BOX – Initiative Post

To be able to critically analyse, through the making of film and reflection on that, traditional and industrial production methods.

I would like to discuss for my initiative post a few music videos I’ve seen lately. I’m trying to come into the practice of editing and shooting things in my own time to get in the habit of staying productive. Last week while I was hanging with some friends I thought it might be a good idea to bust out my camera and try to take some shots while we got a little winter sun and everyone was in good spirits. I shot a sort-of impromptu music video which I’ve embedded below:

a nice afternoon with my friends from rosie pavlovic on Vimeo.

This got me thinking of the production of creating a music video is based off the notion of creative prompts, which this studio uses. A song is another person’s artwork, and as a filmmaker you take lyrics, words, themes and ideas from this prompt to create something relevant, or totally irrelevant but still hopefully inspired. The video I made doesn’t relate to the lyrics my friend Shannon was singing, but rather the singing itself prompted me to go get my camera and shoot something beautiful.
Two weeks later and reflecting on this video after four BOX classes, I can already reflect on technical aspects. The export quality and encoding is not at the quality I can now create. After the first two weeks having a focus on post-production techniques I can now change the aspect ratio, correctly export and encode a video file.

I was really inspired by Julia Jacklin’s music video for her song ‘Eastwick’. It’s shot in a familiar setting to where I grew up, which is a theme I want to approach through filmmaking soon. When editing the film I shot at home, I realised I had a really jumpy hand on my zoom lens, and I couldnt keep a shot static for more than 3 seconds before changing angle or tightening the shot. This film clip mixes those quick shots I love but also balances with long shots of things I never shoot – landscapes, trees, scenery. I feel like in my photography I only focus on people and actions.
I rewatched the clip while writing this post and noticed it features an eyeline sequence including an establishing shot and two dirty over the shoulders.

Paul said not to shoot anything before the set is perfect. I haven’t shot anything constructed in a long time, but I am entertaining the thought that before I roll camera, everything would be lined up in my shot as if I were taking a photograph. That the shot construction would have rules (such as the rule of thirds), the colour would be correct and a single frame from one of these shots would be able to stand alone photographically, such as the first image above.

Also I hope this is relevant but growing up in a “go to the RSL on Wednesday night then put a $20 in the pokies” family, this whole music video is really inspiring in it’s composition. I love this video so much I think I consciously positioned myself to mimic shot in this video for Louise’s class exercise where I tie my hair up.

BOX – Reflection so far….

I have trouble with giving direction. This occurred to me during the class activity where we were asked to create a three shot sequence of a person doing an action. My actions were to walk down a hallway, stop to tie a shoelace and keep walking. I shot each of these three shots once and we all moved on. My other classmates shot one image up to 12 times. I wasn’t satisfied with what I had, but I accepted that it would be easier to try to edit it than to ask the actor to do the take again. This is a problem! I’m struggling to apply the “camera on, world off” mentality because my mind keeps wandering to what the rest of my group think of the shot, or if I’m taking up too much time or being bossy. Beyonce said “I’m not bossy, I’m the boss” and I need to remind myself that when it’s my turn behind the camera I need to make the most of it.

I wrote my last post on my fear of approaching other for collaboration and how I wanted to absolve that in this studio, but in retrospect, I think that there is something really exciting about designing, shooting and editing a sequence all on your own. I love the ‘collaborative nature of filmmaking’ (a sentence I stole from a media and comms alumni that I dropped during my interview to get into this course), but part of me thinks I need to make something I can be proud of on my own.
The last realisation I’ve had is that I have no idea what is good and what is bad in this class. The cat video felt sloppy to me; there was incontinuity because of the shadows, the rendering was low and after secretly watching other class submissions I felt uncreative in my approach. However it was met with praise and I was a bit stunned.
In the ‘making the bed’ assignment, I tried not to think about what I did or didn’t do in the cat video. There’s less structure to the action so it was harder to storyboard for me. After I had exported the final cut, I rewatched and found unconscious similarities between the video (aside from my outfit) which I found interesting.

