• 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

– Reflection on collaborative –

To be honest, at the beginning I thought assignment no.5 was going to be an individual task so when I was informed we were working collaboratively, I thought there would be way easier to have someone working with me for sure. Although things did not really turn as what I expected to be, to schedule the shooting days that suit everyone became the first problem we have faced. As I have mentioned in the past reflections I have even shoot by myself sometimes just because the time didn’t match every time.  The studio runs as usual every day, so if we want to film Carina’s close up shots we have to make sure there would not be too much distractions in the area.  Since we do not use all of our spare time just for the film, especially the location we were shooting is changeable all the time. Initially, we have divided jobs for each person: I was the director, Hazel was the editor, and Rebecca was the producer. However, since we need to find the day that suits for the studio, our actress and us, we took so much longer to finish the film.

Moreover, something I have realized and learnt from this project was: I used not to understand that why there were news about film directors disputed with the produce team, and I totally understand their situation and feeling now. I guess every director has their own vision of the film, for every scene and every single shots, let alone this is written from my observation and inner conflict. After the discussion with Robin, I was pretty confident on how I wanted my film to be, although 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. When everyone gets a chance to manipulate the camera, I have the vision in my head that I believe will work perfectly, but each of us recommended to shot in different angles, so we ends up with lots of footage in one shot but varied angles. We have left all the decisions to happen in the edit suite. Everyone will understand a story-line with their knowledge, experiences and characteristics, so does Rebecca and Hazel. Which I totally understood, just because this is based on my observation, I have a very clear vision of how should the film turn out to be, sometimes I was not confident enough or I felt uncomfortable to deny somebody’s thought. This is something I found the most challenging while collaborating.

Collaboration is sometimes challenging.

– Group film conclusion –

In conclusion for this group film project, I have learnt so many things through our the semester especially by sharing my ideas with Robin and classmates, I really do believe that how the elders always tell us you always can learn a thing from the people around you. One new thing I learnt while progressing the film was the importance of the continuity matters in all the media pieces, this is the most basic way to make it logical. This project is such a wonderful experience to learn from, we didn’t have a clear shot list to follow with at the beginning, even though this is my observation so I have the view of what the film will be like in my mind, its still very easy to get confuse while shooting. If everything happens one more time, I am going to right the shot list first and also get the storyboard ready on the shooting day for sure. The second important factor I have learnt is I finally understand why the dance studio scenes that appears in the movies need to be very carefully set up and manipulate, because if we keep the dance studio as what it is in real life, the situation is sometimes out of your expectation as there are too many variables in this public but limited area.

We were very stuck with choosing a proper title for this film, so each of us came up with three titles to choose from, and we have got a list of titles to choose from, ‘Missing step; last routine; right& left; departure; apart; step up etc.’ but none of them seemed to be very satisfactory. <Out of Step> was the title Robin suggested by summarizing all the titles we had above, and this is the title we ending up to have for this film. I do think this is very relevant to our film as there are lots of shot from different angle and distance to show the main character – Carina’s inner conflict, especially the close up of her walking up and down are all aimed to represent the sense of isolation, loneliness, helpless and giving up finally.

Film title – <Out of Step>

-Today I did the shootings and set up all by myself, after chatting with Robin and our group, I totally agree with Robin that we only got the main structure shoot, influenced by a lot of dramas and music video I have watched I do prefer to the director who shows all the details in every shots, in order to show the transition of the character’s emotion/ feelings.  The way to make our film look more abundant, the film need more detail such as: close-up on Carina’s face; close-up on the props that helps to emphasize her inner struggle and the sense of lost.

-Getting a proper title is always important for every piece of media, a good name may help to attract audience, direct your audience to know what is the content, summarise your film. Our group has each came up with three names to choose from, but neither of them allowed us to make a decision, and Robin gave a suggestion — Out of Step, because in our film we’ve been showing her steps in varies angle, distance and different shots are aiming to emphaszie the sense of losing direction, apart from the community.

