In our final class of week 2, we focused heavily on the quote; “It is characteristic of the vast majority of cities in the movies that they focus not on architecture per se, but on architecture as it affects, and is interpreted by, citizens” (Thomas 2003, p. 410). We were given the task to explore RMIT as a third character, making 5-9 frame photo storyboards in groups. This being one of our first collaboration tasks for the semester, we all seemed to be a bit rusty. We found ourselves standing around in a courtyard, waiting for someone else to suggest an idea for a narrative. Having no initial ideas for a story, I decided to take the group to the most interesting location I could think of on campus, in hopes it would be of use for inspiration. We saw a sign that said “City Morgue” and went from there.

In our group we decided to use the location of RMIT, being the city and the dangers of a highly populated area and explore montage and tragedy, in a non-ambiguous narrative sequence. The story revolves around a couple walking through campus, but is met by a sudden tragedy no one saw coming. Look both ways.

Since the first few weeks of this studio, I knew that it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for with studio choices. This semester I really wanted to make a short film, and have a substantial amount of time in the semester to do so, but with the pool of studios given for this semester, Translating Observation was the closest thing to what I wanted to do.

The first seven weeks of this studio consisted of building up technical skills; mostly with the Sony EX3 and with audio equipment. Last semester I spent a lot of time learning audio so this didn’t really benefit me, and I’d also previously decided I never really wanted to pursue camera work so I kind of turned away from this learning, which is a huge regret looking back. I’m pretty stubborn when I make my mind up about something, and when I told Robin I had no interest in camera, he seemed pretty disappointed. I’ve worked quite a bit with camera, and I’m pretty skilled with it, it just isn’t my cup of tea. But especially with how things turned out from our shoot, I really wish I had’ve payed attention to the early classes. I set out knowing I wasn’t going to work on camera, to not really having a choice when I knew no one else really wanted to, or had the skill and knowledge to do so.

When we first got into a group with Monaliza, Isobell and Alexandra, we were set to work on Monaliza’s film pitch which was about “A kind of essay on the nuances of human behaviour and gesture, on voyeurism and desire, articulated through a simple and wordless dramatic scene.  A young woman habitually breakfasts on her balcony; her neighbour watches her with equal regularity.” This original idea I think is very real and idiosyncratic, but through our work in pre-production, it changed to be something completely different. We originally wanted an adult male and female to feature in our film, with two locations that would work together for our film. This changed quite quickly, to achieve something more “realistic” in terms of organising a shoot in our time frame. At the time what seemed the most achievable would be to cast a young boy and a teenage girl, both for availability reasons, and it seemed easier that people would actually apply. Looking back at how everything turned out, I think we could have achieved something much better. Not just with better technical things, but with story and content as well. Why didn’t we stay true to the original observation and pitch? We didn’t really even think to use Monaliza in the film, which is strange because the observation was originally about her and she has acting experience. I think if we were to tackle this project again, we would go more into that direction. But instead I feel we created something that has been seen before, and could have had a lot more substance in it than what was there,

When we got to the post-production stage of making our film, I was really disheartened by how the footage turned out, and how everyone reacted. Because of the blame I felt and took on for the outcome of the shoot, I really distanced myself from the group in this final stage. Looking back, I shouldn’t have done this, but I also found it really difficult to sit in the edit suites, trying to cut and fix up the footage, with other members mentioning how bad the footage looked and how much of a shame it was.

Robin did make me feel better about the experience when he mentioned that we would have learnt more with our mistakes than the other groups. Even though we were tremendously disappointed, I really did learn so much through this process. Robin also said that “your greatest ideas turn to dust unless you can act on them with technical proficiency”, that’s filmmaking, and that is one thing I need to consider in future. I would definitely move forward, knowing that I have people that want to work in technical roles, because I think that is really what went wrong this semester for our group, because no one really wanted to work with the technical equipment, so we were all out of our comfort zone.

My favourite part about this studio was really the core of it, the observations. I started looking at my experiences day to day very differently. I started looking at things in a creative way, and after writing down a few observations I noticed what I was drawn to and this was really interesting to me. I noticed that the pieces I was writing, focused on one person and their actions, both in itself or in relation to other people around them. When we turned our focus to the group projects, I completely stopped this process of noticing and writing down my observations, which is something I’m really disappointed about. I drew my focus away from what I really enjoyed in this course, and these observations really benefited me because I now have two really different films that I want to make, if not in this course, some time in the future, and this isn’t something I’ve had before.

