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PODCAST STUDIO – FINAL REFLECTION

As the only mature age student in the class, I always find the first week of the Media Studios a daunting prospect, namely the age difference and all the youth culture references that go with it. Also, as the oldest person in the group, I’m very much aware that my co-students might think that I may want to dominate the group and often try to take a back seat approach when necessary.

Fortunately, with the students in our Podcast class, most of the time this wasn’t an issue and we found ways to work collegially. San and Tessa did take the lead as they seemed quite well versed with the medium of podcasts (like in setting the appropriate levels on the H4N recorder). We also bounced off ideas and there never seemed a point of conflict. We also had a lot of fun using the shotgun mic for recording sound effects and atmos. Thus, I quite enjoyed doing our first studio task together which was a story on my accident with a tram. I’d cut things before in Audacity but not something as complicated as recording voices from fellow students to fill in for characters. The end result was passable but as the voices didn’t quite match up in their energy or acting ability I had to ditch half of them. Time permitting, we would’ve have scripted out the dialogue. In the end with had ad-hoc recordings.

One of my favourite in-class prac exercises was recording atmos for our piece where we had to produce a story without dialogue. Choosing the horror genre before we set out saved us a lot of time and we aimed at capturing tropes often used in said genre: doors slamming, screams, heavy breathing etc. I was quite happy with my horror piece – the electric hum of an industrial complex, footsteps then the eerie heavy breathing (enhanced by applying backwards loops and reverb) and all ending with a climatic scream and sinister laugh. More challenging was adding dialogue to it and in a master class, Catherine pointed out that I had the levels up to high on the atmos and sound effects as they drowned out the action and dialogue of the protagonist. Looking at my timeline, she also suggested using fewer tracks so I could see where all my sound effect were (I had them on eight tracks and difficult to find).

Putting together the podcast essay (Project Brief 2) was extraordinarily time consuming. I focused on Shit Town, a southern gothic podcast focusing on a town eccentric in a small country town in Alabama. Finding the central thesis took some time and thankfully the issue of ethics was one I could research. While I think my script was good (bookending the characters talking about the maze) my delivery sounded wooden and stilted and overall sounded somewhat boring (to me at least!). I think I was trying to sound like a radio journalist rather than myself although that in itself is difficult. Though I did numerous takes, practice and learning to relax would solve my awkward voice.

Project Brief 3, the video essay, was far the most challenging task. Our group (Natalie, Armin and Jennifer), decided to go for the web series ‘Bruce’. Making the essay visually interesting was not an easy fix so I thought an interview with the director and the writers would flesh out more of the underlying reasons why they had released the show youtube as they are no financial returns. After all, they’d already had huge success with Wilfred which had been remade in the USA and starring Elijah Wood. I set up the interviews – the director Tony Rogers was more than happy to meet us while the writers were slow to respond but I did manage to interview them over the phone.

As ‘Bruce’ is about the first convicts in Australia, Catherine suggested we interview the director, Tony Rogers, at the Polly Woodside. Tony was most obliging and he met us on a horribly windy rainy day. We started filming but then we realised we had some technical issues – the mic wasn’t picking up any sound and both the batteries were nearly flat. We had to reshoot, charge up the batteries and what’s more, I had to reformat the footage because it had been filmed in MP4 into mp4 before I could send it off to Jennifer and Natalie to edit. This took several hours! What we learned from this experience is to not to use Building 8 video cameras (they’re crap!) and to check everything is working before we begin. Another snag that we had was that Tony, who had promised he had all the time in the world, suddenly didn’t and we had to make do with the footage that we had. Natalie and Jennifer did the best they could with the available footage though the background music, in the end, did need to be taken out completely in parts, though this never eventuated by the time we had our assessment.

The last project, PB 3, pitching a podcast series, was extremely valuable. I’ve been writing a children’s novel for the past three years Invasion of the Bottom Snatchers and so the medium of a podcast was perfect and easy to condense. I pitched my idea to our guests, Bec Hornsby from 3RRR and Steiner Ellingsen from Melbourne Webfest. They were both very enthusiastic about it, which was quite heartening. Bec suggested I approach the ABC while Steiner wanted me to make my show into an animation (he was quite animated about it himself!).

What’s also been mind-expanding are the podcasts. I wouldn’t have normally listened to podcasts if I hadn’t done this course. Some of my favourites were My Dad Wrote a Porno, Wireless Nights by Javis Cocker, Shit Town and Serial. I particularly liked Wireless Nights as I felt like I had been transported into some ethereal dream: Cocker’s hypnotic voice addressing an imaginary character that remains ambiguous – is it really a character or is he addressing us? He chooses to interview people who are ordinary but illuminates their extraordinariness. He is the story while at the same time not being it. Brilliant!

