Final Essay Film:

Mahjong for Dummies

Documentation:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AglboujfYa9VfXAK9GxZ1WmQ3yQBHia3NLnqT_seZ_g/edit?usp=sharing

Prompt #1 – Videos

Prompt #2  – Essay Film Treatment

I wish to make a genre-hybridised essay film based upon the Chinese tile-based game of Mahjong. It’ll be set around a group of four mahjong players, will include narration about how to play, and switches to script during the game.  I am also very keen on including some or all Cantonese script with subtitles as this is something underrepresented in Western media.

Tonally, the story will switch between the genres of drama and instructional video to tell a story through the process of a game of mahjong. I will set this up into 3 parts: 1st part – the setup, preparing the game, 2nd part – the game, 3rd part – everyone waiting for the final tile they need to win.

Upon consulting my mood board, I noticed something that all the inspiration images had in common. In terms of colours, there was a lot of greens, yellows, soft colours that evoke comfort and are complementary of the mahjong table and tile colours. Colour is also very symbolic in Chinese culture, with colours such as jade, red and gold being prominent and often representing luck, royalty and beauty. 

In terms of audio, I was very inspired by the Wong Kar Wai film In The Mood For Love, with long instrumental notes and plucking sounds in Yumeji’s Theme. This created quite an intimate and slightly ominous atmosphere throughout the film and it is used consistently which is why it sticks out as an audience member.

Prompt #3 – Reflection

Through the 15-30 second micro videos we have done to practise our personal essay skills, I have realised how short this really is in conveying a message without it feeling rushed. I found that I would over-explain my message when my photos were enough, which I think took away from the nuance of the story I was trying to convey. I really want to be able to tell a story with more use of show, not tell. This is a skill I struggled with when crafting a voiceover for one of my videos. I found myself overdoing the explanation and not leaving wrong for the visuals and music to tell the story. Hence, I tried to focus on audio and music to convey my message.

Through this studio I have learnt a lot about the variety and freedom of the essay film. Astruc (1948) discusses how the medium, which he calls camera-stylo, allows for the artist to “express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel,”. I’ve also thought about cinema as a “means of expression,” and the forever evolving nature of it. With this, upon reflection, I have noticed how less stigmatisation over certain issues over time has led to more creative freedom and thus more chances for one to express a feeling, mood, or thought in an essay film.  

The spontaneous nature of the essay film has continued to intrigue me over the course of this studio, and as seen through Gibson’s (2021) unplanned works. A lot of cinema and video production requires meticulous planning and preparation, yet the essay film can be found to be quite random in its conception. Inspiration can strike at any moment and upon further investigation an essay film can be made. I think this has made the micro films difficult for me as I am used to video production when there is a script and everything is planned out. In order to think of short ideas that I could implement in a timely manner, I had to scroll through my phone’s camera roll and think of my own thoughts and feelings associated with certain times. For example, when I was going through my family’s photo album, I had to fill in gaps with my own knowledge of my family’s experiences. It made me think of camera rolls now, and their place as a modern photo album. We have so much more footage of our lives now as it has become so accessible. Although this topic isn’t what my essay film is going to be about, I did think this was a very interesting concept that I would like to investigate further in the future.

As Richter (2017) describes it, “documentary film is given the task of visualising notions of the imaginary,” and through showing how something happens, not through telling. My micro films did have a documentary aspect to them, showing a genuine photo album of my family and part of my family’s story. I did use the two micro films as a way to try storytelling through pictures and music. Self-expression and visuals are a major part of storytelling through documentary essay film. The “new and great artistic possibilities” of documentary essay film has really drawn me in as this studio leads up to our final project, as it is what has inspired me to genre-hybridise my idea.

