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.
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.
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.
After last weeks meeting after the lecture, it was decided that each of us would focus on various Audience related peer reviewed readings. I focused on manga and anime fandom, Georgia on fan pandering and Gracie on negative fandom.
As Georgia was ill for this prac session, Gracie and I shared our annotated bibliographies, thus gaining insights and ideas in how to present our media artefact. It was interesting to note Gracie’s researched revealed ‘three basic models of the audience; audience-as-mass, audience-as-outcome and audience-as-agent.’ (Webster, J 1998, ‘The Audience’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol.42(2), pp.190-207.) The ‘audience-as-agent’ complimented my research on ‘Cosplay’ (Costume Play) which is where fans of manga and anime in Japan and now worldwide dress up as their favourite characters. Adding to this was Gracie’s other paper, ‘Intro to Fan Fiction and Slash’ (Oak, A & Ashley, J 2011, Extrapolation (pre-2012), Vol.52(1), pp.128-130) which looks at fan fiction written by women for women and their sexual relationship within narrative. This dovetails into Sarah Kornfield’s paper on Cross-cultural Cross-dressing: Japanese Graphic Novels Perform Gender in U.S., Critical Studies in Media Communication(2011) which is a also written by women for women. Interesting, is the history of gender-bender themes of men dress up as women from times of Kabuki Theatre to women dressing up as men in Cosplay. Strangely, they are known as the ‘Rotten Girls’.
Furthermore, the negative aspects of fandom are of course trolling, which Gracie has covered extensively in Bishop, J 2014, ‘Representations of ‘trolls’ in mass media communication: A review of media-texts and moral panics relating to ‘internet trolling’ and in my research Fans Behaving Badly: Anime Metafandom, Brutal Criticism, and the Intellectual Fan by authors Kathryn Dunlap and Carissa Wolf which looks at Fandam Wank – online backlash against fans that make supportive comments (and worse) about sexual violence in manga and anime.
What came up in out discussion was the idea of trying to ‘interrupt the debate’ as suggested in the assignment. What came to mind was:
With this in mind we discussed negatives of fandom: trolls, stalking, anonymous trolling, flaming and the positives i.e. Cosplay: one of the most popular fandom events in the world, it invites social interaction, being part of the something, a bit nerdy and it generates huge amount of money. Also, the cultural differences. In Japan, Cosplay devotees can’t wear their costumes outside but in Oz and USA they can.
With this in mind, we tried to break down what kind of artefact we would create and came to the conclusion that it might be a 10 minute documentary or a series of video interviews split between text on a website.
We assigned each other things to action:
Then we decided we would need to:
We also concluded we would need to meet with Georgia to finalise what our artefact would be.
I was ill this day so missed our prac class. Georgia and Grace, however sent me their brainstorm on audience.
Reflection on students work.
Aiden Tai-Jones’s work stood out for me (not in my work group) as it combined the technical, visual and narrative particularly well. It highlighted the fact that my own skills in filming and editing needs a lot of work!
In my group I have chosen to focus on Sarah Brooke’s work, ‘Breaking Bridges’. What I liked about her doco on her friend Andrew Foo was the contrast of using black and white, the use of smoke billowing only in the frame and then the sudden colour when her friend made some changes in his life. I did suggest that she use parkour footage as Andrew was/is an urban acrobat of sorts, but Sarah advised me that he wasn’t in to that. Anyway, very inspiring work.
Discussion of Project 3
We discussed in groups who we might interview. Most people chose their closest friends and I did as well. But then Robbie suggested that I step outside that circle and ask the question ‘Is this subject interesting?’ Well, my friend is interesting but not in a visual sense (he’s a composer).
Eventually, I ended up choosing Adam Hoss, an artist friend of mine where I share my office at J-Studios. He’s a visual sculptor so this would look better on film and I didn’t know all the answers to his life. Thus, it would be a new experience and one also where we get to know each other better.
