• He arrived, a place where no one knows him
• He was desperate, so he hides in the dark and shut himself behind the invisible walls
• For a whole year, he was struggled to survive
• Dance
• dance, became a light which leaded him through the darkness
• He changed

There is an image in my imagination of what I want for my PB3, but I don’t know in what ways could I present it. I was looking for someone that can match the image I had in my brain. I was totally blank when I try to think who I want to use for my PB3 and how will I do it. So I started to talk to people around me, I believe that to use people around me will be a lot easier and each of them will have something I don’t know, so I am looking forward to discover it. I am working in a dance studio and I met most of my friends there, I stayed in the studio for a whole day chatting with different people, people from different countries with different personal background and experience. Finally, I had decided to use Jim for my Project brief 3 – a personal profile for him.

As most of you might not know him, the first time I noticed him was because he spent most of his time in the dance studio. Jim always dance over eight hours per day, he does not usually talk much or he does not even talk to the others when I first saw him. My first impression to Jim was, he is extremely quiet, depressing and doesn’t seem to have any facial expressions. Even though we are in the same space he will always seems to shut himself in a little world. I didn’t have any expectation when I first invited him for filming, but he agreed. As the only fact we know about each other is dance, so we spent lots of time to exchange about ourselves. Opposite to my expectations, Jim is independent; inspiring and aggressive. He doesn’t know how to make new friends but he is very expressive and friendly. Jim loves to dance, it appeared like a precious present for him and it has brought him a massive turning point for his life.

Jim arrived to Australia when he was year 7, language was the biggest barrier that brought him back to meet local students. The school he stays didn’t have any student that speaks the same language as him, I knew that feeling when we first arrive to another country, if there is someone who speaks the same language to help me will be super helpful. In his 13 years old, he did not have the ability to break through the barrier, so he became quiet ‘Sometimes I don’t speak for the whole day and my mouth was dry when I got home’. Time passed by, gradually Jim was depressive and sensitive, he described himself as being in the prison and hiding under the dark.

In his holiday Jim went back to China and met his first dance teacher ‘Bamboo’, he didn’t know dance will open up a new world for him.

In this week’s lecture, we are taught to be able to analyse a variation of text. Texts are everywhere in our life, magazines; photographs; films and newspaper are all different types of text. Learn to analyse them will be very helpful in for the next three years of our media journey. In the first part of the class, I found is hard to understand how to use the semiotic tradition for analysis. Denotation is what you see literally; most obviously in the text and connotation is another layer of meaning of the text, its something that associated or connected to the text. Connotation could be influence by the viewer (audience)’s social construct.

I understood this by the example given during the lecture: colour red. It could be described as one of the primary colours, or depends on the viewer’s social construct or personal background, it may mean passion; anger; emergency; lucky etc.

To have a recall back to the lecture, it is pretty interesting to think about the fact that people always connect their interpretation to the text with things we experienced; our thoughts and feelings from our everyday life.

week 4 – The beat I was born without.

The Beat I Was born Without follows the life of Lenny which records the Journey of a Deaf Raver, a deaf who is on her way to Holland to find the best beat. The documentary has record her journey to a deaf clubbing event which uses human being’s different senses to create the experience of a white a night club is for the deaf people. Lenny has told us the reason which causes her to this journey was she wanted to belong to the world that is constructed mostly by sounds. So she extremely hopes to find ‘a place where it doesn’t matter whether you are hearing or deaf’. Lenny has also discussed her relationship with beats, music and vibration (all she can hear from music), she said when she stands near the vibration she feels really good and she doesn’t need the lyrics and notes, she believes vibration is more complex and different as music is to the people who can hear.

I was really surprised when Lenny said she has noticed that hearing people sometimes do not communicate as well as the deaf people because they did not seem to be very friendly and expressive to strangers. This made me pondered for a long time, as one of the hearing people we are not appreciating for the ability of hearing that we own. In comparison, Lenny thought sign language is more direct which communicate what they feel. Hokin, a sign dancer who brings signing and dance together in order to bring deaf and hearing people all together. He uses body movements to interpret the music and communicate music to the deaf audience. As a dancer myself, I cannot imagine how to dance without music. Hokin said he has changed his way to dance which depends on his audience whether they are hearing people or not. For the audience are hearing people, Hokin dances by following the beats and timing. Yet when he is showing to the signing audience his movements is more fluency and he uses his gestures; facial expression and body language to interpret what the music lyrics is communicating to the audience.

To me, dancing is a really good tool which bring people together. However, I have never imagined how can signing people understand music and be a part in the dance community. Hokin has really opened a new world to me, he said as a dancer, he respects music. So he finds out a way that can bring deaf people and hearing people all together to enjoy music and dance.

The sound I like/hate

When we talk about the sounds we like or dislike, we are discussing about hearing that just happens – it is the ability of perceiving sound by ears. The sound I hate the most is using our nails to scratch the surface of blackboard, in most of schools in China we use blackboard and chalk instead of whiteboard and markers. The sound is extremely jarring and afflicting to me which always makes me want to escape the classroom. The second top sound that I dislike is babies/ kids’ crying, this may cause by my younger brother. Whenever there is a baby crying I will feel desperately heart broken and sorry for them.

The sound I like, I think sounds which come from the natural I would like to hear over and over. For example, the top three sound I like the best is the sound of sea waves, it is very healing and soothing. When I am anxious and stressful I always choose to sit beside the beach and listen to the waves. Next, I love so much of the sound of wind, when the wind makes the tree swing. The sound makes me calm and relax when I need to concentrate on something.