Make the Bed

Feed The Cat

BOX – What I want from this studio.

I chose Box this semester after seeing the clip that accompanied the presentation. An entire film inspired by a piece of junk found in the middle of the street. I love to pick up things i find on the ground but I’d never think to make a movie about it. The whole course screamed ‘creativity’ – Something drilled into me that you ‘need in this industry’ and by looking at my folio of work, I was beginning to think it was a trait I didn’t have. It’s not that I don’t have good ideas, it’s just that I struggle to bring an idea to fruition. Obstacles for me vary from a lack of technical knowledge, to an inability to approach others to collaborate, or the fear of ‘inconveniencing’ people (which i’ve found next to journalism or law, filmmaking is the next most inconveniencing profession).

When we started our first week, Paul told us; “Creativity is a bit of a hoax; people who think they’re not creative generally make exceptional content”. Being told this was liberating. I’ve been stuck in a two year creative crisis and filming these simple, mundane tasks puts me in a weird mindset where because they’re boring, I can shoot them and they don’t have to be wonderful, or exciting. Feeding the cat and making the bed is boring, yet it’s rewarding making content regardless.

I suppose what I want out of this studio is a bit of faith in myself that I can make a basic sequence, address a prompt, and be competent at post production. When I eventually approach the ideas I’m excited about, they’ll be done right, through pre-production planning, efficient shooting and concise post-production. And if I find myself in another creative crisis, I’ll be able to be prompted by what I once considered boring.

Room With A View @ 3RRR – Reflection

In this revision, I would like to reflect on my learning curve from week 1 of this semester, to week 12. I’m writing this after hosting our second show on 3RRR, which I would like to think was pretty successful.

What we took away from our first demo show was a killer run-sheet layout. This was easy to customise for each show, containing clock time, show time, track numbers and file sources. The demo also acted as a base for our first show on the 24th of April. We used a convo about penalty rates which was ad-libbed in the demo.

In this show was also my first interview with Thrusher which I reflected upon here.
Though it was marred by the sound quality, I definitely learnt to utilise the studio headphones, making sure they were loud enough to pick up tapping and twisting sounds I was making. I think this learning curve was reflected in our feature, where I interviewed and panelled Prof. Martin Mulligan, a senior lecturer in sustainability from RMIT. I had never panelled before so I was nervous and unsure of what to do. We took the interview in one take and I was thrilled with the outcome. The sound quality is crisp and free of distractions. You can hear the interview below in our feature titled “Fashion Faux Pas” which I narrate and also don’t touch the mic stand in.

I hosted our final show today (May 29th) and as we worked through the hour I felt much more comfortable than I did even in my prerecord with Thrusher. I had briefly met Russell from the ASRC and invited him into talk about his social enterprise on air. I ad-libbed a few questions and tried to throw in a couple of jokes here and there. When a prerecorded segment crashed on air, we had about 10 seconds of dead air, but luckily Nat is an experienced panelist and quickly threw to a song. We decided it would be best for us to play the recording from the start as it was only two minutes in. We cut some songs to run back on time and it was smooth again. Here is a link to the show.

I would love to continue with radio. 3RRR has a great atmosphere and is a Melbourne institution I admire and respect. I would love to be further involved in the station, and I will be signing up for SYN Radio training this week!

RWAV chickas

Room With A View – April 24th

We presented our first show on 3RRR today. The show ran reasonably smoothly, and I am proud of how we managed as a group of first timers. It certainly was daunting before we went live. We all arrived an hour before the show just to be prepared. We had the runsheets printed and highlighted, the files on a usb, the tracks lined up and everything timed. We all felt pretty prepared.

