Category Archives: week 7

What is Collaboration anyway? reading

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Adam Hyde, Mike Linksvayer et al, 2012, ‘What is Collaboration Anyway?’ in The Social Media Reader, Ed. Michael Mandiberg

“The intensity of these relationships can be described as sitting somewhere on a continuum from strong ties with shared intentionality to incidental production by strangers, captured through shared interfaces or agents, sometimes unconscious byproducts of other online activity”

Before reading this, I had never thought of online “non-interactive” activity as a form of collaboration. This is because I don’t often see others as having a similar goal to me especially when we haven’t met.

This reminds me of pinning boards on Pinterest. Boards are a compilation of photos and links to more pages organised by topic. On Pinterest like a communal cork board you can pin and unpin sources. Other can view your board and then take your pins and place it on theirs. In a way, although not very personal, all Pinterest members are  working together to create similar goldmines of photos. When I first made an account I found that it was very easy to find some treasures already nicely compiled for me. Soon enough people were pinning from my own boards.

Mob mentality can be dangerous especially online. Derren Brown’s show demonstrates how quickly a group of dehumanised people can escalate to violence and deliberately harming others. On his show he gives people masks and sits them in a group as an audience.

But on the other hand mob mentality can be good. It has become a trend to make FAKE “social experiment” Youtube videos that shame a particular group of people or are very biased in proving common view. They gain views because as cruel humans we enjoy watching others become embarrassed online. If we were to see this happening in real life we would act as individuals and intervene. On youtube where generally our only trace of identity is our user name and chosen photo we can indulge in prank videos all we like. However, the ever chaotic comment section sometimes proves to be useful in exposing videos for what they really are. On some videos more observant viewers point out flaws and the injustices of the video. The up voting system youtube has where you can like a comment so it stays atop the mountain of comments to be seen by all the viewers allows particular viewpoints to be shared. In a way this is a form of teamwork as the more educated viewers are helping others shine the light on the truth. Popularising vital information about the falsities of sensationalist media through anonymous up voting is one of the greater parts of strangers “working together” for the sake of avoiding ignorance.

Teamwork or die

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I think that if you believe in a Hell it would look something like this. You’d be put into a group with Satan, Hitler and Joseph Stalin and assigned a task that’s due in a week about the difference between amphibians and reptiles.  You’d have to make a poster with your members and you’d be marked individually. Everyone would probably try and lead while you sit there in a pit of fire trying to make up a realistic bibliography fake dates. The stuff of nightmares.

Today I experienced what I’d like to think of as the most preventable and unnecessarily complex issue I’ve ever faced when it comes to group work. We had barely begun our first meeting when tragedy arose. The situation snowballed into a horrid melodramatic debate fuelled by impulsive jabs worthy of a heated episode of Dr. Phil. The meeting ended as quickly as it had begun. If you’re wondering what had caused the chaos it was something very controversial indeed. Yep, it was our meeting place.

-gasp-

Each group member had staggered their arrival into the city and up until this point we had had consistent and reliable contact in our group chat on Facebook. I sent quite an innocent message inquiring where everyone and quickly received a message with someone’s location. I waited with them for more than an hour for the others to arrive assuming they had read the chat. But as it turned out they had been waiting together in the opposite building tempers rising at our tardiness. But we weren’t late we were just blindly waiting for them close by. Apparently they didn’t have any internet to check the chat and had gone by the original meeting spot, not having seen the update.

Of course a group member stormed in, eyes watering with the the sting of betrayal as I retracted in fear.

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

“H-here…?”

And so the interrogation and accusations began. Never have I longed more for clarity and good communication.

If nothing else, I’ve learned that a steady online connection =a steady team.

an optimistic update 3rd of May ’16

Things seemed to calm down very quickly after we had a quick chat and decided to not let history repeat itself. Group project: today was astronomically better in terms of work distribution, idea sharing and general progress. We all arrived on time and got started very quickly. We had a list of things to do and we checked them off as we went. A group member brought along a friend to play devils advocate and randomly throw questions at us to help us full proof our idea.

wk 7 Group Meeting- institutions

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I’ve been put in a lovely group of 4 (the one and ONLY group of 4) with Isobell, Kris, Joss.

We quickly established an overall group goal to achieve a better grade than our previous one; which for us was a distinction at least. I personally would like to think of a creative way to approach this and have a lot of fun with it.

After receiving our prompt INSTITUTIONS immediately the discussion of typical corporations came to mind like schools, prison and the ABC. We wrote these down. But then we started talking about less obvious organisations that act like institutions such as UFC, talent scouting agencies and churches.

We agreed that kpop factories have a great media presence so It would be interesting to have a look at that as an idea.

Wk 7 Workshop

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After watching our PB3 portraits in our workshop, we split into groups and discussed our reactions and thoughts. I will be making “green hat” comments because its my favourite colour and I feel that alternative solutions and seeing other wise of doing things is great for learning and improving. “Red hat” thinking comes most naturally to me and what the we are feeling is central to what the film is trying to say.

