Upon doing the reading, it reminded me back a few weeks where I watched an experimental film in cinema studies. It was about ballet. The reading in fact talks about the same film.
What really is interesting about this style is that it doesn’t use traditional means to convey the at of ballet. It uses shapes, imagery, different close up shots and lines to convey ballet in an abstract manner. It is different to most things in Non-narrative styles, where I think of non-narrative I think of documentaries, mainly by David Attenborough where he talks about the subject at hand in a clear, concise and interesting way. This combined with the cinematography in his documentaries make them very easy to watch as they always feel informative to the audience.
This experimental film is different in the way that it conveys Ballet in an abstract manner without the use of words, mostly imagery on screen which is on beat with the music.
In the lecture today we talked about teamwork and collaboration in teams within not only in our class work but also in our careers. We must start building our reputation now and I feel I’m so far doing a good job out of it. We also talked about how not to work within a group.
So with building a reputation, you have to start now in these groups as “the people we work now are probably going to be people we will work with for our careers”. I feel excited to start working in these groups and build a good reputation between my peers so I am successful later on in my career. I want to be a part of film/tv series making and working collaboratively is the main driving force behind the creation of film. I feel like I’m already working on my career as I start now, which is exciting in a way because I feel like I’m working towards my career now rather than when I graduate if that makes sense. Having my friends around me who I work and collaborate with now at such a grass roots stage and knowing that most of them if not all of them will be there when I start working in my career is kind of reassuring; in the sense that I will know and work with these people for the rest of my life.
When we were talking about bad experiences in group projects it triggered bad emotions regarding this topic. It reminded me of the group work in engineering where in one project, there was no communication within the group until about a week before it was due, in which case I had to do most of the work so at least we had something to hand in. Another project, one group member did not communicate at all to the project but claimed at the end to have done as much as the rest of us and it was a fine example of how not to function in a group.
Anyway, I hope my future group projects do not have the same issues as before and I endeavour to keep the relationships I build in this course to build a good reputation and good friends.
This weeks lecture (although I wasn’t there due to holiday) I had a read through the lecture slides in my downtime here. It really touched on my wanting to be a writer of a story of sorts, whether its writing a novel, writing a story for a video game, writing a script/story for a movie or play etc. I just love complex stories where there is a ‘hidden story’ behind this story, usually like how there’s supposed to be a story before the start of this story. So as the story unfolds more of this ‘hidden story’ is unveiled, this almost always creates a great sub-plot as well as create some great character depth and progression in both the characters and the story. This is similar to Game of Thrones where we know there was a war before the start of the story which is why their politics are like this at the start of the show and how the white walkers exist but we do not know why they exist. So I would expect, as the story unfolds we find out more details of Game of Thrones hidden plot. Often these types of stories are long and people usually are in it for the long haul. However if you pull off the balance or reveal between the normal story and the hidden story it becomes an engaging experience for the audience. This is the type of stories I love to experience and hope to one day write one.
Something was said today that really stuck out to me, something along the lines of ‘we are constantly analysing text’. This couldn’t be further from the truth, for me anyway.
When I’m watching a movie, tv show, anime, listening to music or reading a book I always ask myself. What is the director/author/writer trying to convey to us (the audience)? Why did the director choose this shot? I often question everything on the screen because I love complex story-lines or plot points even though they may be just really simple in essence. I love to over read things in cinema.
Some things I love getting when I watch something is when a small, seemingly insignificant part of the start of the story seems to be something massive in the over arching plot. Sometimes the me that witnesses the small, insignificant part jokingly predicts the huge reveal and sometimes I get it right. The ‘mindblow’ moment I experience is what I love about film and I hope to write a story that gives the audience the same feeling.
Another thing I love in film is the use of symbolism or motifs. There’s a manga I read ‘Tokyo Ghoul’ by Ishida Sui (not his real name, just his pen name, no one knows his real name). Where Ishida uses colours to signify change in character and he uses the same colours for different situations and this changes the context of the colour. For one scene for instance he uses the colour red to signify a change in someone, in another scene he uses the same red but to signify bloodlust within someone. This clever use of symbolism or motifs is similar to what I want to write/create some day.
So in short, I really love intricate, complex stories. And I really hope one day I would write a text that would be analysed by many others and is also open to interpretation and complex in its story.
After watching the ‘reading’ on what music means to deaf people, it had me think on what music means to me. As a musician and guitarist I want to talk about my musical influences and how my interests in different genres has progressed.
