could approach our Assignment 4 audio-visual products. These included an interactive media product using tools such as Korashow, and video collages using Adobe Premiere Pro. While I have been playing around with the idea of using aspects of collage in my final audio-visual product for this assignment, similar to how Max Schleser uses overlapping and masking in my previous research post about his product ‘Midtown’, I hadn’t really given much thought to an interactive final piece. However, after experimenting with the tools and watching Ceci N’est Pas Embres (This Is Not Embres) by Matt Soar in class today, it is most likely going to be the style I use for my final product.

Matt Soar is a filmmaker living in Canada who took his family to a small village in France for half a year and decided to make an interactive film portraying an outsider’s/newcomer’s perspective on the town and its lifestyle. As an audience member, you have full control over what you want to watch, learn and experience of Matt’s time in France, whether it be the neighbourhood dog that could open unlocked doors, or his families worry about the weather before their trip. Soar does this through a seemingly endless string of connected videos, based on keywords set by the filmmaker, using the application Korashow. This app allows you to link videos together, and create random branching timelines based on themes, ideas or pure chance for the audience to experience and work their way through.

This style of audience-driven experiences and their process of interacting with the film based on what they notice and are interested in is incredibly unique, and something I have never experimented with. I would love to have a product where each person’s interaction with the film is somewhat different from the next’s, similar to what Soar has created with Ceci N’est Pas Embres.

Soar, M., 2013. Ceci N’est Pas Embres. http://embres.ca/filmE/

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/