Category Archives: integrated media 1

Integrated media – film essay

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Integrated Media Assessment task 2 – Film Essay

The film I have chosen to study is called “Murder!” by John Roebuck, Katherine Buzza, Laurence Cummings and Lincoln MacKinnon. It tells the story of a young woman murdered by a man in a mask, of the detective who is trying to solve the case and of the witness who saw the whole thing. The film is fragmented and told out of order so that only pieces of information are presented at any given time and the full story can only be understood by traveling through the whole film.

Interface: Interface plays a very important role in the way this narrative has been communicated. The film is set up so that at any given point there is the primary screen which contains the video being viewed and 4 smaller thumbnails beneath it, as can be seen in figure 1.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Rather than being a preview of the next video that can be chosen, these thumbnails will be one of four still images, each one representing one of the four characters in the narrative. Thus, the viewer knows that by clicking on a certain image, the next video that will be shown will be a new addition to the story of that certain character which is displayed in the thumbnail. However, as can be seen in figures 2 and 3, it not always all four options being presented to the viewer but can sometimes be a few of the same character’s thumbnail or even all four belonging to the one character.

figure 3

figure 3

figure 2

figure 2

 

 

 

 

This may be because too many clips belonging to the other characters had been viewed previously and not enough of that character or that the creators felt that the next clips of the story of that character were the best to follow whichever clip had just been seen. This highly structured interface is made very easy to comprehend so the audience can understand how they will be progressing through the narrative.

Content: The content acts as the tie between the interface and the pattern of the film. The distinctive interface gives the viewers some idea about what the content will be of the next clip they will see because they know which character it will feature. However, it is the established pattern of the four different characters and different clips that also informs the viewers of the content because they have come to understand how this film has been structured. The content of the film itself contains the hours before, during and after the murder takes place and showcases the four people involved in the crime; the culprit, the victim, the detective and the witness. The viewer sees the crime from all four points of view and thus gains a much broader understanding of the crime itself. However, the fracturing of the content by delivering it out of sequence and using the different viewpoints causes the viewer to be more intrigued by the story and eager to see more of the content. The difference between this film and some other Korsakow films is that this one presents a distinguishable narrative. Its content includes clear characters, action, cause and effect and temporal structure, all elements which Bordwell and Thompson claim to be necessary for a narrative (Bordwell and Thompson, p. 79). While many of the other Korsakow films I have seen use a collection of seemingly random clips which may form a narrative due to pattern and order, this film uses the story itself to create the Korsakow films, fracturing the story into different segments, creating an entirely new element to the classic murder mystery narrative.

Pattern: “Murder!” uses a series of patterns to further enhance the delivery of the narrative. While there is the obvious pattern of every clip being clearly linked to the overall causal narrative being told, there are various other patterns within the film. Similar to the interface, another pattern is the use of the four different characters to tell the story. Once they have begun moving through the film, the viewer can see the pattern being used, that by selecting a thumbnail with the image of a certain character the next clip they will see will contain the next part of that character’s story. But beyond that, there are more patterns which can be explored. Each character has it’s own style which is distinguished by the inclusion and repetition of certain elements to form pattern which is only present in the clips belonging to that character. For example, every clip belonging to the detective is in black and white, as can be seen in figure 4.

Figure 4

Figure 4

 

Each clip with the murderer has parts of one song playing in the background and almost every clip of the victim has one line from another song repeating through it. The patterns of sound through the clips play an important element in the film. The similar sounds of the culprit and the victim make the clips of those characters seem a lot more connected than the other two. Meanwhile, the clips of the witness bear almost no sound whatsoever. This separates him from the rest of the characters but also emphasises his role as a voyeur in both the film and the crime, watching but taking little action. He is not the focus of his own scenes, the victim is. The viewer, along with the witness, watches the victim silently through a variety of windows and doors. The pattern of silence in the witness’s clips is juxtaposed against the sound in the detective clips as the detective is the only character of the four who has natural sound and differentiates between the detective and the rest of the characters, making him the only one to seem real.

A pattern of lighting also emerges which is used to differentiate the murderer and the victim. Many of the murderer’s clips are very dark or have strong shadows, as can be seen in figure 5. This is juxtaposed against clips of the victim who often has bright light or just generally lighter surroundings, as is seen in figure 6.

figure 6

figure 6

Figure 5

Figure 5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This pattern contrasts the light and dark of these two characters until they eventually merge. Once we begin to see the victim in the murderer’s clips and vice versa, the lighting and shadows disappear to more of a neutral light setting as the opposites have come together. Thus, the pattern foreshadows the meeting of these two opposing characters. A similar use of emerging pattern to foreshadow is the inclusion of an item featuring the colour red in the majority of the victim’s clips, as can be seen in figure 7, which are later represented as her blood.

