In week 5’s tutorial, to prepare for building a new project, we reflected on what we are good at and not good at. Based on this standard to find our new team members.

My rating is:

1) Brainstorm: 7
2) Research: 6
3) Planning/Pre-production: 8
4) Production: 6
5) Post (editing and programming Korsakow): 5
6) Reflecting: 7

In order to achieve complementary work, I was in a group with Nagini, Taras and Mia. From my long-term observation, Mia is really good at posting and doing the research and Taras does well in sum up. These aspects are what I am not good at. I believe that I will learn from them about how to organise ideas by listing in order, how to do some academic or relevant research in a quick way and how to do the conclusion for the ideas and project.

For the brainstorm of the third assignment, we started with a project guideline:

• Having an overarching question or statement (prompt) which the work responds to.
• Constraints = The (literal) rules of making. For example, it dictates when and where we shoot, what angles, mise en scene, framing, etc.
• Themes = The ideas, thoughts and content which response to the prompt. For example, exhibitions often have themes – like dystopia/utopia.
• The themes and constraints work together to jointly respond to the prompt.
• “Thinking the particular theme”

Then, we came up with some ideas for the assignment through the discussion.

 

Prompt

• How we interact with space?

Constraints

• Wide landscape/establishing shot paired with close-ups within that environment
• 5 landscapes w/ 10 close-ups each 10 – 15 seconds each – film for 30 seconds min though
• Close-ups follow-on to other wide landscape shot themes (So you start with the same landscape each time, but from this, it branches out like a tree, each landscape only pairs with one close up from the previous landscape but has a multitude of its own close-ups)

Themes

• The meaning of place – public/private/personal/utility
• Sensory experiences of space/objects/etc.
• Colour (how it interacts with space through light, shadow and tone)
• Linked by colour and/or the same object/actions in a different space
• Same action/movements in the space (the way the subject interacts with the objects)

Landscape ideas

• Bedroom
• Library
• NGV
• Beach
• Botanic Gardens

Research

• The essay film & the diary film (Steph’s presentation)

Steph showed us some clips to explore the sense of the essay film and the diary film. The essay film is a practice that can be situated somewhere between documentary and fiction. According to my understanding, the essay film does not follow the traditional form of dramatic structure. Instead of using full-fledged plot conflicts, it adopts multiple narrative techniques and uses multi-faceted, multi-level, multi-sounding techniques to bring the work closer to the original form of life.

Different from the essay film, the diary film is informal and as she showed us in the lecture, she took shots in her day to create a finished film. The selection of content is at random and close to live. The diary film is easier to resonate and get a sense of understanding.

For our assignment, we decided to do the project as close to live, which means the project would be ‘daily’. We prefer to choose the public location as the landscapes and the clips of each landscape would be normal to see in daily life.

Feedback

Based on the initial idea of the project, we tried to create a close connection to explore a sense of ‘modularity’ and ‘variability’.

Modularity

Relating to Manovich reading, to achieve the concept of ‘modularity’, it is essential to allow for several pieces of online media to function together efficiently yet separate as well. The videos can play at the same time by using the Korsakow software. Moreover, in our project, we try to create five landscapes and record six videos for each. It can be seen that each video is happening in the same landscape, but meanwhile, it can be seen as a piece of media which may be watched independently of the source. They are what we want to achieve in our project by following Manovich’s ideas.

Variability

To achieve the concept of ‘variability’, we try to create different versions for different people, just as Manovich claimed in the reading. We want to use one video with the general view as the main landscape and link to six action videos which happened in that landscape. The viewer could click the video he/she interested in, and then advance to the next landscape. It is free to the viewers to choose what they like, which means the selection is not compulsory but depends on the viewers themselves.