Category Archives: Media 1

Project Brief 3

 

For Project Brief 3, I interviewed my sister, Ashley, who is transgender and enjoy making costumes. I initially wanted to focus largely on her being transgender and how this has affected her life, and therefore I wrote the questions also focusing on this. I organised the interview with her fairly early, so I’d have plenty of time to edit, and recorded it using the Zoom recorder which I borrowed from the school.

As I created a storyboard for Project Brief 2, and found it immensely helpful in streamlining the production and post production process, I wanted to do the same thing for this project. However, as it was difficult to predict what my subject’s answers would be, I really struggled to do so. In hindsight, I think this was due to a lack of creative vision in regards to the narrative structure of the project. Next time around, I will need to spend more time in pre-production and work out what I’m trying to say with my project. Admittedly, I think my slackness in this regard may be due to the fact that I was interviewing my sister, who was readily available. As a media practitioner, I need to be consistent in my work practices and not allow myself to skip important tasks, as a lack of a strong plan really hindered my progress on Project Brief 3.
Keeping in mind the Lectorial regarding interviewing, I tried to write open ended questions. Despite this, my sister was still quite shy and her answers were not as elaborate as I would have liked. This made me think of one of the points Louise raised, regarding making sure the interviewee is ‘good talent. My sister was definitely no Donald Trump in terms of charisma, but nevertheless, I thought there was an interesting story to be told and I was determined to make it work.

I sourced my found footage from www.archive.org and Youtube. This footage consists of shots from 1950’s instructional videos that show women in traditional roles, such as sewing, as this linked to my subject’s practical skill of making costumes. I also used footage of ‘cosplayers,’ as this provided more visual reference for what my subject does with the costumes she makes.

My initial idea was to have purely voice over, through the interview clips recorded on the zoom recorder, which would be combined with visuals of my subject and found footage clips. I struggled editing this together however, due to the brief answers of my subject, I found that it didn’t tell the story I wanted it to.

After the Narrative Structure Exercise in the week 6 workshop, I realised that there was a lot lacking from my portrait. I decided add a stronger focus on my sister’s costume design, and to tie this together with her being transgender, and how it helps give her ambition, and helps her cope. Thus, I wrote more questions and interviewer her again, this time recording the interview on a Canon 600d, as I didn’t have time at this point to borrow the Sony camera from the school, and I thought this had comparable visual quality. However, the audio quality was not as good, and it ended up being quite noticeable where I transition from using the original recordings and the new ones. By adjusting the volume and adding background music, I tried to minimise this effect, but as I mentioned earlier, this problem could have been avoided by being more clear about my creative vision during pre-production.

In the end, I’m glad that I recorded the additional footage as it added a lot more to the final portrait. I also thought the simply animated opening credits (which I created in Adobe Photoshop and caused me a fair share of frustration) worked quite well and suited the overall motivating tone of the portrait. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I wish I’d planned the project better so the portrait would have been stronger and more unified, but overall, I’m not entirely dissatisfied with the result.

Week 7 Lectorial: Teamwork?

                        Where would we be without memes?

Yep. Teamwork. Capable of striking fear deep into the hearts of the world’s university students. The su.bject matter of countless dank memes posted to student run Facebook pages – and yet – an essential skill for everyone to possess, especially those intending to have a career in the media industry.

I’m not going to focus on the negatives of teamwork, as I’m sure we’re all familiar with those. In no particular order, it is good for sharing ideas, gaining inspiration, getting support, working quickly and efficiently, enable us to tackle bigger projects by sharing the workload, and more.

The characteristics of positive collaboration include:

  1. Clear objectives
  2. Good communication
  3. Consistency
  4. Respect
  5. Support
  6. Responsibility
  7. Equitable

I must admit I was initially hesitant about tackling a group project, as I, like many, have had some bad experiences in the past. However, I do recognise that teamwork is an important part of life, not only in the workforce, but in almost every element of our lives. I’ve already, from high school and part time work, that there are always going to be people who you don’t get along with, no matter what you do, but despite this you must find a way to collaborate and work efficiently together despite your differences. This is no different to collaborative work within the media.

