Category: Translating Observation

OBSERVATION 12 – THE ONE WITH THE SHIRT

“I like your shirt”

I look up to see a woman walk up to a man sitting on a bench in a busy shopping centre. I have a clear view of this man, he’s sitting directly in front of me and repeats the same action of looking up from his phone. The woman places a small hand on his shoulder and then proceeds to continue on her way, most likely a day trip shopping for the latest fashion trends or a present for a close relative. I assume this because she holds two wrapped presents in her hand and some gold wrapping paper under her arm.

The man looks at his friend bewildered. He’s just been approached by a random stranger that has commented on his shirt. The shirt in question was a checkered pattern flannel, alternating between tones of green and black. It was buttoned all the way up, with the ends not tucked in.

There wasn’t anything particularly interesting about the shirt aside from possibly the colour, and the man seemed to think so too. His friend laughed at him, and made a joke at his expense, taking out his phone and requesting him to model his shirt.

I thought it was interesting that this stranger would take the time out of their day to make such a comment, and how one would get to that decision. I’ve never really come up to a complete stranger without any context at all and complimented their attire. I have gone up to cosplayers at conventions and potential friends in class, but not complete random people who I wont ever meet again. So hearing the words “I like your shirt” was just something I thought was done on screen.

This could be a seriously ridiculous idea, but I’m envisioning some kind of film similar to “Afraid So”. Where I re-enact different exchanges concerning visual looks of a person. Something to do with “That’s Nice” would be cool, or a simple montage of pleasant things. I know it sounds like I want to completely rip off the “Afraid So’ film, but hopefully I could add in my own spin on it, possibly just having it be played out in a very scientific set, and the “nice” things that are happening are just little experiences being played out that we could all relate to. Something quirky and acknowledges the camera.

 

REFLECTION 9 – THIS IS MY PITCH

*This is a summary/transcript of my 3 minute pitch from Wednesday*

Like everyone else in this class, I think we can all relate to writing about trains, but this time it happened before I even got on the train. I wont read the observation out, it’s online if you want to read it in full, but in summary here’s what happened.

Last week I was waiting for a train to uni. I was sitting facing one way, while the seat behind me was facing the complete opposite way. I couldn’t hear this woman behind me properly, but she was loud. At first I was annoyed at her, she was ruining my daily routine with her loudness, but when I took my headphones out I could actually hear her words. She was on the phone to a friend named George, and wanted to stay over at his place for a few days, and that ‘he’ had hit her again. And before I knew it she grabbed her bike and left the station. To say that I was shocked is an understatement. I didn’t know what to do with this information.

Now my film doesn’t want to focus on this woman in particular, heck it doesn’t even have to be about this event, but I have made plans in my head about a certain structure on how it should play out, and what I want to play out with a subjective view obscuring what is really happening. I want different angles of the same event play out, from different distances witnessing the same event play out, but the audio will be voice-overs of characters describing what they think is happening. For example from the perspective of a person on the platform across the tracks from this woman who sees her yelling into her phone. This characters voice would probably comment on how she seems so violent towards her phone and is having a very vicious argument. They they’ll comment on how they sympathize with the party on the other end, because he received a very angry call from his mother this morning.

It doesn’t need to be big, but the event needs to be acted out very dramatically and ambiguously. We will never see the true event, only what is permitted from the different perspectives that are given, and the audience will be left to decide what they think is happening.

REFLECTION 8 – GOOD IN A ROOM

I successfully did my film pitch this week on Wednesday. It was based on OBSERVATION 11 – THE ONE WITH THE BIKE, my experience of listening to this woman who was sitting behind me and my thoughts surrounding her, and how I would never really understand the situation that unfolded in front of me. The subjectivity of it was completely baffling, but this reflection in particular isn’t going to be about the content of my pitch, but the form and structure.

One of the panelists Jeremy commented on how I presented a good treatment for my film idea, and I took that comment to heart. I have done a lot of public speaking before, general school announcements and debating, but to present an idea and have it be scrutinized for consumption was a relatively new thing I learnt in my last studio, Finding The Ear. As a group we went through multiple pitch stages, first finding an idea/concept we could possibly develop into a film, then the actual treatment and pre-production of the film. I did all this though, with a team and as a group we presented the pitch together, each person using the other for strength and giving each other confidence in our ideas.

This time around I was alone, although I did recieve a lot of good feedback from Robin, it was mainly a solo pitch. Short, Sweet & Simple. But completely individually developed, from conception of the idea, to how it would play out on the screen, and I had no confidence. I wasn’t sure what to expect from my pitch, because in the end not all of our ideas will be made into films. I had to decide if I was to approach the pitch with a very grand idea, consisting of all the complex ideas and approaches to observing I had picked up on the way to here, or to create something smaller, and more manageable. Something that was achievable in the short amount of time we had to create a film.