In week 3 lectorial, we have explored upon the relationship between sound and image. When we discuss about a film or a drama, we may say how amazing the setting is or how natural did the actor play. Although sound plays a critical part in a film, most of us would still notice the distinct part of the films not sound. We say we watched a film instead of listen to a film, so the sounds in a film is like a dialogue between the characters which comes so naturally that we will not pick on it separately. Sounds are everywhere in films and it appears so naturals in each of the scenes which helps the filmmaker to reinforce the intentions. People never come out from a cinema and cheers about how brilliant is the sound fits to each scene so I wanted to describe sound as an engraver who works silently which people may never notice how amazing it is.

David Lynch has points out that a film is ‘at least 50% sound’, which emphasize the importance of sound in a film production, however, there are a massive percentage of sound being unheard in films/ dramas. During the lecture, a short activity that highlights the importance of ‘unheard’ sound was about looking at a picture and image how many sounds can happen in that moment. From this activity I have noticed that most of times, when we watched a film, we only noticed the most distinct sound such as a bomb exposed. Audience may notice the fire burning but not other sounds in the background such as: running steps; screaming; ambulance whistling; helicopter coming above etc. Every piece of sounds gathers so naturally which no one will notice and pick on it.

Connecting to Modern Asia

While studying the course ‘Modern Asia’, I have pondered a lot upon the media industry in the Asia markets. One of the biggest reasons that made me to want to participate into Media studies was because I have always noticed the Asian media industry trends. For example, America is the biggest movie market in nowadays and China comes to the second place. As an Asia myself, I don’t want to say how well is the Chinese media industry doing, because I think there are a massive process is needed in the Chinese media industry.

The biggest problem I have noticed was that the variety show in China was poorly all copied from another country, most of them have bought the copy right but there are still some variety shows that have stolen the idea from other countries’ variety show. I do follow lots of variety shows in Korea and Japan, when I noticed the original idea of a popular variety show in China was stolen and taken straight from a Korean variety show. I was speechless each variety shows were complete by the producer paying lots of effort into it, copy and use one’s idea will never have any improvement.

According to each country’s policy and difference, we cannot take everything from someone else and different production will have different effects in different place.

I believe on this massive land — China, Chinese people do have a lot of brilliant ideas that can bring new things into this industry. However, China as a developing country with only one-party, according to the policy people’s ideas was being restricted or ban by the production department. In this generation, the Chinese society needs something new that would shape China’s media industry into better modernity society. Gradually, less idea are being created and inspired to bring to this generation.

https://youtu.be/i_ezbguixaQ

Project Brief 2 reflection

What is self-portrait? It is defined as a portrait that artist produces of themselves. So self-portrait, it is a production that all about myself. Before this project brief, I have never really pondered about ‘who am I’.

With the title, ‘I am you, you are me’ I wanted to highlight the sense of connection in between each other. The word ‘you’ implies the people around me, friends, family, or teachers. In my perspective, I think once we are born, humans are just like a piece of white blank paper. After we are born, we first meet our family and then we started to know our friends, religious, cultural background, languages. Because of our surroundings, we were shaped into a piece of paper that painted with different colours. So how you are shaped by may be because of my affection, if we have not met each other, you might have a slightly different identity. Our likes and dislikes are also affected by people or things around us. I have chosen to film most of the video clips at a dance studio called JMC dance lab, this is where I would like to stay for most of my spare time. I work there and my friends are there.

The complete version of my project brief video clip was created based on how people around me told me what kind of person I am in their perspective. For example: Most of the times I looked quiet, but I am not. My friends have told me, when they first met me, they think I am a quiet person and speak with a soft voice. After we knew each other more, they found I am really not a quiet person.

I have arranged my narration words in a relaxing tone so then I recorded in a calm and soft voice. The whole project was designed to represent what kind of person I am, my features, likes and dislikes. I don’t like when different things all happen at the same time, I really do need to calm myself and deal with them one by one. As the result, I did not add any background music other than the narration and I believe without adding any background music it is more like me. Which I am simple and clear.

Haiku Exercise was to be finished on week 2, as we did not have time to go through this exercise, I used my own way to understand ‘What is Haiku?’

What I understood Haiku, is based from my researched.

What is Haiku about? Haiku poems may describe anything. Most of the poems will have a dominant main idea, that appeals strongly to one of our five sense. The dominant impression in my production I think is the importance of color, each Haiku poem must include a kigo, a season word. I have used ‘green; lifeless; life continue etc’ to highlight the season which is spring.  In this exercise, we were asked to use static frame. Another way to highlight my main intention is by using the static frame and focusing on the moving things inside the ‘locked off’ frame. What I wanted to express was the world without color can be lifeless. I remembered from my childhood memories, winter and autumn are lifeless and colorless. When spring arrives, the whole world will be fill with colors. By using the zoomed in shoot of the ants in the woods gaps; the swinging green leaves and the luxuriant branches above.

The elements we are asked to focus on were the composition – shots that emphasize lines or particular point/objects. When we first heard of the elements, we might think of the shoots being rigid and stiff. However, I chose to use the contrast between the living things and the static frame to express my intention.

I extremely like the background music that were provided for us on Google drive, I have chosen to used the last one. The music is very cold or desolate but when it continues on, we can hear the tone its turning brighter gradually. So I think this sound track matches my haiku exercise very perfectly.