Video Link:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tZsBpYV9XndcdmhHTgs_4gb1bWIlDYwX

Reflection Essay

Our group has chosen Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West to investigate the culture of West Melbourne and the history of the museum. In fact, this is the first Australia ecomuseum, located in the west part of Melbourne. Founded in 1984, Living Museum of the West has a profound history and vividly records the development and the life of the communities in the western part of Melbourne (Healy, 1991). Due to the fact that western Melbourne is where most migrants live with 500 thousand people from about 70 other countries, Living Museum of the West preserves the cultural dynamic through the close involvement of local residents. Living Museum of the West is a top choice for many researchers to explore the culture and history of western Melbourne and they left their research data and information in the Resource Centre. According to the introduction from the official website of Living Museum of the West, there are substantial historic maps preserved in it, sufficient photographic archives including one thousand historical images and fifty thousand contemporary images related to the local culture, oral histories containing 400 recorded interviews about the migrant culture and renowned industry and the like. Hence, as an ecomuseum (Melbournes Living Museum of the West, 2019), Living Museum of the West is able to display visual clues about the migrant culture of West Melbourne and considering its long history and ample archives about its history this museum is undoubtedly a best site to explore the history West Melbourne.

However, the purpose of the documentary is not only to show some parts of the history of West Melbourne but more importantly to arouse people’s interest in investing or making a contribution to the development and maintenance of Living Museum of the West. The main audiences include two types. One type of audiences are residents in West Melbourne and residents living nearby who are expected to be more actively involved in the volunteering work in the construction of the museum; the other type of audiences are young generations whose age is between 20 and 30 and businessmen who can fully tap the potential of Living Museum of the West and make profits. As has been analyzed in the situation of Living Museum of the West, this museum witnesses the history of west Melbourne and is an authentic presentation of the culture with plenty first-hand materials to dig into local history. Therefore, filming the history of the museum is able to awaken the memories of local people and make them realize what a crucial role Living Museum of the West plays in inheriting the tradition and passing down the culture. In this way, not only does the documentary become the precious memoir of local people but also it will attract the attention of other local residents to devote themselves to the long-term development of Living Museum of the West. Besides, in this document the brief introduction of the museum is displayed and it shows that how significant it is to preserve the museum and make it known to more people so that people can learn from it. Therefore, this document may attract some academic groups to have long-term co-operations with the museum so that the museum can be well-known and be profitable to boost the local economy. In conclusion, this document aims to enhance the development of Living Museum of the West through intriguing both local and other regional young generations to engage and recruiting potential corporations with companies or academic groups to improve the museum. Such type of document is influential for the Australian society. For one thing, as the introduction of Living Museum of the West, the documentary provides the account of the culture of Melbourne and will work as the supporting evidence of the Melbourne’s culture in the west. For another, filming the beauty of such museum will raise people’s awareness of learning through the historical site and advocate the mental life of people.

The main tools for filming the documentary is the Sony 70 camera and wireless lapel microphone. The camera finishes filming and the microphone is used to amplify the voice. The main filming processes can be divided into two parts. In the first part, we focus on filming the sites and archives in Living Museum of the West while in the second part we interview the workers in the museum, inviting them to share their feelings about working in the museum, how they think of their job as well as their expectation on the future of the museum. With the static scenery and the dynamic interview interwoven in the film, our document is colorful, which is not only the display of the beauty of the museum but also the mirror of the humanistic culture. Besides, the documentary begins with an exposition with the voice telling the story. The exposition is the mixture of different beautiful pieces of the museum and historical archives, exhibiting the scenic attraction and culture through editing different episodes about the museum. As the research suggests, most documentaries will have expositions of the themes in the beginning or at the end, which will leave a deep impression on viewers (Ahmed, 2010). Hence, in the beginning, with the presentation of the natural beauty and the humanistic attraction of the museum, viewers will be drawn to the documentary and look forward to the following parts. In order to further touch the viewers, we select appropriate music to highlight the content and create the atmosphere of the museum. For an excellent documentary, the proper music can push the development of the plots and echo the emotion of viewers (Corner, 2002). It is hoped that the soft music can calm down the views to appreciate the connotation of this historical site.

