Mundanity

What we have here is a personal list. An exquisite corpse documentary, that explores the relationship between the poetic, the ordinary, and filmmaking. Over several weeks we developed a sprawling investigation of mundanity – what that was, what we thought about it, and whether we liked it or not. The end result was 6 minutes and 37 seconds worth of anecdotal experience, that we hope will communicate the poetry to be found in the current state of being.

What Maddie got:
‘My biggest takeaway about using a poetic approach to media production is that while it should be purposeful, it doesn’t need to be overly planned out or scripted. At the beginning of this semester, I found it quite difficult to create the poetic and even the personal lists as I couldn’t decide on what to focus them on or what to put into them. Even as we read Sei Shonagon’s   The Pillow Book I couldn’t work out what made this such an important piece in the space, I was over analysing everything that went into it (Perkovic 2013). Throughout this assignment in particular, I have really been able to see the value setting out with an idea that you want to capture (i.e. the mundane) and just filming what you find as opposed to scrupulously planning where and when to film. I do realise that filming using this method is pretty difficult to do in most circumstances but I believe that this have changed the way I will look at filming in the future.’

What Edward got:
‘They were viewings into each of our lives and conversations with barely any context, and that’s what appealed to me the most about these lists. People would see and wonder in these moments about lives that were not theirs. It’s a form of fantasy in itself that I have always been drawn to as a media practitioner.’

What Tom got:
‘Ay caramba, I just had a realisation whilst I was warming up for another tirade on poetics, which I just need to punch out before it fades – I’ve always been awful at trusting my intuition, I’m a measure thrice, cut twice kind of dude, crippled by this weird and impossible pursuit of order, even though I am an essentially chaotic individual. Maybe poetics are for me, and the next chance I get I should make a film that makes no sense to anyone – let them guess, who cares, it’s only a movie, dammit, I never wanted to make clever ads anyway.’