References

• Astruc, A. (1948), The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo https://www.newwavefilm.com/about/camera-stylo-astruc.shtml 
• Bentley, S. (2021) head_phone_film_poems: interview with Ross Gibson https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/head_phone_film_poems-interview-with-ross-gibson/ 
• Richter, H. (2017), Essays on the Essay Film, 6. The Film Essay: A New Type of Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.7312/alte17266-007

REFLECTION #1

Prompt 1 – Reflect on what your expectations of this unit are. Why have you chosen this studio? What do you hope to learn from it? How does this fit in with larger expectations of your creative and/or academic world? What’s important to you in doing this studio? (200 words) 

I was finally allocated to this studio after being in limbo with my timetable and luckily only missed the first studio class. What got me most interested in this studio was how broad the topics we can choose from are. I feel like it allows for a lot of creative freedom and will help me build upon the ideas I have been developing, especially themes such as race and cultural identity which I have not gotten a chance to delve into thus far in other studios. What I expect in this studio is to hone in on a key idea and zoom into it over a longer timeframe. Through symbolism, I want to learn how to build my storytelling skills and to utilise the notion of “showing, not telling” in order to strengthen my ability to create convincing and meaningful visuals. I also want to learn how to edit with intention rather than only sticking to experimentation. I do think there is merit to experimentation when it comes to trying out different things to see what works, but I do not want to depend on this too much for my final product. This will hopefully lead to less uncertainty about the finished product when it’s done, which is another goal of mine this semester.

Prompt 2 – Compare two of the essay films screened in this Unit. You can comment on the depiction of the characters in the film, the story telling style, the visual style, the audio style, the editing style. The ideas the film engages with. How it handles character. How it fulfills or subverts audience expectations. How they make you feel and why. Why does a certain creative choice work for you, or not. (400 words) 

Two of the essay films screened this semester are Shirkers and The Gleaners and I.

Shirkers is about Sandi Tan’s experience uncovering stolen footage and talking about her experience from idea to filming to losing a piece of work she and a few of her friends had worked hard on. What made this film interesting was the mixed-media aspect and the jumping from the original Shirkers footage to interviews with her team members to behind-the-scenes photographs. 

The Gleaners and I is about scavenging. Including the past and present, and different interpretations of reusing resources. From scavenging potatoes to creating artwork with seemingly ‘worthless’ items. It has political undertones about class status and seems to be an offbeat self-portrait documentary about Agnès Varda and the art and films she has created in her career.

When comparing these two essay films, I noticed that there is no piece-to camera from Sandi Tan in Shirkers whereas Agnès often shows up on the screen and shows the behind the scenes of filming the documentary. Despite this difference, they are both very personal stories and it shows through the passion of storytelling in both films. I will say that Shirkers does take itself more seriously to an extent compared to The Gleaners and I, where Agnès’ amusing narration is swapped with a more expository tone which does make you listen and focus more on the story as an audience member. It does play out like a mystery and you want to get to the bottom of it. This is intriguing as someone watching, and I think it definitely makes it a very engaging experience.

The Gleaners and I does link back to Agnès Varda despite being very interview-based and does not seem to link back to her own life until you are aware of the type of art she usually creates. It seems to tell the story of other people more than Agnès Varda’s personal life but this still links back to a self-portrait. It is also links back to her views on class status and inequality, which I think was a major influence for her in making this documentary. Her interviews are also very conversational and feel casual and authentic in that sense. Shirkers also has this layer of authenticity because you empathise with Sandi and her friends’ experience. She adds details about their lives to humanise and understand these people and speaks directly to them in the film. 

What I think was most similar about both essay films is that they utilise voiceover, although in different ways. Both make you feel as though the topic at hand is important but they also fundamentally have different goals. Shirkers is uncovered footage and a documentary about a group of young, passionate filmmakers, whereas The Gleaners and I is about scavenging but links to Agnès Varda and her beliefs and interpretation of her own works. 

Prompt 3 – Write about how these two films may, or may not influence the essay film you will be making. What lessons have you taken from them? What will your film be about? What style(s) will you use to make your film. Personal home movies or snapshots? Interviews? Voiceover? Written text? Experimentation? Most importantly – why you will make those decisions?  (400 words) 

I really appreciated Shirkers from its colour-grading to the storytelling style. Its use of mystery was very intriguing and kept me on my toes the entire time I watched it. I really enjoyed the range of mediums used and how some collages felt like a manifestation of her thoughts and feelings. I was very much in awe of the visuals and grainy colouring, and how it really shines a light on a small town/suburb in Singapore. Instead of a place, I really want to shine a light on a specific part of something specific to my cultural background and nuances like the close-ups used in the original Shirkers footage. I think the nuances of facial expressions on the characters in the footage was very important in creating a more intimate experience for the audience. 

