Training Heels by Charlotte Fels was an enjoyable watch and personally stuck out to me, as it effectively addressed the key ideas from the Heads Won’t Roll studio. As the end goal of the studio was to create and submit a high definition 4-5 minute video, it was important for us to be brutal with our audio. Therefore what I enjoyed in Training Heels was the pacing, where Whisky Falls’s speech didn’t feel rushed and had time to breathe. This came down to post-production and cutting the audio interview up. Furthermore, the speech was concise which made it easy to understand where each segment of the documentary transitioned into the next. This transition was also supported with the sound mix. An example was the sound of a tape recorder running as Whisky discusses the history behind Burlesque, to support the found footage visuals. The sound effect ends when we finally see Whisky in her ‘training heels’, as the title appears and transitions into her personal experience.  Additionally the collection of visually interesting footage; observational filming, copy-right free content collected online; photographs and videos and found footage from Whisky Fall’s shows, demonstrated a direct connection to the studio prompt and key ideas of eliminating ‘talking heads’. One detail that Charlotte uses that I didn’t see any other students in this studio utilise, was bringing in audio of Whisky describing her dance in real time. This really played with the idea of our studio, Heads Won’t Roll, as it technically is not a sit down interview guided by questions but rather something natural that Whisky says. Overall, Training Heels was shot beautifully and arranged in a way that kept me interested and connected to the key ideas of the studio. 

Sarah Goh’s film Third Parent is a beautiful compilation of different stories from older siblings. I personally liked the approach of using voice actors to voice her collected stories, as it gave the storytellers anonymity, an idea that was explored throughout our studio. Furthermore, omitting the identity of the storyteller meant the inability to use personal footage of their experience, and therefore resorting to Sarah using sourced material. The footage used in Third Parent gave me a sense of nostalgia, easily reflecting back on my experience as an older sister. The features of her found footage created a home video feel with the focus and zoom in on faces, the setting of old houses and clothes from a different era. Another core idea of the Head’s Won’t Roll studio was creating an audio visual piece around mystery. An event that cannot be documented in real time or around a feeling that is hard to capture. Therefore I enjoyed the unique idea of the documentary of being a third parent, an idea that is known but very often left unsaid. Overall, Third Parent is a highly relatable short film that connects to the core ideas of the studio through the story, voiceover and her sourced material.

Let Him In is a visually appealing short film by Bambi Cheun and Daniel Milczarski that dives head first into using constraints to serve as the catalyst for creative expansion. Being a student and not having a team, connections and funding often comes with its limitations. In this case Let Him In, pushed the boundaries by asking for external help from experienced gaffers about their lighting work, as reflected in their blog post. This was especially proven successful from their vivid colour palette of purples, pinks and blues helping to push along the thriller genre. Additionally, their team ended up sharing jobs and juggling many roles which allowed for a collaborative and resourceful approach to filmmaking. Their ability to be flexible in each role resulted in a more cohesive final film where each person’s input helped to confirm the overall visual and narrative impact. One of the studio constraint based exercises was to write a short film with randomly assigned genres, often requiring students to step outside their comfort zones. Let Him In demonstrated a mix of thriller and comedy which challenged traditional genre conventions, by blending suspenseful moments with light hearted humour. The exercise highlighted the creative potential of working outside their comfort zone and demonstrated how contrasting genres can be balanced to produce a cohesive and unique storytelling experience. Overall, Let Him In was successful in creating a film that understood their constraints to use it to their advantage.  

