Our Korsakow project is done and dusted. We gave it our best go – the program was unfamiliar to all of us, so hopefully it’s an interesting experience for the viewer. We’ve learned a lot.

We responded to modularity through Korsakow, by creating an interface that allows the user to pick the type of boredom they want to explore next. Each type contains two fragments, which each have one life. The user is then looped back to the home page, allowing them to pick the next section. These separate and simultaneously conjoined pieces make up our film. The variability comes in trying to create a balance between fiction and non-fiction for viewers by creating one of each fragment per type of boredom. Our fictional elements were themed as 50s instructional video parodies, trying to create some levity in an attempt to counterbalance the non-fictional elements that might come across as, well… boring.

In terms of what I learned from the experience; it’s difficult to think outside of the box. Traditional forms of filmmaking and storytelling exist for a reason. Not that we tried anything too bizarre, but I remember early conversations within our group about creating a nonlinear narrative with different user options. We realised it was unachievable within the time frame – even contemplating it and creating different fragments for something that is supposed to come together made me admire films like this even more. Memento (2000) is a great example.

Memento (2000, Christopher Nolan)

I feel as if I now have a much better understanding of Korsakow and its intended use however. We had an perception early on that these complex narratives with all sorts of interactivity was what was expected of us. Our presentation feedback may have led us astray a little bit, as we started worrying about how our film would be interactive. However, as our project continued to develop, we were told to just create fragments first, and worry about combining them later. Our project still ended up with a somewhat structured feeling, even though there is interactivity and variability. For our final project I really would like to make something that gives each viewer a truly unique experience they can interpret. I feel as if this is really Korsakow’s strength and what makes it distinctive.

Many loose ends remain regarding our theme of boredom. I feel as if we portrayed boredom, but only scratched the surface of the topic. Why is the experience of boredom unpleasant to us? Why does the lack of meaning or direction make us feel empty? As we discussed in our presentation, a modern take on this subject matter could be super interesting. Our society’s current fixation on having to be engaged with something throughout the entirety of our waking lives is fascinating to me – I’ve grown up with this generation that is almost hypnotized by screens.

It could be so interesting to me because I want the answers for myself: why do I feel the need to sit in bed watching something until I can barely keep my eyes open? However, it does feel like a natural progression for the topic, and a bit less broad. I’m happy with what we’ve done on this project, but I’m also excited to dig into the different ways we can expand on the matter through different fragments that are a bit more vague and up for interpretation.

We’ve finished filming, and are in the process of editing/compiling into Korsakow right now. I’m mostly handling the editing of fragments in Adobe Premiere, which is feeling like the easy job after we all had a look at Korsakow. Apparently the program is easy to use, and we have some of it figured out, however a bunch of the little functions are still a mystery to me. The editing process in Korsakow is also not just about cutting and pasting, it’s a challenging assemblage we’ve had to talk about as a group. I even had to draw a little map to plan it out. It’s a different experience to cutting with traditional editing software.

One thing I’ve worried about during the editing process is how the audience will perceive the final product without context – how can we help them understand what we’re trying to do without being too on the nose? We’ve discussed titles to help differentiate the different kinds of boredom. Maybe that will be enough. The week 6 reading (Weihl, 2016) says it is “up to the user to become a kind of co-author or co-editor navigating a database of  audio-visual material”, so hopefully their experience comes together through their navigation. The images themselves should theoretically convey the ideas we are trying to present through intellectual montage (regarding non-fiction).

With our presentation tomorrow we’ve had to begin thinking about what ideas and questions have emerged from the development process of this project. I feel as if our fragments have been successful in trying to portray boredom, but haven’t explored what it means to people in a deep enough way. I hope we can focus a bit more on current issues regarding distraction and a lack of meaning for our next project, as well as how technology plays a significant part in today’s society and keeps us constantly engaged. I’ll go into more detail about how we could tackle these matters in my reflection post.

References

Weihl, A 2016, Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries, NECSUS Journal, Small Data.

Last Thursday we had our group consultations, which was a good opportunity for us to finalise our idea before we began filming. We pitched our idea essentially in two different forms. The first, a Korsakow with random fragments simply linking via keywords. The second, a multilinear Korsakow that would place the viewer in a first person perspective, allowing them to choose objects around the room that would play out different fragments from the point of view of a bored student. The Korsakow would loop back after playing one fiction and one non-fiction fragment related to a type of boredom.

