final participation contract – week 12

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what did you do well?

i surprised myself by actually sticking to my participation contract and doing all 5 criteria every week throughout the term. in this sense i did well by keeping organised and on top of my work. i didn’t have to go back and add stuff or change anything. and doing the blog posts for my contract every week really added to how much i got out of the subject each week. it made sure i paid attention in the lectures and that i did the readings. i also attended all but one of the classes and lectures throughout the semester (and i only missed one because i was interstate)

what have you learnt to do better?

i learnt how to better articulate my thoughts about the content through the blog posts (even if that sentence wasn’t great) and to use my blog posts to consolidate the knowledge and content delivered through the readings and lectures. this process has really helped me learn how to take in info from the course and to discuss the relations between the different things we were doing and learning which overall helped complete the work this semester. i tried wherever i could to not just summarise the readings or lectures but actually discuss the ideas that were presented. i’ve learnt how to organise my blog through categories and tags. this was one of my criteria and was really useful to learn over the semester.

what could you have learnt to do better?

perhaps further consolidating what i was taking in from the course with material from outside of the course would have increased my learning and over all experience of the course. i did fulfil my contract but i did not expand on it so i could do better in going outside of the provided course material to expand my understanding. and done some more experimenting with korsakow outside of class to understand it better

the problem with no conclusion – week 11

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been jumping around a number of people’s blogs this week and a post bec made really caught my eye. she had some really good things to say about this whole non-linear, no-conclusion thing we’ve been dealing with all semester. because yes, we do need to start embracing the new types of online and social media dominating our world today. but, like bec says, that doesn’t mean that we have to completely disregard everything we’ve had up until now. they’ve been trying to get rid of print and books for years. but they’re still here. people have been telling linear, narrative stories since the beginning of time. obviously they’re doing something right if they’re still around today, and are the most popular form of entertainment out there. so why should we completely disregard this all because of some little non-linear stuff that is really big for a very small number of people? es, maybe that’s where main stream society is heading. but narratives and conclusions will still always stay with us, so it’s important not to completely write them off.

like bec said, we use narratives to escape our lives. they provide answers and conclusions where sometimes our lives don’t. Adrian does always say that korsakow and non-linear mirrors the way we think and how we experience the world, by association. but isn’t that why we have stories, to escape the real world and experience something different? bec has raised some good questions. she’s not saying to completely disregard what we’ve been learning, but just suggesting that we also don’t completely disregard everything we all ready know and have in society as well.

stormless skies – week 11

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hello. week 11 here. i’m here to make you freak out and have a melt down.

yes! the dreaded week 11 is here. the week where we all realise how much stuff we have to do and how little we’ve done to prepare ourselves for it. the major k-film is almost due and we need to start filming. i’ve done a couple for it already. and they were actually really fun. it’s like being a child again, getting to dress up in costumes and pretend to be a super hero. or be thinking up different types of superpowers that i can film. or trying to force my dog into a superman cape and make him run around the back yard (he wasn’t very happy with me for that). and the other members in my group got some good videos too. my only issue with our videos is that they’re not all cohesive. you can tell they were made by different people. they don’t all flow great. especially compared to some of the other groups videos that we saw.

i mean, our clips are good, and i think they really suit our film. they just don’t seem very…… professional. i’m not sure. the others are really fancy. but in a way, our slightly more disjointed kind of film style works. because our idea with the clips was to film them with iPhones. they weren’t meant to all be perfect but rather be kind of “on the spot” kind of footage, as if you were seeing a superhero saving someone or doing something incredible out on the street and you quickly pulled out your phone to film it. so in that sense, that is the kind of film we have. and that style does work. its just whether or not our films will look cohesive enough once we put them all together. but that’s what trial and error is for. this week we’ll each be taking more videos and start putting them together into the proper korsakow file. maybe if we work on them together rather than individually then it could work even better than what we have already. let’s hope so!