Session Closed  by Jai Batra, Karmen Pei, Celia Chen, Jay Gambrell, and Jarell Gan is a well crafted short film that reflects the core themes of the Golden Age Cinema studio. A hallmark of Golden Age Cinema is its focus on complex characters, which is evident in the portrayal of Kassandra, the film’s protagonist. Session Closed explores her fragile connection between reality and illusion, immersing us in her point of view. The film delves into the topic of mental health, a conversation that was only beginning to gain recognition during the Golden Age (2000s to 2010s). We follow Kassandra as she discusses her illusions with her therapist, witnessing her mental and physical state unfold after each session. However, instead of showing the therapist’s face or providing his point of view, the film keeps us firmly rooted in Kassandra’s experience. This perspective forces us to share her doubt and confusion, especially as she encounters a mysterious presence in her house, making even the therapist’s credibility questionable. The story culminates with a twist, true to the Golden Age style, where Kassandra wakes up from what appears to be a dream, leaving us questioning the reality of the entire narrative. This ending adds a layer of intrigue, blurring the lines between what is real and what is imagined. Overall, Session Closed encapsulates the essence of the Golden Age Cinema studio through its complex character, themes and twist. 

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

HWR – STUDIO REFLECTION

Three months was all it took for Chau Tran to be married, pregnant and bound for a foreign country. After marrying Thanh Duong, Chau migrated from rural Vietnam to suburban Melbourne, driven by her responsibility as a wife and mother. Amidst cultural upheaval, Chau reflects on the importance of family and recounts the difficult journey of leaving everything familiar behind. BETWEEN TWO WORLDS is an emotional 5 minute documentary that shines a light on the complexities of navigating a new country, and highlights the sacrifice and resilience it takes to be a mother.

A Film by Anna Duong

FEATURING:

Chau Tran

Thanh Duong

Peter Duong

Anna Duong

Tina Duong

Tiana Duong

Daisy Duong

ARCHIVE VIDEOS:

Duong Family’s Personal Collection

MUSIC:

‘Aeon’

Composed by Theatre of Delays

www.bensound.com

‘Echo of Sadness’

Composed by TURNIQUE

www.bensound.com

‘The Process’

Composed by X3nus

www.freesound.org

SOUND EFFECTS:

All Sourced from Freesound

‘DSLR Shutter’

by Stevermoser

www.freesound.org

‘Airplane Flyover Landing in Heathrow’

by Suzie Soundcreations

www.freesound.org

STUDIO INSTRUCTOR:

Rohan Spong

Created as part of

HEADS WON’T ROLL.

School of Media and Communication

RMIT University

2024

(1)

If I were to continue working with participants in my media career, I would consistently refer back to my Ethics Charter. The core learning lesson that stuck out to me is to ‘love the people you film’ (Boyton, 2016). This for me encapsulates what it means to be a storyteller and media maker. For example, viewing the participant not just as an object for a story but a real person with emotions, histories and complexity. Being transparent with participants helps to build trust and reduces the risk of miscommunication. Media making often requires us to cut down audio making speech more precise and rearranging simple phrases or words. Throughout this process, I learnt the importance of honouring the true intentions of the participant by understanding their perspective and asking for clarification. Even before starting the interview, making the participant feel welcomed, safe and heard by using open communication and a friendly attitude. Taking responsibility when something is misrepresented by doing my research, involving the participant, being transparent and sending a copy of the media artefact to the participant before distribution. Finally, I am including in my Ethics Charter a commitment to giving proper credit to the resources I used and acknowledging the contributions of everyone who helped me with the project.

(2)

In regards to this assignment I worked on it solo. I found it quite fun as I was able to schedule the production around my schedule and it took out the need to line up schedules with other people. This gave me flexibility but also taught me self discipline as I couldn’t rely on group members for motivation and deadlines. I also enjoyed the fact that I had creative control over my project. Oftentimes working in groups ideas would be overshadowed by others, while working solo, my idea was the final say. 

Although this may be true, my process included working collaboratively with others in order to create a successful documentary. Learning the course content allowed me to expand my ideas and motivated me to try new things. Getting feedback from Rohan as a media making professional, gave me more perspective and taught me problem solving skills. Applying in class and written feedback from my peers was helpful as it came from a fellow media student and generation z point of view. Working with my sister, Tiana, during the interview process allowed my mother to be more comfortable and express her true feelings. As well as constantly reviewing my WIP with my brother and sister for feedback, allowed me to fine tune my work. 