Our first little hiccup was the empty gap between my interview and the recording. There was a quiet intro that might not have picked up on a low fader. I probably should have alerted the panel about that. Next was a bit of dead air as a sponsorship announcement played. I was standing in the greenroom frantically waving my hands for the hosts to talk because nothing was playing. They covered it really well and in the grand scheme of things, I feel as if the 3RRR listeners would be sympathetic to a student group.

an emo amid a group of smiling babes

A few transitions were a little clunky but that comes with practice from the whole team. I was tested when our guest arrived 20 minutes late and 10 minutes before he was live. I had to call a couple of times but he faithfully arrived and apologised. I got him water and chatted with him, told him about the show and the presenters. I wanted it to be a friendly and relaxed atmosphere and I think we did well at creating that.

Room With A View – THRUSHER

I was lucky enough to interview Stass and Alana from the female-focused skate crew Thrusher, who skate around Melbourne encouraging women to jump on board of a skateboard lol. This was my first experience in a radio studio and it’s certainly reflected through the quality of my interview. Something was banging about the studio table, hitting the mic stands, squeaking the chairs, tapping the table and I’m starting to think it was me. It makes an otherwise interesting interview sound super amateur. I got a bit of a spray by a staff member about it. This made listening back definitely the hardest part of the whole process.

Other than the final product, I’m proud of the lead-up to the interview. I managed to keep a consistent dialogue with Thrusher, giving information about the show, setting up times to meet and even organising a time to skate with them. They were enthusiastic and excited guests, and I wish the sound quality of the show had of done them some more justice.

Listen to Thrusher for Room With A View here:

Room With A View – demo recording reflection

Our group (3) began our demo recording process at RRR this Thursday, and I am proud of our final product which I have linked below to SoundCloud. It’s not seamless, but our time management and run-sheet organisation gave us a cohesive piece of work in the end.

My role in the recording was Producer. This involved keeping the segments tight and on schedule, especially the interviews and pre-recorded content. I managed this by tuning a timer on my phone and keeping an eye on the clock. I learnt in the studio that each mic session is shown on a timer on the panel. This saved me when I lost track of the time during an 7 minute interview, as the clock on the panel showed that the mics had been on for 5 minutes.

The brief dead air moment as we loaded the final recorded piece was the only hiccup that was quite noticeable to me. Corey and Jess managed to fill in this time well by repeating the station name and having a brief discussion about the topic. During this we managed to find that the fader was too low to hear the quiet opening of the recorded piece. There was a moment of panic but in actually it was a mere 8 seconds. When we go live we will be more familiar with the levels of the pre-record (if we have any). Hopefully all of our interviews and features will be live-to-air and we can avoid this. Finally, we have discerned that CDs are much easier to manage than an iTunes playlist. The songs stop at the end of play so we don’t manually have to pause the playlist. As a producer, I will take on the responsibility of sourcing our music onto a CD.

Overall I am happy with the professionalism of our group. Everyone was confident going into the studio and with time and practice, we hope it will flow seamlessly.

Sit On My Face; A MUSC production

I was lucky enough to produce some projections for the Melbourne University Shakespeare Company during their ‘Shake It Up’ end of semester performances. I worked with my friends and colleagues Hanna O’Keefe and Amy Spurgeon on their reimagining of Romeo and Juliet; a hyperrealistic take on the young couple’s wedding night titled Sit On My Face. I provided minimalistic looped videos to be projected on a large scale over the performance. These consisted of rosary beads, bloody tears, virgin marys and plenty of body parts. You can watch the trailer below:

Photography 101 Final – everything must go

This is my final photoseries submission for RMIT’s Photography 101 course. This series explores the gentrification of the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne.

Times are changing in Northcote, Thornbury and Preston. The community is reinvigorated with an influx of young creatives opening businesses and profiting off the affordable rental prices in the area. Students, artists, musicians and young entrepreneurs contribute to the rapidly changing neighbourhood, known previously for its elderly Greek and multicultural residents.

