Here at Home is an interactive web documentary about homelessness. It was a radical experiment to see if they could end homelessness. The interactive online documentary began with a short introduction. This introduction bombarded the viewer with statistics and information about homelessness and set the tone for the documentary.

From here, there was a page with hundreds of coloured dots.

By hovering the mouse over one of the cities, information would appear giving the statistics of homelessness in that city. When I clicked on, for example, Vancouver, the website would transform to make Vancouver the main title, then giving all relevant information related to the study around it.

By clicking on the central circle, the video about the study in Vancouver would play. Otherwise, by clicking on the various statistics on the right hand side, the viewer could find out different additional information about the study.

The range of colours and shapes throughout this documentary made it one that was exciting to look at. It seemed highly professional and was very aesthetically pleasing to look at. The interface complimented the story of the homelessness very well. It was easy to navigate and it was easy to get from it the information I wanted.

For our K-film on addiction, me, Ella and Tiana hope to capture the similar mood as is depicted in these pictures:

This week I came across Ed’s blog where he wrote up some notes about this weeks learning. Something which I found interesting is his writing on how K-films can structurally be hierarchical. This is due to the filmmaker giving certain videos more lives than others, or giving them more of a chance of coming up as a thumbnail than the others. I never thought of it this way.

Whilst this may be trying to structure a hierarchy of what is the most important in the video, sometimes it can be overbearing and a bit of an overkill. I for one, hate having to watch the same video over and over again. However, maybe this can be used as an advantage? If something is consistently being repeated, then does that make the viewer try to find the video they haven’t seen yet? Do they eventually start to identify patterns in the work? Could that work in our favour?

ALL THINGS ADDICTION

This week, I had a look through Gina’s blog, and it was interesting to read her take on our ability to adapt.

“As Adrian regarded, we don’t see the world in a rectangular frame but we film the world in a rectangular frame.”

This is something that is very true, but also something I have never really thought about. I have never really looked at a camera and cursed it for not being about to capture absolutely everything from the top of my sight to the bottom, or from the left of my peripheral to the right. I have just adapted to its abilities and accepted that as its limitations. The camera focuses on what we want to see, because in the end, how often do we really pay attention to what is happening in the corner of our eyes. We have adapted to how a camera works as eyes which capture memories and events for us to reflect on in the future, and that in itself is a miracle.

Gina then goes on to relate this idea to Korsakow, and muses that we need to learn how to work with Korsakow and its structure and interface to create something. It may have limitations, but we shouldn’t view these as a hinderance, but more of a healthy limitation. The idea of keywords, ins and outs and patterns is one we need to adapt to, not try to change. We need to work with our mediums, not against them.

I’ve created my first ever K Film using Korsakow, and you can find it here. Enjoy!