• Entering Translating Observation

To be honestly, my first choice was not ‘Translating Observation’ initially but according to the timetable clash issue I have to go with my second preference, I was quite worried before the class started because I don’t count as an international student, but unlike the local students, English is still challenging for me. I was expecting the weekly observation must be described in great detail like a literature, whilst getting used to all the new filming equipment and writing observations every week, I felt quite stressful at the beginning of this semester.

• Throughout my observations

Throughout few weeks later I believe that I am not the only one who found writing observations was like a weekly mission must complete, sometimes if we write them all in once I felt nothing to write and even made one up. Gradually the half semester has gone, and I found myself was getting used to write an observation became a habit that I not only do as a blog post. Lots of film producers and director suggested that inspiration can comes from anywhere, especially in your daily life. Writing my observation is a very helpful way to get inspired from, not only this course but any other media related subjects. For example, my photography final series of work was based on my observation of the different international students in Melbourne, and I am pretty sure I am going to continue this hobbit for the rest of my media journey. The last group film was based on a series of observations that I observe and feels everyday, while deciding which observation should I use as assignment 5 idea, I looked over my blogs and I felt like flipping through an idea dictionary or browsing an idea gallery.

• Something good about this studio 

Remembering from the studio presentation & pitching session at the end of last semester, there was a student recommended us to ‘at least have Robin once in the studio, he is amazing’. Our group was discussing something good about this studio, and the result was to have Robin as our tutor/lecturer. Robin is always keen to help every single student in the class, he listen and accept everyone’s ideas and he also give us one to one tutoring if we missed a class. Second, the reason for most of the street photographers became noticed by the public were because they have the talent to capture the moment that most people would not noticed. By learning translating observation, it pushed me to get used to be aware all the details that happened around me, and consider how can these to represent as the scene in a film.

• Something Challenge

Other than working collaboratively may be challenging sometimes, the ability to discover something that is worth filming is also difficult. For the fully experienced media workers, they have the view that an observation piece will work perfectly if its a scene of a film, but for students we are still learning to own this ability. Use the 30 second film we shoot at the beginning of the semester as an example, whenever I crossed the pedestrian crossing I noticed the two stream of people converge at the mid point of the pedestrian crossing, I found it very interesting and very dramatic if I can film it from a long distance. However, the result didn’t end up to show the converge very clearly because its from a long distance.

• Something I learnt 

Sharing – I prefer to chat to friends, share my ideas with them and listen to their ideas whenever I got stuck, sometimes different people look at your idea from vary angles that allows you to view your own idea more clearly and more critically. As we are still students and learning to be more professional as media people, it is very important to chat with Robin or someone who is more experienced than you. When my ideas have been admitted by Robin I feel more confident and comfortable to start the film.

Collaboration – Working with the others can sometimes help to release your pressure but sometimes can be challenging as well. As we were not spending all of our time on this film and university, so the t schedule for filming days became the first problem we faced, the importance to arrange the filming schedule I can 100% understood now.

In addition, as I have mentioned in early reflections, when different person read the same story or just look at an image, they will have different understanding to it. It might vary by the person’s experienced, culture background, religious, interests or knowledge. My film was 90% based on my observation in the dance lab, I have been here for 2 years so I am very familiar with everything that happened or will happen in this area. People who heard about my ideas either Robin or my group members, there were things that I don’t know how to represent with words but I do have a clear vision of what should my film looks like. Although my group members might understand my ideas from a different angle, so sometimes they recommended a different way to shoot a particular scene. I am not that confident with my decisions as I am not very experienced still, the way to solve this situation was to shot the same scene in different ways and we would decide which one to use when we look at the footages.

Decisions – I remembered Robin told me when we first chat about my final film, I was very unsure about all the details of the film, such as: should I have background music? Should I set the camera and let it keep rolling for the day, produce a documentary instead of a story based; what sort of costume should I ask the main character to wear? Can it be in dialogue etc? Robin told me to have a clear vision of your film, because it is my observation and my film, if I am more confident on the vision I have for the film then there will be less decision to be considered