Research

• Week 5B – Dovey, Jon, and Mandy Rose. “We’re Happy and We Know It: Documentary, Data, Montage.” Studies in Documentary Film, vol. 6, no. 2, Jan. 2012, pp. 159–173.

‘Spatial montage lends itself to the presentation of connections.’  (p. 170)

Manovich (2001) came up with the concept of spatial montage to describe the juxtaposition of images within multiple computer windows is consistent with our project. We devote to display multiple videos on the same webpage to create the sense of connection among every single video.

For the individual research, spatial montage includes both picture editing and picture composition.
Synthesis: A unified picture work consisting of many pictures or patterns juxtaposed or stacked.
Editing: The way or process of making this art combination is to combine a series of shots from different distances and angles and shot in different ways in different places, describing the plot and depicting characters.

Our work tends to be the first one, which is the media synthesis. The multiple videos juxtaposed at the same time to display on the screen to inspire the imagination of the audience. For example, if the landscape is the library, we might shoot the video of the library as the main landscape, and the collect the videos of typing the laptop, reading the book, flipping the page, someone is looking at somewhere, grassing something and sleeping in the library. The final stage is to combine these clips together on the same screen for the viewer to choose.

• Week 6 – Weihl, Anna. “Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries.” NECSUS Journal, Spring 2016 – Small Data.

As Anna Weihl claimed in the reading, ‘Korsakow is trying to create small worlds or stories, it starts from the premises that documentary practices based on miniaturisation and minimalism, drawing attention to the idea of smallness, details, and slowness.’ This idea really gives me a hint for the project because the landscape is a huge range and what we need to more focus on is to observe the tiny things inside or divided the general sense into multiple small ranges. It would be easier to get the ideas of the useful materials because, for the first step, we always determine the scope of the topic, for instance, our topic is about ‘space’. However, this is a wide range of topics, so it is necessary for us to target specific content. The idea of miniaturisation is useful because pay more attention to tiny things would help to narrow down to find specific things or something we do not notice in usual.

Moreover, ‘Korsakow is a complex dispositive enabling the creation and experience of documentary miniatures as well.’ I totally agree with this because I think the Korsakow projects can be considered as effective tools for thought and zooming into the very small details of everyday life in a contemplative way. For my personal experience, a Korsakow project called ‘PLANET GALATA – A Bridge In Istanbul’ is an example to reflect it. To reflect this idea, we observed the actions and behaviours of everyone in the landscape. Some tiny things might easy to ignore, but at this time, it would be discovered.

In addition, the group of viewers is also the crucial point that cannot ignore. As the reading mentioned, ‘In interactive audio-visual media, in contrast, the viewer must assume the role of an active user, which makes her/him much more engaged in the process of making meaning.’ The interaction between the producer and the viewers is important because this would make it easier for the audiences to integrate into the project. We encourage the audiences to click the video they interested in to create a sense of interaction. Meanwhile, through the interaction, it is up to the user to become a kind of co-author or co-editor navigating a database of (not only) audio-visual material. 

 

Pitch

We will be exploring how people interact with spaces. We intend to focus on actions, movement, sensory experiences. In terms of technological constraints, we want to use five landscape shots, and within each landscape shot, we will take ten close up shots each portraying a different action from within the space. Each shot will be ten to fifteen seconds each. For example, we could include a landscape shot of a library. One of the close-ups could be showing someone reaching up to take a book from a shelf. This shot could then link to a close-up shot of someone reaching up to pick a flower from a tree in a park. We want to visually link actions within places to other places to portray how people interact with spaces. We want the project to create a sensory experience for audiences that allow them to connect the visual shots. We want audiences to relate to the project through how they interact with spaces, this will guide them in moving through the project. In terms of modularity, each video will function separately yet through visually linking videos of actions the project will also function as a whole. The project also responds to variability as the project will differ depending on the audience’s interests, as they will click on the video that interests them.

 

Feedback 1

Likes:

• Fresh idea
• Explore the idea in many different ways
• Gives us lots of options
• Similar shots leading into each other

Improvements:

• Think more about how colour could work into the assignment
• How the audience will interact with the different spaces and how we plan to portray that interaction

Feedback 2

Likes:

• Different idea from their group (we focus on visual, but they focus on music/sound)
• Emotional
• Sensory experience
• Composing a version

Improvements:

• Confused about how we will create it

Reflection on feedback

First of all, thanks to the other two groups’ suggestions. I think we express our initial idea of this project in a good way based on the feedback of the goodness and fortunately, the viewers could get the points. In the project, we want to explore the same idea in different ways but use similar shots to link them together. Moreover, the most important is the interaction of the project and what we want to achieve is to let the viewers join in the project to experience the emotional and sensory experience during the period.

To reflect on the weakness, we thought about the element of ‘colour’ (because we want to do about ‘colour’ and ‘space’ at first), but we found it is not necessarily about it, so we considering to change ‘colour’ to another concept or delete it. To achieve the interaction with the audiences, we tried to set the same actions but in different landscapes. For example, if the action is ‘grab something’, it might be ‘grab a bottle in the supermarket’, ‘grab sand on the beach’, ‘touching grass in the garden’ and ‘grab clothes in the bedroom’. However, the audiences could choose the landscape they interested in to explore more to create a sense of interaction. For the question of ‘how to create it’, I think Korsakow would work on our project, but the final result still needs to work on.

 

Final Ideas