In Tuesdays lecture we had two guest speakers… Adrian Miles and Liam Ward. Both of these people made a significant impact on the way I am going to approach project brief 2 as well as all future projects.
Starting with Adrian Miles…
He works with interactive video, but this isn’t what made an impact on me. It was what he said about ‘ideas’ and the way we often link ideas alongside things. Often we make the mistake of thinking they are the same thing. He explained to us how often we mistake having an idea, with actually executing it.
It was then that I realised…
I do this all the time, with my work, with my learning and with personal tasks.
This is something I have since become aware of, and have made a conscious to avoid. I have only gone as far as to write down some of these many ‘ideas’. This should mean that soon, this blog will be filled with all my ideas that have been simmering away in my ‘ideas bank’.
Some of my ideas:
- Get involved (RMITV + The Catalyst)
- Get a job somewhere within media- Internship? Volunteer?
- Make as many connections with media and communication students as possible. (This will create a great network and support my career goals)
- Collaborate with people to create media
- Possibly make a YouTube channel?
- Contribute to the catalyst?
- Collaborate with others in making some of my blog posts?
- Conducting a series of interviews recording it through multiple mediums (-recorded sound-images-video-text-) that I can later post on my blog?
The second speaker was Liam Ward who discussed editing and what it really is. He explained it as deliberately breaking things up to make you think. It is these breaks where the viewer does most of the interpreting.
This was much of the focus of this weeks reading by Scott McCloud, 1993, ‘Blood in the Gutter’, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. It focused on making the reader aware of the processes undertaken when trying to create meaning within a comic (But this can also be related to any narrative styled media.) e.g. movement-to-movement, action-to-action and subject-to-subject.
These techniques explain what approach is taken outside of the frames and it is in these breaks where the true meaning is made. Much of the responsibility of creating meaning lies within the imagination of the reader.
Liam also discussed the beauty of interchangeable frames. Where the meaning of a frame is altered by what comes before and after it. e.g.
- Shot of mans face lacking expression – followed by a shot of a bowl of soup- the mans expression becomes hungry
- Shot of mans face lacking expression – followed by a shot of a child in a coffin- the mans expression becomes sadness/remorse
- Shot of mans face lacking expression – followed by a shot of a woman laying on a couch- the mans expression becomes lust
This left us with the idea that the frame itself has less importance than the gaps in between, and what comes before and after it, as it is between these gaps where we find meaning.
This made me think about the approach I have been taking with project brief 2. I have focused too much on what to put within my frames rather than what to put outside of it. I am going to now look at it in reverse and explore the possibilities that come with this concept. I’m want to place a greater focus on what is in between the frames and what I put before it and after it. Hopefully by doing so I can achieve my goal of a less literal approach and make it more abstract.