My first influence in picking a guitar was listening to Metallica, mainly ‘The Black Album’. My favourite track from that album was The Unforgiven, from listening to this album I wanted to learn all of the best Metallica songs. I learnt how to play nearly all the best Metallica songs and I was also listening to other bands of that era too, like Guns n Roses, Bon Jovi and Green Day to name a few. I was very immersed in Rock Music and didn’t listen to anything much else in my young teenage years. I guess I loved the pure power of Rock Music, a real ‘gun ho’ type of feeling to it. I also felt like this type of rock music had a range, like in ‘The Unforgiven’ it ranges from emotional acoustic sound to heavy rock.
Then I got into some more acoustic music, Green Day’s softer alternative I think was the reason for that. I started to listen to a lot of Youtube sensations Boyce Avenue, Tyler Ward, Kurt Hugo Schneider etc. It got me listening to or acknowledging modern music through their covers. I enjoyed the laid back feel of the acoustics, I felt like it told a story rather than the ‘gun ho’ nature of rock music. My real love for these Youtube sensations was their original music, in which I haven’t heard anything like this. It was acoustic, soft, but also had range that was actually loud without being ‘loud’ if that makes any sense. It told a story more so and it moved me emotionally. A fine example is one of my favourite songs called ‘On My Way’ by Boyce Avenue.
It started off soft, like the start of a story, but as each verse and chorus progressed the music swelled and made it ‘loud’. This along with the lyrics really pulled at my heartstrings.
Nowadays I listen to a combination of above with soundtracks of my favourite anime, movie or TV show. But also I listen to a lot of trance or melodic dubstep. I listen to soundtracks because they generally remind me of a good moment in the series that I watched or convey the themes of the show or movie through the track, but sometimes I just listen to them because they’re catchy.
But with trance and/or melodic dubstep, I have been listening to a lot of it. Mainly through Youtube, through the youtube channel Arctic Empire. Here’s one of their playlists/podcast.
I really enjoy this because it is relaxing, but at the same time has a certain bliss about it. I generally listen to this when I’m doing something else, like playing games, doing work, studying etc.
Music is a tool for many things and for me it is a method for conveying and feeling emotion. Without it, life would be very, very boring.
In this weeks lectorial Brian said something on video and video editing. He said that (paraphrasing a little here) ‘even though if you are going to video it is important to know that the sound is very important to the video’. Then we talked about how the music and sound of a video often makes a video outstanding and I agree. Many of our greatest movies have great soundtracks.
A couple examples of great movie soundtracks that are instantly recognisable are the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars soundtracks which are both amazing and unique to each other. I can hear the Lord of the Rings soundtrack and Star Wars soundtrack and instantly pick out that I am listening to that soundtrack. Another honourable mention is the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack which I think is amazing. These examples of music and sound in movies are the reason why music is so important in not only making a movie feel complete but also enhances the viewers experience.
Also one last thing, wouldn’t it be so cool if music soundtracks played out in real life. Imagine you are training to become the next great sportsman and eye of the tiger played in the background. Just a random thought.
David Gauntlett’s blog on the change of how media is created and learned and how we can adapt and change the way we think about media as an academic study or a method of relaying information.
It got me thinking, it prompted me to think back to a conversation I had with my uncle this past week. In the conversation we talked about how we feel media has moved to a new age, this meaning that not even a decade ago, we used to only look at media at home through our computers and TVs. The only ‘mobile’ media source we had were books or newspapers but they weren’t really how they are today which is ‘On the fly’. Today we are able to experience media through our phones, tablets or laptops. All these things available through a 3G, 4G or wireless network, which has picked up its effectiveness over the most recent years. We read and watch things more on the fly more than we ever have. Now we can watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead on our phones on the train on the way to school or work. We are also able to stream sports such as Football, Rugby or NBA live through our phones, there was a time where this wasn’t common practice. It is in a change of our thinking, we are able to keep in touch with each other through social media anywhere we go, well anywhere that has an internet connection, now we can watch the latest YouTube videos on our phones when we’re travelling. I remember a time where the only place we got to watch YouTube was actually sitting down at a computer or laptop and actually going on the site.
So what does this mean and how does it relate to us as Media students? Well everything we make now must be accessible via mobile devices in terms of media. If we create a video, it better be available to view on YouTube. If we’re streaming it better be available to watch on a phone or tablet app.
