Assignment 5.2

1> In what ways do you hope your screenings/exhibited/screened work (whether individual or group produced) engaged its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio?

In our studio, we are doing our own research project and decided our own research topic that we interest in, therefore it’s a more personal project. For my project, i think it will be good to do a video loop, doing a separate screen and put my final video and the Godfather baptism scene playing together. Therefore, the audience come in can have a better idea about the connection between two videos.

2> Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it into a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why?

If I’m going to keep working on my media piece, I want to make it as a work experience share or educate video. I’m going to borrow a camera and lights to redo the shooting, and record the shooting and editing process. Then edit them together with my voiceover explaining what I’m doing and why I’m doing this, and finally shows the final video. The aim is to give the people who want to do similar video or who are interested in making video but don’t know where to start some new ideas. Also, this is the first video I’ve done so I think it’s worth to record it as a good experience.

3> From your studio, reflect on an aspect of two other students/group’s media work on the website in terms of specific insights they produced about a key idea addressed by the studio?

Xinyu’s report is reflecting on how Chungking Express shapes the style of Wong Kai-wai. Wong is definitely an auteur, he has a continuity distinctive style in his film career. All of his film is actually talking one story over and over, that is to reflect the struggle of lonely individuals in urban life. Also, time and memory are the everlasting theme in Wong’s movie. As Xinyu mentioned, the memory and flow of time are broken and free, traversing countless ambiguous clips. It can be reflect through the two stories in Chungking Express, Cop223 and 663. Wong’s stylistic visual can never ignore the contribution of his cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s contribution. Xinyu also describe how the camera works, which I don’t know before. This blurred visual also identify the loneliness feeling of the character and might also can be understand that we are in character’s psychological level. Furthermore, the music, light, style over narrative style as an important part of forming Wong’s distinctive style. In Yuechen’s report, she analysis Wong’s The Grandmaster from the camera work, the effect of this film and the aesthetic style. When I watching The Grandmaster, I think it supposed to be an action film, but still feel like watching a literary film, that’s Wong’s style, extreme romanticism, even with the fight scene. The slow motion and detail shot of rain and dust fall slowly brings aesthetic feeling to the fight. Yuechen also mentions that the special effects are used in The Grandmaster. I didn’t even noticed that! The snow is such realistic! However, it’s actually complete by CG setting, 3D transfer technology, 2D character image shape plat, which is a very complex process.

4> For the other studio website you engaged with,  describe a key idea that you think the finished media/studio work communicated with reference to a specific example (i.e. a particular individual/group work)

I engaged with the studio of It’s Not Rocket Surgery, their final assignment is to study a complex concept  for a particular audience. What impress me the most is Joel’s group’s video, the video explore the concept of “history” and tend to educate the students or people who are interested in or learning the history. The video points out that the history itself is unreliable, mainly because it’s hard for people to view things completely objective, people who writes it may carry their own perspective, tones, languages, experience, feeling, etc, thus, make the historical fact unreal. The history also could be rewrite by the winner of the war. Therefore, we can carry critical thinking to look at the history, and view it as a puzzle pieces rather than full picture. I think it’s a wonderful piece as an educate video for both children and adult. I love the presented style of the video, it’s really well made. The little people look like cut from the paper piece, also with the squares. I’m not sure if the video is made up by stop-motion animation. If it is, I think it’s a big process. I also like the way how text works, the text add relaxed and lively feeling to the video. Further to mention is the sound effect, it’s the finishing touch that makes the video complete. All in all, I think this video perfect done its function of educating people who what to know about the history and give them another way to look at it.

Thank you very much!

The scene in cinema | Assignment 4

The Scene in Cinema | Week 7

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/05/25/the-scene-in-cinema-week-7/

The Scene in Cinema | Week 8

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/05/10/the-scene-in-cinema-week-8/

The Scene in Cinema | Week 9

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/05/25/the-scene-in-the-cinema-week-9/

The Scene in Cinema | Week 10

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/05/25/the-scene-in-cinema-week-10/

The Scene in Cinema | Week 11

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/05/25/the-scene-in-cinema-week-11/

The Scene in Cinema | presentation

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/05/25/the-scene-in-cinema-presentation/

Research Report

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/05/28/research-report/

Thank you very much!

Research Report 

“Parallel Action”

The gangster movies are one of the most enduring and popular film genres, they could date back to the early days of film during the silent era. The famous gangster movies have The Untouchables(1987), Akira(1988), Miller’s Crossing(1990) and so on. My Research Report will mainly focus on two gangster movies, one is The Godfather(1972) directed by Francis Ford Coppola and another is A better tomorrow(1986) directed by John Woo. The particular scene is The Baptism scene and The Restaurant scene. Although both scenes show the killing actions, the continuity requests are different due to different situations. This research report on my exercise of “parallel action” as in Godfather. 

