SUICIDE SQUAD

The first show of ‘Suicide Squad’ at 12am of 4^th of August, it was 11:40 in Melbourne central Hoyts and there were still lots of people holding large popcorn and drinks. Everyone’s eyes were bright and filled with expectation to the movie, jumping and rushed to the cinema with a bright smile on each of the audiences’ face. There were lots of ladies who dressed up like Harley Quinn (the main character) with two blond twin-tails, one is pink and another is blue at the end part, one more important feature to include on their face was a small black heart drew on the right side below her eye. Few of them who dressed up like the joker were very eye catching either; vivid green hair and paled faces is the joker’s feature.

Brian Sokol — A photographer who reveals the life of refugee

While I was completing the research blog for photography, the first impression to Brian Sokol’s work — ‘The Most Important Thing’, by asking the refugee what will you bring if you now need to flee to another country? This group of people are the refugee’s holding their ‘most important thing’ that they are going to take with them.

With black background which made the subject stood out more, is an old man sitting on the blanket holding two empty drink bottles in each of his hand. His white shirt wrinkled up which seemed very old with few blots on it. The intense black eyes were smiling at the camera, they are more like the focal point of these photograph to me. His hands have injured with some paint on the fingers and mud inside his nails, he must be working to survive under this challenging condition. The two plastic bottles could not be see through because they were plastered with mud, and there was no water in both of them.

The fence in my veranda is frosted glass, it is 1.5m tall which I can only see a small part of the sky from inside and there are usually tiny sun light coming through during day time. I walked to the dinning room this morning, the sun was hiding behind the thick; grey clouds. The part of sky I can see from the inside was cold; grey and light blue colour which seemed exactly connecting with the frosted glass. When I squint my eyes and looked outside the veranda, it is filled with light grey and white colour.

Difference in between most of the local students and most of the international students (specifically from China). This observation would not be so obvious in others sight, but for me having friends from both local and international students, I have carefully observed this two typical types of people since I have moved to Australia.

Three students holding filming techniques walked out of building 9, I can tell that one of them is from China for hundred percent and the other two of them might be local Australian. The Chinese student was wearing luxury brands from her top to the bottom, different logo of each brands showing everywhere on her outfits. Over to the local students, white runners; T-shirt and skinny jeans looked very simple but suitable for them as UNI students.

Translating Observation – Individual exercise NO.1

This exercise is aiming to help us to get familiar SONY EX-3, this is so different to the camera I usually took to take photo with, there are a lot to be aware and set before we get into shooting. It is more complicated and hard to manipulate for sure. As I was away when this assessment was given, so I felt quite confuse when I have to find something to film.

I have chosen to set the camera at a corner of Melbourne central’s intersection, watching the traffic came and passed by me. A tram drove vertically across Swanston st and passed in front of me, the traffic lights switched to red afterwards. Pedestrian on the opposite side started to cross over, the moment when two wave of pedestrian intersect at the mid-point of the road was really amazing.

I have arranged the two segment of shots in sequence, the first segment was my first try to shot. It took me long time to find a suitable angle to set the camera, I thought the best position will be at tram stop — the middle of the intersection. However, as I first wanted to include more things into the shot, so I have chosen not to zoom in first but to set the shot from a long distance but I found that the pedestrian cannot be focused or emphasize on the shot if I keep my shot from in this distance.

I have made some changes in the second segment, I zoomed in to make sure the moment when pedestrian cross over each other can be clearly viewed in the shot. While I was manipulating the camera, an interesting thing I found was that sometimes when the tram drove horizontally on Swanston st, it seemed like an eraser that remove all the pedestrian and it is more obvious to view from the screen. In conclusion, when I was filming this class exercise as I usually did in the pass, it is quite difficult to find the most suitable filming angle to set the camera. I have the ability to observe and discover new elements that I want to film, but I usually spend a long time to consider how can I shoot this from a perfect angle.

Week 2 Class practice:

Walking across the traffic light from Melbourne central station, there were a group 5 girls chatting to one another from the opposite side of me. Most of the girls from the group looked local to me, they crowded together laughed and talked loud. My eyes move to the left side of the There was also an Asian girl among them but looked more like she was walking with them at the very left hand side, seemed to be the extra one among the squad. Her steps swapped rapidly from big to small, she was trying to follow the others speed. Most of the time, the girl lowered her head and looked at her phone occasionally. When the others laugh loud, she turned her face and smiled with them. One local girl turned to her and spoke to her, the Asian girl’s face looked nervous with her eyeballs jumping from left to right.

Later, a group of uni students bunched out of building 80 and my sight was covered by the crowded.

Last weekend, I have just finished my lunch with two of my friends walking toward my car. People around me lower their heads and staring at the screens, fingers moving forwards and backwards fast. No doubt, they were playing the most popular game recently —‘POKEMON GO’, and myself is one of the them who extremely addicted to the game. I stopped in front of a small shop with lots of Pokemon soft toys sitting on the counters, a young couple holding their hands chatting sweetly and walked toward me. The boy laughing and stopped in front of the window, held up his phone targeted at the ‘Bulbursaw’ soft toy in the shop. Then he suddenly started to slide the screen with his finger from the top to the bottom of his phone. He was trying to make a joke to his girlfriend, pretending to catch the POKEMON soft toy with the game app.

The girl smiled when she notied my sight and she patted on her boyfriend’s forehead, ‘stop being stupid, let’s go’

– 1st reflection –

I am one of the students in Communication Media that likes filming things or record my surroundings with a camera, but I often find myself cannot represent the image in my imagination by my camera. As the result, I have chosen to participate in this studio, to turn an observation verbally to the filmed.

I was considering how Robin says ‘an observation expressed verbally is inadequate for our purposes’, in my perspective, to be able to represent what we have seen or imaged by words or verbally is not enough to let our audience feel/ understand what we really want to express. In nowadays, for sure it is easier to understand if something is representing visually instead of verbally.

What I hope to get from this course is that I will be have the ability to transfer an observation to the filmed, and successfully let my audience understand what I am aimed to repressed/expressed. As I am still a fresh hand in the industry, so I wish to learn lots of techniques in order to help me transform not only my observation but also all the good ideas i want to represent through my cameras.

Moreover, I think every students from non-english speaking background will meet the same challenge as me even I have been here for seven years. For multi-lingual students there are always language barrier for us, for example, if I would like to describe something amazing to a friend, i have to rummage for a suitable word to describe it. Another reason for me to choose this studio is, I believe that this might be the way for me to break the language barrier, not to show my audience with words and sentences, show them on the screen instead.