SCREEN LAB
EDUCATING AND ENGAGING THROUGH CINEMATIC EXPERIMENTS
“Your goal must be a good story well told” Robert McKee (2005)
“If you make something, it’s an artifact. It’s something that somebody or some corporate entity has caused to come into being. A great many human beings have thought about each of the artifacts that surround us. Different degrees of intelligence and attention have been brought to bear on anything …” William Gibson (2010)
STUDIO PROMPT
What possible aesthetic styles, development approaches and other parameters might shape the production of short- form educational videos about complex screen media concepts and processes?
DESCRIPTION
As communication professionals and media producers, we often take the task of communicating incredibly complex ideas and processes to general or non-specialist audiences. The world of ‘media’, for instance, is a multifarious intersection of industrial processes, histories of technological innovation and evolution, cultures of public and private communication and so on; and it can be difficult to explain because of its seamless integration into our everyday lives in ways that mask its complexity.
Stop for a moment and consider that the smartphone is far more intricate than any of the filmmaking tools Alfred Hitchcock used.
This studio is a collaboration with ACMI (The Australian Centre for the Moving Image), Melbourne’s preeminent centre for exploring the cultural and creative richness of moving image forms.
ACMI are working to produce a series of industry videos that complement their new permanent exhibition and help engage audiences. These videos focus on communicating concepts from across film, TV, videogame and digital art making to potential audiences and visitors and will have a high educational value.
Short films are very much the future and are having a bigger presence in mainstream creative industries than ever before. The most successful short films demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of stories and how to tell them.
This studio worked closely with ACMI in the design, development and production of these works. Students were skilled up in sound, video and graphics production and post production methods.