In two scenes, both protagonists Mark and Michael kill their enemy. However, Mark has direct responsibility because he is the one shooting at the location but Michael has a more conceptual association because he has no direct relation to the death of the head of other families. This difference leads to different strictness of image continuity. In the restaurant scene of A better tomorrow, the strict continuity of cause and effects are demanded because Mark has direct relation with the violence and place. Therefore, a bunch of verse and reverse shots are used for depicting the tension killing clearly to the audience. For example, Mark shots and we see the reaction shots of people getting killed. Conversely, In the Baptism scene of The Godfather, parallel actions are used to demonstrate the participation of Michael. Michael has no direct relation to the killing, however by alternate editing Michael with the images of killing of other families together, it builds a conceptual association between the actions. Therefore, the audience will default Michael masterminded the murder. At this time, strict continuity between images is not necessary. Both films require a significant amount of rehearsing and advance preparation to get the continuity of images. The restaurant scene demands more of the actors and camera person’s practices ahead of time and the Baptism requests a beforehand and precise plan of shot list and the way of editing shots together. 

Reflection to the parallel exercise 

The storyboard:

-Reflection on the shooting 

High standards and high requirements of the director makes the film a high quality film. It’s the normal thing for the actor to act time and time again until the director satisfies their performance. However, when it comes to my exercise, it’s difficult to implement. My actors are not professional, they are all my family members who come for help. Therefore, it’s hard for me to keep asking them to keep shooting over and over again. They will be impatient as well so the maximum to shoot one scene is around five times. A good director is able to guide the actor to inspire his largest potential and get the perfect shot. However, I found this is the ability I miss. My parents and grandparents always cooperate with me. However, my uncle doesn’t listen to my requests. When I ask him to walk beside the window and make a phone call. He responds “let me play guitar for you”. When I ask him again, he says “the plants need pruning.” It’s just so hard to get him to perform the way I want. There are always opportunities to work with those actors that don’t listen to your request or have lots of restrictions. For instance, some female actors don’t accept nudity on screen or they may even don’t accept kisses. It’s important for directors to quickly respond to these accidents and find a way to solve the problem. 

The script keep changing until the last minute, this is the final scripts:

Throughout my exercise work on “Parallel action”, I’ve changed scripts for several times and until the last minute. The problem of the absence of aunt and my brother is communication. I took it for granted that my aunt would be willing to participate in my shoot, so I told her the shooting plan one day before. My aunt responding with unwilling attitude and recommend her son as my actor. Therefore, I went to my brother on the other day. After shooting, he told me he will go travel with my aunt two days later, which means he won’t be able to attend the shooting on weekend. Therefore, I made an appointment with my uncle before one week and rewrite my script again. However, the accident happens again. He had a cold on Saturday and he felt uncomfortable so he couldn’t go to my grandmother’s house for dinner. Thus, I can only go to his house, shoot some images and change my script once again. Accidents happen all the time and the best way is to prepare plan b and plan c to reduce the loss as much as possible. 

The process of Editing 

First version:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XPAJ4Oe6Nb6nSYfICIZ0PMPrFfC7hx9q/view?usp=sharing

After finish shooting, I start to edit around the material I got. Editing is a process with no right answer, different person comes up with different version. I regard my first version of editing as a draft because the process I’m doing is mainly selecting the good and useful shots from a bunch of clips and arrange them as the same way of script. I exporting this version with a feeling that something goes wrong with this version of editing and Robin’s word make the flaw clear. The balance between scene is disorder, some of the scene might be too long, which could be tighten, most importantly, this version of editing did’t clear explore the notion of parallel action. With knowing the problem, I watched the Baptist scene again and this time, I only concentrate on the soundtrack. The overlapping voice-over consist appears throughout the montage, which increase the connection between different scenes and creates this atmosphere parallel action. Furthermore, with the voice-over reference of Ermanno Olmi’s I Fidanzati (1963), it shows what voiceover can do is to create a third meaning with editing the associated silent images and clips. These knowledge and thoughts results to my second version video.

Second version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RXbko5dIw8Iq1m5gUl6LObEH36qk1U48/view?usp=sharing

In order to form a parallel scene like The Godfather’s Baptism scene, I put voiceover of cooking sound in the kitchen overlaps with the other scene to form a sense of these scenes all happening at the same time. With remove the useless shots and tighten the rhythm. I feel this version is much better than the one before. I’m pretty satisfied with this version and with the suggestion from Robin, I tried to remove the black transition between picture and get the third version of the video. I feel like the last version looks better!