narratives and conclusions, part 2 – week 11

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the lecture this week again was consisting of discussions regarding conclusions, narrative and nonlinear in regards to korsakow. it seems people are pretty hung up on the fact that korsakow is different to what we’re used to. different doesn’t mean worse (it certainly doesn’t mean better), it just means different, it’s not what we’re used to. and this is still getting to some people. maybe they’re just xenophobic (although i never thought xena was that scary. sorry, that was a terrible joke).

people’s main issue appears to be that of a lack of conclusion with the k-film. that you can’t determine how or in what order someone will view it and so you can’t provide the conclusions that you want. this brought up the question, “should you have an end SNU?”. this was a yes and no kinda answer. obviously it depends on the kind of film you’re trying to make and the kind of experience you want your viewers to get. end SNU’s can be problematic because if they come up to early in the viewing of the film then the film will end prematurely without al the right stuff getting out. but an end SNU can also give clarity or information that might be needed ago end the film or deliver the final message of the theme. an end SNU is useful for a film with a strong temporal link or a literary timeline. again, the use for an end arises when we think mostly in linear narrative form. if we want our film to be a traditional narrative then we will want it to have a traditional conclusion and in that situation then yes, have an end SNU. but that’s not what korsakow is supposed to be a bout. it is decidedly different and allows you to be different. so why revert to the traditional when this is the way to do something new, non-linear is the way of the future (according to adrian). my favourite point from the lecture was again about conclusions. we are all hung up on them, on linear storytellings with narrative endings. but not every story has an ending, even ones told in linear fashion. and the example adrian gave was soap operas. soap operas are a story. they tell a narrative in linear fashion for half an hour five days a week. but they have no conclusion. ever. they just keep going. people can stop watching them if they want. and form their own conclusions about what that means or what might have happened. but in reality, thy have no conclusion. and that doesn’t seem to phase anyone. narratives and conclusions relate but they are no code pendant. you can have one without the other and we need to grasp that and understand it because by the look of things, that’s where we’re all headed in the future.

the finale hurdle – week 11

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this is it!!! we’re almost there. 11 weeks down and just a k-film to go. or so i thought. then this reading got thrown at us. it’s our last one. we were all hoping it would be a nice simple one. something enjoyable, easy to read. but of course it couldn’t be like that. oh no. it had to be evil. and by evil, i mean pure evil. devil worthy. mark pellegrino singing stairway to heaven 50 times over kinda evil.

let me begin by telling you that this reading is “concerned with the social praxis of documentary  in the sea of ubiquitous data that is both consequence ad driver of online social mediation”. let me then continue by saying that i have no idea whatsoever what that means. the article discusses the benefits of web 2.0, HTML5, regular documentaries, i-docs (remember i-docs? like back from week 1!), popcorn maker, and pretty much anything else, online, nonlinear or korsakow-y. so, in a sense, yes it is kind of like a conclusion to the theory from the semester. it’s just a very long, very painful one to get through.

we hear about the “industrial revolution of data” that is coming our way. everything we know about online information is changing and we can only imagine what it will look like in a number of years from now because you can guarantee that it won’t be the same. a big part of this article was the difference between “on the web” and “of the web”, the latter being the direction this revolution is taking us and our data. Dovey and Rose discuss the new ways that video can be seen and uploaded online, integrated within the page and consisting of links inwards and outwards rather than being situated separately within their own player. everything is joining together and becoming one with each other, forming an all mighty ‘online’ that pretty much has everything. the program called popcorn maker is mentioned which, like our lovely korsakow, allows users and creators to view and make interactive documentaries where films link into and out of each other or even to anywhere else on the web that may be relevant. as i’m sure we are supposed to be believing, this is the future the internet but also just of media and communication itself. korsakow again here. everything is connected by associations. link make the world go round. linear narrative doesn’t.

