The entire idea central to this intrigues me. This reality that we, the audience; the listeners; the viewers; the congregation of consumers, have a voice. Thanks, internet, and your various pathways and passages to greater social communication.
“The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all.” — (Rosen, J. (2006) The People Formerly Known as the Audience)
Of course, in 2006 this was more or less teetering on the outer edges of the web 2.0; Rosen had posted this just a few months succeeding the creation of Twitter. At this point, Facebook (after only just dropping the infamous ‘The’) was well on its way to global domination, with the likes of other (soon to be giants) YouTube, Flickr and Tumblr very much on the same path. Having grown up alongside this expansion of social media and the rising (at least, dominant) age of the internet, of course it’s hard to imagine anything else; when Brain spoke of a broadcast era and the initial introduction of rap music into the world my mind races. To have seen (and maybe welcomed) the beginnings of the things we now take for granted, or those that exist as background noise among the ventures of everyday life, would have been something of a glorious experience; although I always find myself stumped on the question of whether or not it would have been as powerful or as interesting as it is in retrospect. Today, when things happen, do we/how will we know what’s going to stick (part of this virally-oriented world we live in) and become this ‘big’ thing (like the creation of hip-hop, or colour film, or even film with sound!), and sometimes I wonder if all those moments have been and gone. Is it just the retrospective element that make these things as exciting to me as they are? Would they have been as exciting if I had witnessed them firsthand? Ah, the beauty of life.
“You don’t own the eyeballs. You don’t own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don’t control production on the new platform, which isn’t one-way. There’s a new balance of power between you and us.” — (Rosen, J. (2006) The People Formerly Known as the Audience)
This week’s lectorial, as you all know, touched on collaboration as the driving force in the media industry today; it’s the ability to manage teamwork and, as creativity expert Keith Sawyer puts it in this week’s first chunk of reading (Group Genius: The creative powers of collaboration, pg. 39-57), enact group flow. The idea of flow, a term coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly to describe a ‘particular state of heightened consciousness’, and known colloquially as being in the zone, is built upon by Sawyer in his writings. He expands the singular flow into a grander group flow; ‘a collective state of mind’, ‘a peak experience, a group performing at its top level of ability’ (he also bases much of his research on jazz musicians of which I have a growing interest thanks to my PB3 interviewee, so I can dig this). Csikszentmihaly records four important characteristics of one’s environment that determine whether they are likely to get into flow (which I will list for future reference):
First, and most important, they’re doing something where their skills match the challenge of the task (is the challenge is too great for their skills, they become frustrated; but if the task isn’t challenging enough, they simply grow bored).
Second, flow occurs when the goal is clear;
and third, when there’s constant and immediate feedback about how close you are to achieving that goal.
Fourth, flow occurs when you’re free to concentrate fully on the task.
while Sawyer devises a comprehensive list of the 10 Conditions for Group Flow, from The Group’s Goal to The Potential of Failure (again, listed for my future reference, and because I feel like they’re fairly useful guidelines):
The Group’s Goal
The key to improvised innovation is managing a paradox: establishing a goal that provides a focus for the team–just enough of one so that the team members can tell when hey move closer to a solution–but one that’s open-ended enough for problem-finding creativity to emerge.
Competition, mixed with loosely specified goals, can be just the right recipe for group genius.
Problem-solving creative tasks (if the goal is well understood and can be explicity stated) VS problem-finding creativity (the group members have to “find” and define the problem as they’re solving it)–the two extremes.
Close Listening
Group flow is more likely to emerge when everyone is fully engaged–what improvisers call “deep listening,” in which members of the group don’t plan ahead what they’re going to say, but their statements are genuinely unplanned responses to what they hear.
Innovation is blocked when one (or more) of the participants already has a preconceived idea of how to reach the goal.
Complete Concentration
Creativity is associated with low-pressure work environments–even though many people think they’re more creative when they work under high pressure.
