For the summer semester, I decided to do the Recording Place studio. The normally twelve week long studio, was cut down to a six week intensive program. In the first few week, we covered the theoretical elements of place. I enjoyed the Cresswell readings, ‘The notion of place’, in which Cresswell introduces ‘place-memory’ (pg121). Essentially, Cresswell believes that places can also hold memories, which can be supported and remembered by a number of individuals. A place is what we as individuals make of it. Our focus for the semester was the iconic Queen Victoria Market. The market has been a part of my life since I was born, like many other Melbournians. It is a place I used to frequent with my grandparents, and usually where I was allowed to buy toys.

We were asked to find characters and a story that was in some way connected to the Queen Victoria Market. Finding the story/character was surprisingly the easy part of the documentary making process. The market is full of people from all walks of life, the hard part is finding the right person to do the documentary. While Terri seemed like the perfect fit off camera, the story changed once we pressed the record button. She went from being a very well spoken, interesting character to a shy, mumbling person. We met with her three times before the interview, to ensure she was comfortable with us. So that rules out the experimenter effect, in which our view for the documentary clouds our judgement. We established that she was camera shy. Ironically, this worked in our favour since our interview footage was not in focus. We opted to use b-roll and voice over.

During the first few weeks, I learnt how to use the sony x200 and how to set a white balance. I had no idea how to set up the microphones or the importance of using a custom white balance. The white balance was the most useful element of film making i have learnt. It may seem simple but for someone who has zero experience filming, it was a different way of looking through the lens. With the x200, setting the white balance was integral, since unlike dslr there were no other presets available. We had instances where we forgot to bring a piece of white paper and our footage turned out yellow or blue tinged.

Working in a group of six, I learnt the importance of collaboration. Everyone had something different to bring to the group. Some were excellent at editing, others preferred filming and the ones living in the city had responsibilities like borrowing cameras and doing the last minute stuff in the editing suites. This project made me realise that I truly enjoy working in a group, even though at times it can be hard for my naturally introverted self. I enjoy doing creative work at my own pace but for a six week studio, my own pace would be too slow and thats where I saw the benefits of working in a big group. We also respected each others opinions and often talked about our frustrations with the work we created. I mostly regretted filming with the x200 but did not have the luxury of switching to dslr. The look of the footage did not feel right and some of the technical glitches we encountered would have been less noticeable had we filmed with a different camera. To my group, I kept on saying that at the end of the day the story also matters, while i looked lovingly at the videos of the other groups.

while I may not be ‘proud’ of the documentary we created, my close friend told me that the process is often more important than the end result, especially since i am a learner. I had an unforgettable experience making this short documentary and learnt so much more than i expected in six weeks. Now the Queen Victoria Market holds a completely different meaning than it did six weeks ago. It is a place with happy memories of my university days I will cherish and remember everytime I visit.