The main two pieces of feedback we were given were:
a) To go with the non-fiction/fiction loop structure, however, the point of view screen was not necessarily needed.
b) To film our fragments sooner and worry about how we’ll put them together later.

We took a general structure away from the feedback that gave us the confidence to begin shooting. Soar’s reading from week 7 was something else that personally gave me a better idea of where we were going with our Korsakow film. The program was a little bit confusing to me at the beginning, but his description of multilinear narrative as fragments that “will be viewed collectively in sequences partly prescribed by the maker and partly chosen by the viewer” (Soar, 2014) was enlightening. The way we covered his material as a class last week helped in giving me a sense of direction regarding our third assignment.

Over the weekend, our group shot a couple of fragments that could be done individually, however, we shot most of our footage today. We actually finalised the theme for our fiction fragments this morning during class – we’d been contemplating the idea of creating parodies of old 50s instructional videos for each type of boredom. I’m sure you understand what they look like but here is an example of one we looked at for inspiration. The idea behind it was to keep the viewer engaged my making the videos ironically on the nose and a bit self-aware. Hopefully they turn out to be a bit humorous and a nice counter-weight to the non-fiction fragments.

References

Soar, M (2014), Making (with) the Korsakow System: Database Documentaries as Articulation and Assembly, New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 154–73.

After some more group brainstorming and discussion, our ideas for assignment 3 are starting to solidify. We tried to look at boredom and the psychological state of being bored, however it is incredibly difficult to define as a whole. So, from our own experiences, we instead tried to list several types of boredom as an approach to our concept. From the different scenarios we could come up with/recall, a few of the main types of boredom were routine, waiting and lack of stimulation.

We then proceeded to try and come up with ideas for different fragments within these types. We split the ideas into fiction and nonfiction categories. For lack of stimulation (non-fiction) we thought filming dry or bland environments with very little going on could convey this kind of boredom. Obviously we want to avoid boring our audience, however this felt like an appropriate idea. For fiction, we came up with a basic idea of a little sketch that portrays a young person daydreaming in a dull environment. We could then zoom in and get a look inside their head. A pre-existing scene we referenced was a short bit from The Simpsons Movie (2007) where Homer drifts off as Marge is talking to him.

On Monday I couldn’t make it to class, however Gigi and Liam kindly did a short pitch to our class without me, and brought some feedback with them. What I was told was that people liked the theme of boredom and our fragment ideas, however it wasn’t clear how the project would be interactive. This wasn’t something we had put much thought into, so this should be our next step before we start filming our fragments. If we have an idea of how we will put them together, then we can film around that idea. I assume we will be using Korsakow for the project, but we haven’t discussed exactly how we’ll mesh the different pieces together – I’m sure it will be first on the agenda next time we meet as a group.

After we were split into groups based on our strengths and weaknesses, we spent class brainstorming possible ideas for our third assignment. We were prompted to look at the Are you Happy? and Viewfinders projects for inspiration. This gave us a general idea of how we should tackle the project. We started a list of possible themes and mediums we could use. These included commuting, anxiety, boredom and sadness (themes) and vox pops, atmospheric footage and social media posts (mediums).

One theme we agreed upon being interesting was boredom. While we didn’t go much further in class, I thought I would use this blog post to look into the idea a little bit further. What I’ve found is a number of articles talking about boredom and its benefits, as well as a general consensus that it is difficult to define. It appears to be a subject with a lot of depth and room for commentary. Hopefully through the project we can try to explain what boredom is and what it means.

In terms of the mediums we briefly discussed how we could interview people about boredom and their own experiences regarding it. We also talked a bit about possible social experiments regarding boredom. I remembered something I’d previously read about people choosing pain over boredom and brought it up as an example. We tossed around some ideas about some social experiments we could film with people around RMIT, possibly giving an incentive to sit still for 15-20 minutes and allow us to film them. They might be a bit too difficult to work out but these ideas have helped us continue to move forward in the brainstorming process.

As we move forward we’ll hopefully continue to develop some interesting and fresh ideas that we can start developing soon, and I’ll keep this space updated with them.