Week 7

by jasonhendriks on September 21, 2016 in Uncategorized • 0 Comments

During Tuesday Kim showed us some visual approaches that can be tried to represent your documentary. She showed us videos that are some made by students, which I have to say was surprising, because It looks really good. one particular video was very interesting, The Butcher’s Wife , a very intimate documentary depicting the abuse a mother has had. It was very intimate and personal, And it manages to make the audience to be emphatic with her. I liked that documentary because it helps me & shows me how to approach a sensitive subject & to create the atmosphere that fits the story. We got a bit more practical on Thursday, where we ‘go out and do great things’, which is where we experiment with sounds, camera techniques to achieve certain desires. I haven’t finished editing mine, but I want to experiment with sounds.

My approach to my next documentary lies similarly to the video example that I told you above. Something to do with sensitive and personal topic, that revolves around Indonesian people and migration.

I want to know, how Indonesian migrants, particularly the ones who moved to Melbourne under stress because of the May 1998 Riot. Many of the migrations at the time were unprepared, filled with anxiety and scrutiny. still researching and trying to find interviewees, Here are some of the question I might ask these people (I am still updating them, this is not final):

Why do you choose Melbourne as a safe haven from the riot?
Did you come here unprepared? If so, tell me the process until which you come to melbourne
How do you cope when you first moved here? (Do you have another family here? How did you get a roof to stay, do you have any struggle financially?)
Do you have any other challenges that you faced during these times that you want to share?
How do you find/make an indonesian community here?

After some asking around, I found that after 20 year these topic still seems to sensitive to adults. I want to make clear to them that I do not wish for them to recall the horrific abuse the underwent when they were in Indonesia. I want to hear their story after they arrived at Melbourne. Be it a boring and mundane story, moving to Australia is no piece of cake.

Because many of the families that ran away to Melbourne in 1998 were mostly Chinese-Indonesian, I feel like they are mostly the victim of the scenario. But a friend of mine willingly told me his story of discrimination. he was an indigenous Indonesian, during the prescribed time was humiliated in front of the town hall with several other indigenous Indonesian by Chinese-Indonesians for something that they have no part of. I will be investigating further on this case as well.

Week 7

by jasonhendriks on September 11, 2016 in Media 2 • 0 Comments

I have been off-focus between my obligations and my other works, and I feel like it’s been dragging me down deeper into the well of misdirections. Scraping back into the right path will be hard work, but I have to try.

While other are already settled on their creative projects, I am still struggling to find ‘the one’. With Kim’s link I open a website and saw this collaborative doco “The G word” that gathers stories all over the world about gender issues to transform what I think a very stigmatised norm. It’s very interesting to look at, even though it’s a little bit laggy because of all the submissions inside. check it out here

Week 6

by jasonhendriks on August 31, 2016 in Media 2 • 0 Comments

During the week we discussed further on our ideas with the projects, how we see it’s going, and how do we play with the format, so it becomes more collaborative, more open spaced. But the week was also pinned in the board with interviewing practice. There are some great tips that Kim gave us:

as filmmakers, what am i allowed to do because i am a filmmaker, what access you are given and how to get people to open up to you
if you let people talk, without interrupting them, the will reveal something inside them, someone they think they are.
when you keep silent, it makes the atmosphere a little bit uncomfortable and it forces them to speak more, something that they have no thought before.
not just the world around them, but the world inside them
instead of asking people a question, you let your subject discuss it in a group.
if you feel like its not going anywhere, try to ask them a dumb question, that surprises them and shake em off (dance with them), so that the question gets more interesting.

I’ve never tried the tips that Kim gave before, it will be a good addition to my next set of interviews. Kim also gave us an article about reading, but I will cover the contents of it later. Instead, to further my understanding of open space documentaries, I read this discourse on collaborative documentary by Sandra Gaudenzi. Her focus is on collaborative online participation, which i think is not on the same track as mine, but she gave a lot of useful information about the role of participation in collaborative documentary. Particularly questions when making one;

In what way is this a participatory documentary
How has this collaboration/participation influenced the production process?
What is the role of the documentarian as an author(?)

Kim also stresses out that sometimes there are people who are just not the camera-type, they do show a unique characteristics in the interview, so your job is to find one that fits the criteria.

A line given by her (Sandra) also ponders me

While in linear documentaries meaning was created by framing shots and editing them together, in participatory interactive documentary meaning is shared and layered

the word ‘shared’ in conjunction with ‘meaning’ give me a new meaning of participatory. If the usual type of representation that I did in my videos were my own interpretation of meaning from the ‘represented’, then Open space & participatory documentary should be an interpretation of a ‘shared’ meaning. The role of the author is that of initiator,juxtaposing, producing the sketches into one book, but what’s inside the sketches must be made by the subjects themselves.

The lesson’s i’ve learned will certainly helped me in my documentary, but i’m still struggling the type of content I want to make with my documentary. I want to make something new, yet I do not have the time for it. It’s interesting how everything that I did seems to be done in the last minute :’).

Week 6

by jasonhendriks on August 23, 2016 in Screening Politics & Economies • 0 Comments

Guest Speaker Debi Enker

The art of Reviewing

Debi Enker started working after graduating from RMIT Media in a factory, a rugged one.

There she learned how to watch. (watch from beginning to end with full attention silently, and all of the credits).

she explained to us the rudimentary rule of viewing “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. She told us the first time she heard that Fargo is going to be returned as a mini-series, she felt cynical at first, she loved how it turned out. She said that the series still has that atmosphere, the characters, that feeling “it’s the same but different”

Nothing in a screen is put without consideration. It has all been prepared over years, so you have to respect the thing that you are watching about.

