It would be an understatement to say a lot has changed since 1922.
Robert Flaherty’s ethnographic documentary Nanook of the North (1922) is widely regarded as the first feature length documentary. It depicts a nuclear Inuit family; their world, and their culture. However, today the academic discourse of the film centres on its authenticity, and speculation that scenes were reconstructed to enhance the film’s visual and narrative impact. Flaherty’s film expresses a western colonialist ideology which shapes the way the audience perceives the film and its subjects. It is indeed a great film, but it is limited in showing an accurate depiction of Inuit life.
Robert Flaherty, whether unintentionally blinded by his obsessive romanticism with the Inuit, or intentionally in order to have his film better received by western eyes, codes his film with a western colonialist ideology of ultimate degradation of Inuit culture.

door knob

yoghurt lids

Taco-van sticker

bin juice

screensaver

dried wood

Average Joe’s Dodgeball Team

basketball hoop

dandruff

I think the most important thing to drive me is to have a deadline. I think I have been doing pretty well with the blog posts and the readings (despite only understanding it at a surface level) but there is always room to do more.

My goals to improve learning were:
Attend class – and actually ‘be there’ not just turn up.
Ask questions – either directly to Adrian, or reflective questions to myself.
Critique my work – and document this process
Reflect – Blog posts.
Do the readings and consolidate the knowledge.

To meet these goals, I should give some quantitative aspect to them.

Attending class remains pretty self explanatory. Come twice a week and properly listen.
Ask myself a question after each class – this can also be used to blog about. What is on my mind? etc. For it to contribute, it must manifest on paper or a blog (not just in my head)
Critique my work – blog about the practice and reflect on each assessment or stage of assessment.
Reflect – similarly, make sure that my reflective thinking is actually in written words.
Read the readings, and try come away with at least one thing new which I have learnt, and write it down.

blog every thing, every thought.

I thought I should reflect (given that reflection and critique are some of my goals for this blog) a bit on my first assessment. The process of completing the assessment was very smooth. I’d say that was the thing I did best. Upon reviewing the video, i’d say there are a few things I could have done better, or at least a few choices that could have improved it.

I had chosen to film a body, and hands more specifically, given that wallets are normally associated with being a personal belonging. The audio suggests that a wallet is as much a part of our bodies than any other limb, so i suppose it also fits in that sense.  This choice was more of an instinct, it wasn’t something I necessarily calculated, or even chose to explore further. In hindsight, this is probably an idea I could have explored further. e.g Show different people’s bodies, closer detail of body parts (not just hands)

I suppose in the end the footage does fit the audio. But it is linked in a way which has a very linear association, which i’m not sure is a good or a bad thing. I feel like it is a very ‘surface level’ link, but a link none-the-less.

It will be good to hear what other people think, and to see how other people handled the prompt tomorrow.

MY past media studios have drilled into me the idea of having a workflow, and for this assessment, I feel like it has finally culminated in having a decent, streamlined workflow.

This is what I did.

Set up camera settings (1/125, f2.8, iso800, 5000k, 1080p, 60fps)
(even this was streamlined because I have made preset settings on the camera for shooting different things, ie. slow motion)
Set up lights
(I did this assignment last night so it was a bit dark)
Get brother to stand and play with his hands
Shoot for ~3 minutes (40% slower gives a lot of room to play with)
Import footage to project folder
Interpret footage and conform to 24fps (slow down)
Cut and edit. (didn’t put too much thought into how, but just wanted to displace the linearity of how I actually filmed it ie, hands in pockets, play with it, put back in pocket.)
Record voice
Cut out mistakes and import
Add title screen
Add soundtrack used from another project I did (no copyright etc.)
Screenshot, and grade photo in Lightroom. Apply to the video and export.
(I need to work on that bit, by upgrading to Premiere CC which can use .cube files so that I can use my lightroom presets in there.)

Compared to previous projects, it did not take long at all, and I am relatively happy with what I made.

I am never inclined to blog, or to post things online. This is the case for all platforms of social media for me. I had never really seen the point of it, and a lot of it feels like I am creating and picturing things for other people, and not for myself.

It’s weird, because I used to think this was a good thing, or a ‘humble’ thing to do. To not project myself out there and say ‘hey everyone, look at this, look at me.’ To me, it all comes off as being very staged, and is not an accurate reflection of anyone. I feel like everyone thinks that, even the posters, but just go along with it anyway.

But now, as I move closer to graduating, I’m beginning to realise the importance of having a strong digital footprint, and a strong online presence. It feels like I’ve shot myself in the (digital) foot.

Maybe for me, blogging can be a good way to begin making a habit of uploading stuff online. This isn’t to say i’m going to craft the perfect blog, or have all my most profound ideas and photos uploaded here, it’s just to say that I am going to start uploading things. This blog is my training wheels for making and sharing content online.

This class exercise took one connection we had. Mine was borrowing a car from my brother. We then went down the rabbit hole of linkages to explore that things are deeper and infinitely complex. It proved that we do not have control over our actions. We share agency. We are a small link in the chain of things. We are not the centre of things or decisions.
This was then related to story. The point that I took is that story can only account for a small part of the true reality and complexity of it all. Story only accounts for people (and not all the little linkages)

What other ways can we make stuff about the world that isn’t a story? How can we explore these links, and not just the surface connection?
The Rushkoff reading began to dissect this in the Narrative disruption chapter, pointing to immersive RPG video games as a possible solution. In a sense, anything with more interactivity, and less linear models of story telling would tell a more cohesive story of the now. Fleshing out and expanding. Games are now spending less time on the story and more or the immersive factor.

So far, it is hard to put into words what I am learning. I know that I am learning, and I feel I have an understanding of it all, but I am still limited linguistically with how to describe it all. (unfamiliar with terms and their use) But I get the direction we are heading in – to explore ways to ‘document’ in a multi-linear way. To tell things more holistically in a non-anthroprocentric way. Or are we heading in one? Is this class teleological? Who knows. 

I have noticed that I am following the exact trajectory which I set out in week 1 (Trajectory of Learning)
With all this new knowledge and new terms, I expected to be feeling in over my head. A lot of the terms and readings seemed to have contradicted what I thought I knew about story and its power. This comes from a cinema standpoint. This is not to say that I disagree with any of it, it is just things that I had not thought of. This was a similar trend with the readings, in which I noted that:
“It is interesting to hear this perspective from a media theorist, of the media landscape which is presently evolving. Whereas my knowledge and thought capacity only looks off into the past, or into the future. It’s easy to see what has happened and make sense of it, and in a similar way it’s easy to speculate on the future of it all, but the present is impossibly hard to unravel for me.”

Last week I set a personal criteria to follow for my own participation in the class. These included, turning up to class, doing the readings, making notes, and asking questions. (note: I will upload the picture of these next post)
So far, I feel like I am following the criteria pretty well. While a lot of the criteria may seem basic, it is often a challenge for me. Turning up to this class means getting up at 5:30am, which is hard enough to stay motivated for. But I have managed that so far.
I have also managed to get through and make notes of the readings. The readings themselves were very dense and hard to get through, but I managed to dissect a few points and learnt a bit. This learning was not just knowledge in a sense, it was just noticing that my thinking was very different to how Rushkoff, the media theorist, thought.
To participate more, I need to formulate a few questions. But this will require going over my notes and consolidating some thoughts.
So far, all is going well. I feel a bit more in tune with media and creating.

A7s II / no light no worries (unedited)