Because of the circumstances with how our group was formed, with me personally being in a different state, I think this led me to enter this project a bit negatively. When I returned the week after groups formed, I came to learn that the majority of the story had been decided on, and there was no real further discussion on the content we were going to create. This really disappointed me personally, because one thing I really wanted to work on this semester was fleshing out an idea and transforming that into a script, but because of the nature of our film, we didn’t really have any dialogue or the need for a script.

In the weeks before our film shoot, I think our group worked really well with organising location, actors, props and set. We went as a group to Chapel Street Bazaar to pick out props, and we all decided on the soft 50s aesthetic we were going to go with for the film.

The day of the shoot was really stressful for me, because I was working on camera and wasn’t very confident in my ability with the EX3, but Isobell really helped me on the day with solving a few unforeseen issues with the camera and some of the operations. Communication on the day of the shoot was really good as well, because we’re friends I think we all felt really comfortable with each other and that made it easier to let each other know their thoughts and feelings towards things.

The of the main issues with this specific collaboration, was with the intentions of our group members. It makes it pretty difficult to make a film when you have four people that really only want to direct or produce. This definitely was an issue I believe, especially when it came to assigning roles for the day of the shoot, because no one wanted to work on camera or sound.

In the post-production stage of this process is when I think we were really tested as a group. With the footage turning out the way it did, it made it really awkward to even talk to each other. Our communication started to get worse and worse, because I felt as though there was a lot of tension and negative energy. I started to distance myself in this stage because I was so devastated by the outcome of the shoot. We did a few rough cuts of the film, with a few sessions of feedback with Robin, and finished the film. I think this project has effected my relationship with my friends in this group, and is something I really need to think about and work on for future group projects.

So today we met up with Robin in the edit suites so he could review our process and how our film is coming along. Our process was met with slight disappointed shared by Robin, but with a few tips we were able to improve some things in our film, like the length of shots and some little cuts.

The main thing Robin wanted to address with me though was with the issues from our shoot. He went through the amount of effort he had gone through to do different tests to find out why our footage was blurry. Through the tests he did, he found out what was NOT the issue with the camera, which made me feel more guilty with each thing. What the issue turned out to be was entirely my fault. The issue was solely found with the viewfinder, and the settings you are supposed to set yourself; that of which I did not do, and to be honest, not really know how to do anyway. We apparently went over in it in class, but I was either not there physically or not there mentally. So the problems were with the peaking of the display screen of the viewfinder, as well as contrast. So the peaking was on full, which is usually used for low contrast settings, which we didn’t have because low contrast is usually indoors, with outdoors being high contrast, so that is the first problem. The second issue was that the brightness was on full, which with those two together being wrong, make it hard to pick focus and make clouded judgement on where focus was.

So this was an operator error, so the camera wasn’t at fault, which I kind of already knew, but was devastated to find out. I guess if I were to make some changes so this wouldn’t happen the next time would be to actually do some test shots with the camera I know we’re going to use, as well fully research the camera and it’s functions. Another thing I would do differently next time is to not work on camera. I knew at the start of this semester that I didn’t want to work on sound, but now I think I definitely know that I prefer human interaction much more than interaction with a machine. I really dislike the technical pressure that comes along with using equipment, mostly because if something goes wrong, it’s easy to be blamed and to even blame yourself, which I have done a lot in this process.

So upon viewing the material we shot over the weekend, it’s safe to say that quite a bit of it is unusable. Most of the shots outdoors were not very sharp, which I’m not surprised by because of how hard I, as well as others, were finding it on the day. I’m feeling really disappointed by it and feel really guilty about it. We tried to hard as a group to organise everything and put it together and it has been really put back by this issue. I’m not exactly sure as to why this has happened, but I’ll have to find out, because this is the last thing I want to experience again.

The day of the shoot is always nerve-wracking and stressful, and a few things always seem to go wrong. The first issue of the day we faced was camera, and setting the white balance. Because we were shooting mostly outdoors, and with the sun constantly changing between shots, we wanted to set our white balance to 5600k so we wouldn’t have to worry about it for the rest of the shoot, but it took about half an hour to figure out how to find the settings to do this, even though we covered it in class.