I was quite worried to do it all by myself for the first time, although while setting up all the equipment everything wasn’t as bad as I imagined which gave me more confident to do this. Expect for one thing that was a bit out of my control, it was the control of how many people appearing in the scene and the continuality. There was a scene that needed a lot of ‘students’ from the studio to be in the background, however, according to the people in the studio always come and go and I cannot gather a big number of my friends to come at one day for my shooting. When I chat with Robin about my planning whether I want to shoot the actual situation of what happens in the studio or I want to get people act the thing out. I was pretty sure that I want an actress to play the main character, and thought will be good to have some scenes that happen naturally. I did not expect to have a lot of people on Friday, the situation was very hard to control as not everyone feels comfortable to appear in my camera without informed; there were people being very curious at my camera and storyboard; people were talking too loud while the camera rolling etc. There were way lots of people than I thought which I cannot get them out of the way so I have to try and not have them appear on my frame, I guess if Robin ask me one more time, I will be 100% sure that I need to set up the whole thing never let a camera keep rolling at a uncontrollable space, its just waste of battery.

Checklist: 

• Actress, location, equipment, group members time available
• Get the location set, how many people need to be in the background?
• Audio recording check, switch on to the internal recording
• makre sure every actors’ clothing are the same
• white balance
• never on auto

During discussion, our group has decided to add background music in the flashback part, the choice of song will be decide by the actress. I have asked her to give me few songs that she thinks to play an important role in her dance life so far, either could be an inspiration; the reason that makes her dance; the song that she first choreographed a dance; or can be just the favourite song that she likes to do inprovisation dance.

The song Carina has chosen is ‘7 years’ by Lukas Graham, the lyrics is about the role of parents in our life and also about grow, how experience force people grow faster.

Q: What was the reason that makes you choose this song to represent your ‘memories/experiences’?

Carina: This song is talking about parents but it is also talking about one’s growth, how to survive in this big big world and how people always learn better from their experiences.

She told me that this song stays with her teengage years when she first arrived to Newzeland by herself, she struggles to get use to the new environment. She met her dance crew, met a lot of new friends there and started to get use to the new environment, this song was the first song that she learnt her dance mentor’s dance choreography.

Since we have started editing and discussed with Robin, we discovered we are very unsure about how to sequence the flashback scene, initially during my planning parts, I really want it to be strong and distinguish with the present scenes. There were two edited version of flashback scene so far, they both start of by the reception person from the studio writing up the date on the blackboard – 2014. The first version will be the flashback scene flows fluently when the character comes into the studio with her friends, just to show the differences that she has friends besides them when she first arrives. The second version is to break down the flashback scene and plays simutanesouly while the character dance, which means when the character puts her earphones on and once the music starts to flow she is being pulled back to her memories. However, we are still adjusting the colour tone for the whole film becuase we need to change the flashback’s colour tone in order to make it looks more like a memory scene and they link fluently to one another.

1^ST EDITING:

We were going though all the footages taken last week, and we discovered two problems that need to be fix by the next filming day. The first problem was the stairs scene for the beginning and the ending scene will need to be redo because the stairs have been renewed, the building have changed new carpet for the stairs. We used a DSL for all the tracking shots, because we found using the big camera will be very inconvenient to move around in a limited space, especially when there are lots of people around. The second thing need to get fix was the tracking shoots accidently have two green stripes on it, we had discovered during the filming, but we thought it might be the monitor. Although when we started to look through all the footages today, all the tracking shots are not able to be use unless its in black and white, but if we convert the film into black and white then the flashback scene in the middle won’t work efficiently.

Moreover, something we do thing we have done well even though we might need to get part of our scenes redo was we get another chance of pracitce shooting, we did practice shooting the day before we shoot which helped us a lot to straighten up our shoots and also helped us a lot in saving more time. Having this experience I guess we will be more careful and more prepared during the next shooting day, I believe we will film more deliberately and efficiently the next time.