Figure 7

Figure 7

 

Connections: All three elements are put together to make a very interesting film. The makers appear to have used Korsakow itself as a style and means of telling this story. The simple interface of the four thumbnail options allow the viewer to move easily through the story and allows the patterns to emerge. The fragmented and interactive way that korsakow presents it’s content allows the viewer to be submerged in the story, almost as if they too are the detective and are solving the crime by discovering different clues and elements of the story at different moments. However, the downfall of having such a strong and obviously set and presented narrative within korsakow restricts the program and its signature structure from being able to deliver a truly unique experience to each viewer as a regular, disjointed film would. This is due to the strength of the temporal timeline of the film. Even though the events are viewed out of order and from different perspectives, the viewer still knows where each clip fits within the timeline and so forms one story in their mind and any other viewer is likely to create this same story. This weakens the effect of using Korsakow because each story experience is not as unique to the viewer as it could be.

References:

Bordwell, D, Thompson, K 2013, Film Art: An Introduction, 10th edn, McGraw-Hill, New York

Buzza, K, Cummings, L,  MacKinnon, L and Roebuck, J 2011, Murder!, Korsakow film, viewed on 3/4/2014, http://vogmae.net.au/classworks/2011/Murder.html

readings upon readings – week 4

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somehow this week, the readings for each of our subjects all seemed to interconnect. while this was kinda helpful in that they were all discussing similar topics, it did get a but confusing where they kinda all blurred together into one and i wasn’t sure which reading was for which subject and needed to be used to answer which question. and it didn’t help that the reading for this subject was the same as one we did for cinema studies this time last year and both it and the reading for cinema studies this week were covering documentaries of some form or another. luckily, my brain is completely fried and i managed to get through them all without a complete and total meltdown. and here’s what i gathered.

at first glance, i wasn’t really to sure where the connections were between boardwell and thompsons “film art, an introduction” excerpts and our course. but i think i got it (i’m prob wrong so feel free anyone to comment and give your own opinions). this reading began with narrative and the construction and functions of narrative and it’s effect on it’s audience. it then moved on to experimental films before finishing at the different types of documentary. these three sections can be combined to create what we are doing in integrated media this year with our korsakow films and the little sketch tasks.

we were given a simple task to make a 6 second video. but we still needed to make them. and that is where all of these topics come in. do we try and make a story when we film them? do we try and simply document something? or do we want to make them abstract and random, with no meaning? and yet, each of these are linked. when we choose what it is we want to film, we must then choose where we film it from, for how long, how close in, what it does, if we move the camera and why we are choosing that. and every one of these influences the film as a whole. and then, as an audience, we seem to immediately and subconsciously try to associate a meaning to whatever we watch. as the reading stated, as viewers,  “We often infer events that are not explicitly presented”, that is, we try and make connections out of what we see, even if nothing is explicitly shown. the reading claims that “In general, the spectator actively seeks to connect events by means of cause and effect.” but what if there is no discernible cause and effect?

this is where the experimental film joins the conversation. are our films experimental? are they abstract? are they associational? certainly when i filmed a painting on my wall, i was not trying to tell a story. there was no cause for filming it and no effect that occurred from it being there or bing filmed. and yet, can connections be made between that film of  my painting and say my other film of a wallet being opened and closed? again, when i took those films, i had no connection in mind, just trying to fill  the “something square” criteria. and yet, there may be abstract connections made. or even connections through causality, space and time. yes, both were square items, both were filmed during the day, both films were 6 seconds long. but perhaps the film of the wallet opening and closing following that of the painting insinuates purchasing the painting and now having no money? i don’t know. i just thought of that now. and i made these videos 2 weeks ago. and this make me realise how all the different elements of this reading fit together. that nothing is accidental, we all set out to make something when we film. even if we don’t know what that something is. but there’s another element to that, that the viewer can take what it is that we have made, whether there was an intended meaning or not, and create a narrative, or a story, or simply a meaning or set of connections.

and this is just with 6 second clips. imagine what it will be like when we actually make our korsakow films.

