In what ways do you hope your exhibited work (whether individual or group produced) engaged its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio?

I would love to exchange some of the ‘sense of wonder’ I have found in this topic. I think film as an art form has a lot of potential to portray this kind of subjectivity, and I would argue that this is often overlooked by today’s big budget Hollywood cinema. If I could inspire even one other filmmaker to try and apply this concept in their practice, I’d have achieved my goal! That is my hope for this project, and I know it has definitely impacted the way I approach covering a scene.

Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it in to a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why?

While I didn’t create a particular ‘media piece’ for my contribution, if I were to continue my research project I would love to create some kind of a “compilation of moments” for exhibition. Perhaps this could be presented on a digital platform such as a standalone website, or maybe even a physical gallery setup, where each moment could be screened on its own.

I think my research could be furthered by studying the place these moments hold in the deeper contexts of the film. It would be interesting to examine how they impact the film’s narrative as a whole. Are they used in a system of cause and effect? Or are they standalone scenes which ‘step out of the narrative’?

Reflect on an aspect of two other students/group’s media work on the website in terms of specific insights they produced about a key idea addressed by the studio?

When browsing all of the research projects created by my studio peers this semester, I was most struck by Kit’s study on moments of reflection, as well as Shiyang’s reflection on the coverage of elevator scenes (sorry if I’ve got your name wrong!).

In regards to the moments of reflection, I feel like this subject has a high degree of commonality with my chosen topic; perhaps you could say the moments we have selected aim to do the same thing, Kit’s aim to do so in an implicit and subtle way, while mine aim to be more stylised and expressionistic in their approach.

One idea that the subtlety of Kit’s chosen moments brings up for me, is the possible influence of the Kuleshov effect (by which the audience will project emotion and meaning onto an ‘expressionless face’). Clearly not all of these shots could be called ‘expressionless’, however, I would argue this principle still applies to some (albeit lesser,) extent. If you take any one of these shots out of their context, they wouldn’t have the same ‘revelatory power’ as they do in the context of their respective films.

Solely on paper, it would seem that these moments are creating space for their characters to indulge in a time of reflection, however, I would argue that it is instead the audience who is getting to do the reflecting. Moments like these give an invitation for the viewer to enter into a space of empathy and/or sympathy with the characters. As poignant as they may be on their own, without the reflection of the audience they lose most of their power. Although, it seems you could say this is true of any shot in any film.

On the topic of Shiyang’s project, my attention was instantly grabbed the combination of a still from Lost In Translation and the reference to 500 Days Of Summer in the project’s title, as these are both in my “top-10 films” list.

The elevator is such an interesting location specifically for films which centre around character relationships. Where else can you confine two characters who may not know each other very well (-if at all) into an enclosed space for just enough time to make small talk? Something about elevators lends itself to unusual and often awkward exchanges. I’m sure we’ve all experienced this in real life enough to know that it’s true.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Shiyang’s perspective on how these scenes can be utilised in action/drama movies, and I will likely be keeping an eye out for how elevators are used in the films I watch going forward.

For the other studio website you engaged with, describe a key idea that you think the finished media/studio work communicated with reference to a specific example (i.e. a particular individual/group work).

For the final part of this reflection, I was assigned with investigating Making Embodiment‘s studio web-exhibition, a studio I was largely unfamiliar with. I really liked the way the works created in this studio emphasised the importance of reflecting on one’s environment, and I feel this approach to creativity has had the opportunity to really flourish under our current circumstances.

Having spent an abnormally large amount of time at home in the last few months, I’ve found that my appreciation for the local area has grown exponentially. Having the time to walk around my town aimlessly, exploring strange tracks and hidden paths wherever possible, has lead to some truly magical discoveries in otherwise mundane ‘lockdown’ days. Although I will admit, it probably helps that I am literally surrounded by national parks and hiking trails.

After viewing all of the media pieces which were created for this studio, the one that stands out to me the most is Chrono Cross by Chloe, Evelyn, and Wenping. I was really struck by the creative way this film matched the worlds of someone living in Melbourne and another living in China. The piece was clearly very well thought out, with all of the shots acting perfectly in unison between the two environments.

As someone who has always lived in Melbourne, it was fascinating to see all of the things which I consider so significant to our city to be paralleled in a city from the other side of the world. I found that the split-screen editing was done exceptionally well, really emphasising this idea as in addition to the themes which the piece touches on.

I find the theme of synchronicity so interesting from a conceptual standpoint, as even though we may be in ‘separate time zones’, on a molecular level, everything is happening simultaneously. Everything in this film happens at the same time, even though the ever-present clocks may not agree with that statement. Time as we know it is wholly a manmade construct, and even the divisions we assume to be elementary (seconds, minutes, hours) do not exist outside of our thought processes, however, the belief in this non-existent ‘thing’ is so fundamental to the operation of our society (or is it?).

I found this piece to be very profound, and it has definitely inspired a lot of personal reflection on the ideas it encloses.