What I liked about The Gleaners and I was the use of voiceover from both Agnès and the people she’s interviewing to create this film with perspectives from a range of different people. However, I don’t think I will be interviewing a lot or any people in my short film as I want it to be more narrative based and less of a documentary. My main themes are family and culture which I want to delve into and expand upon, but I also don’t want to use too vast a range of shots which may overwhelm and take away from the intimacy of the moment. 

I really want my final product to be based around something from my cultural background as it is an area I want to build stronger and more well-rounded ideas on. I also want there to be people and connections between people to be a focus of my final product. Hence, I will probably lean more on the ideas communicated on Shirkers as it hones in on a small group of people with only a few interview sequences. I think the nuances of facial expressions and small changes as well as slow-motion which will create a very intimate mood and atmosphere in my final short. I do want it to be a mix of narrative and step by step on how to play a certain card or strategy game. I also want to play with the past and present aspects especially as certain games have evolved and changed over time, as has its audiences and those who play them. Overall, I’m looking forward to experimenting with narrative and filming small nuanced moments in preparation for my final product.

I think our main goal with Situation Tragedy was to make people laugh. I have had people contact me and my other group members telling us how much they loved it and thought it was hilarious which has been the most rewarding part of screening this film.

I hope everyone in our group is recognised for their specific efforts on all parts of the process of making Situation Tragedy, and that we successfully made a media product that is more informed by comedic theories and forms than if we made it prior to taking part in this studio. One thing I’m super proud of is that we were voted second audience favourite despite not being screened on opening night, so that means we were able to reach more audiences than expected. I just hope whoever watched Situation Tragedy had fun and laughed.

The main things I would develop if we had more time to work on Situation Tragedy, we would have put more thought into the timing and editing stages, to ensure that it looks even more like a genuine true crime documentary. Basically, we would work more on the true crime aspect of the genre-hybridisation. I would have also liked to pay more homage to the American Vandal format, with more focus on the behind the scenes aspects of the documentary. For example, we could have included Mira, the Twitter fan / detective in more scenes for comedic effect, like if she was losing her mind over finding out who put the condom in the sandwich.

Our Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre studio produced a lot of hilarious work and it is really cool to see how each group produced something different to each other, with different styles and forms of comedy.

Rogue, a spy-comedy by Zoe, Chloe, Anna, Bobby and Oscar was a really well-done execution of hybridisation and was hilarious. Reminiscent of Mr Bean‘s physical comedy and Men in Black‘s sci-fi, they did a really great job of using forms of comedy and sci-fi to create a new entertaining product. I loved the camera work especially in the fight scenes, it really felt like the group had worked on their craft to make sure it was believable. Also poking fun at modern Melbourne and demonstrating it from the perspective of someone who came from the 1960s was super fun and creative. The subtle hints at previous works the group members made in the studio was also very smart and a nice way to demonstrate how far we have come since our sketches.

Trip Up by Angus, Giorgio, K, Ben and Saskia was reminiscent of The Hangover, and did a really great job at creating believable comedic characters.  I also love how they just used really random ideas like looking in really random places for Millie Bobby and Kevin being fully submerged into the sea, as it was so funny to watch as it had a shock aspect and also got laughs out of the audience when it was screened. I think my favourite part about Trip Up was the group dynamic. I think that the group had great chemistry and it made it feel more genuine and believable as an audience member.

From the Visual Blueprint studio, one work that stood out was Unhinged, a horror short about a first date gone wrong. There were a lot of really aesthetically pleasing shots and the use of colour, particularly red in the murderous scenes really conveyed the somber mood and atmosphere. The dramatic cuts between the interrogation scene and date scenes were really interesting and I believe it was successful in evoking anxiety and fear. The acting was also really great and the contrast between the character Jarrod during the interrogation and date scenes was quite haunting and uncomfortable (but in a good way). I did help out with some of the sound operations on set so I got to see how differently this group operated compared to the process of our comedy short. Since Visual Blueprint was more about the visual style and ‘showing, not telling,’ a lot of time on set was spent on filming each scene over and over from different angles. This did give the final product a more cinematic and visually compelling outcome.

This semester has genuinely been my favourite of the course so far and I’m so excited to take on the skills I have developed into the next studio. Seeing a lot of works from other studios has given me a lot of inspiration and I’m ready to start brainstorming ideas!

