Here is an example of what I’ve been doing at my current internship at Goldeneye Media. I have been interning there for 8 weeks now and will be continuing over the mid-year break. I wrote the voice-over script for this video that they made for one of their biggest clients; real estate agency Kay & Burton. This video was sent out to clients and subscribers of the Kay & Burton report.
Kay & Burton Report, Episode 3 – Inside Story from Goldeneye Media on Vimeo.
This week’s reading discusses database documentaries by using modern examples and describing them in detail. The authors discuss the spatial montage and the power of juxtaposition as has been discussed in previous readings aswell.
One of the most interesting points for me was the discussion of the ‘Are You Happy?’ project. This question was posed in various cultural contexts, getting quite personal answers as well as universal responses. What is really interesting about this project is the inclusion of the twitter feed alongside the video, juxtaposing between the cosy feel of the video and the jarring twitter feed. When Jasmine suggested that we include a text thread for our major project, this project came to my mind. I will endeavour to research different poems, or even twitter threads about celebration to see what we as a group like and find interesting.
Another interesting project was the one focusing on how people feel. I found it really interesting as it has long been so difficult for researchers and scientists to find evidence of how people really feel as they usually don’t reveal their true feelings. This project gave an interesting insight into the true feelings of people and is something I will use as an inspiration.
The reading discusses traditional documentary and its claim of having a privileged relationship to social reality in the sense that what we are shown we are lead to believe. It is usually about trying to get the audience to take a stand and change how they behave in their everyday lives. This is unlike new database documentary which allows for much larger interpretation, and a more personal and subjective view on whatever the maker decides to film. The juxtaposing between clips as well allows for greater depth, and larger interpretation, as well as allowing the maker to be more ambiguous rather than stating their ’cause’ or rather not even needing a cause at all. The reading states that “documentary film in the twentieth century was as much about changing the world as it was observing it.” My question then is, can we as filmmakers continue to ‘change the world’ by creating Korsakow films?
“In 1926 John Grierson defined documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’.” I find this interesting as documentary since has taken a more subjective and argumentative approach to its material, consciously leaving out or exaggerating facts to make audiences take a particular stance. So this to me isn’t ‘actuality’. As Adrian has mentioned over the semester, by using Korsakow to document our observations we can create our own ‘actualities’. But is this really ‘actual’ as it is highly subjective? What makes something an actuality?
Tom, Torika and I presented our prototype for our K-film around celebration in today’s tute. It was received well, and we were fortunate that the other students and Jasmine were all willing to give us some great advice and feedback.
The clips varied in sound volume levels, which is something we need to fix and normalize across all of the clips. We were also given the advice to include more colourful and saturated clips to bring some variety and vibrancy to them. Our theme of celebration seemed to come across clearly to the audience which was good to see.
Another suggestion was to include a colourful or interesting background to our interface, so that it isn’t just black as it doesn’t support the theme of the film. Jasmine gave us some great suggestions, including creating an ambiguous text thread to link the clips together. She also suggested that we include more intimate and personal celebrations, showing more subjective views of celebrations rather than general celebratory events you would expect and that we included. She also suggested using stock footage of colourful Indian celebrations and of other cultures that we would find difficult to film on our own.
When we were first given the task of filming videos on our phones to specific constraints per week for Integrated Media 1, the challenge seemed a bit daunting and frustrating as I spent a lot of time thinking about what I should film. As the weeks progressed, however, I began to let go of the pressure I was putting on myself to produce beautiful and interesting videos to the weekly constraints, and rather just ‘noticed’ the little things around me that I had always put in the background and put them in the limelight of my videos.
After completing my sketch film, I felt relieved that I had finally made a Korsakow film despite all of the hardships I faced when it came to using the program. As I couldn’t seem to get it to work at home on both Mac and PC computers, I spent my time after the tutorial finishing it in the library. My thumbnails wouldn’t line up with my main frame in the neat way I wanted them to, and I spent some time mucking around with changing the size of the thumbnails and the aspect ratio before it looked the way I wanted it to. Another problem I faced was that I couldn’t centre the text the way I wanted to, as how it looked on my interface editor was different to how it appeared when it was exported and played. This was the only problem I couldn’t seem to fix and settled on keeping it the way it was.