Even though I worked solo, I knew that reaching out to people would only boost my work as it gave me different perspectives that weren’t just my own and therefore using the feedback to improve and refine my work. 

(3)

When thinking of Bill Nichols’ (1991) ‘Modes of Documentary‘, I believe my documentary is a culmination of the expository, performative and observational modes.  

I use the expository mode through archival footage and my voice of god narration. This allowed me to give my perspective on my mother’s story but also allowed me to guide the audience on how to feel; appreciation, admiration and gratitude. 

In the performative mode, I used animation to conceptualise and express my mother’s memories of leaving Vietnam. Animation in this mode prioritises emotions over objective truth. An example of my understanding of the performative mode is watching ‘Waltz with Bashir’ (Folman, 2008) which conveyed the directors personal memories and psychological effects of war. The film reflects on the subjective experience rather than a factual, objective truth.

While filming, I constantly keep in mind Frederick Wiseman’s documentary film making technique of long observational shots, in reference to ‘Boxing Gym’ (2010). Examples of this was when my mother was taking in the laundry or eating her cake. This helped me a lot in post-production as it gave me more footage to experiment, allowed me to experiment with rhythm and created a sense of authenticity and realism.

(4)

If I were to continue to work on this artefact, I would like the ability to adapt it into a portrait format to create social media content, as my intended audience are of a younger demographic, who can relate to having immigrant parents. As my intended career pathway is around the social media sphere, I would re-editing the documentary into micro-stories and post them on Tik Tok and Instagram. Inspired by in class student examples, I would also like to improve my animation skills, to tell stories through images I can create in my mind. I would also like the ability to tell more stories without using talking heads as it allowed me to have more creative freedom by making an effort to seek out archival footage, focus on creating an immersive soundscape and honing in on the impact of visual storytelling. Ideas I would like to explore further; my mother’s motivations in moving, her relationship with her parents then vs now, her connection to her people and land, her cultural identity etc. 

REFERENCES:

To Do list:

• Colour grading on shots 
• Fixing audio levels
• Add title
• Apply audio filter, reverb, to found footage 
• Capital Letters and full stops on captions
• Sound of feet entering first, then visuals = j cut
• re-Storyboard animation = simplicity 
• Start on Animation – get feedback on animation
• Add airport sound 
• Ending credits 
• Rearrange scene talking about of her struggles
• Changing phrasing of last narration: ‘Making this film about my mother…’ or ‘asking about my mother’s life’

Things to try out/test:

• Apply dreamy filter to found footage 
• Different audio for intro
• Different narration page 
• Remove details of getting on the plane

In choosing the audio documentary part, my main focus was creating a elaborate soundscape designed to evoke a sense of fear, especially at the start of the piece. My goal was to convey this emotion effectively, aligning with the studio’s emphasis on exploring non-pro-filmic subjects.

To guide the audience through my narrative, I used my own voice as a navigational tool. This allowed me to establish clear transitions and demarcating each segment. This approach helped with the smooth progression and enhanced the listening experience.

I wanted to use a skill I learnt in class, the ‘j cut’, a technique used in film where audio precedes the visuals, but in my case as there were no visuals. An example of this was introducing the sounds of waves, people and seagulls, allowing listeners to envision an ocean scene before my brother described it.

Another intentional choice was to highlight key punchlines from my siblings’ dialogue. Before they delivered each punchline, I layered a heightened sound effect to underscore the humour.

Credits:

Staring: Peter Duong, Tina Duong, Tiana Duong

Audio Effects and Music: FreeSound

Observational Film 

When considering Rhythm within this work, I tried to match it to the sound of the music but also using both longer andshorter duration clips. I also arranged my clips in a way to show their connection to each other with similar subjects.