One of the main issues we faced on the day of the shoot was the wind, and because most of our filming was to be done outside, it proved to be quite difficult. Even though the weather isn’t something we have any choice over, if we were to do something different for next time, it would be to have a few safety days just in case the weather isn’t in our favour. Another thing I would do next time is shoot an indoor film, or really limit the amount of shots outdoors. The main shot that this effected was of the girl on the banana lounge reading a magazine (below), which she could hardly do with the wind.

Another issue I faced with doing camera was focusing outside. The viewfinder made it very difficult to see what was actually in focus, especially towards the end of the shoot when the sun was at it’s brightest.

Being away during the week that groups are being formed for the rest of semester projects isn’t the best thing in the world. Even though I didn’t really want to pursue making my film idea this semester, doesn’t mean I didn’t want to have any input on what I was doing for the remainder of the year.

I’m not saying that I didn’t want to work on Monaliza’s film pitch, but I did want to at least see what other possibilities I had with other people I don’t necessarily know or have worked with before.

The group I was put into for Monaliza’s film was with Isobell and Alexandra. The roles we are taking on are Monaliza as director, Isobell as 1st AD and editor, Alexandra as producer and me as cinematographer. I didn’t really want to work on camera, but I knew no one else was really keen on it, and I have quite a bit of experience with it, but not really on the Sony EX3.

I’m looking forward to seeing what we come up with as a group, but because of the nature of the observation/pitch we are working with, I don’t think that there is much progression to be made in terms of writing a script, but nonetheless excited.

Seeing a movie in cinema europa always ages me, I feel like I need to bring in a glass of wine or champagne into the cinema with me, and it seems like the couple next to us were thinking the same thing. After about the fifth trip back into the cinema, each trip returning with a glass of wine and an opened bottle of beer, I noticed that they were both quite drunk. They were talking for most of the movie, but with each glass and bottle they started to get louder. A woman in the row ahead started to get really agitated, which was quite evident when she would turn around and aggressively yell “SHH” with her finger in front of her mouth… like the already loud shh wasn’t enough to get the point across. The male of the couple wasn’t having any of it though, as he returned this with a “pipe down love”.

The film I would like to see produced out of this, would be to capture small scenes of conflict between strangers. I feel like everyone has their own story of when they were yelled at by a stranger, or when they told a driver to piss off when they were cut off. I think a series of short scenes of these sorts of ideas would work as quite a non-serious piece, and just something that can show how sometimes people just need to chill the fuck out.

I know that pitching your ideas to professional is like a very important thing in the media industry but it is honestly one of the most stressful things. But after Wednesday’s pitch sessions I was really happy to hear other people’s ideas and get feedback on mine. One of the main bits of feedback that I received was that I should make my idea into two or three separate films. I was considering doing the three scenes that I have in really different styles and lighting and breaking them up by not explaining transitions (sort of like in a play), but I never even considered doing them completely separate. I think this could really differentiate the mood and feel of each scene, and also gives me the opportunity to explore the emotions of each scenes/film more and how I can communicate that visually.

I didn’t quite understand what had happened at first. I was looking out of my car window, whilst waiting for the boom gates to come up, when I saw a bike fly into this tall white fence. I looked at the bike, still bouncing as it landed, and thought it was a completely normal thing to see. Someone probably just threw their bike, was one of my initial thoughts. Like ??? Who would throw a mountain bike at a fence like that? Who even could throw a mountain bike at a fence like that? This moment seemed like it lasted at least a minute, but a few seconds after I saw the bike, I saw a woman screaming as she jumped out of the passenger side of a white commodore, now with a hint of red. A young boy, still in his school uniform, laid on the corner of the gutter, unable to tell from my distance if he was moving or not.

The film

I’ve always been one to enjoy making a drama, something with a clear narrative, but with this observation, all I see is just a series of images. The moments after something incredibly shocking. There are moments in life where something bad just almost happens, and about an hour later you wonder, shit what would my life be like right now if that had have actually happened to me. There are moments straight after a horrible accident, where you are in this different world, not quite faced with reality yet. It would be very interesting to try and document those moments.