“If you have time to think about art, then you are privileged. Full stop.”

Another productive Monday from our guest: award-winning film critic Alex Heller-Nicholas. Alex put criticism into perspective as a means of taste, privilege and bias, audience, scale and detail, history, and context vs. opinion. More specifically, the human trait of “taste [as it] classifies the classifier”. Taste can become the trap for most critics as a review becomes an opinionated rant about a film without any analytical basis, but merely a reflection of that critic’s taste. Alex reminds us to constantly ask ourselves: why do people care about what I’m saying? It’s important for a critic to keep an open mind, speak confidently with self-awareness, and to trust your instinct to guide you but not govern you.

The next part of the workshop is to write a short review on the Australian short film I’m you, Dickhead and then read the reviews from others. It’s interesting to read the different perspectives people took but still conveyed the same message as you. Feel free to read mine below:

If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, where would go back to and what would do? One possibility is to convince your 10 year old self to master the guitar as a means of earning more action with the ladies – Richard, the main character of the short film I’m You, Dickhead does exactly that.

Yes, it’s one of those time travel narratives again, but its crude yet witty take on the sub-genre provides viewers with a refreshing take on the inevitable consequences of tampering with your past. Director Lucas Testro’s satire is with the exaggerated “futuristic” costuming and setting of the time travel institution combined with a nod to pop culture references from The Terminator to Transformers. Testro is aware of his target audience and with the help of the fast paced editing of Bill Irving and the tight to wide shot from Aaron Smith, he is able to condense such a complex topic into a ridiculously simple story.

Anthony Gooley’s portrays Richard accurately as the insecure boy-next-door “dickhead” – a character that everyone loves to hate as fast as his moustache continuously grow with his ego. Although, his reasons are absurd and superficial, the viewers can’t help but still empathise with his desperation and stupidity as it directs him into what he really wants – and plenty more.

If you’re a fan of time paradoxes filled with Aussie banter, then this is the film for you.

Monday is always better with a sugar / caffeine rush. Alexia welcomed us back into class with boxes of Short Stop donuts (thank you again Alexia!) and a class discussion about the critical piece we were planning to produce. Not only did we get a taste about what will soon to be some of our final pieces for E.A.C studio, but also a valuable feedback session to guide us to a focal point in our pieces.

Knowing me, I couldn’t decide between 2 ideas that I had been tossing up in my head during the mid-semester break:

• Analysing the evolution of music videos. Since when did music videos become so cinematic?
• Is there such thing as a Melbourne sound / music scene? Does it come from the location of Melbourne itself or is representative of the people who listen to certain music?

At this stage, it seems that the music video idea would be an easier route to investigate. However, judging by the discussion in class, it seems that the Melbourne sound idea has more questions that are left to be answered (challenge accepted I guess). If were to develop this as either a writing piece of video essay, I’d mainly focus on artists that have unexpectedly found international success such as Courtney Barnett and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

Wednesday’s grammar session focused on the common errors we made during project brief 3. We recapped on the difference between passive and active voices, the difference between a colon and a semicolon, effect vs. affect, its vs. it’s, and the different types of dashes. As someone who struggles with sentences structure, it provided me with clarification and the importance of simply reading your work out loud can really bring out the editor inside you.