what happens on vine – week 10

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been checking out some other people’s blog this week and came across Kevins very funny vine post called “what happens to an asian on vine”. not the most academic video but it is very enjoyable. however, the video does have some kind of relevance to the course, specifically the kuleshov effect that was discussed in last weeks reading and the lecture earlier in the week. the kuleshov effect describes the theory that individual clips have no meaning by themselves, but rather that meaning is drawn from the connections between clips. kevins vine is comprised of 4 separate clips that, if you were to only watch one by itself, would be confusing and mean nothing, but when placed together in this certain order, have a meaning. the video shows kuleshov in its basic format. putting clips that alone mean nothing but together create an experience that could not be had if the clips were separate. good stuff kev.

database narrative – week 10

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a different kind of reading this week. this one didn’t go on for ever and make no sense. although, i can’t really say i understood this one much, it kinda seemed to ramble and be a little incoherent at times. but at least they were kind enough to break it up into 8 relatively short pages with pretty pictures on the side.

so, what did i learn from this reading. to be brutally honest, not much. but i’m still here so i shall soldier on! it was about databases…. i think. i never really got what it was actually about. but the heading of the thing said databases so i kinda assumed that that is what every point was talking about. below are some of the interesting points and quotes that i took from the reading

“While plot provides important tags (hero, villain), schemas (goals, obstacles) and navigation instructions (genre), it is ultimately the cognitive and emotional investment of the receiver of plot – the subjective associations, desires, visualizations, decodings and fast searches – that transforms a mere series of selected details into a story network that is always more than the sum of its parts.

 

“Paradigm, the multiple relational aspects of story elements, becomes visible in a database; and syntagm, narrative sequence, is suppressed.

 

“Interface design, like production design in movies, is an art to primarily guide attention as it flows through and around multiple elements on a screen.

 

“graphic devices are integral to reading and understanding all narrative texts. One begins a book by looking over the table of contents, assessing the length and count of chapters and sub-chapters

 

“Before social media, friends shared photo prints and videos, but they often did so as ritualistic forms of linear storytelling: narrators addressing an attentive audience. Now, online friends post tagged sets of travel photos to social networks, often as events happen, and hope for conversations to start. While both methods speak of the desire to shape and communicate experience, the former uses media as illustration (and mnemonic device) for linear storytelling and the latter presents media as an interface to the unfolding “story” of experience itself.

superwho? – week 10

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now that we are well underway into working on our major k-films,we’ve started setting ourselves weekly goals. so for my weekly discussion of my attempt of the constraint i will be discussing my attempts at our weekly goals. this week, each member of our group had to go out and film 5 of our 60 clips for the major film. just so that we can start to get a hang of things and understand what it really is that we’ll be making.

our idea is reality vs. fabrication. will people be able to tell the difference between which clips are real and which have been edited? probably. but hopefully not. and that’s what this week is for. for us to get an idea of what we’re gonna shoot and practice shooting it. we have three distinct categories of filming style

1. real –  this is the basic level of clips. stuff that implies a super hero. or kids pretending to have superpowers. pretty much it’s just things in every day life that may have something to do with super heroes or super powers.

2. fabricated – this is where the rehearsals and the editing starts to come in. each of these clips will be fabricated, i.e edited. these will be done to show things that could never really happen, happening. even something as simple as someone disappearing by cutting the film and continuing  it after the person has left the frame.

3. magic – this is the most important section, where we are blurring the lines between reality and fabrication. we want the viewer to be questioning whether or not what they’re seeing is real in these clips. magic tricks or science tricks, slight of hand or clever camera placement. this section will require the most thought and set up but could also contain the best clips if we get them done right.

my task this week is to practice with different types of editing of clips as well as get some of the real ones out of the way. we want a broad spread of videos that show different things but still all link together. at first i was just thinking about trying to edit these while filming or on my phone. but having started to film and actually think about them, i’ve realised that it may be much simply and also more effective to upload any videos i take and put them into the computer and edit them there where i will have a far greater amount of tools to use to make these the best that they can be.