My Dad Wrote a Porno showed how an informal podcast can be – 3 friends drinking wine around a table while Jamie Morton treats them with cringe-worthy passages of his father’s erotic novel. I liked its relaxed conversational tone –a real conversation but entertaining nonetheless.

Finally, what I learned in the podcast studio overall, apart from the technical aspects such as framing, lighting, microphone placement, working in group and story development, was the potential of stories and how they can be told in interesting ways. Both mediums, visual and aural, play to their own strengths, though I would say I prefer podcasting as our imaginations can take us to places that filmed visual imagery cannot. The podcast studio has given me confidence where there had been none before in this field.

WEEK 6 – Sebastiao Salgado doco, discussion in pairs of photo essay

Sebastiao Salgado

Today we watched the Wim Wender’s documentary about Brazilian/Magnum photographer Sebastiao Salgado, The Salt of the Earth (2014).

The documentary resonated with me because I have to travelled to some of the places he’d photographed such as the Congo, though I’d been there before the Hutus arrived enmasse in 1994 (I was there in 1990). Kasingani, Goma…towns that I had stayed in that would later be places of slaughter.

‘Each man had gold in their souls’

While Salgado captures extraordinary shots such as Brazilian gold mine workers, the famines that gripped Ethiopia, the atrocities of the Yugoslavian war or the horrors of the Rwandan slaughter, he is also able to capture the humanity, a topic that became more of a travail of his soul.

Some are reminiscent of Steve McCurry’s work but I would hazard that Salgado got there first.

It was interesting how it was his wife that was the one that was the catalyst for his career after coming home one day with a camera for her studies. Even more surprising that she stuck with him through the years where he disappeared for years at a time.

Damaged by the horror he’d witnessed, he went back to Brazil and on his father’s farm he and wife planted millions of trees, thus recovering the depleted ecosystem. This adventure led him to focus on a new subject Genesis where he focused on the environment.

I really got a lot of this documentary. It really covered not only his life of a social photographer but his own spirit. It gave me a sense of hope about reversing the damage done to the planet.

Brian’s notes:

After you’ve seen the film read this short extract from Susan Sontag’s landmark book, On Photography.

If the film and Salgado intrigues you, it is worth watching an earlier documentary,  Spectre of Hope (here on youtube) where he talks with John Berger about his photographs (particularly the work on globalisation and migration). Berger puts forward an interesting and perhaps optimistic viewpoint about why such photos of suffering are important and necessary and how they work.

Photo essay

Having been allocated to work with Taylor, we both set out appropriate subjects for each other. Taylor has a friend whose father runs an antique shop. He restores furniture so I hope to get some interesting shots of him planing a chair, his shoes covered in splots of varnish while he shuffles around the curls of shaved timber legs.

Taylor also has a DJ as an alternative but he was not sure how well that would work out as it wouldn’t be as visually interesting.

For Taylor, I suggested an artist, Hoss Ayes who makes glass and steel sculptures. This would be very visually interesting as he has a big workshop. My second choice was a Nepalese friend who works as a carer but we worried about the issues surrounding consent.

Photo Essay Prac – 7 Images

We looked at various photo essays in class such as ‘How other half live by Jacob Riis (1890), ‘Country Doctor in Life’ Eugene W. Smith and 100photos.time.com.

We looked at how they captured the human condition, that the aim should be to leave the viewer with a particular emotion. Also to consider was narrative structure – beginning, obstacles, conflict, protagonists interacting and resolution.

Other photographers worth investigating are Cindy Sherman, Tracey Moffat, Gregory Crewdson (interwebs), Melanie Pullen. Furthermore, there is a great book to check out: Storytelling with Photographs: How to create a photo essay (book)

With that in mind our group went out and photographed The Exchange. Ours was about friends that bump into each other. One of them has a fatal communicable disease which she passes on to her friend and they both very quickly die within 7 frames. Fun!

 

 

FINAL REFLECTION

Before I’d began the course, I’d already had some experience in making short films and had worked in the industry crewing on television commercials, so the prospect of having to use my own initiative, collaborate or work alone, was not daunting at all. Most of my creative practice
has been self-produced so self-learning was already well-established.Having said that, I did need help and I had to lean on the ‘digital natives’ in my class to help figure out this new fangled thing called ‘blogging’ (in my day we used to use ‘austromancy’ if we wanted to be heard).