Though the suburb receives a much needed facelift, there seems to be a divide between the young and the old. Businesses have foreclosed as the rental price skyrockets to make room for units, boutiques and cafes. This piece aims to explore this changing landscape, a locality spattered with fading businesses advertising the phrase; everything must go.

Media 1: Final Reflection

Hopefully in this written reflection I can not only highlight what I’ve learnt within my first semester at RMIT, but also define learning curves to myself as I write. It’s been a significant change to the learning method I’ve previously experienced in school and university. These often did not stress the importance of consistency and even loyalty to a creative method. I feel through being assessed on our weekly blog posts we are learning to make creativity a habit. Blogging becomes a nagging thought we would feel guilty not to answer. I believe I need this learning strategy to be consistent with my creativity. Hopefully, this practice teaches us to take our creative methods and make them a part of our routine.

The form of my posts has had a transformation too. My earlier posts were almost short essays. I believed my blog to be a strict scholarly writing outlet, where posts were curated on their basis of empirical evidence. Not ultimately a bad thing, just too time consuming for a casual learning blog. As I kept practicing blogging, posts became snappier and strayed from the standard format I’d laid down. I had a Q&A with myself, psychoanalysing my ability to work in a group. I even posted a draft for a poem I’d written. My tone became casual, but sharp enough to clearly argue my point, with the coursework giving way for various discussion points.

A post that stands out to me in this area was spurred by class discussion in a tute. We had turned to the topic of trigger warnings, with some classmates arguing that they enforced censorship and were an unnecessary filter for people with sensitivity issues. I argued that they were a coping mechanism for trauma survivors and allowed their friends and classmates to practice self preservation. I detailed my thoughts in a blog post titled CW: Ignorance; Why do so many people misinterpret trigger warnings?
This post is fairly emotional, and written with a slight undertone of contempt. However, it’s the post that gained the most views on my blog, inside and outside this course. I wished the graphic comic I included had come through clearer. I am still learning the in’s and outs of wordpress.

This semester I’ve had various degrees of hands on experience with media technology. This is an aspect of the course that I’ve enjoyed the most. Camera exercises in class were a favourite. These tasks were also a great way to get to know classmates, including the way they work technically. I realised this when working on this Camera Exercise with classmates earlier this year.
I found that I actively engage better with creative processes when I’m working in a group. For so long I was apprehensive to work in group scenarios due to their bad rap, but as you mature as a practitioner I think it’s important to brand group activities as ‘collaborations’ (if that’s what you need to tell yourself to get through it!) It’s a chance to work with people outside your social circle. It’s a chance to to learn from people who might have a completely opposite creative direction. The PB4 is an obvious example of this. I had this ‘aha’ moment as we delved into our first task together. I chronicled this in a post titled Collabs; rate or hate?

As we know, all learning can’t be from positive experiences. The biggest challenge I faced so far would be during PB3. It was the act of putting myself out there to interview people I knew. I had a huge obstacle to get past which was anxiety of being a pest, or annoying the interviewee. People seem to shut down as soon as a camera is involved. This happened to me a week before PB3 was due. As hard as I tried to make the situation light and comfortable the interviewee wouldn’t participate and I had to scratch the project. I wrote a post about this experience on my blog, when I thought I wouldn’t rebound. Luckily I managed to pull it together.

Finally, my last learning practice I’ve undertaken would be volunteering at Melbourne Queer Film Festival. I wanted to open myself up for experience before applying for work attachments. I know they aren’t the same level of engagement, but it might look good on my resume and I know they offer intern positions next year. I usually don’t put myself out there in the industry, but I had a blast talking to other like minded volunteers and patrons. Plus I was given free tickets to some shows which my friends and I thoroughly enjoyed. Here’s a post about the experience, along with a very dorky instagram.
I’ve attached a picture of my learning graph, hopefully giving this post the visual element it needs.

i don’t have access to a scanner forgive me