My initial idea was to work off from OBSERVATION 10 – THE ONE WHERE THEY SPEAK, with the film idea being very purposely re-staged of the event, and of the surrounding environment. It required a lot of controlled variables, capable actors, and time. A lot of time. I had told Robin of this idea and he told me that realistically it would require a 3 day shoot, and an empty train carriage, which as a full time media student I didn’t have the resources and time to acquire all these things. It would have been a great reflexive film, delving into the psychology and different perspectives of these people I had envisioned, but it was too ambitious. It didn’t have an end or a beginning. It was just a great idea that would have taken too long to make in the 5 weeks we have left.

So I changed things up, and I focused on a recent event that took place, and how that affected me. I wanted to make people understand how I got to the new idea, and how it’s my actual perspective of observing, or in this case listening, to this woman with the bike that I new it was a better story to tell, but also that I had a more concrete and interesting way to tell it. I focused on that ‘ear’ and began to develop more things on the structure, and the non linear way it would jump between perspectives of the same event instead of a mismatch of interactions. And then I revisited the video my previous tutor showed me on pitching, and how one should present something in a room of execs.

I didn’t just dump information on my peers, and I knew that my observation wasn’t completely relevant to what I was asking to do. It was the ideas after the observation that got me to where I am, and so I took my audience through my reasoning and my journey to that point. I wrote down the key elements of what I had to tell my audience, but in the end nothing was set in stone. The setting, and the characters, and the events could change, but it was the central idea of viewing these all from multiple perspectives and exploring their subjective viewpoints that compelled me to want to make this film.

 

OBSERVATION 11 – THE ONE WITH THE BIKE

A blonde woman, distraught and hysterical. She struggles to make words as her sobs tear through her body. The tight bun her hair was in is now loose, and limping to one side. Her jacket wrapped up all the way, perfectly protecting her from the outside elements, or maybe protecting her from someone else. She’s on her phone, desperately pleading for help.

“George please can I come over?!” She says in between sobs, “He hit me again this morning and I had to run out of there!”

She yells this across the platform, even though the only person that she needs to convey this to is her friend George on the phone.

“Please George, I barely made it out of there, can I stay at your place for a couple of days?”

She pauses for George’s reply, still sobbing loudly for the entire public to hear. After a few second she mumbles a quiet “thank you” and hangs up the phone. She picks her bike up from the bench, and immediately leaves the station platform.

I’m worried for her. As she mounted her bike and rode off to George’s house I wonder if she is going to find a happy ending. Today seemed like a horrible day for her, and while she has suffered this morning, I have been living my day to day life, neglecting homework and prepping for a birthday. I also realised that this event stuck with me because I was able to actively listen to it. Any other day I would have had both headphones in, completely oblivious to the outside world. In some alternate universe I would have just thought her muffled rumblings behind me were a nuisance, and that she was a nuisance to my day. I wouldn’t have been able to understand her situation at all. I would have just assumed something else. Maybe it was an argument on the phone with her mother, maybe she was just obnoxiously loud and passionate about a film that just came out. I could have missed this event, and not been able to write this observation at all, and that idea strikes me as very concerning, because I feel like her story needs to be told. And if was a stronger person, I hope that one day I will be able to stand up and help people like her.

Something that plays on how close I could have misconstrued something so specific and detrimental to the party. Misunderstanding is a theme I want to emphasize, possibly how unreliable I am with my re-counting of this event. I’ve written like 4 drafts of this specific observation and that could play into how I want to frame this particular event. I could be purposely changing things to fit what I thought was happening, I could be forgetting other important facts of her situation. So this is a theme I want to explore and I want to do it with her, and possibly play out an event but told by a unreliable narrator. Someone who doesn’t know the complete story.

REFLECTION 7 – WHAT IS A FILM?

What makes a film different from a random edit of clips. It’s the way in which we invoke meaning in both creating it and viewing it. Or at least that’s what I think it is. We watched a lot of examples of the different ways we could make a film throughout this class, but today was a bit different. These were actually films that almost went outside the norm, the same way I think Robin would like us all to do as well.

