As mentioned in my previous post I recently taken up Photography 101 as a school elective and the following pictures are for a class assignment. They are basically portraitures of my mates at the Carlton Gardens Tennis Club and we were required to take 3 portraitures of any theme or series or not even have to be related. My approach was leaning towards sports photography taking after one of the most well known sports photographer, Clive Brunskill. We all know that I’m a tennis player myself and I my love for the sport began at the age of 6, and my interest in photography has always been a topic that I have not find the time or opportunity to scratch this itch until uni. Therefore, what more combining the 2 things I enjoy into pictures and portraits, and of course, the opportunity of socialising with people at a level of comfort for them to display their potential for the camera lens.
This assignment pretty much marks the start to what’s more to come in the coming weeks ahead. Weekly assignments as well as the major assessments.
Having said that, I’m quite happy with what I managed to churn out from the limited skills I’ve acquired from watching video tutorials on Lynda.com, which I might add are really informative and detailed. Further problems that I might have encountered, I just googled the issue or typed it into the search bar of YouTube. Like what my tutor mentioned in class last week, “Whatever you’re experiencing now, know that somewhere in another corner of the planet has been through it before.”. That’s quite a power message, not just learning how to edit on Adobe Premiere Pro, but I guess it applies to life in general as well. You never know somebody’s background or what they’ve been through until they opened up to you…
Back to point, I had a little brainstorming session with myself during class time in the middle of week #3’s workshop. Started churning out ideas onto my notepad and came to nothing. However, I knew I had to get it done at the end of the day and I needed to show something, so I started on recording my daily routines, like making coffee, walking along the streets, doing laundry, cooking (which didn’t make the final cut), and so on. It’s rather challenging to do a self portrait video that represents yourself when most of the things that represents you are back home, with the exception of a few items like my tennis rackets.
After getting all my raw footages, still photos, and some recordings of daily activities, got down to business to editing. It’s probably my very first time editing on Adobe Premiere Pro if you exclude the “Haiku Exercise”, as that was more like a warmup exercise than an actual assignment. It was quite intimidating at first, but once I got a hang of things and organising my work files, I realised a certain flow from importing files to cropping and trimming to adjusting the scale and positioning as well as adding text. Once all that have been covered, there was more room for creativity on how I select my shots and which pictures to include into the sequence and how certain things are arranged and place. For audio wise, I decided to go with a more stripped and minimalist approach, not trying to go all out coming from an music and audio technology background, it was so easy to go overboard by turning this assignment more into a short 1 minute music video. Instead, I recorded some everyday sounds of water flowing, like being in the shower and flushing of the toilet bowl, and the sounds of clock ticking. It became more of a timbre-centric piece than anything else. I feel that takes my film away from having the common background music to accompany moving images and pictures.
I decided on the title “Out In the Open with Time”, as I believe if I wanted to tell a story, I would tell it through Time, as time has no boundaries, but at the same time, time restricts and constraints. And my story is about how I spend my time after having to move away from home to pursue a degree, and to some that’s like going out on your own, hence going “out in the open”.
What worked in the film? I really liked the opening titles on how the steam from the hot water from making coffee created a blanket for the text to sit and then slowly fade away. I decided to reverse that footage, as it was cool to watch how the coffee and sugar dissolved into the hot water in reverse and it suits the opening titles, otherwise, the steam wouldn’t have appeared first, but me pouring the hot water into the cup. Another thing I thought worked very well was the split screens for the scene showing people crossing the road and cars on the street shot from above street level. Instead of showing individual scenes in full scale, I decided to do it in split screen, but scaled down, as I think they were both have the same function of stating my point that time is everywhere, whether we notice it or not. It also help saves time, instead of cutting from shot to shot.
What didn’t work in the film? It was definitely a challenge to create flow and linking everything together. Without a clear plan of what was I doing, it could just turn out to a video collage of random pictures of my coffee, laundry, tennis rackets and people walking along the streets, and my mates having a game at the tennis court. I thought the concept was very important and it was hard trying to link everything together, which I hope I managed to deliver the message to the viewer.
Overall, it was a good first assignment, getting to know Adobe Premiere Pro and maybe getting to know myself a little better.
Had my first go with tennis in Melbourne on Friday. No wait, actually, had my very first go with tennis in Melbourne on Wednesday, however, I didn’t really count that as a “proper” experience, as the main outcome of that day was to socialise with the people from the RMIT Tennis Club and not so much on actually playing the sport.
After meeting some mates from the RMIT Tennis Club, a couple of them recommended me to head down to the Carlton Gardens Tennis Club on Friday nights to enjoy hitting, aside from the usual RMIT Tennis Club sessions held every Wednesdays and Saturdays at the Powelett Reserve Tennis Club. Having an itch that I have not scratch for more than 3 weeks, I couldn’t say no.