—PROPOSAL for Final film—

The ideas was based on all the observations that talked about the dance lab.

Since this observation, was when I really feel being apart with the crew now – I lifted my hand on the silver door handle, and pulled out the door. There was, Bill, Ryan, Jessie etc. a group of people including some of my friends were practicing an up-coming performance that I have never heard of. Every movement were delicate, deliberate and precise, they looked so professional with their eyes looking straight into the mirror. This must not to be their first practice, ‘what is this performance for?’ I looked around but no one seemed to have a second to answer and no one did even look at me. I sat on a chair nearby trying to get involve their practice for 20 minutes, but I still feel apart from them because I knew nothing… 

The main idea for this project was based on my experience, observation and feelings in a dance studio. By reading over and over the observations about the dance lab, I found it is very surprisingly when we notice that how fast someone can feel being left out in a short period of time. Especially this is a place that you believe to be the most familiar place in Melbourne, but it actually ended up to be the place you don’t belong to. The desperate I really wanted to show through the flash back of the main character’s memory on the time she first came into the studio, I used to be in the centre of the place, I knew everyone who came in the door and everyone used to be close to each other.

The sense of isolation will be emphasized and showing on the character’s face, there will be a big part of facial expression close-up shot to re-enforce the emotions that she feels in every moment. As I was still concerned with the actual settings, alignment and if I should do my film as a frictional film or a documentary. I tried to film during the mid-semester break, I set up the camera when there were lots of people in order to see if people will be aware of the camera rolling. The result was to set a big camera rolling in the limited space was very distracted, people to have the final decision, I did practice to shoot some footage during the mid-semester break, I was targeted to test:

1. Where to set the camera in a limited space
2. If the space is possible to film or its to small to include everything
3. To keep it as a documentary or to film in like a fictional film
4. What color tone would it work deliberately?
5. Should I shoot in a third person perspective or in a 1st person perspective (having the camera frame to be the character’s eyes)>
6. Do I need to get someone to act out or just leave it as it is originally?

After the testing, I found it was very challenging to keep it as a documentary – to have the camera rolling all the time in the space and does not give an control on the actual situation, because there were to many thing going on in that little area, if I don’t inform people that the camera is rolling they will not be careful with it. Although if I do, people might become aware to lens and that might not be able to let me capture the most realistc situation that happens in the studio.

I did also tried to use black & white filter to press the messiness down, however, according to all the noise going at the back and people who rushes in and out. There would not be much to be change unless I really get control of this situation – to cast people to act out the scene. What I do want to keep in the finished project was the environment noise, the music playing all the time, sounds of footsteps and the crowded. So I am considering not to add background music if I can get everything in control. Isolation, loneliness will be the main concept that connect the whole film, to highlight the reason of the character has been isolated so much, I will include flash backs in some close up shoots, she remembers the moments when she first came to the studio. There will be no dialogue other than people speaking in the background, the emotion on the character’s face and her feelings are the most important elements that need to be emphasize in this film.

Inspiration: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4Jrbathb3A

This is a new music video that released recently, and I was quite inspired by the way the director presents Korean life. Lyrics were about, everyone live in Seoul seemed to be so busy with their own business, they have no spare time to look at things or people around them and they have no time to understand the people around them neither. I have seen several music videos that are target to represent people in Seoul (capital of Korea)’s life, they have used people’s facial expression or their daily life. Most parts in this music video were the camera tracking people’s feet walking to different places, it seemed like an introduction of Seoul tour, but it is actually showing more of the bustling and fulfilled life in Seoul.

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. I am very interested in music videos from Japan, Korea and Taiwan, each music video has not only matches the style of song but also matches the singer’s image/characteristic. I love the play of the colour tones, the manipulation of different shots and the implication behind the shots.

Conclusion:

By looking at different movies about dance and shoot in a dance studio, everything was so carefully prepared and arranged, such as the space that needs to be in the frame, the costume/ accessories on the characters, the lighting whether to be the natural lighting or illumination lights. I think my project will be quite a lot to prepare and set up, so I better to get start as early as possible.