For example if we were to make a short film about a local football club, why don’t you just show the club members only and their relationship to the team, but throughout the entire film never show the actual team. In “We are the Faithful” we witness the club supporters of FC Basel cheering and crying for their team. We witness all their pain and their joy for the game that unfolds in front of them, but we never actually see the ‘main subject’. We only see their faces, their reactions and their passion. I also noted how at the beginning we weren’t properly introduced to anything aside from these rabid fans. These people came across as very obnoxious at first, but as the film continues we see these people become vulnerable and by the end your opinion of these mindless masses changes to focus on the individual that stands there alone. I thought this shift in the way we think of the fans in this crowd is very interesting, because its easy to assume one thing, but for it to turn completely around. I think this film was a great example of what we can show in a film without having to actually show everything.

 

REFLECTION 6 – CAPTURING ACTUALITY

During week 6 we were shooting  small script in class. The tale of Rachel and Barney. It was a brief look at how the set of a film should probably look like, although in a very informal way. I’ve actually had the opportunity to work in many different environments and set procedures. As one of the latecomers to class I had no chance of actually getting a role. The script only required two actors, so no extras were needed, and the main production roles were already given out before I got there. I wasn’t disappointed though. I got to sit back and observe how my peers would act within a ‘professional’ capacity. They got through multiple angles of the classic shot-reverse-shot coverage, and a few mid and wide shots. In the end it was an example of how we should conduct ourselves on a set, and what roles we need to keep in mind. So having a full crew on site would be in the best interest of all the different projects we will eventually create, and in the end we will be all grateful that someone was there to record which takes were bad and which were even worth our time considering in the final piece.

OBSERVATION 10 – THE ONE WHERE THEY SPEAK

The train interaction between two people on two sides in their own two worlds. A girl drops her lanyard, too distracted by her phone to notice. A woman interrupts her boyfriends whispered comments and points the fallen object out to the girl across from her. The girl picks it up, says thank you, and then continues to look at her phone.

Starts off as a small observational piece. Establishing shots of different people you can encounter on a late night train. A couple whispering sweet nothings to each other. A lone girl on her phone, texting a friend. A man in a yellow reflective jacket and construction boots struggling to stay awake. A young man trying to whisper apologies to his partner over the phone. 3 men trying to sneakily drink alcohol in the corner of the carriage.

After we establish these little vignette moments observing these people who take the 12:30 train, which is the last train of the night we come back to the first two worlds. The couple is established to be sitting directly across from the girl on her phone. Neither party has acknowledged each other throughout the entire train ride.

The girl then shifts in her seat, and a small item falls out, without he noticing. The woman in the couple notices it and breaks away from her partner. She sits up and points across very abruptly, disturbing the almost quiet in the carriage.

“Hey, you dropped your lanyard/keys.”

The girl on her phone breaks out of her mobile world. Unsure how to proceed from being talked to and looks down at the object the woman is pointing to. She quickly leans down and picks it up, and mumbles a quiet “Oh, thanks.”

The woman replies with, “No worries.” and continues to dote on her partner. The girl shoves her item into her pocket more tightly now, and then pulls out her phone again. Neither person acknowledges each other again.

I want this to be re-staged more purposely than what I observed. I want to make it start off feeling like we are an omniscient observer in this train carriage, and the people in it are too. There should be multiple angles of the different people, from the perspective of the other people in the carriage. So that when the audience thinks this is an establishing shot, it’s actually a point of view shot, which forces us to break the fourth way and connect the character to us.

 

OBSERVATION 9 – THE ONE WHERE SHE SMILES

The girl stood there diligently waiting for a customer to approach. Her dark hair was pulled back and tied into a loose bun at the base of her neck. A very ill fitting apron was wrapped around her as a poor excuse of a uniform, and her make up was done up perfectly to compliment her bright smile.

She smiled at the multitudes of women and men who would past the kiosk front. Being located underneath the escalators at Melbourne Central Station wasn’t a great place to host a sit-down cafe, but it was effective in catching all the straggling workers and students who needed a quick bite or drink on the go.

“Hi, how can I help you?” she asked a passing woman who was on her phone. The girl was probably in her early twenties, the woman almost twice her age. She ignored the girl, and continued talking on her phone. The girl was unfazed.

A man hurries towards the kiosk shortly afterwards and stands directly in front of the fridge displaying the food available. The girl smiles again, and greets him warmly.

“Hi, how can I help you?” she asks very politely, almost as if it was second nature to her to say those words.

I wonder if she’s said those words over a hundred times this week, maybe even a thousand. Working in hospitality is something I am very familiar with. A few years ago I started my first job doing the exact same thing this girl was doing. Stuck in the middle of a generic food court, located in the corner of a shopping centre, surrounded by other kiosks and stores all doing the same thing. Having people smile at customers, as we wait for someone to arrive and interact with. I remember waiting for hours by the register some days, never getting a customer, but always cheerfully giving the illusion that I was always happy to serve.