The issue that was discussed was the curly nature of found footage. It cannot be stock and it must be derived from a copyright free source. www.archive.org was one. It’s okay. Not the greatest resource. Also, because my topic is on an artist I wanted to use artists that had influenced Hoss such as Geiger and Picasso. Alas, despite finding these on www.archive.org I couldn’t use them due to copyright that extends onto the artwork itself. I’ll have to find another tact.
Essentially ever since cinema’s inception, there has been a great question about its complicated nature — answers to which have spawned an even greater debate among film theorists: What makes a film a film? One theory, formulated by Russian filmmaker and “Father of Montage”, Sergei Eisenstein, claims that the footage captured by a camera is nothing more than raw material. Not until that raw material is edited do you have a film — at least according to the Soviet Theory of Montage. John P. Hess of Filmmaker IQ breaks down the history of montage editing in the second video in their History of Cutting series. Check it out after the jump.
The practice of editing footage has been around since 1898 when British filmmaker Robert W. Paul cut together his film Come Along, Do!. However, it wasn’t until filmmaking pioneer and “Father of Film” D.W. Griffith began using editing techniques, such as parallel editing, that the practice became more sophisticated — a discernible film language that later became known as “continuity editing”.
As Hess points out in the video below, Griffith’s approach to editing was more practical, whereas Eisenstein’s approach was more intellectual. To put it another way, continuity editing is structural — it’s meant to get you from point A to point B without wondering where you are. Soviet montage, on the other hand, works to elicit an emotional response from the audience thanks to The Kuleshov Effect.
Check out Filmmaker IQ’s helpful video and learn about the history of Soviet Montage below. Here is a link that Robbie has suggested http://nofilmschool.com/2014/02/video-the-history-of-editing-eisenstein-the-soviet-montage-explained
This week we were shown some experimental video to help us with our next project. Below is ‘Signer’s Suitcase’ or rather, exploding stools (glad I didn’t sit down for that one). What is interesting in the form here, is despite the violence of the chair shooting out of the windows, there is a playful elasticity to it.
Likewise, in the second video, the obnoxious sound of someone snoring is given something it already has…amplification.
Robbie highlighted one of the student’s, Emily Mitresvski, blog, ‘Don’t show what you like, show what you’re like.’ Yes, a point to take note of. It’s easier to point out the things you enjoy but more difficult to demonstrate your personality.
In regards to our second project which is a one minute piece on ourselves using new footage. This includes sound and video. We were advised to upload it up to vimeo and familiarise ourselves with the AV department. Sound footage is to be raw and experimented with.
A daunting to prospect. How do I portray myself within one minute?
Robbie showed us Steve Reich’s Come Out (Original Version), thus introducing the idea of looping sound. It’s a bizarre, nightmarish effect.
Later, our tutor talked about using Edward De Bono’s Six Hats in regards to critiquing each other’s work. Here is a summary of them in terms of colour:
Yellow
A positive, optimistic response/something that works well
Red
Initial ‘feeling’ or hunch, immediate ‘gut reaction’.
Black
Something that doesn’t work
Green
Alternatives, creative ideas sparked by the work.
Maddy’s – wind chimes – delightful but annoying. Like the architecture in the images of her pile of books.
Rose – ‘false perspective’ under a sheet from a great distance made her look like she was a piece of tissue on a pavement
Jess – stop motion – travel articles – gave the work energy, movement.
Oliver – showed his eccentric character through the anachronistic group, LARP.
REFLECTION
It was great to see different perspectives on self portrait. I don’t recall her name but she took a polaroid of herself and filmed it developing. Brilliant!
Seeing other students’ work helps me to loosen up my own style and think in new ways of presenting creatively rather than relying on found footage.
Also, the ‘mind map’ that Robbie provided looks like an ordered way to congeal creative images and text.
Lastly, and which was really useful was Use ‘Lynda’ which is a website on how to use programs.