When asking us about our initial ideas in class on Thursday, Rohan asked us “Who wants to use slow motion?”, and just about 100% of the class put their hands up. After explaining to us how to go about doing that (something to do with frame rates, resolution and camera types), I have to say I was completely turned off it. The technicalities of cinematography are not my specialty.

Having said that, Rohan also asked us if any of us were aiming to get our work on Rage or a similar television music show, and he observed quite rightly that the amount of hands raised was about the same (basically all of us). And if you watch Rage, or V-Hits, or The Loop, you do see quite a lot of slow-mo.

Which makes sense, really. Because a music video clip is not just a short film with a soundtrack; it’s a video in which the music is the focus, so it makes sense to try to use as many cinematic techniques as you can to play around with rhythm. Editing that matches the beat, differing frame rates and physical movement of the camera are all ways in which music video producers aim to evoke the rhythm of the track within the clip. It seems slow motion is a favourite. It’s not necessarily a case of matching the action to the music exactly, so much as it’s about creating a considered sense of rhythm and timing that is kind of musical in and of itself. Also, as many video clips don’t follow a narrative but focus instead on imagery and aesthetics, slow motion can create interesting visual dynamics that are engaging and add to the piece’s overall appeal.

As usual, my constant exposure to V-Hits means I have a strong opinion about this, so I’ve decided to highlight two examples of slow-motion video clips that are popular at the moment; one that I like and one that I’m not such a fan of.

Okay so I’m back – I went to have a look for some slow-mo videos and after getting lost in someone’s Best of 2014 playlist and watching the entire trailer for Sisters (which I have to say looks pretty disappointing from the comedic fempire) I discovered many videos that use slow-mo in some capacity, but none that I could actually say I liked. Taylor Swift uses it to show off her famous friends in Bad Blood, One Direction uses it in Drag me Down to make you believe they might actually be astronauts and whoever directed Good For You uses it to sexually objectify Selena Gomez even more than that song does.

But top marks go to Vance Joy’s Fire and the Flood.

I love this song to bits, which may be exactly why I hate the video so much. I find the let’s-film-something-cool-in-slow-mo-and-reverse-it technique a little bit of an artistic wank (‘scuse my French); it doesn’t match the tone or narrative of the song at all and, to me at least, seems to be trying too hard to be artistic and aesthetically pleasing where in reality it’s a bit of a cliché. But hey, that’s just one girl’s opinion. If my research has taught me anything it’s that slow mo is not my personal preference, so when you combine that with how difficult it is to film I think I might be avoiding it, thank you very much.

Considering that our music video course is a six-week intensive, we had to get right down to business on Tuesday and start working on our final group project. Three guesses for what it is . . . I’m working with Jordan, Blair and Jenny, and Jenny was right on the pulse with finding an artist who was keen to work with us in producing a music video. I was apprehensive at first, not being familiar with the artist – I don’t think I could commit myself to a project involving heavy metal or thumping EDM. So I was pleasantly surprised when listening to Aivy’s (Abby Iverson) Hey You There: a sweet acoustic, almost country or bluegrass-style love song. Have a listen – Aivy has a beautiful voice and the style suits her wonderfully:

Now, of course, we need to decide what sort of video we want to produce. I’m sure Aivi will have her own ideas, and we’ll be meeting up with her soon, but it’s important that we’ve got some ideas too. To help me think about it, I decided to have a look at some similar songs and see what sort of road they’d gone down for their videos.

Picture Frames by Georgia Fair

If this song sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because it was on a Big M a few years back, which is how I got onto it. Interestingly, when I looked up the video clip for this I was surprised – I thought I’d already seen it and did not remember it being like this. It was only after a while that I realised what I was thinking of was the Big M ad itself (a summer road trip). Nonetheless, I liked the way the video’s bright lights (the natural sunlight and the coloured fairy lights at the end), casually dressed cast and simple framing mimicked the laid-back tone of the song. I like the idea of trying to replicate our song’s playful tone in our video clip.

Tomorrow by Gianluca Bezzina

Speaking of playful, when I heard the lyrics of Aiva’s song, this immediately came to mind. The song, being a cheesy Eurovision entry (that I love nonetheless!), has a pretty strong narrative, and the video reflects this. Again, bright colours and costumes reflect the happy tone of the song, and the simple narrative is engaging and humorous. I think our song has a similar sort of narrative that we could explore.