Final Version:

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/557892803

Sorry, I forget the password for Vimeo Mediafactory so I just share the link of google drive

Thank you very much!

The scene in Cinema | Week 11

In this week’s class, we looked at “The Kid with a Bike”, written and directed by the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. I think It’s interesting to watch them explain their intention, thoughts and chosen approach of solving problems when shooting the film. In the scene when the boy throws himself upon Samantha which seems like an easy shot. It’s a very economical shot which only requires one camera. However, it actually needs very accurate control of camera movement to get every actor on screen at the right spot and time. Furthermore, when making decisions, they avoid their weakness of wide shots. Everyone has something they’re not good at and I think that’s a smart choice to choose the technique that we are good at. 

This is the final week of this semester. I feel time goes by so fast. I learnt so much from this studio. Before this studio, I had no idea about the camera coverage and what the director needed to consider when making a film. Now, I understand that a director needs to consider the camera’s position and movement, the actors’ performance, the choice of lens, the continuity, the style of editing, and etc. Before the shooting, the director needs to be well prepared, the best thing to do is to get a storyboard, floor plan and shot of lists done. I learned the basic rules of filmmaking, like the 180 degree rule and I also understand the rule is free to break. The intention of a film is to express what the filmmaker wants to express, therefore it’s important to be creative all the time. Due to my camera being left in Australia, I haven’t been shot by myself for one and half years. This class raises my passion in shooting again, although my skill is not professional, I think I might want to find a job as a director in future. Even though I won’t be a director, I will continue to pay attention to the pre-production and all the technical aspects in the film. It’s a bit sad to hear you said it will be the last class, you are such a good teacher! Hope everything goes well for you! 

Thank you very much!

The scene in Cinema | Week 10

In this week’s class, we discuss the plan sequence. Plan sequence is the French word for long take. I love long take and that’s why I chose the long take of “Someone in the crowd” in La La Land as my project in Assignment 2. The advantage of Long take is obvious, it offers an immersive experience, and a more reliable environment to the audiences. The long take often include more details, require lots of pre-preparation and perfect match between actors and cameras on the day of shooting. The final clip of the long take of the static village is pretty impressive knowing that it’s not the kind of special effect that appears in Korean TV series, that the man has the ability to be static in time and space. Instead, it’s the real actors holding breath and camera people moving through them. It’s quite difficult to get the perfect shot of nobody making mistakes, in regard to such an amount of actors. It’s hard to image how many times the production team has tried. Further, the long take is more attractive as a way to attract the audience’s attention, which makes them more concentrated.

My research project is on track, I have done most of the storyboard. However, I’ve never observed my Grandmother’s cooking and haven’t decided what kind of dishes she will make, therefore it’s hard to imagine the perspective and position of the camera. One accident is that my aunt refused my request to shoot her because she’s not confident on screen. This disturbs my original idea. My second choice is my brother, he went to exercise everyday as well. However, he will travel to SiChuan in two days with my aunt. Then, I went to my uncle’s final choice, we decided to shoot next weekend. Hope everything goes well! This experience taught me that accidents happen all the time, we need always to prepare plan B and plan C.

Thank you very much!

The scene in cinema | Presentation

On the presentation date, I heard other people’s research topics. Michael is researching on the backstage of the film Inception which is directed by Christopher Nolan, the comparison between the real shooting and CG. I think acting before the green screen will test the actor’s acting skills more compared with the real location. Actors need to image the surrounding scenes according to the script. Further, there are two people in class who choose to focus on Wong Kar Wai, Xinyu  is researching on Wong’s film style and shooting technique on Chungking Express. I like Wang Kai Wai’s film as well. I think his film has a strong personal style, and a consistent theme of submerged passion and hidden desire. Interesting, different from the traditional Hollywood films that have strong storylines, Wong thinks the cinema is more about “You have the frame: you include some things, and leave the rest for the audience to imagine”. All his films are not stories, they are more about characters. That’s the reason why when I watch In the mood for love, I don’t understand what is going on until I research on google about the storyline. But when I watched it again, I think the slow motion and slow music used in the “Corridor Glance” scene really express the loneliness feeling of two protagonist and their hidden love towards each other. The same happens in Chungking Express, when I first saw it, I felt strange about Cop 663 talking to the towel and soap and Faye breaks into Cop 663’s home changing his objects for many days but Cop 663 still doesn’t notice, it just doesn’t make sense logically. However, it well expresses Cop 663’s immense sadness of breaking up with his girlfriend through comfort the objects in his house. It’s also interesting that Wong made Chungking Express without a script, it depends on his felling which actor has more play parts. In the technical aspect, I love his slow-motion, the voice-over and prying perspective. This way of capturing things through shelter offers an observising perspective to the audiences. I think it’s beautiful. All in all, I think it’s good to know everyone’s doing and what they are interested in.

