This class focused on the Presentation our tutor was giving us. Below are some points that he raised about online documentary.

Online documentary is going to adapt, and it has demonstrated an increasing attention to interface and user experience design as dynamic structural elements. A documentary designer is broken into four groups: Interactive Media, Affordances, Web of relations, and design methodologies. The designer brings a unique way of looking at problems and finding solutions.

Interactive Media:

-When you create a documentary you are engaging in a process that is actively rethinking the project, where they make content for “lean-forward” users. The designer will come up with strategies of what is being designed and produced, as the tools are not permanent and fixed, they are constantly changing. Practices of technology will have to be created, which involves being open to working with software, hardware and practices within other fields.

Affordances: Granularity, Remix, Indexing, Spatial Montage.

-The designer understands the affordances of the format they are working with in relation to the content, the user interface, and the digital platforms. They have the ability to determine what matters and doesn’t matter, and how these affordances will be made available. You need to be able to understand granularity as an affordance in relation to fragments of content, that is being created to work in a self-sufficient way. Designers will use indexing to form multiple relations between shots.

Web of Relations: Linear narrative, linear non-narrative, multilinear narrative and multilinear non-narrative (what we are working with this semester).

-Designers work within structures that may have no beginning, middle or end. The work may not be viewed entirely, but may have multiple viewings. You need to be able to refer to other structures, rather than the narratives that have historically been created in linear documentary.

Design Methodologies:

-Here, you work as a “reflective practitioner”, to reflect on what is made and use this reflection to inform what is made next. The research is often imbedded into the practice, because they will often need to explore new ground. You need to understand how to use sketches to iteratively explore possibilities, to probe and question options, make connections. They use prototypes in real world environments.

Dexterity: The ability to adjust to change.

Before you insert media into the Korsakow program, you need to prepare you media files accordingly, in order for them to work, and run smoothly. You need to work with a 16:9 interface to match the proportions of the photos and the default sizes in this interface. Make the video clips and previews at the same time and name them both the same, as they will be used together when they are put into Korsakow and SNUified.

The photos that I took on my iPhone 5 were 3264 x 2448 – These images need to be sized down in photoshop to go into the K-Film.

Reducing data: The proportions that are required for the media to work in Korsakow are 720 x 405.

(When you are editing, keep the original images separate to edited images (different folders).

Now that the file is the correct size, the next step is to open it in Quicktime 7.

(Video compression varies in Korsakow and is dependent on the context of the clips and how it converts within the application itself into .flv files. this means it is complex and is often based on a trial error with your first clip to get a workflow).

Korsakow Tips and Tricks:

-.mp4 – extension

-H.264 – compression

-ACC audio

-Frame Size: To suit your project

-Aspect Ratio: To suit your project

When it comes to the previews, simply save to the web and resize them to 240 x 135. Put the preview with the same name next to the movie file. Now these two files (the video clip and the preview) can be tested in Korsakow.

Korsakow:

Home of Korsakow: www.korsakow.org .

e.g http://www.xolabs.co.uk ; www.embres.ca .

This software is moving way beyond choose your own adventure. You can have multiple relations between clips. It is targeted at low budget creations, therefore you don’t need to find a budget. You can set the amount of lives on a clip, it can die and never be seen again, or it can keep appearing, and keep being seen.

Bridging Clip:  Also known as Clustering. This function takes the user to another category or section. There is a transitional video to take viewers from one topic to another. The designer can cluster the clips into groups. They can control whether the viewer can view all of the topics, or you can bridge the user.

The results of the users’ choices can be predetermined or randomised, according to the filmmaker’s design.

To compress media into Korsakow: H.264 compression; Frame Size: To suit your project; Aspect Ration: To suit your project (generally 4:3 or 16:9).

More examples: www.nfb.ca/interactive ; highrise.nfb.ca .

This reading talks about a media software being programs that are used to create and interact with media objects and environments. Looking at the software that NEW DOC is using, Korsakow is an open source application that is mainly used for documentaries using an authorised database narrative. This program launched in 2000. The web is a place that offers users the opportunity to understand and see details of our everyday lives. When you create a project in Korsakow, you are excessing interactive spatial montage, including multiple images, potentially different sizes and proportions, which would appear on the screen at the same time. As a designer you can determine the degree of latitude with these spatial montage, which change as the user goes from section to section.