Although I was relieved to have the task well and truly behind me, I began realising just how much I missed filming and documenting my daily life, and the little beauties that I discovered. While I could of course continue making Vine videos, I found that having a constraint actually helped focus my attention on the things around me, for example; circular things, something fast, etc. I really missed showing only a part of a whole and filming something in a beautifully ambiguous way and so am now trying to focus my attention more each day and finding something I want to film. The main problem is doubting and questioning why I am filming this particular object. It definitely is a problem I continue to face and that Adrian has mentioned before; the narrative filmmaker being concerned with filming something perfect and with a purpose, rather than just documenting something that catches your eye, or even something just ordinary.
With our major group K-film, we have stuck to the constraint of ‘celebrations’ in order to help focus our attention on the clips we film. However, I still find myself doubting what I’m choosing to film and asking myself many questions of such as, ‘does this depict a celebration in the conventional way?’, ‘can I film something unconventional that still refers to a celebration?’, ‘will the audience understand our concept?’, ‘how will the audience feel when watching it?’ These questions I feel are unavoidable, but if I want to contribute to the project in the way I want I need to let go of my doubt and film as much as possible, and filter through the clips later on.
This week’s reading by Will Luers discusses the concept of database narratives. It refers to how computer databases of sending and retrieving information can be used in conveying a narrative. Unlike linear narratives in both fiction and non-fiction types that rely on revealing information in a sequential order and giving the audience a sense of journey, the database narrative relies on spatial relations in order to hold the audience’s attention.
Luers says that “narrative emerges as an effect of navigation,” which in Korsakow films refers to how viewers choose which video they want to watch next, and how they create links between the patterns that emerge. His belief that “narration of the database is through the interface; its design, entry points, absences, spatial complexity and simultaneity” is quite an interesting point as it emphasizes the importance of the interface. This is something I didn’t really prioritize that much in terms of analyzing or creating a K-film, rather I have been more focused on the content and patterns created. Luers places a lot of importance on the interface, which is something I will now take into more careful consideration.
Questions from the reading:
“The temporal relations of events, that which plot works to structure as linear narrative, is just one of many structural relations available in a database narrative.” Can you please explain what temporal relations are present in K-films?
“A plotted interface provides micro and macro views, but also limits and delays access to those views.” How important is thinking about micro and macro views in Korsakow films?
Luers discusses how plotting the interface results in the narrative; does this mean that if we follow this method a narrative can be formed by using Korsakow, that does make sense?
Lecture 7 Lighting: What was covered? Do you think the content is relevant to your project? And why?
The lighting lecture covered quite a lot of information which will be helpful for planning and shooting our film. Lighting, by definition, is a result of exposure. Being comfortable with adjusting exposure levels on your camera and adjusting the positions of the subject, camera and artificial lights are all important to achieving the correct level of exposure.
There are a few reasons why lighting is important to a film; we light for exposure – so the subject and location is visible, for continuity – in terms of temporal (time of day) and spatial, to have control over the image – stylistic choices and tone, and to achieve a good key to fill contrast ratio – the key light being the brightest or more prominent, with the fill being the less prominent light (could be bounced or reflected).
An important point I took from the lecture was to know your location and do test shoots before filming. This will allow any changes needed to be made to the shot schedule, if for example, you realise during your test shoot that too much sunlight floods the particular location at midday, so you choose to shoot there in the early morning. Understanding the natural lighting that occurs at different times of the day at your location is important to scheduling the shoot and making choices of fixing these issues; such as blacking out a room or shooting at a different time of day. This is something that we will be doing tomorrow on our test shoot as we will be experimenting with the natural lighting at the location as well as implementing the artificial lights, gels, reflectors and negative fill to see how we would like to set up the lights for our shoot next week. We will take photos of our setups so that we have a reference of how we would like to light and position the camera, as well as photos to represent a storyboard that we can follow on the day.
Communicating with the director is also very important as it ensures that you both understand how the coverage of a scene will be shot, so that you know where the lighting equipment needs to be positioned for that particular shot. Keeping your eye on the bigger picture and understanding how the lighting will maintain continuity or not (depending on stylistic choices) is also something to think about during pre-production and on the shooting day. In terms of our film we will ensure that we plan as well as we can as a result of our test shoot and I along with the rest of the technical crew will ensure that we communicate with Torika and Michael so that we don’t have problems on our shooting day.
An interesting point that I hadn’t thought of previously to this lecture, was that a lighting set-up can involve taking lights out of the location rather than introducing them. This is also known as negative fill and can be achieved by using a large black card to reduce the amount of light illuminating the subject’s face.