And how is it going to be taught? Gauntlett touched on this with his blog posts about his book ‘Making media studies’ saying that media has evolved to what it is now from its roots as a very small, bare-bones profession. Now jobs and institutions exist that wouldn’t have a few decades ago or at least would be very rare. We have to change the way we think about media, we have to make it ‘both a subject, and a method’. To create new media we have to be creative in the way we go about making new media, we can’t rehash ideas that have been used over and over again. We have to adapt to this growing profession. Not only we have to be creative but we have to know our audiences’.
I’ll use E-Sports as an example. Over the past half of a decade E-Sports has grown exponentially with games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends having people compete for prizes of millions of dollars. The style that was introduced when E-Sports was first introduced some years ago was very laid back and edgy. There were jokes in the broadcast that wouldn’t get past censorship screens on TV, but that was what audience liked. The audience being fans of the video games: Gamers. Understandably the E-Sports scene had players competing for millions of dollars and the organisers felt it was proper to be more professional, so they had the hosting panels wear suits and conduct interviews very much like they do in sports and the community did not like this.
As to quote Pyrion Flax (a Dota 2 personality) in an interview (I’ll post the link after this) ‘We got here by not being like that (professional Sports) we got here by being different’
Ultimately, we should change the way we think about media and how we are to be more creative in producing more media as it is evolving and I think Pyrion Flax put it beautifully ‘we got here by being different’.
I’m not even sure if this is SFX or editing but Jeremy’s presentation got me thinking of a scene in Inception. The scene where Leonardo Di Caprio’s character was explaining the architecture of the dream world to Ellen Page’s character. The editing/SFX had a particular effect on me when I first watched this in theatres.
Watching it for the first time I was awed in a way that I haven’t in a long time. The landscape being ‘folded’ on top of each other via the buildings, the infinite staircase and the bridge building scene amazed me on the scale that this movie had at its premise. That from one angle the staircase was infinite but from another the staircase was incomplete. The landscape was infinite but could also be literally right on top of you. The use of Ellen Page’s character’s imagination to create more features of the dream world I thought was amazing. The editing combined with the SFX in Inception is a great example to produce a sense of scale, imagination and epicness to the audience.
So upon reading the comic by Scott McCloud it got me to appreciate one of my favourite manga writers that I follow. Ishida Sui, who is most famous for writing highly acclaimed series Tokyo Ghoul. A quick synopsis of Tokyo Ghoul: an ordinary quiet boy Kaneki Ken, gets turned into a Ghoul (someone who can only survive by eating humans) against his will. So he has to learn to adapt to survive in this world where Ghouls are hunted and oppressed, only to be met with tragedy.
Anyway, Ishida is a master at creating a story and this McCloud’s comic got me more appreciative on why. Ishida is very much into a ‘show don’t tell’ kind of approach and it keeps the audience guessing. McCloud describes Western comics or manga as a kind of ‘in the moment’ with each panel and Ishida exercises this practice beautifully. He is ever so subtle with each panel with reveals and foreshadowing scattered throughout every chapter. This conveys his story in a subtle way and always leaves the audience guessing what’s going to happen. Not in the way that someone says ‘I wonder what’s gonna happen next’ more like ‘I need to know what happens next’. This is why Ishida is one my favourite manga writers and Tokyo Ghoul is one of my favourite manga series.
Scott McCloud, 1993, ‘Blood in the Gutter’, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art(Northampton, MA : Tundra Pub)
Ishida Sui, 2011, ‘Tokyo Ghoul’, Tokyo Ghoul (Japan)
So I’m starting uni, again. Second year, different course. I was an engineering student, I switched over to media because I realised I wanted to do what I love rather than things I was good at in high school. I fell out of my interest for maths and science, but was I really that interested in it at all? It doesn’t matter because here I am. ‘So why Media?’ my relatives often ask me. Well, I love watching TV shows, movies, anime, music and video games so I decided I wanted to be a part of it.
I already knew what to expect before the first lectorial in terms of how they run. Throughout the first lecture I could only think about how much more laid back this course was, everyone was much more friendlier and more social, compared to engineering at least. I felt at home. Which was something I never felt in engineering. I was particularly intrigued by the video that we watched at the end of the lecture. The constant techno beat coincided with the visuals on screen. With each scene as it was essentially repeating, something was added to the scene. From what was just a peaceful beginnings of the music video turned out quite chaotic by the final repetition got me thinking about how I want to direct/film something similar, in scale at least. I want to produce something that starts of small or peaceful and gets grander in scale. I guess this is one of the many reasons why I’m in media.