In group flow, the group is focused on the natural progress emerging from members’ work, not on meeting a deadline set by management. Flow is more likely to occur when attention is centered on the task.
Being In Control
People get into flow when they’re in control of their actions and their environment. This implies that groups won’t be in flow unless they’re granted autonomy by senior management.
Group flow increases when people feel autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Unlike in solo flow, control results in a paradox because participants must feel in control, yet at teh same time they must remain flexible, listen closely, and always be willing to defer to the emergent flow of the group.
Blending Egos
Group flow is the magical moment when it all comes together, when the group is in sync and the performers seem to be thinking with one mind.
In group flow, each person’s idea builds on those just contributed by his or her colleagues.
Equal Participation
Group flow is more likely to occur when all participants play an equal role in the collective creation of the final performance. Group flow is blocked if anyone’s skill level is below that of the rest of the group’s members; all must have comparable skills. It’s also blocked when one person dominates, is arrogant, or doesn’t think anything can be learned from the conversation.
Managers can participate in groups in flow, but they have to participate in the same way as everyone else by listening closely and granting autonomy and authority to the group’s emergent decision process.
Familiarity
Group flow is more likely to happen when players know the performance styles of their teammates and opponents. When members of a group have been together for a while, they share a common language and a common set of unspoken understandings, aka tacit knowledge.
Group flow requires that the members share an understanding of the group’s goals (because clear goals are so important to flow); they need to share enough communicational style to response mutually to each other (because immediate feedback is critical to flow).
But if group members are too similar, flow becomes less likely because the group interaction is no longer challenging. If everyone functions identically and shares the same habits of communicating, nothing new and unexpected will ever emerge because group members don’t need to pay close attention to what the others are doing, and they don’t continually have to update their understanding of what is going on.
Familiarity helps more for problem-solving creativity. If there’s a specific goal and the participants don’t share enough common knowledge, the group will have difficulty accomplishing its goal.
Problem-finding groups are more likely to be in group flow when there’s more diversity; problem solving groups are often more effective when more tacit knowledge is shared.
Communication
Group flow requires constant communcation. Everyone hates to go to useless meetings; but the kind of communcation that leads to group flow often doesn’t happen in the conference room. Instead, it’s more likely to happen in freewheeling spontaneous conversations.
Moving It Forward
Group flow flourishes when people follow the first rule of improvisation acting: “Yes, and . . .” Listen closely to what’s being said; accept it fully; and then extend and build on it.
The Potential for Failure
Group flow happens when many tensions are in perfect balance: the tensions between convention and novelty; between structure and improvisation; between the critical, analytical mind and the freewheeling, outside-the-box mind; between listening to the rest of the group and speaking out in individual voices.
The paradox of improvisation is that it can happen only when there are rules and the players share too much cohesion, the potential for innovation is lost.
His writings on group flow tend to pose it as a thing of spontaneity, something that requires the group to be on their feet at all times or as he calls it ‘improvised innovation’. Yet the guidelines he gives are so specific that for me, it seems hard to imagine what group flow is at all. All of these things must fall directly in place, ‘you can’t have this’ followed by ‘you’ve gotta have this’ followed by ‘you need this to have this‘. I don’t know, maybe if flow didn’t sound like the wrong word or some extra-sensory state maybe I would be more understanding.
I’m a bit of a movie buff so most of this is background noise for me, but Rabiger definitely writes in such a carefree way that it’s hard not to enjoy. He speaks on behalf of documentary filmmaking, but speaks in a way that it encapsulates that of regular film too.
Again, Word is dead for me so this post will consist of both note-like sentences and blog-worthy evaluation.
Plot is the organisation of situations, circumstances, and events that pressure a story’s characters.
“…the most fascinating characters often those contesting–heroically, and sometimes unsuccessfully– the way things simply are.” Think Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976), think the Crimson Bolt in Super (2010), think Frances Halliday in Frances Ha (2012). Think from the eccentric satirisation suburban/urban life of The ‘Burbs (1989) or Pain & Gain (2013) to a more understated Mean Streets (1973); the mundane re-imagined as the extraordinary. This is the basis for documentary.