Most of the time, the lectures were fascinating and helped me break down the rigid forms of my own thinking (e.g. semiotics, audience and technology vs culture), thus sparking seemingly random thoughts to enter my consciousness like, ‘Why haven’t they invented the Darth Vader vacuum cleaner, yet?’ or ‘Why do towels have so much power?’ or ‘Do snails cry?’ (Mmm. Perhaps semiotics is a bad for me…).
Anyway, I did struggle with the new terminology and concepts in the readings and it required me to think much deeper. But the good thing was I was able to adopt these theories into in my projects.
In terms of how I learn, I would say that most of the time I do it by trial and error, that it is by ‘doing’. I don’t mind being thrown in the deep end like when I had to interview and film at the same time for Project 4. This was difficult because I was roaming around the Melbourne Convention Centre, interviewing subjects while trying to keep them lined up in the viewfinder. Adding to this, I had to come up to speed with the latest version of iMovie (I’d just upgraded from my 2008 MacBook for this course) and re-learn how to edit (why they keep moving things around is beyond me!)
While I’m quite happy to figure out things for myself, I have found being in groups to be quite helpful particularly where someone shows you how to do something (if it’s not too complicated). Furthermore, groups are great for sparking ideas, seeking ways to improve your work, overcoming obstacles together and arriving at solutions quickly and effectively. This is why I liked the Practical Classes, despite my own sense of isolation of being much older than everyone else. It was when we were assigned collaborators that I finally felt I was able to share because we had the commonality of working on the same goal.

What does stand out for me the most about this course and that I hadn’t realised before is that I am a perfectionist when it comes to filming. I spent inordinate amount of time on The Whoniverse, crunching, tweaking it, showing it to friends for feedback, re-editing it because a frame didn’t have quite the right rhythm or the intonation in my voice over was not as good as I liked it to be (don’t get me started about how many times I re-recorded my voice!).
So, in the end, a rewarding semester and look forward to the studios next term.

Lastly, here is my Learning Graph.  I couldn’t help but be reminded the film ‘Dead Poets Society where the students are asked to graph their understanding of poetry.

graph

 

THE FIVE CURATED POSTS

Practical 1, Week 3, Six Thinking Hats

I think this helped free me and others in adopting Edward De Bono’s process for evaluation from our egos. We were able to engage and ‘role play’ if you like as the ‘good cop’ and ‘bad cop’. It helped narrow down what exactly we were critiquing without offending the subject. My only complaint here really is that we weren’t critical enough of each other’s work.

Furthermore, it was great to see other student’s work because it taught me out different ways of communicating visually on the same topic and to see how other are way more creative than me in other areas (I’m more of a narrative artist).

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/russell-mcgilton/2015/03/16/practical-1-3rd-work/

 Lecture, Week 7, Semiotics

I enjoyed this lecture as it opened my mind to how we view and assemble images into meaning. I’d never thought of this before and it opened up a new creative possibilities. For example, a towel is just a towel, right? However, move it to a public swimming pool and lie it on a banana lounge and that space is owned by you. You have ‘signified’ ownership, thus created meaning. I thought I could make a comic video of someone doing this then going out in the city and put that same towel on different objects and claim ‘territory’. So in the end, as something as dry as semiotics actually became grist for my artist’s mill.

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/russell-mcgilton/2015/04/21/126/

 Lecture, Week 9, Audience

The lecture on audience helped make form out of the mess. It was illuminating to see audience not as passive but also active participators. This information was invaluable in looking at our project on fandom and its numerous factions and players. I’d never heard of the term Cosplay until I’d actually started this course and they subcultures within it nor of Slash Fans or Fan Wank (odd to see that in academic papers). This lecture helped add weight to our research and the shape of our documentary which was the best thing I’ve done on this course. It was a joy to see it all come together.

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/russell-mcgilton/2015/05/05/lecture-week-9-audience/

 Project 3

What I really liked about this project was apart from using the HD cameras (excellent resolution) I was able to learn more about my friend, Adam Hoss. It was like a therapy session as we sat and talked and this wonderful ‘light bulb’ moment, this realisation of a part of his life he’d never connected before. I enjoyed being the facilitator. What’s more, I got to learn iMovie more, though it is a frustrating program to use, and was able to implement some of the editing suggestions talked about in Blood in the Gutter.

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/russell-mcgilton/projects/

 Lecture, Week 3, Media is a public practice

I may not have attended this lecture but I did get a lot out of the reading, The ethical stance and its representation in the expressive techniques of documentary filming: a case study of Tagged Kay Donovan.

