This studio has been a pertinent exploration into understanding the relationship between how we observe everyday life and how that information can be transposed into filmic works. The strong emphasis on making weekly observations and posting them on our blog served as a useful tool to practice how we contextualize what we see and improve the quality of our writing. Personally I felt that as the semester went along I began to hone into a better way of writing observations and looking back at some of my earliest observations compared to my last, both the level of detail and the level of expression has vastly improved.

Each weeks theoretical side; mostly being short films, were useful tools in beginning to understand how to form our own final assessment. The personally assigned works shown to me by Robin such as works by Santiago Alvarez such as “Now” (1965) & LBJ (1968) as well as The War Game (1965) by Peter Watkins which initially was advised to be viewed when my intention for the final assessment was vastly different, however even still it assisted in teaching me practical skills in non-traditional narrative forms.

My decision for the final assessment outcome retrospectively was a unique experience, having worked on the project solo rather than in a group, leading to some benefits but also some hindrance in the production process. While it was convenient to be able to work whenever seen relevant rather than when it would be convenient for others, it was at times difficult to retain some of the aims of my original proposal given my need to lessen the scope of the task as I did not have as much man hours that could be dedicated to the task with only one set of hands doing it. There were many renditions of my piece, most of which I felt lacked in the specific area of not having any kind of emotion or power behind it. This was particularly important to achieve as being it was a politically driven piece, the requirement to elicit a response in viewers was of high priority. The main other issue encountered during the process which retrospectively I believe compromised some of the project was the video quality of some clips chosen, leading to an inconsistency in post-production and at times making the project feel jarring. At one point I intended to use a filter over the entire project to address this issue, specifically a filter to make all the clips look like they were playing on an old VHS tape but there was no way to justify this decision artistically for the project.

In contrast I believe one of the biggest strengths for the project was how attached I was to the project across the entire production timeline. To clarify, with other subjects and even one or two of the earlier tasks of this semester I would at some point or other lose interest or investment in the project and begin to not care as much about my choices made and be doing the assignment just for the sake of competition. Whereas in the case of the final assessment, all the way through I felt attached to the project and actually motivated to make it of a quality I was happy with not just for the sake of the assignment mark itself but to make a project I could proud of and be willing to show to others. The other area I believe was strong in itself was the actual prompt/inspiration for doing the project in the first place. Having decided to make this piece a response to a sighting of a man on Swanston Street wrapped in a blanket of the Australian flag. This personally resonated with me as I was already very politically motivated and had a lot of disdain for current issues plaguing our country at the time.

Overall the studio experience was a measurably positive one and all of the group exercises completely across the semester taught us valuable skills from a technical perspective that will surely be applicable in the future, some of which including undertaking roles such as: Director, AD, Sound, Boom Operator, Lighting, Continuity and Camera Operator. The camera roles specifically being of importance to me as these were skills not touched as in depth in past studios and an area that I personally was very interested in. The classes dedicated solely to learning skills on operating such equipment were a clear highlight for me during the semester and great preparation for people’s final assessments (Even though I personally didn’t capitalise on these skills during the final assessment).

In conclusion this studio has taught me many valuable skills and above all, the fact that I was proud of my final assessment was something very refreshing compared to past studio experiences. The theoretical aspects of the semester were not outweighed by the observational emphasis of the studio which I believe was important based on the way the studio was advertised however it blended many different areas of film and video composition both from a technical but also a narrative standpoint and by doing this semester I believe I have come out with skills otherwise I would not have attained.

The editing and finalizing process for the Media 4 Assignment (originally due 14th now being extended to Monday the 17th) is finally at a stage I feel happy with. I will utilize these extra days to make small bits of refining just to improve the video quality and overall visual appeal of the assignment however at this point in time I am definitely in a good place regarding all my work. The key from now on will be to write my final reflection in which I intend on putting heavy emphasis on the evolution of the project as I think from a reflective standpoint that was the thing that stood out the most out of what happened during this assignment. Retrospectively I think choosing Premiere as my Video Editing software was a good choice as it allowed me to achieve some effects and editing abilities I may not have been able to with other programs such as Sony Vegas or Final Cut (in which i have some experience in). Today and Yesterday has been spent on improving the rhythmic feel of the piece more than anything so nothing feels too out of place and transitions between clips/audio/etc. is seamless and not jarring to the viewer.

As  can be seen in this screenshot towards the fourth quarter of the piece, some of the clips cut very quickly and it was a long process syncing them to the audio to make them “travel” with the words metaphorically. To contextualize what I mean by this, I aimed to have each word/sentence have a clip and with the end specifically when all 4 voices are speaking simultaneously I had to assign a clip to each word which became difficult as voices did overlap, meaning I had to mute all layers except the specific one I was working on, it was an arduous process but worth it in the grand scheme of things.

 

 

 

 

 

Working on the current Assessment for Media as a solo project as opposed to a collaborative task has yielded both some positives and negatives in the process of creating the piece. In terms of advantages it has enabled me to work at a pace I set for myself regarding the task and meaning there is no waiting periods in which I have to rely on others to submit/do things before I can move on to the next task. It in some ways has also been beneficially as it’s meant that my artistic vision has more or less stayed the same, as it might be fair to suggest that in group projects you run more of a risk of making compromise take away from what you want from a project or to get out of it. In terms of negatives there was definitely a sense of pressure in having everything required on myself to be done, I think also in terms of resources I am a little bit more limited than what other groups would have been as every part of the process both during and post has been based on my own skills where as in group projects you can use the people best suited for each role to do certain things (EG: People good at Adobe Premiere, Recording,  etc.). Overall I feel satisfied with how my project is looking, At the beginning of the project I feel like my ambitions for the task were much higher and the scope of the task became smaller as I learned that much of the footage/assets I was using were not necessarily always exactly what I wanted in terms of how they looked or transpired on screen.