A dramatic hero may be flawed and even pitiable. He or she may contest the way things are from outrage, self-righteousness, ignorance, innocent, obstinacy, conceit, or a host of other reasons.
Written more accessibly and in a more relaxed tone than the work of McKee (for the better), Rabiger knows his words aren’t to be taken as scripture and notes them as such, as opposed to the oppressive scribblings of the former. He seems less of the shouty guy from Adaptation. than McKee could ever try to be.
The three-act structure is an invaluable tool for organising story material. Apply it on a micro or a macro level–that is, to a single scene of the way scenes flow in an extended story.
The dramatic curve is an invaluable tool when you direct because with it you can interpret the unfolding action you’re filming and decide how to shoot it.
Rabiger’s point about how editing is really the “second chance to direct” struck me as particularly interesting, and a point which I will likely hold onto for future work. Apply the dramatic curve to your ideas, and use this judgement when shooting the action.
Pinpoint the apex or crisis of a scene, and the rest of the dramatic convention arranges itself naturally before and after the peak of the curve.
“Indeed, you find this escalation of pressure up to a crisis then lowering down to resolution in songs, symphonies [etc]…because it is as fundamental to human existence as… sex.” Love your work, Rabiger.
A beat is when someone in a scene registers an important and irreversible change. Often it’s when participants realise they have lost or gained an important goal. A beat signals a new phase of action, so you must film them astutely since they are your film’s most intense and dramatic moments.
I like McKee. I mean, I don’t hate him. When going through this reading on the train back to Melbourne last night, I showed a friend what we were given this week and he told me he had a speaker come in and give in a similar low-down on the do’s and don’ts of screenwriting. Jokingly, I asked “did he say no deus ex machinas?”, referencing this scene from (the Jonze/Kaufman masterpiece) Adaptation. (2002):
And surprised was I ever when today it was revealed that this lecturer character is in fact the writer of (one of) this week’s readings (he was with us another week too if I remember correctly). The man, the myth, the legend: Robert McKee, played so spectacularly by Brian Cox (that sweetly serenading voice: also see, Zodiac (2007)).
McKee, of course, makes some good points, but with this piece having been published in 1997 I fear that it may be a little (maybe a lot) out of date; the ever-changing face of cinema, and the ever-changing faces of cinephiles seem to be beginning to reject some points McKee so powerfully asserts. Statements following lines such as “A story cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn’t want anything, who cannot make decisions” come off as slightly ignorant as many films have found their protagonist at a perpetually conflicted state, and it is this state which draws the drama in, sometimes in richer form. Obviously these notes are meant to be taken as scripture but McKee seems to be writing off any opposition to this template too quickly. It is the films which push these guidelines to the limits, or completely shatter them that stand out as unique, glorious in their doing so. But I guess you have to know the rules to break them.
McKee’s entire thesis strikes be as odd considering he never penned anything of worth (a few episodes of TV??) with such an extensive knowledge on the inner workings of narrative. McKees reluctance to refer to the protagonist as anything but ‘he’ is also odd, because clearly by 1997 a plethora of women-driven films had been put to screen by then (from The Wizard of Oz (1939) to Safe (1995)). Maybe I’m just being pedantic.
Also, my Office subscription ran out, so I guess my notes will be taken here for now. What lazily follows is a list of the ‘big’ (or at least bold) points McKee makes, saved for future use:
Two ends of a story: the substance V audience’s reaction to this substance
Protagonist: that who allows the audience to slip into a subjective and highly imaginative POV, to understand the substance of the story and how it performs
Single character
Plural-Protagonist: duo, trio, etc. possibly an entire class of people. Two conditions: all individuals in the group share the same desire, and in the struggle to achieve this desire they mutually suffer and benefit. Motivation, action and consequence are communal.
Multiprotagonist: characters pursue separate and individual desires, suffering and benefiting independently. eg. The Breakfast Club, Robert Altman (finally a mention).