Select from one of the readings from week 5, 6 or 7 and describe two points that you have taken from it. Points that excite you, something that was completely new to you.
Out of the lighting readings from week 7, the one I took the most from was the Malkiewicz reading. It gives really in-depth descriptions of different types of lighting techniques for different types of lighting that you may want to achieve.
One of the important points I took from the reading is in regards to how we will light most of our film. The advice that comes from the reading for filming interior day scenes is that it requires soft light, meaning that it is diffused and doesn’t create harsh shadows. The only hard light would come from the sunlight coming in from the windows, which can be prevented on location by closing curtains. These types of scenes usually have the upper parts of the wall as being darker, depending on the natural location of the sun at the particular time of day. This is important as if you want to achieve a realistic impression of day time, even with the interior being quite dark, it’s important to keep in mind that the upper parts of the wall should be dark.
Another important point is to be wary of creating unwanted shadows. Each source of light can create shadows depending on their position in relation to the subject and when you add artificial lights, the trick is to ensure that shadows are kept to a minimum. You must try and only produce one shadow, or two if you really have to. This is due to that in real life we are used to seeing only one shadow, or one direction of shadow as they would naturally occur. Having multiple shadows with competing directions are unrealistic and distracting for audiences. This is where planning how you will set up your lights for your shoot comes into play as you can experiment with positions, heights and angles to prevent multiple shadows occurring.
In this scene note the choreography of the actors, camera, frame and focus. As covered in the lecture describe the things Antonioni would have have to consider when directing the actors and the camera.
This scene from ‘Blow Up’ focuses on two characters, a woman and a man. The woman wants to retrieve some photos that the male photographer has taken of her, and the camera follows them as they meet at his front door, and make their way around his studio.
Antonioni implements panning camera movement to follow the two characters, however as demonstrated in the lecture, this can be quite technically difficult and require rehearsals to achieve. Firstly, keeping the actors in frame requires the right amount of speed in the panning movement as well as timing when the pan will begin and end. A technique to ensure that the actors remain in frame is to pan so that they remain at the back of frame, ensuring that they don’t get ahead of the camera and therefore out of frame.
As the actors move to and from different distances to the camera, focus pulling is required. This is when tape arrows are used to note the different f stops needed to keep the actors in focus for a particular shot. A rehearsal is done to note when the actors begin to go out of focus, focus is made at each point and the f stop is noted with an arrow tape on the camera. When the shot is taken, the cameraman pans while an assistant focus pulls using the tape as a guide and knowing at which points to change the focal length so that the actors remain in focus.
Tracking is also used to follow the actors. This is when the camera is pushed along tracks or a dolly usually in a forwards or backwards motion. To ensure that the tracking movement remains smooth and consistent, a gaffer is needed to push the camera along the dolly, while the cameraman operates the camera and panning movement. When actors are moving towards camera or away from camera, the focus pulling technique is required to keep them in focus and may need to be used for tracking shots as well.
Looped clips.
interface question mark, person holding balloon.
first clip of red balloon like interface image.
red question ‘where do you want to go?’ next to two small thumbnails.
ambient sound from clips no music.
thumbnails just images – move to left of main frame after first opening clip.
some staged clips.
most clips involve movement.
The K-film ‘Forgotten Details’ focuses on the things we take for granted and no longer question, for example; why are windows rectangular? It’s interesting and quirky, with most of the video clips having some movement involved.
The interface is interesting as it includes a black background with red images of a question mark, person holding a balloon with accompanying red text per image. The opening clip is of a red balloon floating through the air, matching the background image. The accompanying text ‘where do you want to go?’ present next to the two preview thumbnails leads nicely into the film, prompting the audience to click through to their choice of thumbnail while also making sense in terms of the clip shown.
The clips are looped, giving the sense that the images we have taken for granted constantly occur, while the matching text attempts to break that chain, making us stop and think about what we are actually watching.
The film does achieve what it sets out, however it could be improved with an overlaying soundtrack rather than just the ambient sounds heard. This would prevent it from seeming like a sketch film and make it a more complete work. The small thumbnails are also distracting as they are hard to see and are not in proportion to the main frame and large images in the background image. Some of the clips seem staged which does detract from the experience of observing objects and things that we don’t look at closely in our everyday life.
Overall, the film uses interesting use of colour and text to bring the authors’ argument to life.