Audio Interview with Sarah Goh – Storytelling 

Questions I came up with:

• What kinds of stories are you interested in?
• What does storytelling mean to you?
• What got you into storytelling? 
• Why tell other people’s story and not your own?
• What’s your connection to other people’s stories – how does it make you feel ?
• Can you describe the most emotionally impactful story you’ve heard or seen? 

The main objective of the Zephyr studio was to focus on uplight and promoting the young underground creative scene of Melbourne, through a docu-series. The pitch deck based our understanding of the studio, with the main objective of creating an immersive experience for viewers to see the ‘no filter journey’ of ‘young, boundary-pushing artists in their ‘fearless’ creative journey of ‘redefined self-expression’. Our group docu-series video was able to capture the complexities of this through the documentation of artist April Crumpler. More specifically engaging with her journey as a visual artist finding her unique style, influenced by her move to Melbourne. 

In more depth, our work was able to engage with inspiring viewers to ‘explore their own artistic passions’ and uplifting Melbourne’s scene by portraying the story of a dedicated and upcoming artist. April’s story started when she was younger, visiting Melbourne with her parents and creating her own art in high school. Though the move from rural Victoria to Melbourne influenced her art in a way that opened her mind to new creative practices and influenced her style in a way that she would have never been able to do back in Ballarat. Starting with portraiture and becoming more abstract and lively with the murals and spray paint work within Melbourne city streets. Therefore, our decision in choosing April allowed us to perfectly engage with the criteria of the pitch deck and its goals.

I believe the most successful element of our final work was being able to capture the essence of April’s journey as an emerging artist through our editing and b-roll footage. We were able to achieve this through the many in class trial runs which developed into creating a VPW. The VPW acted as a cheat sheet for our group, consistently updating and engaging with the content when we were unsure or needed further confirmation. This step not only allowed us to practise and get better at our technical skills with the equipment, but also helped to develop the interview questions, allowing for more in depth and detailed answers. April’s story was demonstrated through our a-roll, but refined during post production where we extracted the most important parts to create an engaging story that ‘encourages viewers to explore their own artistic passions’. Our inspiration video, ‘Meet the artists – Precious Okoyomon’ influenced the way we could edit our own video. This video included an engaging introduction of ways in which we could hook the audience, the structure of the video and bright colouring. Furthermore, our post-production process included logging, paper edits, the comparison doc and group reflection, allowing us to refine our docu-series video down to the core elements and therefore audiences were able to engage with the 4 minute edit in a digestible and inspiring way. In addition to this, the b-roll footage allowed us to visually portray her practice and make our video more enticing in its video format. Viewers were able to see her progression from realistic portraits to spray painting and abstract art as well as her personality, a fun and bubbly person. Therefore, the editing process allowed us to demonstrate April’s ‘unapologetic self-expression’ while also addressing the overall aesthetic of ‘gritty cinematics’ through the b-roll. 

Although these elements were successful, we did run into some challenges throughout our process. For example, we ran into planning issues, where our filming location fell through and therefore pushed our filming day back. We were able to solve this issue by booking an art studio in RMIT. This allowed us to put up April’s work on the wall for a more dynamic background and allowed us to push April away from the wall creating depth, which is one element we were able to solve from the trial run. Another issue was the audio for the a-roll, where the echo of April’s voice could be heard after every sentence. This was due to the open-space of the room we shot in but was able to resolve the issue to the best of our ability in post-production using the audio effects. Although we did run into problems, we all understood that problems will always arise in creative projects and these issues acted as a learning tool for us to improve on for next time. 

In regards to the source material learnt in the Zephyr class, I believed it allowed me to gain real life industry experience in a supportive classroom environment. I was able to learn the whole process of creating a ‘professional level, short documentary’ with the step by step guide and the constant feedback to do so. From practical skills like using the FX3, lighting and audio equipment, or creating a VPW, logging document or paper edit, which I’ve never done before. This semester we not only did blog post reflections but also video discussions which cultivated more ideas and ways of improvement. Furthermore, engaging with the exhibition of the video docuseries by making a thumbnail and printing and putting up posters. 