THE PROTAGONIST
A PROTAGONIST is a willful character.
The PROTAGONISThas a conscious desire.
The PROTAGONIST may also have a self-contradictory unconscious desire.
The PROTAGONIST has the capacities to pursue the Object of Desire convincingly.
The PROTAGONIST must have at least a chance to attain his desire.
The PROTAGONIST has the will and capacity to pursue the object of his conscious and/or unconscious desire to the end of the line, to the human limit established by setting and genre.
A STORY must build to a final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another.
The PROTAGONIST must be empathetic; he may or may not be sympathetic.
THE FIRST STEP
In story, we concentrate on that moment, and only that moment, in which a character takes an action expecting a useful reaction from the world, but instead the effect of his action is to provoke forces of antagonism. The world of the character reacts differently than expected, more powerfully than expected, or both.
THE WORLD OF A CHARACTER
“A character’s world can be imagined as a series of concentric circles surrounding a core of raw identity or awareness, circles that mark the levels of conflict in a character’s life.”
“The inner circle or level is his own self and conflicts arising from the elements of his nature: mind, body emotion.”
“The second circle inscribes personal relationships, unions of intimacy deeper than the social role.”
“The third circle marks the level of extra-personal conflict–all the sources of antagonism outside the personal: conflict with social institutions and individuals.”
THE GAP
STORY is born in that place where the subject and objects realms touch.
ON RISK
The measure of a value of a character’s desire is in direct proportion to the risk he’s willing to take to achieve it; the greater the value, the greater the risk.
I’m intrigued how a wide majority media (texts) seem to be obsessed with pinning down what various aspects of media actually are, as opposed to other subjects (eg. science-y stuff) where what’s written in the textbook is the one and only truth. Media practitioners seem to be publishing and publishing days on end in attempts to uncover the (hidden) meanings of the practice, showing that the enterprise is still very much a work in progress, full speed ahead. emphasis on ‘the role that media plays in our lives’—undoubtedly the overall aim of the subject—is played out in almost all readings. Perpetually meta in the sense that not only can the study of media itself can be read as a ‘text’, but also the fact that it uses texts to understand how to read texts—all presenting their own version of reality, a kind of bumbling, cyclical philosophical mess that and I’d be lying if I said I don’t enjoy it.
Alan McKee in this week’s reading (‘Beginner’s Guide to Textual Analysis’) aims to open the eyes of the regular person to the inner workings of textual analysis, providing guidelines on the do’s and don’ts underpinning the underpinning methodology itself. McKee asserts that there is no single ‘correct’ interpretation of any text; as soon as we describe a something as a ‘text’ we are implying a certain approach to, and way of making sense of, it and no single rendition can entirely define the text’s meaning. ‘Never claim that a text is an ‘accurate’ or ‘inaccurate’ representation, [and] never claim that it ‘reflects reality’, he continues, cautious of the fact that ‘every version of ‘reality’ that we might measure out text against is always—inescapably—another representation’. Just ‘another text’.
Context is key: ‘you can do nothing with a text until you establish its context’, boasts McKee. The context is the thing that grounds the text in interpretation; alter or remove this context and interpretation reshuffles. Context also exists and an inescapable constraint, we are unable to describe a text without implicitly putting it into context (McKee gives the example of an indigenous Australian video being described as ’empty’ or ‘shots of landscape’ and this putting the video in a Western context).
McKee’s piece was a little easier on the mind than the accompanying ‘Looking at Photographs’ by Victor Burgin (maybe my 9am sleep-deprived brain was working against me at that point), and although I extracted some especially thorough points on photographic analysis, the ideologically-comprehensive, aggressive and loaded style of writing he employs causes my head to collapse to the point of implosion. Burgin’s writings on Jarches’s photography (General Wavell watches his gardener at work, 1941) struck me as particularly fascinating, the ideas of ‘paternalistic imperialism’ and ‘vis-a-vis photography (and how its dominant alternative is voyeurism (a particular fascination of one Brian De Palma (who is a particular fascination of one Samuel Harris))).