Hey, look at that: three months off and suddenly I’m back on the blog. What can I say, the summer breezes and a renewed positivity brought on by a fresh year rekindled my writing spark. That, or I’ve started a summer semester that has compulsory blog posts. I don’t know, you decide.

Despite having to admit that I’m doing the class to make up credit points for an early finish to my degree, I am genuinely excited about this course. Led by sometime tutor but most-time director/filmmaker/documentarian Rohan Spong (can’t wait to check out some of his docos), the subject is named The Great Belgian Egg Hunt in honour of Anton Corbijn and is all about music video. Music video production is a really interesting part of film-making (especially for those of us with short attention spans!) and I feel that it’s a really viable career pathway for those of us looking to get started in the Australian media industry.

In honour of my new course, I thought I’d start by reviewing a few of my favourite and not-so-favourite video clips out at the moment. Anyone who knows me well will know from my constant complaining that at my gym we’re subjected to channel V-Hits, so I feel relatively well-versed in the current music video zeitgeist. Here are my thoughts:

The Girl is Mine by 99 Souls.

While I’m not a huge fan of this song, I really love this video clip. In our reading this week, Vernallis looked at the importance of narrative  in music video, and suggested that the majority of video clips actually don’t conform to conventional narratives. This video must be the exception, because what I love about it is the quirky and considered story with engaging protagonists at the heart. Pretty unrelated to the song from what I can tell, it follows a young man living in a reverse-world where he seeks treatment for his crushing disability: walking forwards.

The Trouble With Us by Chet Faker and Marcus Marr.

This video is much less plot-based than The Girl is Mine, but I would argue that you can still glean some narrative by reading into it. That’s not why I like it though; I simply really like the aesthetic created by the costumes and choice of cast against the minimal props and background, and the engaging visual effect of the domino-like repetitive sequences.

On the naughty list: Hello by Adele.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not bagging Adele. Are you even allowed to? Along with the rest of the world, I love this song, but I’m not so enamoured with the video clip. While it’s not so linear as The Girl is Mine, it does clearly tell a story; that of a break-up. The problem I have with it is that while the song tells that story with gut-wrenching emotion, to me the video seems overwrought and clichéd. The reaching hands, POV shots of an argument and falling leaves all strike me as melodramatic and detracts from the song’s emotional power.

Not too much to report about On the Frame this week, as it was week eleven and we’re nearly done for the year (so weird that academically 2015 is nearly over and it’s only October!)

We had a bit more of a look at what we were going to do for our presentation at the end of semester, and decided on some templates. Other than that, we were all focusing on our upcoming brief fours (briefs four?), due in just a few short weeks.

We all presented in class on Thursday a bit of an update on how we were going. Some people had really changed their ideas since the original proposals so it was good to be able to see how they were getting on. The projects look really fascinating and I hope to be able to see them all; we have some very talented cinematographers and editors in our class it appears!

My own project is moving along slowly but surely. I was in the edit suite this Friday past and I reckon I spent the first hour just setting up everything for simultaneously editing three projects. I had my laptop with me for the third – and most simple – screen, but I wanted to use the two monitors in the edit suite for my two major screens. This led to a few problems. Firstly, you’re not actually supposed to be able to open two Premiere projects at once, so I had to look up an internet hack to cheat my way through it. Then, as I’m pretty unused to a Mac environment, I took a couple of minutes to work out how to get that second project onto the other monitor. Finally, once I had that done, I realised that when you play your project in Premiere it automatically extrapolates the playback window onto the other monitor – covering the second Project that shouldn’t have been open anyway but that I needed to be watching simultaneously. After much hunting around on the internet, I found a way to switch that off and then I was all set up.

All that took around an hour, I think, but after that I got on swimmingly and managed to complete my entire first sequence without a hitch (well, at least without any hitches specific to a multi-screen project). Continuity has never been my strong suit but I’ve got my fingers crossed it’s not too noticeable (and also I figure I can just say in my exegesis that as that wasn’t the focus of my project it doesn’t matter anyway!). It took me a while to get out of there as well, as I discovered that my hard drive is actually a Windows hard drive (because apparently yes, even your hard drives can be Windows or Mac), but the projects are all saved to the RMIT server and safe for another day. I’m hopeful now that I know what I’m doing I’ll be able to move at a good pace and get everything done in time for the exhibition.