After today’s Lectorial, I’m determined to keep a positive outlook towards teamwork going into Project Brief 4, and the rest of my career.

Noticing things on my daily walk

Every day I walk to and from the station to make my way to uni. Today, however, freshly inspired by the Media 1 workshop and John Mason’s Researching your own practice: The discipline of noticing (London: Routledge), I decided to make a deliberate effort to notice, mark, and record (right here!) some of the interesting things I saw. So without further ado, here you go.

  1. The smell. The first thing that I noticed emerging from the sub-terranean kingdom that is Boronia station was the lovely smell in the air. I remembered that I’d noticed this same smell last week when I got home around the same time, and concluded that this smell must just be evening.
  2. The sky. As daylight savings has ended, my walk home on Wednesdays now occurs when the sun is setting, granting me some beautiful vistas.
  3. The girl walking behind me. I realised she was the same girl who I’d witnessed awkwardly missing the bus yesterday morning. I was the only one who saw and she tried to brush it off but know I feel I know some sort of secret only shared between us.
  4. An abandoned trolley with an empty can of beer in it sitting all by its lonesome on the naturestrip.
  5. A bus stop covered in empty cans of beer. I’m not kidding, an entire mountain. The only explanation I can muster is that the empty trolley and the bus stop are somehow related. I’m imagining some sort of incident involving someone very drunk pushing a trolley full of beer down the road and it not ending very well.
  6. The roadworthy assessment place on the other side of the road is actually closed, and has been for some time. I can’t believe I never noticed this before – I always just assumed it was a quiet business.
  7. A weirdly exposed backyard. When I walked past this morning, I was thinking that it was very odd everyone walking past could see right into this house’s entire backyard, and how it must be awkward if people were in it. Of course, when I walked past the same backyard that very afternoon, there was some one it, and we made very uncomfortable eye contact.

These are only a few of the things I noticed that I was able to mark and record. I quite liked this exercise – it was a fun way to get more acquainted with my neighbourhood and add some life to an otherwise mundane walk.

The Art of Noticing

One of my train sketches.

One of my train sketches.

John Mason’s Researching your own practice: The discipline of noticing (London: Routledge), describes different forms of noticing and how these can help us to become better professionals, encouraging us to be ‘mindful rather than mindless’ when it comes to noticing. (page 37).

Part of our discussion in the workshop touched on how noticing, marking and recording is important in the media industry as well. For instance, a writer has to notice people and their traits and characteristics to aid them in creating complex and unique characters. The best fiction has its roots in reality, and interesting characters can be found everywhere in real life if you take the time and attention to notice them.

This rang very true with me, as I have also dabbled in writing and drawing, and my subjects are almost always humans. I spend an hour on the train to get to uni in the morning, time which I often spend listening to music and observing the people around me. Trains, for some reason, always gather the most odd and interesting characters, which are fun to sneakily draw.

Learning to draw has definitely opened my eyes to notice many things that I didn’t usually before. For example, once I painted a study of a nose, and afterwards I’d constantly notice the way the light hit someone’s nose and how this revealed its construction and how I’d go about drawing it.

Whilst I did this type of noticing subconsciously before, after reading Mason, I intend to do it more often and more consciously.