Everything in a video has a meaning, there might be something that completely changes your perspective/view.

length matters, (some are 100, some are 400, some are thousands of words)
a review is not a plot description you give a sense of what the story is about, and whether or not you like it, and why, in the space that you are limited to
always be punctual, grammar right, always remember to write correctly.
you want the words to flow smoothly,
try to find what your response is, and why do you respond in that particular way.
trying not to make the article just a plot description is not an easy thing to do
you need to pick a particular threat of the narrative and develop from there
don’t forget to recheck for the small details (date, name, number), because you can’t retrieve it once you hand your article in.
tips: don’t do the group mentality (watching other reviews before writing your own) because it might influence what you write.

what are you looking forward in a text?

what’s the history, what are other works that they have done in the past?
you have to argue and make reason why do you stand on your point
to dismissed a media text with one line, it’s disrespectful. You have to understand that it’s someone’s work, someone’s life, it cannot be simple and easy piesy.
there is no right or wrong, there is just your opinion and how you look at it.

Week 5 Update

by jasonhendriks on August 23, 2016 in Media 2 • 0 Comments

Presentation

In week 5 there was no class, the first project brief presentation was done on Thursday. I have to say everyone’s video was stunning, the content were amazing. They all looked very articulated. I was worried though that my video kind of looked different, but I hoped it still would satisfy the audience.

But everyone still kept in touch in the Facebook group, and Kim gave us a photo of ‘some speculations on participatory documentary environments’, and one point got me

This form of documentary responds not to big issues and individual portraits, but the micro and the multiple

After seeing this I got a little bit more clearance of what an open space documentary is. It doesn’t have to be a ‘grand’ or involves ‘the bigger cause’, it focuses on the micro, the smaller, unseen community, that has their special uniqueness, but never represented. I don’t have to make my videos really flash, i just have to collaborate with my ‘subject’ to make the most collaborative video I can make.

Week 4

by jasonhendriks on August 15, 2016 in Uncategorized • 0 Comments

My video works within the format of expository documentary (which i learn from Nichols’s article ‘Representing Reality’ but still I created the narrative from the answers that I get from my interviews. The interview is not scripted, even though I mentioned the questions to my subject before I started recording. In the video I want to incorporate more…

Week 3

by jasonhendriks on August 11, 2016 in Media 2 • 0 Comments

In week 3 I read a blog post about the ethics of creating a documentary. Through thousands of the references that the article made, I learned that there are different approaches of how I want to pursue my subject, and it’s never black and white. The article mentioned the practice similar to what a psychologist would practice, should the subject be informed to receive their consent, but risk the quality of the research, or should you be deceptive (that’s not the right word i think) to get the best result but risk angering the subject?

For my approach I think I will have to tell my subjects because I will be interviewing them. But i am still trying to find ways not to make my video seem very biased, since this involves people that i personally know. Since there isn’t many videos that I can take, I think I will approach the video with photos and b-rolls.

Head stuck

by jasonhendriks on August 11, 2016 in Uncategorized • 0 Comments

Last week I watched one documentary called “Nowhere Line: Voices from Manus Island” I don’t think that this documentary counts as an open documentary, but regardless it’s unique and different. The narrative is told by using animation, and the story was told by 2 men who are still in the detention center as I write this. Obviously the talk…

Documentary as an open space

by jasonhendriks on July 25, 2016 in Media 2 • 1 Comment

During my first week, Kim gave my class an introductory reading about what this class is all about. And that is participation.

In the classical tale of documentary, the art form works as a representative of a community, group, or a problem that the author wants to address. Usually the author researches, brainstorm and plan a narrative in which the filming would follow with. Open Space Documentary takes an alternate path, a curved one that slides off as a meander but eventually arriving at the same end. It works through collaborative means, between the author and the subject.

The docuentary does not work by the idea of one director, and then advanced and supported by footage and interviews, rather the community participants become the authors.

They deploy story-telling strategies all the while engaging and creating something new through their communication. I think that open space documentary actually lets the community shape the narrative. Through the participatory method, the practice is “reciprocal, localized, reflective and multi-voiced”. not an argument but as a way to consider a concept or a place.

Taking this studio is a huge step for me. Communication skill is the bread and butter of a media practitioner, because creating media involves a lot of other people. It’s going to be a challenge, but i hope it might as well be a goddamn worthy one. Lastly, here’s a quote from the second reading that Kim gave us, it pins really well in my head right now.

What matters is that you remain close to what is human, to what your life has taught you to believe, and that you develop your own ideas and authorial voice

cheers,

Practice practice practice, Project O

by jasonhendriks on June 1, 2016 in Uncategorized • 0 Comments

So I did a little video for the small organization that I am working on , Project O. We are a bunch of Indonesian students trying to raise awareness that there are still 2.5 Million children in Indonesian struggling to go to school. We are trying to help, the best that we can.

The video that I made is for the campaign, #POChallengeYourSenses . We want to challenge the Maxim “The Three Wise Monkeys” that is seen as an act of ignorance to the western culture, to use that to challenge how you can use the senses to create a difference. Sharing is caring, and sharing is a powerful action.

I recorded the video using an iPhone, Because I thought It was enough back then. But I kind of regret using the iPhone, because the pixel quality wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. Nevertheless, I hope that my skill has improved, even if it’s only a tiny little bit.