This might be my last post for On The Frame; next week is week 12 so it’s been designated Mad Max/going to the pub week, and I can’t imagine I’ll have too much to write about.

So, for the time being at least, so long, thanks for all the fish, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and I’ll see you next March for round two!

It’s that time of year: feedback time!

In week fourteen, each of the media studios has to present a reflection on its learning and achievements throughout the year, so that students can know what to expect when they’re submitting their preferences for next year (we’ll ignore temporarily the fact that all the studios change every semester anyway).

Dan is going to be assessing our contributions to the presentation as a final assignment, so when I heard that the speakers didn’t have to make a written contribution I immediately put up my hand. There are three questions we all have to reflect on, though, before we get to writing up a script so this is what we have to think about for now:

1. What it the studio investigating/exploring? How did it do this?

2. What did you discover in terms of your current/future professional practice?

3. What about this studio would you recommend to potential future students?

In terms of the first question, I’d have to say that the answer is in the title: On the Frame. I would say we looked at both theoretical and practical elements of cinematic framing, in terms of how they are created, their aesthetic impact and the meaning that is contained within them. This involved looking at a range of different readings from film theorists, analysing various films for the way their frames were constructed and, of course, creating our own frames and exploring the importance of the frame for ourselves.

I think the element of On the Frame that was most relevant to my future professional practice would have been the analysis of the individual styles of various directors. Understanding that link between what the director did on set and how that manifested itself in terms of a visual and stylistic aesthetic on screen was really helpful to me in understanding how directors create their own style and how to personally go about constructing my own cinema.

I think I would recommend this studio to people who have an interest in studying films for meaning in the way that people study books for meaning in literature disciplines. I found it really fascinating to be able to look at the way in which what we see on screen conveys certain meaning to us as an audience, whether that be obvious symbolism (the skull tattoo representing the protagonist’s violent past), or the more subtle construction of mood and tone (the blue light evoking melancholy in the audience).

The first reading I started with was Justin Wyatt’s A Critical Redefinition: The Concept of High Concept. The reading opened with a discussion of the classic 1978 musical Grease, which for me was a good sign of a promising reading. As it went on to compare the critically-canned but wildly popular Grease with the critical success but commercial failure of the 1979 musical All That Jazz, I was expecting a high concept to be defined as something similar to high culture, the difference between high and low culture being something we discussed way back in week one. However, as the reading points out with the following quote from Richard Shickel, high concept is almost the opposite of high culture: “What the phrase really means is that the concept is so low it can be summarized and sold on the basis of a single sentence.”

Wyatt’s discussion of what this means for popular cinema is fascinating. He describes how the high concept film is not only a part of popular cinema through its attempts to market and gain popularity for the film (the concept is itself the ‘pitch’ to the audience), but also in terms of how it plays on stardom (“Clint Eastwood stars in . . .”) and repetition and variation (“It’s Titanic meets Star Wars!”)

I then moved on to Ethan Alter’s chapter on Jaws in Film Firsts. He starts by discussing the logistics of the production of Jaws, discussing how technical and location difficulties lead not only to the shoot taking three times as long as expected, but also lead to Jaws himself – the huge mechanical shark that stars in the film – featuring less often due to the sheer effort required to operate him. Funnily enough, Alter contends, this concession on the film-makers’ part was actually a happy accident, as the infrequency of Jaws’ appearances on screen creates the sense of suspense that makes the film so enjoyable.

This sense of suspense seemed to extend to the film’s marketing as well. According to Alter, the tripled production time created a big lead-up to the film’s release that allowed the distributors time to construct a monster marketing campaign (from unheard-of amounts of money on TV advertising to extensive merchandising), and allowed audiences to get excited about the film and read the book.

The last reading was Noel King’s New Hollywood. King started by harking back to our topic of week eight, the new Hollywood style. He described the way in which America adopted art house cinema and, to a degree, turned its back on traditional narrative conventions. However, King also points out (in a way that is particularly relevant to the popular cinema concept of repetition and variation) the way in which even new Hollywood art house films contained references to other films, particularly stylistic and aesthetic references to European art house films.