As for interviews, we mainly adopt medium shot to film. The medium shot not only includes the persons who are involved in the interviews but also contains the background of the people interviewed (The Ultimate Guide to Medium Shots, 2019). Now that the workers in the museum are going to share their ideas about the museum and the self-revelation of their feelings, including their working environment can further elucidate their nature of working here and will not make viewers feel bored if only focusing on the faces of the interviewees. In addition, we also use the microphones to make sure what the speaker said is clear enough, despite the fact that the first interview encounters some technical problems for lack of experience.

Apart from the exposition and medium shots, we also extract archival footage into the document. Now that Living Museum of the West accommodates substantial archives about west Melbourne, extracting a short clip from the archival footage will directly present how the museum records the history of the local community. The vivid content of the archive will surely attract more visitors for the museum when the viewers are intrigued in it. As the most historical documentaries do, archival footage will increase the credibility of the content and as another form of sources of the theme it increases the diversity of the sources of evidence (Swender, 2009). Now that the purpose of the museum is to make its culture and history seen by more people, presenting its archives will directly show how attractive and interesting the museum is and give inspirations for the businessmen in front of the documentary. Generally, the style of our document is serious and lively, with the realistic recording of what the museum is like and how it comes into being and the voices from the local workers.

As to the use of archives in the museum, we mainly film them in the documentary and edit some content of it into the documentary. In the beginning, we selected the archives we needed to use and asked the staff whether we could record the old pictures and the old tapes into our documentary. After getting the consent from the staff, we made the videos about these archives. In addition, we accidentally knew that someone had interviewed the staff before and the videos were left. In order to enrich the content of our document and show that this museum is very popular, we asked if we could get the videos and use some in our documentary. Once the staff agreed we used the footage. Our proper method for having access to archives shows our respect for the sources in the museum. Containing what the archives in the museum are like is the vivid description of the culture and history of the museum, which is very important. Adding some footage of archives enriches the content and the form of the documentary.

In fact, the whole filming process went smoothly. We made the plan in advance and none of our requests were refused by the staff. On the contrary, the staff in the museum were very passionate about aiding our documentary, claiming that this would be of great help to gain a good reputation for the museum, which delighted us greatly. Hence, we filmed different parts of the museum with different work of division as it was scheduled. However, we made some technical mistakes. This was our first time that we had attempted to add interviews into the film. Although we had known that we should use the microphone to make sure the sound of the speakers can be clearly heard in the movie, we still failed to succeed recording it due to the fact that we forgot to switch on the microphone. As a result, what the speaker said had to be first transcribed by us and then we had to have one of our group members to read the transcript, which will decrease the authenticity of the documentary now that it was obvious that these words were not said directly by the speaker. Another problem we encountered is the use of tripod. Tripods are a useful instrument to have stable filming but this makes the filming process static and dull. Hence, we abandoned the tripods and filmed through putting the camera on the shoulder. Due to the lack of sufficient experience, when it came to the switch of the spots or the moving spots of the museum, the footage was a little shaky because we failed to control the speed at a proper level. This can influence the artistic style of our documentary because the shaky shots may leave a bad impression on viewers and this also causes confusion for viewers. Nevertheless, despite the failures and mistakes, our documentary contains various kinds of archives and first-hand footage of what the Living Museum of the West is like and how it was established and developed. With the mixture of different footage on physical appearance of the museum, substantial sources in the museum and true accounts from the people working here, our documentary is still attractive enough and includes the account of the narration of the history of the museum with wonderful melodies.

References

Ahmed, J.U 2010. Documentary research method: New dimensions. Industrial Journal of Management & Social Sciences, vol.4, no.1, pp.1-14.

Corner, J 2002. Sounds real: Music and documentary. Popular Music, vol.21, no.3, pp.357-366.

Healy, C 1991. Working for the Living Museum of the West. Australian Historical Studies, vol.24, no.96, pp.153-167.

Swender, R 2009. Claiming the found: Archive footage and documentary practice. The Velvet Light Trap, vol. 64, no.2, pp.3-10.

The Ultimate Guide to Medium Shots 2019, August 26. StudioBinder. Retrieved October 11, 2019, from https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/medium-shot-examples/#What-is-a-medium-shot?

Melbournes Living Museum of the West. Retrieved October 11, 2019, from https://www.livingmuseum.org.au/