Friday came and I made my way to the courts at Carlton Gardens. Could not believe what I was seeing for the first few moments. Though it is nothing fancy, just your typical public tennis courts located in the middle of the park, it just made me feel so much at home. Thinking back to the first few hits of the tennis ball, comforts me like how a you would feel when you tug under your blanket into bed after a long long day of endless work. Yes, it may sound weird, but that is just how I felt. Although it was my first time playing at the venue, it didn’t feel all too foreign to me. I was still on the same court size as I was back home in Singapore, though the surface of the court may be different, it held the same dimensions, net, maybe even the size of the ball? All these just adds up to an experience that I would not be able to achieve else where. And in some ways, it almost felt like I was “coming home”. People with common interests, but different backgrounds, speak the same language. For once, I felt not so foreign, in a foreign land.
I was mentioned by one of the players that I am one of the few, if not, the only Singaporean he knows who doesn’t speak with a “la” in my sentences. Which made me laughed at first, but I never really noticed that until he said it to me. I guess through growing up with watching many American or international TV programmes and movies, exposed me to certain kind of accents and feel towards speaking to someone who isn’t the same nationality as you. I can guarantee that if I were to speak with my Singaporean friends back home, every single “la”, “leh”, “lor”, would appear in my sentences and phrases. Not forgetting local lingos like, “Shiok!” or “Shag” or “Jialat”… would come into play. (Do ask me in person if you’re interested to find out what are the meanings of those words that I’ve mentioned).
The point I’m trying to raise here is, I guess through TV, radio, films, music and more. We are exposed to so many aspects of the world, we never knew that was possible. It becomes almost second nature when I speak to a local, to turn down all my “la”, “leh”, “lor”, so as to make myself heard properly and not let the person that I’m talking to have a hard time trying to understand what am I saying. On the other hand, I can express myself easily when I’m having a chat over the phone with my friends or family back home with the common expressions and lingo I’ve mentioned above. It’s almost like I’m speaking in 2 languages, although I’m still speaking in English, some might debate, the language that I use back home is actually “Singlish”, but I do not want to go into that.
Language unites us all, and would be the bread and butter of communication. Personally, without having any common language, there’s no way people can communicate even with the latest media producing piece of technology.
Tennis fans in Australia were thrilled to see their local tennis stars play at the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club here in Melbourne! The tennis club hosted to the Aussie and US tie over the weekend with top players from the respective nations coming down to play at this historic venue where it ones was the location for the Australian Open back in the 70’s and the 80’s.
I, however, was contemplating if I should go have my first experience participating as part of the Davis Cup crowd and atmosphere. There were much to be settled over this weekend and watching live tennis, as big as the event may be, wasn’t really much of a priority for me at the moment. Having just moved in to my apartment only on Friday afternoon from a serviced apartment, bids just having more to do on my list. Therefore, decided to drop the idea of going for the event and probably catching it live on TV.
There’s just something very different from watching a sports event or any event, for that matter, live or through the television. Be it your favourite rock band playing at Wembley Stadium or the tennis mens’ singles finals at Wimbledon. There is always going to be that difference in atmosphere and environment. Having to go through huge masses of people just to get to the venue, queuing up to get tickets and entering the venue, queuing up to get food and beverages, and if the event is held outdoors, having to deal with the weather conditions (rain or shine), all these compared to sitting on your couch with a bottle of chilled cola in your hand and a bag of chips in the other, just can’t outweigh the perks of actually being there at the stadium, cheering your favourite player or team, shouting the lyrics to your favourite song or just being part of the atmosphere.
From a production point of view, a downside for watching from your TV is, you only watch what the producer wants you to watch, and you only hear what the microphones pick up at the venue. You don’t really have a panoramic view of the venue and not having the freedom to see what you want to see. As a spectator of a tennis match, usually the best seats would be behind the player at the end of the court, this allows you have the view of the entire court and the ball, without having to turn your head left and right while the players are in a rally. You can’t get that at home, however the production team would try to achieve that view, but nothing beats being there in person.
Getting on to the deep attention and hyper attention wagon, being part of a crowd at an event would generally mean having deep attention in order for you to achieve the full experience of being at the event and soaking up the atmosphere. It wouldn’t be so much of just going to the venue to watch a live spectacle, but immersing yourself in the sights and sounds of the whole exhibit. Whereas catching it on TV would sometimes mean you have the tendency of going off to do something else while leaving the TV on, such as checking your email, engaging in social media, or making a sandwich. There’s only so much time one can spend on just watching TV without doing something else, with the addition of commercial breaks in between, just adds on to nudging an individual to do something else.
Anyway, back to Davis Cup action, unfortunately, US moves on to the next round while Australia’s dreams of winning the Davis Cup has to be postponed for at least another year.
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