King then goes on to also discuss the concept of high concept cinema, even quoting Wyatt in his analysis of Grease and All That Jazz. He contextualises it in the era of the blockbuster; in the ’70s and ’80s, Hollywood was showing a preference for films that cost a lot but, when subjected to intense marketing campaigns generated huge profits in return. He brings up the idea of repetition and variation again in this section when discussing the way Star Wars appealed to a mass audience through its adoption of a wide range of conventions, from the Western genre to more specific textual references.

Seeing as I’m still in the Big Apple this week (well actually I’m sitting at home writing this in advance but you get my drift) I thought I’d do a post on five famous frames that are particularly relevant to New York City.

1. Planet of the Apes (1968, Franklin J Schaffner)

While I haven’t seen Planet of the Apes, I don’t think you have to to be able to recognise this shot. The central premise of Planet of the Apes is that a man goes on a space mission, only to find his ship out of control and leading him to a planet where apes rule. As the film goes on, we slowly learn (SPOILER ALERT!) that he has in fact travelled not in space but in time to a future where apes rule the earth. This classic shot of iconic New York landmark the statue of liberty shows at the end of the film finally reveals the dark truth both to the audience and the protagonist, who falls on his knees in despair.

1a. The Simpsons parody of Planet of the Apes: Homer works it out

Sorry, had to put it in.

2. King Kong (1933, Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack)

Again, do you have to have seen this film to know the image? The fearsome ape (what is it with New York and killer apes?) grabs Ann Darrow and climbs up to the top of the empire state building, all while being shot at by fighter planes. Is it any wonder Roger Ebert gave this four stars?

3. Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)

With the yellow cab, the classic Scorsese/De Niro pairing and the gritty, urban violence could this film be set anywhere else?

3a. The Simpsons parody of Taxi Driver

Can you tell I’m a fan?

4. Wall Street (1987, Oliver Stone)

Not the first or last film to be set in New York’s world-famous finance district, but perhaps the most memorable, if only for that famous line, “Greed is Good.” A gorgeous shot at the end here shows us New York under a dim, depressing haze. Hopefully I’ll have better weather.

5. Ghostbusters (1984, Ivan Reitman)

Who could forget the Stay Puft man terrorising New York City to the tunes of Ray Parker Jr? Perhaps the oddest of characters to make it into the cult cinema canon (no, wait, I’m sure there are weirder ones!), the Ghostbusters resided and did their honourable work in an old fire brigade station in the heart of New York. With that in mind, this ought to put you in an empire state of mind:

As I mentioned in my last post, brief three was due last week and it was all about planning what we were going to do for project brief four, and seeing as I’m heading off to the Big Apple this week, I’ve already gotten started.

As I mentioned in my last post, in my research for project brief two (an essay in which I chose to discuss the similarities/differences between cinematic and visual art) I found that most cinema theorists seemed to think that film had inherited certain limitations from visual art. For example, the difficulty of being bound by a rectangular frame, or the need to use compositional techniques to create the impression of depth on a flat surface.

It seemed to me that these problems were all dependent on the idea of ‘the frame’; that rectangular, flat surface through which we see a film. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if a film was round, or curved?

Thus came about my idea for project brief four. I intend to create a multi-screen film, with the screens being exhibited at different depths and angles, to break down our existing conception of the frame. (For more detail on my approach, take a look at my project proposal which I have attached to this post as a pdf.)

So with that in mind and my first overseas trip looming very close (I’m actually writing this post ahead of time so by the time you read it I’ll be in New York City, baby!), I decided to get started on filming straight away. I managed to rope in my two good friends and excellent actors Xavier and Lucy and last Friday we filmed just about every shot of the film.

I have to say, it certainly made it a lot harder filming for a multi-screen project. I had two cameras, so for most scenes that required multiple shots I was able to film them simultaneously, saving time and ensuring that the continuity between shots would be consistent. However, it was difficult to get out of the mindset of typical film storytelling; I kept forgetting that I was not filming a shot-reverse-shot sequence and that I would therefore have no cover for issues (if an actor forgot a line, I could not rely on cutting away to a reaction shot as both the actor and the reaction shot would be on screen).

(Bear in mind when you’re looking at these that they will be displayed at different depths so the effect will be a little clearer).

Despite the difficulties, I thought overall it was a pretty successful shoot and I’m looking forward to getting into the edit suite and seeing it all come together.

This week was d-day (that’s due-day in uni speak) for project brief three, the spoken and written proposal for our project brief four. The constraints for project brief four are pretty wide; we just have to create some sort of media product that explores a concept relating to the frame that we’ve discussed in class.