Thank you very much!

The scene in the cinema | Week 9

This week I’m working on my Assignment 4. For my research topic, I start with investigating the gangster film, The Godfather and A better tomorrow. I chose two shooting scenes from these two films, both scenes tell the killing action but express in different ways. In the restaurant scene of A better tomorrow, the director uses quick cuts and verse reverse shots to depict the tension shooting action happening in the restaurant. At this time, Mark is in the location and has direct relation with the violence, thus, the images demand a strict continuity of cause and effects. For example, Mark shots and we see the reaction shots of people getting killed. Differently, in the Baptism scene of The Godfather, the director uses parallel action to demonstrate the killing of Michael. Although Michael is in the church, we can tell he has direct responsibility for the death of the heads of other families through the editing. The strict continuity is not necessary at this time because it’s more of a conceptual association between Michael and the death. Both scenes require a significant amount of rehearsing and advance preparation to get the continuity of images.

I decided to do an exercise of “parallel action” as in The Godfather. The script mainly tells a story of different family members getting together on Family Day. In this script, it contains different locations and actors, so I think it’s a challenge for me compared to the previous two exercises I’ve done. Like Robin says, I’m familiar with the actual location in the script. I can go visit them at any time and draw the storyboard according to the physical location, which is more convenient. I will plan carefully before shooting and do a storyboard, a floor plan and a shot list. Hopefully, to get the satisfying scene I planned.

Below is my script for now:

The Scene in Cinema | Week 7

In this week’s class, we mainly looked at acting and screen performance. Performance is an important element of filmmaking, which can adjust the final quality of the film. I understand that the actors are chosen not only because they are actors but also because of their physical skills. For example, a horse riding scene needs the actor’s ability to ride a horse. When choosing the actor, the director can either choose people who have the particular ability or leave time for the actor to learn particular skills. During the discussion, I learned that driving and acting at the same time is a very dangerous thing. I thought it’s a very natural thing before the class. In order to reduce the dangerousness, the director can either shut down the street or hire a trailer that can carry the pop car so that the actor can only concentrate on acting.

I know a famous actor called Eddie Peng, he is the type of actor that learns specific abilities for the character he performs. In the film “Jump Ashin!”, in order to act as a professional gymnast, he trained for 2 month to get the perfect reproduction of the figure of a professional athlete and learned 6 gymnastics items. Except for a few difficult actions, the rest in the film are played by himself.

Further, I understand there will be a camera test to choose the actor because there are people who are preferred by camera. Their actions like running, walking and dancing on camera have more aesthetic feelings than others. The relationship between actor and filmmaker is also important. A good director is able to guide the actor to inspire his largest potential and get the perfect shot. The famous Chinese director Yimou Zhang likes to find actors who are in line with the character’s temperament and likes to use people who have never acted before. As he said, new actor is like a piece of white paper, which can paint whatever he wants.

Thank you very much!

The Scene in Cinema | Week 8

In this week’s class, I learned that the choice of camera movement is not for dynamic effects on screen but for whole bunches of different intentions of the director. Different camera movements can be used for different reasons. Camera follows the character can help to increase the audiences’ sense of substitution; camera movement can be used to keep the balance of different scenes; it can be used for the intention of following up the moving objects; camera zoom in can for psychological reasons and it can also be used for highlighting the important element, etc.

However, it is not saying that a scene with a camera moving is always better than a not moving one.What needs to be noticed is that there are lots of things happening in that still frame that need to be carefully designed. I think it’s good to identify this at the beginning of the class because this is what I thought before this class, the moving one is better than the other. In the party scene of Les nuits de la pleine lune. The first time I watched it, I thought it’s pretty boring. The camera is still and there’s a bunch of people dancing in the frame for 1 minute. However, when I watched it a second time, I found the performance and movements of characters in that frame quite interesting, it actually shows the relationship between characters. Therefore, the camera movement is a tool of the director to express what they want to the audience, there are no right or wrong answers and no one is better than another. The visual interest is important to attract the audience’s attention. When the stage of the camera is still, we can always use actors’ movements to make the image richer. 

Thank you very much!

Assignment 2

The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 4

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/03/31/the-scene-in-cinema-2021-reflective-writing-4/

The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 5

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/04/16/the-scene-in-cinema-2021-reflective-writing-5/

The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 6

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/04/16/the-scene-in-cinema-2021-reflective-writing-6/

Descriptive & Analytical Writing

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/04/16/descriptive-analytical-writing-2/

Thank you very much!