“…work in semiotics has shown that a photograph is not to be reduced to ‘pure form’, not ‘window on the world’, nor is it a gangway to the presence of the author…the photograph is a place of work, a structured and structuring space within which the reader deploys, and is deployed by, what codes he or she is familiar with in order to make sense.”—Intriguing work.
I feel as if I need to email this to the people who ran my media class in high school, they could learn a little something something from these writings. In particular, Gauntlett’s citations from anthropologist Tim Ingold strikes me as essential:
→ “it’s about learning with media, rather than learning about media”
To put it simply, the subject of media was not run particularly well at my school, which could be attributed to a range of problems. Deemed school-wide as the bludge subject, classes were often packed with students looking for some free time (an excuse to play game on their laptops) or an easy workload (extensions were given out at a consistent rate). Teachers possessed a distinct lack of authority in the class (in year 10 we had our own fight room in the back (see embedded), and once centered a whole class around our own stand-up comedy show) and struggled to engage the class in all possible areas.
I once got 90% for an assignment I didn’t submit. The end of year exam in year 11 had a crossword on the back for students who finished early, and at that, the crossword didn’t have even half the words in it that you had to find. I dropped the subject the following year. But I suppose in a way it wasn’t entirely the teachers’ fault. The content of the course was tedious, usually a single OneNote page distributed by an illiterate email, more often than not a fill-in-the-blanks surrounding media techniques (media techniques, alwaaaays media techniques), never a proper engagement with ‘media’ itself, and when it came to the practical application of anything learnt in the class the level of creativity from the majority of students (bludgers) was substandard (though when the few students actually did good, they did really good). The subject itself fought valiantly to stay relevant but in the end never attempted to change with the continually changing landscape, and ended up drowning in its own mess.
Gaunlett’s Introduction (first reading) comes to me as kind of vague (a problem that would likely be overcome by actually reading his book) but he seems to be saying a lot and doing not much, big concepts, little coherence. My lack of understanding in a way may also come from the fact that I still haven’t fully grasped the idea of what media is. So far to me it seems to be whatever people want it to be, lacking a sense of clarity in not so much a single definition, but a general sense of direction. There seems to be a lot of “think of media as this” or “don’t think of media as that” and I’m beginning to feel overwhelmed.
Here, his ideas about the “twin peaks” stand out as key info; one attending to the inspiration and optimism of everyday creativity (the constant sharing of images, thoughts, arguments on social media; a platform created to encourage us to express ourselves), while the other focuses on the troublesome and pessimistic nature of data exploitation and the idea of “computerised capitalism” (it’s not hard to see what he means by this, a quick google search on metadata in Australia will get you well on your way to understanding). But Gauntlett is less concerned with the idea of them competing against one another and more concentrated on their coexistence. To perfectly summarise, he attempts an analogy: “with the necessary skills, you can make some effective weapons out of wood, and maybe you even live in a society where the use of wooden weapons is enjoying a resurgence, and some people have been seriously injured; but these observations could not be used to prove that trees are a bad thing“. The two peaks are situated side by side.
In the second reading, “What kinds of knowledge do we need now?”, Gauntlett attempts to lay down concrete theory by providing a series of steps surrounding the important kinds of knowledge in understanding media today:
“→ How things work (technical and economic knowledge) → How things feel and fit (emotional and embodied knowledge) → How to make a difference (creative and political knowledge)”
or put simply: know your limits → know your surroundings → allow yourself to be creative.
I guess what I’m trying to say is I wish my high school media course was anything like this course now, more interested in the current state of the media industry, focused on its evolution and the idea of learning with media rather than just about. A proper commitment to the material at hand. This is the first step to a more holistic knowledge.
(also funny to see how ashamed Gauntlett seemed to appear about having his computer asking him questions, as if he realised his mistake but thought it too late to change anything).