 

 

 

what defines me? – week 4

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the constraints of this weeks task are more convoluted than ever. and i thought timing something round was hard… now i have to not only work out what defines me, but i have to film it? i’m at that stage where i still don’t know, we are all still learning who we are, that’s why we’re at uni.  and i don’t want to go with the obvious, i like to try and think out of the box, but it’s not always so easy.

i don’t want to just film my parents feet because i can’t show their faces (and also, i hate feet). when asked to film objects  (well, actually, parts of objects) that define me, what kind of things can i film that don’t blend into the 3rd constraint of places that define me. i mean, my first thought of something that defines me is my bed. i spend the majority of my life there and i love it. it’s the centre piece of my room and i hold it very dear to me. but is my bed an object or a place? same with my car. i love my car, i use it all the time, but it kinda feels like a place. i guess a place is something i would define as something you could go inside right, like a house or a building. but you can go inside a bed and you can definitely go inside a car. and then an object is something you can use or do something with, like a ball or a pen. so a house doesn’t fit into that but a car does, you use it to get place, or you sleep in a bed (or use it to put things on). so which is which? maybe i just shouldn’t use my car or my bed. but they are really important to me that i can’t really think of a film that describes me without having them in it.

the next point is how to film them. we can only film parts of the objects, no whole. first off… why no wholes? is that too obvious? do they want us to be more abstract? will it become to narrative-like if we just show things that are special to us plain and simply? this task really brings the abstract ideals to this, because i need to consider whether, when i’m filming only parts of objects, do i want them to be understandable? can you tell what these parts are? or do i want them to be mysterious, as in we know that they are important to me but from the way they have been filmed, you can’t really tell what they are. do i only film one thing for each constraint or a range of objects and places that can be put together to form a bigger picture. am i trying to create a narrative or do i want to be as abstract as possible?

so many questions. i guess we’ll find out soon enough considering i need to actually start filming these videos

 

Spinning slowly – week 4

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i always like to check out the blogs of my fellow students. it’s useful to see if they’ve found any sites or videos out there that relate to the content that maybe i haven’t but also jus tot see what they’re up to. everyone interprets this course differently so seeing what others have thought about each weeks stuff can really broaden my knowledge and my take on the subjects covered that week. and it’s fun to see what kind of videos others have made in response to the constraints because everyone makes such drastically different videos, it helps me see how maybe i could make mine better.

one of my favourites this week was from the blog of Kylie who had some create video responses last week. although i did really enjoy the traffic one, i’d have to say that my favourite was the slow record video. not only did it combine one this week’s constraints, slow, with one of the first week’s, round, but there were just so many different elements in such a simple video.

i loved it. loved the simplicity of it. we’re just watching a record spin for 6 seconds but the Screen Shot 2014-03-30 at 1.15.50 PMentire 6 seconds we are kept interested. what i thought was great was the way the record itself actually blends into the rest of the frame, so really all you can see is the smaller circle in the middle which is the label of the record. and you are left watching that rotate slowly as the words move from right side up to upside down and back again, all the while you can kinda but not completely see the shine of the black record itself spinning.

however, my favourite part of the video was the double slow. not only are we watching a record spinning slowly on it’s turntable, but we are listening to the music as it plays. the music not only keeps the video interesting and draws us into the spooning record, but the tune itself is a slow tune. thus we are presented with a slowly moving record playing a slow tune. its like inception… slowception. i guess this is what happens when you read waaaaay to deeply into a 6 second video. but well done kylie. i loved it

But my life is a story – week 4

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we finally got an interesting, (mostly) relevant and even somewhat entertain (towards the end) lecture/symposium this week. adrian and the others actually appeared to be answering the given questions (although i’m not too sure how that first question about reality tv related to the course) and there were some rather interesting points brought up.

for me the most interesting question and subsequent discussion was in regards to the increased accessibility of media nowadays and whether or not this is ‘ruining’ films. what was important about this, as jasmine (i think it was jasmine) said, is that ‘ruin’ is a very strong word. which is true. ‘ruining’ depends on how you classify and describe ‘films’ in the first place. its a very personal word and thus it differs for every person. Adrian then took over to discuss this in further detail, claiming that what is made on technology such as iPhones doesn’t even classify as film. first off, that’s because it’s not recorded on film, nor is it a physical video. it’s an all new thing. lets just call it a moving image (or MI) for the sake of this post.

now, of course, the definition of a film is different for everyone. when we think about film in the traditional sense, does this include television? or can it only include what we see up on the big screen in a movie theatre? is there a difference between a film and a movie? where do short films fit into this? or youtube. and then we get to vines…. are they films? they’re not tv. but isn’t television just film being broadcast to an electronic box? when you start to think about it like this, it all gets very confusing and the lines start to become very blurred. but i think that’s all what this course is about. blurring the lines between all the separate technologies, everything is connected today.