– Melbourne central station –

I was on my way to my 8:30 tutorial in building 9, I was extremely tired as I didn’t get a good sleep last night. I glanced around, there were groups of Wesley students walking out of the station in front of me, maybe its their excursion day, I thought. Can’t even remember how did we persist to wake up so early everyday back in the high school time, following the stream of people and reached the exist of the station.

I lifted my head up to let the sunshine shine in my eyes, when I looked forward again, I noticed an old woman sitting on her wheelchair with a new magazine holding in her left hand, she has a gentle smile on her wrinkled face. The sunshine was coming from her back which sewed her a warm, gold jacket. She had her hand up all the time, seemed like never going to be tired, and she keep her smiles all the time for every person that passed by.

– An observation from my memory – The first time

I lifted my hand on the silver door handle, and pulled out the door. There was, Bill, Ryan, Jessie etc. a group of people including some of my friends were practicing an up-coming performance that I have never heard of. Every movement were delicate, deliberate and precise, they looked so professional with their eyes looking straight into the mirror. This must not to be their first practice, ‘what is this performance for?’ I looked around but no one seemed to have a second to answer and no one did even look at me. I sat on a chair nearby trying to get involve their practice for 20 minutes, but I still feel apart from them because I knew nothing. This was the started, the first time I felt being isolated and desire to being as one of them. I sat on the chair with my eyes gradually lost of focus, people were moving away and toward me, yet they never really mind if I exist or not.

The girl – Her name is J, one of a staff who works and dances in the dance lab. When I walked in, she was sitting with her legs cross on the largest and the most comfortable black armchair in the studio, I glance around and found the boss M of this studio was standing near J with her phone, there was another small white chair behind the black armchair, but they it was filled with students’ clothes and bags.

I took another look at the M’s face she had her eye lids down which I could not really read anything from her face. I walked over, and started to move the clothes; bags over to the nearest sofa so maybe M or I can sit down. At the second round, J turned around and looked at me and asked with a bad manner ‘Oh, why are you here?’ I wasn’t so satisfy with her attitude to me, does she means that I should not be here? I answered her with a smile and continue what I was doing.

While I was moving all the clothes over, I glimpsed that J was watching me even she held up her phone to pretend like she was looking at the phone. When I finished the last clothes, I patted on M’s arm and gave her wink. M should be sitting of course, because she was pregnant. M smiled, she quickly lifted her chin up to point me to a direction, I followed the direction and I saw two yellowish Adidas superstar shoes, one of the shoelaces was untied and stained with dirt — it was J’s legs up on the seat without anyone’s notice.

Filmed:

Character – J (staff); M(The boss, the investor); me

During the progression of exercise 3, we were given 45 minutes’ class time to go out the classroom and each of the group member need to shoot two 30-minute shot video each person without camera tracking. The footages were uploaded to media server, so that every student is able to use the footage.

As I was very inspired by the Music video I have mentioned in the early post, shoots in that music video were mainly tracking people’s foot, walking/running/wandering in different places of Seoul, Korea. It was a presentation or a recording of the daily life in the capital city of Korea.

I didn’t really have any ideas before I looked at the footages and started editing, there were few footages that were shot in a cold tone which is my favorite colour tone. Within these footages there were some tracking on feet crossing the road or busy with their daily life.

I started by editing these footages together, and I noticed the footages I have used at this point were shoots that pass a fresh and relaxing feeling to the audience. The intention to start with these shoots were aiming to show people’s idealistic life, I believe for sure while we are struggling to survive in our daily life, everyone wants to live in a no pressure environment and chill out everyday. So the beginning is showing people dreams to chill out without any stress, however, when the shoots changed very fast it was showing when we go to work, back to school etc. we force to pull ourselves back to reality. The last part of this film was to show people have pulled back to their original life, they need to work hard, study and surviving.