Adrian Lapiz

He established a good relationship with his subject Brandon, defining him as a “distant” but fascinating person. His use of colour and and lighting was very distinctive he says he “turned up the contrast and the brightness.” His use of stock footage was very well implemented and it related to his metaphor of building boxes.

Green hat: I would have made Brandon’s voice as loud as Adrian’s for more balance.

red hat: This made me feel inspired and intrigued by the architecture.

Blair Conway

As usual Blair takes a more interesting alternative approach to his briefs. His use of rainforest stock footage created an appropriate serene mood as his questions were more abstract and emotional. Also it linked well with his setting as he shot in the backyard lawn.

black hat: don’t tell death jokes. good music more questions

Blair said that his subject wasn’t as confident on camera and was an emergency step in. So I thought his approach was good in not making her too on camera too much. The clips of her dancing and moving showed her quirky side without it being too explicit.

green hat: He could have asked more questions

Matthew Duong

Matt’s introduction was very good in showing his subject in their natural setting. His symbolistic use of stock footage was great in creating meaning for example to represent his subject’s relationship with her pets he showed baby lambs and their mum.

His final shot of Tina and her husband cuddle on the couch all made us go “aww” and summed up his theme of love and care.

green hat: I would have added an emotive turning point about something in Tina’s past or had something about her husband for more depth.

red hat: His portrait made me feel very happy and reminded me of family values.

Eloise Large

She had excellent use of stock footage which conveyed deeper meaning and added to her subjects emotive story. Particularly the discussion on gender binary where she had a drawing of a man and a woman in chalk (stock footage).

Eloise had good lighting and composition creating a formal interview style.

Her use of POV in showing the process of graphic design added variety to her shots.

red hat: I felt that she did a fantastic job in subtly touching on a bigger issue by intertwining her subject’s story with her struggles with gender and her outlet in creating art.

PB3 Reflection

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I definitely tried to be a bit more risky with this project brief; playing with audio and new equipment. I was never clear about exactly what I wanted this film to look like in the end, as it was more of a work in progress type task for me. A surprising amount of it was improvised; but of course that just made it more fun. For example with the interviewing I had a set list of questions in mind until our conversation directed me into a different idea where I’d focus more on my subject’s rebellious side.

The idea of calling the the interview “Ambiguous” came from the ‘one word’ exercise I thought of to get warm up for the actual interview. I randomly said a few words, then Charlotte would respond with a single word that she thought of first. I think this exercise revealed a lot about her without having too say much; which ties in nicely with the theme of ambiguity. I had so much fun with her during the one word interrogation that I decided to keep the recordings and use it as a way to casually introduce her to viewers; just like I had been introduced to her.

It’s also a great (sort of planned) coincidence that aspects of her room reveal so much about her. Such as the bursts of orange, the rainbow flags. guitars and action hero figurines.

I feel like I could have made a 10 minute video about Charlotte from all the interesting things. The time limit forced me to select the most significant things that from her responses and cut them together like they were one question. I learned a lot about cutting to the point.

Playing with found footage was a new challenge. I found that I could link some of it with what Charlotte was saying for example when she spoke about her fears I showed a snake even though she was talking about being scared of vulnerability.

 

Wk 7 Lectorial

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Exploring non-narrative has been confusing to me and I am curious to see and make film that follows this style. I still have questions about it like:

How can meaning be conveyed without story?

How do I invest myself in a film without a character, or even sequence of cause and effect?

My favourite film out of the ones we saw was Gap-toothed women (1987).  Gap-teeth have always fascinated me because they are a minor detail yet distinct feature. One of my friends had been gap toothed her whole life, then one day she just became fond of her own flaw; I think it had something to do with the “London-look ads” ahh the power of advertising! I feel a little envious and I don’t even know why.

london book

My eyes were always drawn to the gap instantly after the repetition of similar shapes. Graphic matching was particularly effective in portraying the diversity of women with a similar trait. I had a good laugh at the anecdote about the lady who left unique bite marks on all her snacks.

 

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Frederick Wiseman’s “fly on the wall” approach to capturing human conflict was quite disturbing to me. The lack of cut aways and hand-held following of the camera made me feel like I was trapped in the scene of a woman being choked and all I could do was watch. In comparison to newer hollywood cinema with sharp editing, the lack of interruptions seemed odd and forced me to think about what was happening, rather than relying on direction from structure.

I was interested in his “stick it to the man” attitude to institutions so I went off and watched the clip from Highschool (1968).

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“Hey, you listen, you better come in a gym outfit”

I could feel the tenseness in the room with this scene which felt more like a police interrogation rather than a teacher nagging a kid for the right uniform. I’m glad I didn’t go to school in the 60’s. Wiseman’s erratic use of zooms emphasised the teacher’s growing anger and framed him as the unreasonable one. It’s interesting how he manages to stay in the background while getting into the action, but of course the subjects are aware of the presence of the camera.

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In a more modern context this approach reminds me of trashy reality shows like 16 and Pregnant, Keeping up with the Kardishians and Here come the Habibs. The camera follows in the background as the contestants argue and entertain us and we all seem to forget that they know we are watching.