Thursday we had the chance to watch each other’s presentations. There were some really interesting concepts being explored, most of which seemed to be inspired by students’ work and research for project brief two, the essay. (Not judging, by the way, because that’s exactly what I did.)

For example, a lot of students who had chosen to discuss colour and Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love in their essay seemed to want to explore colour. And by a lot, I mean a lot. But that’s okay, because they were all really unique and interesting. For example, Jerome decided to look at the impact of colour on emotion by creating a series of shots in which the action was the same but the colour was different. Jeremy similarly intends to look at colour, but, inspired by Shaun of the Dead, wants to use colour to link thematic elements of the frame.

Others were exploring different aspects of the frame. For example, Sandy wanted to explore the importance of frame rates, looking at films such as Mad Max and The Hobbit. Daniel wanted to look at video quality as well, adopting the style of Park Chang-kyong’s Night Fishing and using his iPhone to create a film.

As for mine, as I said, I was also inspired by my essay, and focused on what I’d learnt about the similarities between cinematic and visual art. It occurred to me that the way most theorists characterised these similarities was as limitations, so I decided to see if I could break down these limitations through re-conceptualising the frame. I don’t want to say too much yet; I’ve already done some filming so I’ll upload a post next week reviewing the shoot.

I know it’s a little bit of a short post today, but that’s because I’ve had a very dramatic day on my first RMITv set as First Assistant Director. Let’s just say that if you got evacuated from building 80 today for a fire, well . . . we may have had something to do with it.

As a long-term fan of the ’70s sitcom M*A*S*H* I was pretty keen to see our text this week, the original 1970 Robert Altman film of the same name. I have to say, I wasn’t a huge fan of it: it’s grainy, hard to hear, and consists of a plot barely strung together by very thin causal links. For all of these reasons, it was a good film to use as the basis of our discussion of new Hollywood.

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks talking about the Hollywood studio system of the early 20th century, when just about all Hollywood films were produced, distributed and exhibited by the big five (and little three) production studios. This meant that most films (most, we noted in the seminar, is an important word here to avoid generalisations) adhered to a similar narrative style of having a psychologically well-defined protagonist with clear and apparent goals.

However, from the 1940s Hollywood began to change. The antitrust laws from the US government came into effect, forcing the break-up of the major studios in a bid to create more industry competition. Television was invented in the 1950s and became wildly popular, creating a cheap and convenient alternative to cinema. Furthermore, the increased importing of European and Asian films (as opposed to exporting of American films, limited due to WWII) opened American film-makers’ eyes to a new, authorial, creative style of cinema that, in the era of ’50s beatniks and ’60s hippies, answered a growing demand from a counter-cultural audience.

As a result, Hollywood saw the rise of ‘art house cinema’. In one of our readings for this week, Bordwell defines art house by its intention to subvert the classical Hollywood conventions of neatly constructed characters and linear causality in plots. Where classical cinema prefers the stereotypes of hard-boiled detective, pretty blonde, young rascal, or even more generally good and evil, art house muddles them up to create hybrids and characters whose motivations are ambiguous. Where traditionally Hollywood had liked easy-to-follow plots with a sense of resolution, art house suggested this didn’t have to be the case.

M*A*S*H* certainly exemplifies these attributes of the art house style, which became popular (and profitable) in Hollywood in the ’60s and ’70s. The protagonists (note the plural, as the film bucks against Hollywood’s desire for one or two starring roles) are by turns heroic and hateful, and the film aestheticallyis grainy and hard to hear. In fact, Altman specifically used multiple audio tracks to create overlapping sound that he thought was more true to real-world conversation.

This provides a good segue to mention the most valuable part of the discussion for me, which was the idea of realism in art house cinema. To me, Bordwell’s references to realism were somewhat confusing as he seemed to suggest a double meaning of the term. In class, we discussed the idea that art house’s often unsatisfying resolutions and ambiguous characters were realistic in their attempt to more closely mimic the real world; and yet, perhaps we could describe classic Hollywood as being the more realistic style as art house often employs a surreal aesthetic with the intention of confusing the viewer (for example, Antonioni’s hauntingly still and unrevealing shots in L’Avventura or the indistinguishable dark, alien sets of Under the Skin).