1. In 200 words or less please outline your goals, desires – what you want to get out of this semester. You will review this later in the course. Many will rethink this dramatically by the end of the course – this is a good thing.
To gain more knowledge and practical use of the camera. To step out of the pre-production side and instead help with the editing process and actually have input to the structure of the project. And hopefully be more proactive and have better suggestions when holding the camera, to get creative with whatever location and utilize subjects with the time given. I also want to make something Reputable with my work, something that is note worthy in my future endeavors. So, to work at a “professional” standard and have “professional” topics.
2 Listen to the first 10 minutes of Glenn Gould’s radio documentary, “The Idea of North”.
The overlapping technique used by Glenn Gould works effectively to give off this cloudy and hazy audio trip on which Glenn’s voice shines a light On to the matter. Almost like a collage. Exactly like a collage. The statements brought up by the people were probably popular thoughts that are often stereotyped with the idea of the north, and Glenn Gould is trying to break that. The use of ambience and background noise is also a nice transition to the other speaker.
3. Select from one of the readings and briefly describe two points that you have taken from it. Points that excite you, something that was completely new to you.
Week 4’s Reading was Interesting, it talked about the difference between Fiction and non-fiction and how documentaries sort of have aspects of both depending on what kind of doco one would want to get. There are ‘docodramas’ where it is apparently a mix of drama and documentary. But prior to this, I had a bit of info about the styles of documenting. There is the fly on the wall concept of course, where there is no interaction between subject and filmmaker, there’s the performative kind of documentaries to name a few. But to what extent is any of these “real”? No pre-conceived ideology that the documentary is trying to portray, but there is no such a thing. All documentaries should have a sort of topic and must always try to have the story full circle, at least good ones should. There has to be some sort of editing process that a doco must undergo. For example the aid of narration, music, great photography and cut away shots do wonders, but to record reality and make it interesting is a challenge. So the line that divides is a very blurry one indeed as Bill Nichols says.
4.Link of the Abstract Video: https://vimeo.com/108772307
5. Then reflect on the whole process – Consider: the quality and usability of your recordings; the effect of layering and juxtaposition of both the audio and the video and; the things you learnt from working with this kind of audio and video.
The shots I had were not the most aesthetically pleasing, I was trying to sort of capture the whole idea of parallels and lines and since I had a recording of my friend in a long exposure scene. I felt as if I could manipulate those into a sort of dream like clip. There’s no real narrative actually. The audio I got was from our class. It was a girl saying “film tv 2 8:30 Thursday” so I cut up some words and repeated them then slowed them down. There was no real reasoning but it just seemed to feel more like a dream. Inconsistent and random things that somehow connect. Halfway through, I reverse the first whole sequence to almost retrace the steps. Although it isn’t really noticeable because none of the shots were directional, in a sense that even when reversed it still looked normal. I had just learnt the glitching technique, where I leave gaps to have a black screen. And I also used to stills because it adds a whole new dimension to it. The words were “which way” “this way” “here”. The words I used are disconnecting and lost
6. Select from one of the readings and briefly describe two points that you have taken from it. Points that excite you, something that was completely new to you.
Imagining Reality week 2 reading where it talks about the death of documentary was something. It says that documentary depends on TV to survive, but its because of TV that Documentary is fading away. The convention of a Documentary is often slow-paced and heavy with content and predominantly interview based. Which takes up a lot of time but with more substance and content. Although, the media industry being a mass appealed Business, needs to get quick attention of viewers, ratings, and in turn popularity. Consumers are constantly choosing Fiction because that is what is given to them and Non-ficiton would be too boring for the average viewer of today.