IM Lecture Week 8
Some dot points highlighting points raised from this mornings lecture.
INTRO
- Don’t wait for inspiration, give yourself constraints. If you want to be paid for your work, you’re going to have to make stuff all the time.
- Set this reading because we want to frame what our major project actually is.
- Beautiful work can be lists
- List making is an interesting way to set up constraints
- Essays and list making
- Essay films privilege a personal subjective point of view
- We do have things to say and make if we learn to stop and notice the world. We don’t have to fully force our view upon the world
- Engage things that are already there
- Stop thinking about the impossible or the things that take copious amounts of effort
- Relations = clips mean things not in themselves but virtues of the links formed in korsakow
- Bad habit = explain everything in one shot
- Interested in the essay film = better work happens between the relationship between parts – you’re establishing something.
- Each shot does not need to explain itself all the time – if you do that you will make dull work.
Q1. How would you distinguish between an essay and documentary film when both can have exploratory and creative elements?
- Essay films came from documentaries
- Filtered through the subjectivity and thoughts of the person making the film
- Doesn’t have to be grounded in reality
- Fiction meets non fiction
- Elements of documentaries but it’s all about the voice of the filmmaker
- More direct and involved spectatorial experience
- DOCO vs. EF = the essay film is interested in engaging viewer in conversional dialogue rather than engaging them in objective view of the world
- Essay Films are a category in documentary
- Essay Films not telling you what to think but think with the filmmaker as they think through something
- Exploratory in that its a thinking through of an idea/proposition/experience = journey with the filmmaker
- What they do with that creation is the difference between EF and doco.
- EF can mean anything but to work out what they’re doing is and EFQ2. How can you say a film essay is not a genre when it is categorised by the author as something else?
- The author of this weeks reading refers to an EF as a mode, not a genre.
- Genre usually goes to content and narrative shape
- Mode is more like style
- Author = EF have a certain style of making and address
- Theres nothing in a genre definition that talks about how it needs to present itself.
- More interested in the style of how to make something than a romance film
- Lists = makes the problem easier to solve
- Hard to narrate a multi-linear system
- Different shape = question of style, not genre
- Looking at what the work actually does in its qualities in this course
- Our interpretation of text has no relation to the authors intention
- My intent cannot preserve context or meaning
- Context can never be preserved – that’s why we can read film’s from the 50’s differently now than we did then – that’s why we can reread novels, re-look at paintings etc
- Our identity is founded on the presence of the unconscious… how can i claim what my intent is.
- If you accept the unconscious then you are obligated to accept the idea that intent cannot mean anything.
- Intent doesn’t survive anything – it’s the easiest thing to break
- As makers you have to realise your intent counts for nothing.
- “That wasn’t my intent” – bad luck.
- You can’t run around with your audience explaining your work.
- Second half of this question = who cares?
- There’s going to be stuff in the work that you don’t know is there – but other people will see it
- Just because you think its not there doesn’t mean it is thereQ3. Films are about interpretation and personal knowledge – does this type of interpretation and personal knowledge transfer readily onto a k-film when making it into a type of essay?
- K-films tend to lend themselves to essays
- The idea of using text in an essay film, in korsakow we have the possibility of a few different text possibilities
- Jasmine – it does transfer readily because of the things k allows you do and as a software it does lend itself to subjectivity – expressions of the world – making some kind of point about the world
- Multi-linear vs linear
- Translating into linear form means most of your effort is put into editing – more work moving things in a consecutive, understandable manner, where as in korsakow, it could just lead out to the four different ideas
- In k film = this idea is EQUALLY connected to these four things – in linear, three other ideas have to be demoted
- The way we understand the world is completely associative – that is how we look at th world.
- An idea can simultaneously have a relationship to multiple other things
- An essay is a form of thinking out loud
- EF = a mode of thinking out loud, which is why their associative and poetic, something that transfers very well into a k-film
- Making visible of thoughts out loud.
- If we have a model thats not always about building the perfect monument, it is possible that we can achieve this.
Q4. With the emphasis placed on the viewer’s interpretation and the role it plays in defining meaning – is it possible for a piece of work based on classification being free from interpretation, opinion and speculation?
- If you say something exists in a certain category, people are going to add their own background knowledge therefore it’s not possible to have work free of interpretation
- Adrian = the answer is no.
New Questions
Q1. Soar argues that makers should choose keywords based on meaning rather than visual appearance. Does this contradict the way we’ve been using Korsakow (things that are round, things that are light, things that are fast)?
- You make things that respond to those prompts, but your adding meaning to the relationships
- Keywords don’t name what the shot is of
- There is no reason why the visual appearance can’t be the meaning of the work
- Keywords – use the visual indicators, but that’s not the meaning
- Second answer = all constraint tasks in the first few weeks and forms an autobiography of yourself
- In all your clips against your intent, and notice a pattern – a pattern about you
- Autobiographical film about yourself
- They are all micro essays about ‘i’
- If you look it in that sense, you can find a few common keywords
- We’ve all made personal documentaries through those clips
Q2. Why would we choose Korsakow as a filmmaking system if it can only be viewed via limited technology?
- Not a lot of other choices in terms of similar programs
- Yes, it’s a problem
- Limited technology – on an IOS device
- We treat it as disposable media. three different platforms for this subject, and it will probably change three more times in the future
- We use it because it sets up what we can now make with it – the first project allowed us to understand what we can do – so now we can worry about content
- Small pallet
- Highly constrained and constraint = creativity
- Small pallet = learn to think creatively because you’re not worrying about how to actually use the program
- We are able to engage with more serious questions quickly
- There is no such thing as industry standard – it’s not going to happen… i.e. final cut to premiere … premiere to…?? IT WILL CHANGE!
- In korsakow we can all make compelling work with your phone and free software – it doesn’t take a crew of twelve people.
- A 20 thousand dollar camera is not going to necessarily make your film better than a one thousand dollar camera
- Once its available on the iPad it will open up a whole new element of filmmaking. – ideal for the filmmaking we’re exploring in this subject – something intimate- something aspiring to be small and quiet.
rebeccaskilton • April 28, 2014