Ethics in documentary filmmaking is problematic as the lines can be so easily blurred. It’s not a conversation I’ve had with myself but I have seen numerous examples where these have been flouted. I also had never heard of the term ‘axiographic space’ that is ‘the Gaze’, that positioning of the camera can change meaning or threaten the ethical position of the director. This has something that has been whirring over in my mind since I read it and if I ever do make a documentary I will consider Donovan’s ethical approach.

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/russell-mcgilton/2015/03/16/lecture-week-3/

 

LECTURE [Week 12]

Media Materialism

Media Materialism is a way of looking at technology from the past, now and the future and how it relates to culture.

Technology, Technique and Culture

‘Technology is the consolidation of knowledge, processes, skills and products whose aim is to control and transform’. Murphy and Potts

Technology

  • Consolidation – tools, hammers, iphones, steps
  • Processes – microwaves, text messages, code in computer.
  • Skills – bricklaying, piloting, programming

Therefore technology is not just a tool, ‘it involves cultural values, ideologies and eithical concerns and it also shaped by political and economic developments.’

Technique

These are skills that are uniquely human like using a screw driver, mental process like mathematics. It is traditional in that it can be passed down through the generations.

Culture

  • Identifying subgroups with the main culture eg. Youth culture, Italian culture, hackers etc.
  • Characterising humanity. How we operate as a species.
  • Creative expression such as art, film, books, music.

Does technology dictate culture and society as it progress?

Technology determines its own path. Eg. Bronze Age, Steam Age, Technology Age. It also it affects our destiny and the way we engage with the world.

With the invention of the camera, one film maker, Dziga Verto, saw it as a natural extension of thought it was an extension of his eye, brain and body. Here we have his film ‘Man with the Movie Camera’ by Dziga Verto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97Pa0ICpn8

Competing view is cultural materialism, in that we determine how we use technology. For example, the NRA claims that ‘people kill people, guns don’t kill people.’

Here is a video of technological materialism being re-determined by ‘culture’ (humanity).

TASK – BLOG O’CLOCK

Dan asked us to have a moment of stream of consciousness and ‘blog away’ by choosing a topic. I chose ‘Humanity is in charge of its own future…’

Not really. Look at the planet. It is going to hell in a hand basket despite knowing the consequences of our anthropogenic pollution that is melting icecaps, fouling the water, warming the planet, killing what we so need – life.

We’re too diverse. We are beset by short term needs and goals, those few in power fight and destroy humanity and the environment, countries, governments, social cohesion all for the bottom line. Nothing is going to change while we have governments being corrupted by big business and the selfishness that goes with it.

It could, however, if humanity could unify and agree it could be a wonderful future. Imagine, free renewable energy for everyone, integrated transportation, off the grid systems, companies that gave back to the community, built better worlds or mandated that the environment was a number one priority.

The rest of the lecture was about our final semester submission. We must talk about our top five posts and provide a final reflection.

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989).

 REFLECTION

I’d never thought of technology in this way and its forms. I’ve always taken the view that technology will determine our future, in particular, the militarisation of artificial intelligence. That may be another argument to explore because we’re not far off from having a consolidated tool being able to use its skills and processes to determine our culture as well as its own. I was moved by the video Kara (above) ‘I want to live.’  Perhaps we will have a symbiotic relationship where we become part of technology and it becomes part of us.
I do relate to the above quote by Beckett. It is something I’ve been doing all my life with all my new art projects.

PRACTICAL 1 [Week 12]

The last tutorial for this semester.

I showed the edited clip to the class and Robbie suggested that I change the titles as they’re too similar to Georgia’s. He pointed out that each clip should look unique to each aspect of audience we are exploring. Also, he thought it was a bit long. I shall cut and change titles and see how that looks.

Others groups had some very promising work…some a little short but anyway. What a great creative bunch.

We have agreed we should get it done by this Friday.

PRACTICAL 1 [Week 11]

Robbie was away so our group compared notes. I had a whole stack of footage to show which had come out really well. Alas, not much of the Whovians were into online forums or trolling for that matter. So not much material for our team to get their teeth into.

Georgia had created a snapshot of web clippings to show the use of online forums and comments. Pretty nifty!

Also, we have discovered there is a lot of Doctor Who academic papers which I have been sharing with the others and vice versa. So we’ve dropped the original manga and anime idea in favour of this.

Will have a rough edit for them next week. Will send some footage to group to edit what I have.