If I were to continue my work on the Zephyr docuseries, I would love to build social media content on different platforms like instagram or TikTok to reach a broader audience. This is a pathway that I want to personally go down later on in my career. I would do this by re-editing the video into portrait mode, as well as shortening the video down into micro-stories and quicker cuts. I would also love to interview more emerging Melbourne creatives to develop more variety and greater depth into the project, people from different backgrounds, with different experiences and creative processes. 

Our group worked really well collaboratively. We all put in effort to keep constant communication on our work in progress, delegating tasks by understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses. During the editing process, even though we did it individually, we helped each other with the audio issues and discussed ways to combine our individual edits to an improved and concise group edit.  Our reflective Zoom calls allowed us to listen and learn about each group member’s understanding of the course material and was another way of improving our process both individually and as a group. 

Overall, the Zephyr docuseries project provided me the opportunity to apply industry standard experience within an academic setting, allowing effective teamwork and ultimately elevating April Crumpler’s journey as an emerging Melbourne creative. From planning to collaboration to execution and post production we were able to successfully deliver a dynamic short documentary that resonates with viewers and authentically depicts her artistic evolution. This experience strengthened my technical skills and inspired me to consider expanding the project to reach more people and showcase Melbourne’s vibrant, underground creative scene.  

References:

Art Basel. (2024, May 16). Meet the artist | Precious Okoyomon. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Ljl3I14GU1w?si=Oooouo93fWAyzHdJ

At the start of this week our group was able to hop on a zoom call to discuss our assignment with the ILO and weekly written reflections to guide our discussion. The shortened ILO for this assignment was to produce a professional short documentary that captures the nuances of a creative process and addresses the pitch deck. We were able to discuss the ways in which we did this by talking about the process of picking our participant, location logistics, how we were able to get our a-roll and b-roll footage, post production- paper edits, logging and our individual edits. As well as how our mistakes helped shape our learning and improve for next time. 

I believe that teamwork was the most important learning lesson that came out of our discussion especially when we had to do our individual edit. Even though it was done independently and we were able to individually show our skill and vision, we all helped each other out on how we could use different techniques to fine tune our work, eg. fixing the echo in the room or the colouring of the video. At the stage of the call, we were still working on our individual edits and refining them as much as possible in order to share with each other and get feedback. 

When we did get our individual edits done, a comparison doc was made to share the edits and feedback was given, the strengths, weaknesses and any extra notes. This was especially helpful because it gave a 3rd person perspective on my own edit. I was able to refine my individual edit using the feedback given: adding credits and trying my best to  improve the audio quality. It was also positive to see the strengths in my work. 

Going into the editing booth on Thursday was when we got to sit down, watch through the edits as a group and discuss what we liked about each person’s edit. We found that this was the best method instead of getting one person’s edit and making that the final chosen edit without any further refinements. This allowed the best parts of each person’s video to be included and a group effort instead of an individual one. The editing suite also helped us listen to the sound using good quality speakers instead of just our headphones, emulating the theatre that the video will be exhibited in. Furthermore, the piece of feedback that stuck out to me the most from Seth was to get straight into the story, have a b-roll shot that bookmarks the transition of the mini-story before the a-roll audio comes in (eg. B-roll of April flick through her notebook followed with a-roll of her talking about it). This allows audiences to see what the participant is going to talk about before the participant talks about it and therefore peaks the audiences curiosity. As well as, in a mini-story within the overall story, b-roll footage can have longer screen time and we don’t have to always flick back to the a-roll footage. 

Overall, we have worked really hard to get to the point of exhibitions. We just need to tie up a few loose strings; finalise our group edit, write the written justification on why we picked each media making evidence and prepare materials for the studio exhibition like the blog, thumbnail and the posters and flyers. In regards to individually, after attending the exhibition I will write my studio reflection.