hopefully they come out well.

narratives and conclusions – week 10 lecture

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more discussion about k-films in this week’s lecture, we discussed themes, emotions, narratives and conclusions. looks like everyone has the major k-films on their minds. the major point that i took from the whole lecture was about  the k-films not being a way to literally express any point but as a way to experience something for each individual. the point of the k-film is for everyone to interpret the content individually, they become a part of experiencing something without being told exactly what they are supposed to be experiencing.

how important are themes in a k-film? a theme gives us something to work around. like we discussed in one of the previously lectures, constraints are good. they allow for greater creativity. and a theme can do just that. limits that we work both within and around. even without a defining theme, as humans it’s within our nature to try and find any form of pattern or link between things, without pattern, all we see is chaos. our lives are associational because we link everything together so a them in a k-films allows them to feel more cohesive than they may be without one. however, the important part, like in the previous point, is to not always be too literal with the themes. infer a theme or idea without explicitly stating it. give the audience a means to enjoy and experience for themselves. its not so much the theme itself but how the content explores the theme. of course, this also depends on what the theme is, some can be far more obvious than others. for example the theme we have decided on for our k-film is superpowers and reality vs. fabrication. one of these is more obvious with the other and we are using this first theme as a means to explore the latter one. so while the superpowers themselves might seem obvious, the way that they are delivered and the ideas that they are being used for (reality vs. fabrication) will be more inferred than explicit.

does a lack of narrative or conclusion give an unsatisfying experience? the first answer to this was that we really need to move away from the ideas of linear narrative storytelling as a way of communication. that’s not what this course is about. of course, simply moving away from that isn’t that easy, it’s something that we have grown up with as part of society and is pretty much all we know. even though adrian says that non-linear is how we think, that’s how we think sub-consciouly, consciously we live in the world of linear narratives. what was a good point is that narratives and conclusions are separate. you can have one without the other. k-films can end. they can provide a specific ending clip. but even for the ones that are meant to go on forever, they must end. and that is when the viewer gets to decide the conclusion, which in a way makes that conclusion even more powerful because the viewer has decided upon it themselves (even if it’s just because they were bored with the film they were watching). and even without a set conclusion, we will always try to prove some sort of context or meaning to whatever we’re watching. even if the ending doesn’t make sense.  we don’t watch a film for the ending, we watch it for the experience. our k-filsm are the same. another really good point i liked was that the internet is kinda like a giant k-film. its comprised of links in and out, is uniquely experienced by each individual and has no end (except for those decided upon by the user). there is no meaning on the internet, we give meaning to what we see and contribute to it as well.

finally, we discussed the kuleshov effect, a topic that was brought up a couple of times last year too. the kuleshov effect reminds us that when we are making, not just our k-films but anything, that it’s not the shots themselves that meaning anything but rather each shot in its relation to those around it. meaning only comes from relations, the shots or clips themselves have no meaning.

film/tv analysis reflection 5 – question 3

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although it seemed like a relatviely simple scene, that scene from “Blow up” was very technically complicated. there was almost always movement, either of the actors within the fraem or the frame itself. as a director, Anotioni would have had to have done extensive rehersals with both the actors and the camero operators to ensure that the scene goes smoothly. every action would have been choreographed specifaclly to suit a particular framing or a specific camera movement. thus, while directing the film, Antonioni would have had to have worked very closely with his actors to ensure they were getting each action and movement exactly right. this does not only require rehersals beforehand but a close communicative relationship with actors on the day of shooting will be vital to get the necessary movements.

similarly with the camera, there were a large variety of different camera set ups, positions and movements. these movements involved not just tilting or panning the camera but physical camera movement including dollying and tracking. these too would have required lots of rehersals to perfect the movements so they could deliver the correct aesthic. Anotioni would have been working very closely with his DOP and camera operators to get the right pacing of the scene through the movements of the camera and frame.