A Korsakow film is self-contained, they are not networked, and they don’t depend on links to media outside of the film itself. The program involves these main kinds of editing:

-Film footage is selected and cut together to make raw material for each SNU.

-Process called ‘SNUifying’, which adds metadata to each short film including key-words, probability, and lives; and then refines this assemblage based on repeated viewing and test screenings.

-Editing involves the viewer, who chooses the next SNU to advance the film, and miss others they had previously encountered.

Reporting:What happened? What issue or incident was involved?

You need to respond by making observations, expressing opinion, or asking questions.

When you report, you are assessing the situation, breaking it down into segments, seeing what happened, giving the facts.

Relating: Make connections between the issue and your own skills, professional experience or knowledge. Have you seen this before? Were the conditions the same or different? Do you have the skills and knowledge to deal with this?

When you are relating, you are suggesting a more personal side. Your are coming at it with your experience, knowledge, and past references. This is when you have to relate back to yourself, and the subject at hand.

Reasoning: Highlight significant factors underlying the incident or issue. Explain and show importance in understanding the issue. Refer to relevant theory and literature to support your reasoning. Consider different perspectives. How would a knowledgeable person handle or perceive this? What are the ethics involved?

This is where you have to include various underlying factors apart from your personal views. You have to bring in sources of information that relate to the specific subject, but now you have to justify it. You have to explain your reporting and relating.

Reconstructing: Reframe or reconstruct future practice or professional understanding. How would I deal with this next time? What might work and why? Are there different options? What might happen if … ? Are my ideas supported by theory? Can I make changes to benefit others?

This is the stage where you build on from the previous factors of reflective thinking. You have deconstructed, analysed, reasoned and related, now it is time to rebuild on the ideas and subject, and create something bigger and better.

This reading comes to terms with researching how you work and what directions you can head with the knowledge that you have gained. It begins with saying that only after you get to know what is on the surface, that you are then able to seek what is underneath. In order to learn and broader our actions, we need to work on widening our sensitivities, in order to start noticing different aspects that are all around us, both professionally and un-professionally.

You need to be able to reflect upon your work, and what you have done in order to move forward. It is all about learning from our experiences. This is something that is more talked about than actually carried out. If we want to learn more and have a greater understanding with anything that we do, we need to be able to reflect.

To notice, you need to learn from the experiences that you have had. Within the reading, it says that noticing is a collection of practices both for living in, and hence learning from, experience, and for informing future practice. When you notice you are making a distinction, where you then are creating a foreground and a background, and then distinguishing elements from its surroundings. When you notice or perceive, it provides you with a significant amount of experience, which learning depends on. When you record, you need to have motivation. This element takes more energy than that required to make.

The first tutorial for second semester in the New Documentary studio put us straight in the deep end. We all went out into the city in pairs, taking photos and gathering sounds to put into the first stages of online documentary. The only instructions were to gather materials on the subjects of bikes. I was excited and daunted by the idea of coming up with something in a short period of time, however when I went out and starting collecting materials, I was surprised at the ideas that started to flow.

Bikes are a mode of transportation that is being used more and more in society, especially when trying to avoid traffic and costs of car parking. I like to think of bike riding as a journey, as they can take you places where other modes of transportation can’t. Every time I think of a bike I think of the memories that I have had on them. I go places that no one else can, except on a bike or foot, it gives you the freedom to explore and to be active at the same time. The city has many bike tracks and alley ways that trams cannot get to or where cars cannot park; Melbourne has a bike system that allows people to ride around the city, and they have made bike racks and bike paths available to everyone. Here is some of the material that was gathered…

Throughout the city, Melbourne is known for its street art, and here is a picture showing that bikes are a significant item in society.

People travel on bikes to get places, there are bikes going in all directions, especially in peak hour traffic. Bikes go on pedestrian crossing, or in the bike paths.

When I was walking through the city it is hard not to see hundreds of bikes lining the streets in bike rails and locked up to street signs. They are easily accessible and there are all kinds. This got me interested in if a bike could determine what kind of person you are? And what do you use your bike for?