The film could be focused on this girl’s regular day to day life. Maybe it starts off with her getting this job, being very excited for the new job. Fast forwarding (could also do that to footage as well in the film) to like when she encounters her first angry customer, her dealing with that, but still holing that smile and front. Then fast forwards more into a moment with her gaining more responsibility, like keys to manage the store alone, and her smile being more genuine. But then she becomes more weary of the job. Fast forward more until you see her start to break that smile, or the actor just smiles less happily. Now it’s just a front of a smile, no real passion behind it. That fake smile gets more and more empahsized, and eventually she gets to a customer that annoys her, a customer that is constantly complaining. She finally drops that smile.

A possible aesthetic choice was to only frame her mouth in these sequences. We never really get to her eyes. It could just be a medium close up on her lower face and shoulders. The background would have to be very purposely done, with props and setting playing a huge influence on what we observe, although the phrase “Hi, how can I help you?” already alludes to a customer service/hospitality role. We can just gather that she is new. Even her name badges could change from trainee, to a supervisor, to a manager and so on. Doing this, and disassociating the person from the smile, we only judge the smile now, and so we focus in on that. And hopefully create a film that shows when a smile no longer is a true smile.

 

REFLECTION 5 – BEING INDEPENDENT-ISH

So I have completed my first graded assessment practical exercise and to be honest I feel very conflicted with the result. It was a very quick shoot, with Alaine’s help I interviewed one of my new friends of the year Eloise Large. Elly has become one of my favourite people this year and I think her story of coming to live in Melbourne at pretty much the same age I was during my first year is very striking.

I think the reason why I chose to interview her was that her life was just different to mine, and that she took the chance that I never took. I wanted to know what it would have been like if I had followed what she did, and moved out of home, to another island, away from family and friends.

Armed with an EX3, a boom mic and a micro LED panel I opted to have the traditional one-take of answers. I didn’t want to force her to answer or repeat certain phrases, and instead wanted an authentic experience of Elly’s personality. However, that did lead to a lot of unscripted responses and repetition. Elly is also a media student and knew the kinds of answers I wanted, but she also did that too well, and as I reviewed the footage from the interview she would repeat certain phrases multiple times, and try to word things purposely in ways that seemed more professional. At the time of interviewing I didn’t realize it was happening, so I couldn’t comment on it. I think I was too invested in just the interview process and not the editing that would come later on.

Another note on editing was that I realised with an unrehearsed question comes an unrehearsed answer, and a lot of stuttering. Elly was already a quick talker and with the added pressure of being in front of a camera, her words would leave her brain too fast and she would stumble for words, using “Um” very frequently. I was able to capture the clear sentences and edit around her bad habit, but I think it still comes across in the final product. I think if I had the confidence to ask her to re-structure some of her sentences and if we had more time to shoot, than it could have come across smoother. But I liked her genuine comments on being independent-ish, and her experience was what I wanted to capture. Her transition from young naive teen into ‘adult’ is happening right in front of me as her first year of uni goes by, and I really just wanted to document this moment of her life.

REFLECTION 4 – BEING A PROFESSIONAL

Someone asked if we had to use the Sony EX3 camera exclusively for this class, and Robin replied both yes and no. No because it’s not completely set that this will be the only camera available to us in the future, and Yes because it would help us build a professional discipline when working a job. Carrying around heavy equipment, bumping in sets, picking up catering, location scouting; these are all necessary jobs that are integral to making a film, and yet they get very little recognition. People rarely see the value in these small roles and tasks that build the foundations of any film, and yet they forget that this is where most people start in the industry. As a university student I’m not going to have a big production house or studio backing up my projects yet. At this moment in time all I have is the equipment office in building 9, my friends and family, and a small network of actors who I’ve made friends with over the course of my education. There’s no flashy camera grip to come assist me, or a hired lighting director. I am starting from the bottom of the chain, and that means putting up with the large equipment hauls onto the trains, or enlisting my friends to come hold a boom pole for 3 hours. This is something that we need to get used to early, so that when we do eventually get to a point where there are more defined roles, and a more professional scenario, I can appreciate every little cog that works in this big machine.

The more low budget you are, the more you can find yourself carrying everything, but it also means you get to control everything the way you want it. Being limited with both resources and money will also help with me being able to overcome those obstacles and find resolutions that I wouldn’t have thought of in the first place. So I think I’m getting used to it, I think I’m building thicker skin and more muscle dragging those pelican cases around the Melbourne CBD. One day I’ll have someone else do it for me, but right now collaborating with classmates is enough for me, and this experience will be something that will shape how I conduct myself in the future.