LECTURE [Week 11]

THE REMIX & THE GLITCH

Lecturer Dan Bins

‘There is no such thing as an original idea.’
Walter Benjamin, Work of Art in Mechanical Reproductio

Walter Benjamin was a German academic and escaped the Nazi’s only to commit suicide later. He has written the seminal book, Work of Art in Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin raises the issue that with the emergence of changing technologies (film, sound) it popularised ideas and spread them around the world. Benjamin considered how reproducing something changes it.

‘Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be… The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.’ Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Without the source the copy loses all meaning and authenticity.

‘… the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.’ Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Today we have a multitude of ‘authentic’ media experiences, particularly social media. It adds another layer to our experience of the world to perhaps a pure ‘Pure Aurora’ as Dan proposed, a more authentic space than the real world, that we get a sense of someone through their engagement with social media. Is this a more pure mode of engagement?

REMIX THEORY

The aesthetic of sampling by Eduardo Navas is a seamless music such as experience ‘Beat Matching’ a high hat beat. DJ was the true remixer and sampler, using two turntables, slip cueing and amplifying. Then home computers changed the mashup experience. Girl Talk music, is an artist who samples and remixes to form a totally new music track.

TASK

Listen to the Girl Talk mix and guess as many samples as possible:

  • DMC
  • The Cure
  • Duran Duran
  • Jackson 5
  • Salt and Pepper
  • Sonic Youth
  • Led Zepplin
  • Beatles
  • INXS
  • Mash up Break downs.
  • Pop Art

Glitch Art

The digital fragmentation that occurs in digital forms are accentuated and/or exploited to find their own form or protocol.

Glitch art is often about relaying the membrane of the normal, to create a new protocol after shattering an earlier one. The perfect glitch shows how destruction can change into the creation of something original. Once the glitch is understood as an alternative mode of representation or a new language, its tipping point has passed and the essence of its glitch-being is vanished. The glitch is no longer an art of rejection, but a shape or appearance that is recognized as a novel form (of art). Artists that work with glitch processes are therefore often hunting for a fragile equilibrium; they search for the point when a new form is born from the blazed ashes of its precursor.’  Video Vortex Reader 2, p.341

REFLECTION

I didn’t realise the extent of mixing and sampling or how much you could change something into a completely new sounding track. It’s an interesting proposition that Benjamin raises about the authenticity of a something that has been reproduced. For example, listening to a recording of a live band is not really the same as attending the event. So, have you had a less authentic experience? I would counter what you haven’t experienced you can’t miss and with the reproduction you can project or find meaning to the music.

PRACTICAL 1 [Week 10]

So far I’m not having much luck with locating a Cosplayer. One that I did have lined up fell through and the only other one is in Brisbane doesn’t want to be interviewed online.

However, just now I have received an event message from a Doctor Who event, ‘The Whoniverse’. I’ve advised our team that I will film it, hopefully catching Cosplayers. Alas, none of them can join me so it’s me alone with a camera and mine and their questions.

Grace has set up a Tumblr account and given us passwords and Georgia has shared documents in the google drive. All seems to be going swimmingly thus far.

Lecture [Week 10]

Institutions. What are they?

We can see institutions in a number of ways. For example, the police drama The Wire is comprised of institutions such as police, gangs, unions, city council and journalism. But there is also a well known institution that is used all around the world. That is the institution of marriage. Or ‘marri-arge’ to quote Little Britain. It is:

  • governed by rules and expectations – faithful, values, loyalty
  • Framed by a legal document and regulation
  • Religion – another institution enmeshed with it.
  • Widely accepted and practiced
  • Cultural norms and rules
  • Ceremony/rituals/symbols – rings
  • Witnessing
  • Government intervening, eclipsing the church’s role.
  • Symbology – blue dress, white dress, tossing of bouquet
  • Performed in cultural narratives – romantic love, kinship – family starts, extended with relatives and reproducing
  • Wedding Industry – Commercial industry – photography, reception centres.

Apart from this relationship contract, there are the more obvious examples like Media Institutions.  These can include:

  • ABC
  • The News
  • Journalism
  • Newscorp
  • Cinema
  • Broadcast TV
  • Community Radio
  • PBS, RRR

Then there’s the Contemporary Institutions like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, Newscorp, and other social networking sites.

REFLECTIONS

It was interesting to note that schools were noted as institutions by Michel Foucault, so this idea that institutions are about social control is a salient point. Do people act better or worse once the context is removed? It can be, as much as control, the glue that keeps people together eg. work friends.
Institutions also carry status like the BBC or Guardian or a low status like The Herald Sun or The Courier. Institutions give a legitimacy/illegitimacy and authority/no authority depending on how they are perceived by people outside and inside them. For example, Harvard University as opposed to going to Footscray University. One carries more academic status than the other.