Narrative Structure Exercise

  1. What is the ‘controlling idea’ (Robert McKee) of your portrait? I am interviewing my sister who is transgender. The controlling idea of the interview is how she copes with this challenge, especially through creating costumes.
  1. How is your film structured? My film is going to be structured largely through voice over narration in the form of the interview. It will follow certain rituals in my subject’s life, in a ‘day in the life’ type style.
  1. What do you want your audience to make of your interviewee? I want my audience to gain some insight into the life of someone who is transgender, and to realise that although this concept may be slightly strange and unfamiliar to them, she is just another person with the same hopes and dreams as anyone else.
  1. How is your portrait being narrated? My portrait is being narrated by clips from the interview with my subject. This will make it seem personal.
  1. What role will the ‘found footage’ play in your portrait? The found footage in my portrait will be largely clips from 1940-60s videos that focus on stereotypical gender (particularly women’s) roles and appearances. This will contrast with my interviewee, who despite transitioning to a woman, still does not the encompass stereotypical woman.
  1. Does your portrait have a dramatic turning point? I’m not sure my portrait really has a dramatic turning point. Whilst it is communicating a narrative about my subject, it doesn’t follow the three act structure precisely, besides having an opening and closing.
  1. When does this turning point in your portrait and why? If any part can be called a turning point it would probably be in the final moments of the project where I will attempt to emulate the process of transformation, symbolic of transformation of gender, which I’ll try to reflect through my interviewee’s costuming craft.
  1. How does your portrait gather and maintain momentum? My portrait gathers momentum by beginning with simple introductory statements, such as the interviewee’s name, before delving into deeper and more personal narration.
  1. Where will your portrait’s dramatic tension come from? The dramatic tension will come from the building and combination of different images, the found footage and original footage. I will cut between shots of my interviewee answering questions, shots of her working on her project, and found footage that will reinforce the theme of the film.
  1. Does the portrait have a climax and/or resolution? The climax of the film will be a shot of my interviewee dressed in one of her costumes, signifying the completion of the transformation.

These questions definitely incited me to think more deeply about my project and lead me to decide I needed to make some changes to make my project more engaging and effective. I struggled to answer a few of the questions, which made me think that I needed to put more thought and planning into the construction of my project. Hopefully this exercise will lead me to create a better final product. As Rabiger puts it in Directing the Documentary, (2009), 5th Edition (Focus Press), this exercise did lead me to “think hard about [my] story’s essentials, which is the spade work of creativity.”

The Three Act Structure

 

M. Rabiger in Directing the Documentary (2009), p284-7, outlines the three act structure, or more broadly, ‘the escalation of pressure up to a crisis,’ that is present in most works of fiction, especially Hollywood cinema. Rabiger contends that this dramatic curve can be seen even in songs, dances, mimes and more, so I decided to test this theory with one of my favourite songs, ‘Never Going to Give You Up,’ by Rick Astley.

The song opens with an instrumental introduction, signalling the beginning of the First Act. This sets up the melody of the song that will be present throughout. The melody is upbeat, and instantly recognisable, communicating to the audience that the main scope and focus of this song is to be a chirpy pop song that will get stuck in your head all day.

The inciting moment for the song is perhaps when the vocals kick in, with Astley singing ‘we’re no strangers to love.’ The onset of these vocals starts to outline more clearly for the audience the narrative of the song, and the hypothetical conversation the lyrics are having with a different character, i.e. Astley’s love interest.

As the verse beings, the tension escalates, conveying the beginning of Act two. The lyrics outline Astley is ‘never going to give you up’, perhaps indicative, through the repetition of the verse, his struggle to make clear his feelings. We come to gain a greater understanding of the singer’s feelings and intentions, and are invited to feel empathy.

The climax of the song lies about three quarters of the way through, as the verse becomes constantly repeated, and eventually fades out until the end of the song, together with the instrumentals. Here the song is resolving itself, emphasizing the notion ‘I just want to tell you what I’m feeling,’ and released the tension of the dramatic arc that had been building up to this point.

Of course, the narrative of a song is very simplified compared to that of a film or documentary, but I think this demonstrates that Rabiger’s theory applies quite well even to popular music.

I HEREBY DENOUNCE THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Screen Shot 2016-04-11 at 8.31.19 pm

 

It’s only Monday and ‘Murica has already delivered the goods.

The highlight of the news today is the Southern mom shooting up her children’s iPhones with a rifle, denouncing ‘the effects social media’ as the cause of her children’s disobedience and disrespect. The whole incident was filmed, on what I can only assume is another iPhone, and ironically posted on social media. Naturally, as a blossoming media practitioner I found this interesting on a variety of levels.

Firstly, the mother’s overwhelmingly negative view of social media is noteworthy, as it highlights a distinct discord between her (the older generation) and her children (the younger generation). This generational divide is quite common, not only in regards to 21st century emerging media, but also throughout history. When the printing press became easily accessible, older generations were concerned that children would spend all day reading and never go outside; when radio was introduced, similar concerns were expressed. Fear of change, especially fear of changing, emerging media, is cyclical; change is almost always met with a negative reaction.