i’ll give you an example that adrian gave us when answering a different question in the lecture. this example was big brother. when we think about big brother, we think it is a just a television show. but it goes far beyond that. for one, it is happening live and continuously. even when no-one is watching or when the cameras aren’t on, the tv show is still going. and we see it on tv. but it goes beyond our television sets. it has it’s own website – an online forum where people can find out more information about the ‘characters’, see extra footage that they watch online or even rematch old episodes. we see recaps of it during the week during other programs, news about it written in the newspapers and interviews with eliminated contestants and hosts on the radio. then there’s the voting system, which incorporates the vastly growing medium of the mobile phone. people can not only watch from any time from their mobile devices, but they are a part of the show, sending in votes to determine who stays and who goes, a mechanism which rakes in millions of dollars. so, what does this have to do with the point i was just making? i’m not too sure, i may have gotten a bit carried away there. but this example showcases how widespread our media is today across the different mediums. interactivity is the key. people want to be able to be a part of what they are experiencing.

this is where korsakow comes in. if interactivity is what the public wants, korsakow is here to give it to them, albeit in a weird, abstract way thats not well known and kinda difficult to understand. but surely this is where the future of film and tv and other motion pictures are heading, to the realm of the interactive media where people can choose their story so that it is unique to them, they can be a part of the narrative. all this accessibility to production means ins’t ruining film, it’s creating new types of film, new categories that can’t even be defined. and are allowing for more people than ever to be creating their own content and experimenting and interacting with something that once only the elite and rich could do. this is what Sørenssen was talking about. this is what adrian means. this new accessibility is creating a new era of film or moving image. it is free, it is raw, it can be interactive, it can be made by anyone. the only reason we keep holding back is when we call it film. it is not film any more and that title is constraining us. we need to be able to drop that title and move forward. create new things. interact and experience all new mediums. woooooo!

my only question i would ask, based of the boardwell and thompson reading, is whether our korsakow films are supposed to follow a certain structure? should they be exhibiting cause and effect? narrative plot lines? or are they supposed to be random and abstract and experimental?

finally, i would like to add that the discussion (argument) at the end of the lecture between adrian and one of the students was brilliant. however, have to disagree with adrian, i believe our lives are narratives. they have beginnings, middles and ends. there is no meaning in a narrative until the reader assigns a meaning and that is the same with our lives. we take what happens and we give it meaning. our lives follow a cause and effect structure just as narratives do.

Participatory mode – database documentaries – week 3

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so, in my ever present abundance of work and readings and work and reading logs this week, i came across something from the cinema studies course that i felt very well attributes to what we’re doing over here in the study of Integrated Media. this was an excerpt from a somewhat lengthy book called the “introduction to documentary” by Bill Nichols about a specific tripe of documentary, the “participatory mode”. i have included the link below, hopefully you’ll be able to see it but you may not be able to without an RMIT login (although i doubt anyone reading this would be from outside RMIT anyhow so yay, readings for everyone!)

http://reader.eblib.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/(S(iywjtj5u3xlhsdp4xfuaglw1))/Reader.aspx?p=624329&o=116&u=JN9cOMM1ezwPTbqabsS80g%3d%3d&t=1395557139&h=594FCCE8182AEC8650EAF151775A781769D65091&s=11699655&ut=337&pg=1&r=img&c=-1&pat=n&cms=-1#

the book introduced something called “database documentaries” which seemed all too familiar to the “i-docs” which we read about in this course in week one. what the chapter discussed was how the participatory mode of documentary making sometimes extended beyond the interactions between the filmmaker and the subject of the film to being between the viewer and the film itself, thus making the audience a participant in the film, contributing to its structure and how it is viewed. this seems similar to the idea behind the korsakow films, where, as is mentioned in this book, the “viewer (is able) to chart a path through the spectrum of possibilities made possible by the filmmaker” and so each viewer, being a unique participant within the construction of the film, will have a unique experience of the film based on the choices they make and the paths which they follow.

it would seem that this new “participatory mode” or the database documentaries allow for a much richer viewing and storytelling experience, much like the korsakow films and the i-docs, which allow users to get what they want out of a film but also allow for potentially thousands of different ways to view one film, creating thousands of narrative possibilities. and it can only go up from here!