DailyMail author Anneta Konstantinides writes that as the children watch their phones be destroyed, “the only outlet they’ve ever known to a social life disappears.” This reinforces the generational bias I discussed earlier, suggesting that the author believes that children no longer know how to socialise outside of social media. One could certainly argue that social media is a large part of how 21st century kids socialise, but is difficult to substantiate the argument that it is the only way they know how to socialise. It’s not my place to comment, but one could suggest that the mother’s reaction is more a reflection on her method of parenting than the presence of social media in her children’s lives.

Moreover, the incident is an interesting case study in terms of the saturation of the media in our lives, and the speed with which news travels.

 

 

Week 6 – Lectorial

Part of today’s Lectorial was about story and narrative. Story is important in constructing media texts, as it can frame our experience of the world. It is essential to how we communicate as human beings, helping us to make sense of our lives and the world around us. This point reminded me of an experiment by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel called ‘An experimental study of Apparent Behaviour,’ conducted in 1944.  Subjects were asked to view a short video which featured a bunch of geometrical shapes moving around at varying speeds, and were then asked to interpret what had happened. Most of the subjects assigned personalities to the shapes, creating a narrative out of simple moving geometric forms. I think this relates to Brian’s point that human beings have a convulsion to make narrative sense of our lives, and how our brains are hard wired towards narrative and story.

Story telling conventions can help us to structure our own stories. Generally, all stories have a protagonist, who drives the action in the narrative, and is central to the narrative’s turning points, as well as an antagonist, who causes change and in trouble for the protagonist. Other conventions, such as the three act structure, are almost ubiquitous, particularly in Hollywood cinema. However, narrative conventions are not limited only to the cinematic medium.

Joseph Campbell’s theory on the monomyth of the ‘Hero with a Thousand faces’ (1949) is also interesting. The TED Talk by Matthew Winkler embedded above is a helpful illustration of this idea. Campbell proposes that most protagonists, or heroes, in narratives throughout history follow the same pattern of events. This mono myth exists in all human cultures, and relates back to the first point that story is essential to us as human beings, as a way of reflecting on our own lives through symbolic stories.

The Art of the Interview – Masterchef Style

In the spirit of Louise’s lecture on ‘the art of the interview,’ I decided to focus this post on the function of this ‘art’ in one of my favourite guilty pleasures – you guessed it, Masterchef.

The interviews in this show, as with most reality TV shows, are interesting because they are recorded after the action has occurred. It’s always a bit strange to see a contestant talking how much they want to win a challenge, when you already know that they already know if they won or not. It’s a prime example of interviewers asking the right questions to get the response that they want. Moreover, they have already been assured to be ‘good talent’ because the casting directors for the show have made sure that the contestants work well in front of the camera, and the other contestants.

Masterchef is the only reality TV show I can watch because of the high production quality, which also extends to the settings of the interviews. They are recorded in a controlled studio environment, where the lighting and sound is manipulated carefully, and the backdrop relates to the show (usually cooking utensils or something else relevant).

Of course, this type of interview is different from, say, interviews for a documentary, but it is still an interesting example to look at.

Sony MC50 Camera Exercise

As you can see in the finished result of this exercise embedded above, we faced a few challenges. When we struggled to even set up the tripod properly, we knew we were in for a fun ride (we did figure it out eventually!). It was hard to find a suitable place to conduct the interviews that was quiet enough, had an interesting background, and decent lighting, we ended up having to compromise on all three of those points.

Upon viewing the final footage, I realised that some of the shots weren’t properly focused on the interviewee, so this is something I will have to make sure of in the future, as this really affected the quality of the shot. It was also hard to make the reverse shots of the interviewer look consistent as we didn’t have control of the lighting and were inexperienced at setting the white balance of the camera. It did help us to realise that framing the interviewer and the interviewee properly had a significant effect on the consistency of the interview.

I think the establishing/wide shots were the most successful, as it was easy to get a shots that reflected RMIT life in and around building 80 due to the interesting architecture and large numbers of students.