Week 7: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chloe-roussy/2024/06/02/beyond-a-joke-beyond-a-genre-week-7/

Week 8: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chloe-roussy/2024/06/03/beyond-a-joke-beyond-a-genre-week-8/

Week 9: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chloe-roussy/2024/06/06/beyond-a-joke-beyond-a-genre-week-9/

Week 10: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chloe-roussy/2024/06/06/beyond-a-joke-beyond-a-genre-week-10/

Week 11: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chloe-roussy/2024/06/06/beyond-a-joke-beyond-a-genre-week-11/

Final reflection + Final Product: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chloe-roussy/2024/06/06/beyond-a-joke-beyond-a-genre-final-reflective-essay/

Week 8

This week we started to really get into the groove as a group, assigning roles and further brainstorming our narrative. We outlined a general storyline, subplots and what events would take place over each of the two 10-minute episodes. However, one of the biggest parts of our narrative that we could not figure out was the ‘incident’ that takes place on a sitcom set. Hence, we got to brainstorming again and chucked all the ideas we could think of on the table.We knew the incident couldn’t be too serious of a crime that police would need to get involved, as our premise was centred around twitter fan who investigates.

When we finally figured out the incident – one involving that of a sandwich and a condom, we were ready to start writing out a first script. Lewis begun by writing out the second episode, and we were so glad he did. He turned our scrambled ideas into a story, and this was a real turning point for the group.

My role this week was to do a talent scout, so basically, looking for actors that would fit into the roles we had briefly written character profiles ab0ut. I already had a few actors in mind who do Comedy at Collarts, as I had already seen them do stand-up and was confident in their abilities to comedy-act. We wanted to make sure we had reliable and professional actors so working with Comedy students felt more seamless. It also meant that they could add another project to their portfolio which, as media students, we’re aware how important this is in gaining future opportunities in the industry. I also had a few media students in mind in the casting, including those of us in the group who had acted in previous Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre sketches. So, I got the socials of a few Collarts Comedy and RMIT Media students and added them to an Instagram groupchat, laying out our plans so far and starting the casting process.

As expected, comedy is so much harder to do successfully than I thought. I think a lot of people think that it’s ‘easier’ to do because it doesn’t necessarily require high quality cinematography in order to be funny. I did not feel this way as I have friends doing comedy and knew that it is a highly underestimated art. However, what I have learnt about comedy is that writing comedy is difficult and you often need to work with others in order to come up with a well-rounded piece of work. As a whole, my idea of comedy has become more informed, through learning about different theories, aka. the science behind being funny.

I think we very successfully created our take on the American Vandal format of mockumentary / comedy-documentary. Our short is filled with comedic bits and jokes and takes the idea of a true crime documentary pretty seriously. Upon showing our friends who aren’t in the studio our rough cuts, we got many laughs and that is the main goal of comedy, so I definitely think we succeeded in that. Our main theory that inspired us throughout the process of writing and planning was ‘Benign Violation,’ one of the key theories we learnt about in class. This refers to when something is gently harmful, like the body’s response to tickling, where it seems there is a threat to one’s body but it isn’t enough for there to be actual harm, which leads to laughter (Warren & McGraw, 2015). When coming up with an incident that happens on the set, we knew it had to be serious enough for a cast member to be kicked off set but not enough to require criminal charges or have severe consequences. I think this, paired with the fact that Mira takes the whole investigation very seriously adds to the humour and hybridisation of comedy in Situation Tragedy. We were also inspired by an episode of Brass Eye, which is a fake news TV series (Meikle, 2012) which had more of a public commentary on a serious topic; drugs, whereas our social commentary was a lighthearted take on celebrity culture and fandom.

If we had more time to work on our film, I think we would have put more thought into the timing and editing stages, to ensure that it looks even more like a genuine true crime documentary. I think this would have really sealed the deal for it as a believable Netflix-style documentary. However, I do think that part of the charm is the detail of the documentary being made by a Twitter fan and not a professional. I think we would have more time to iron out some of the nitty gritty details, such as having filmed interview scenes in two seperate locations. Fixing small issues like this would probably elevate the project as a whole as well.

Another aspect of American Vandal that I would’ve liked to trial in our project is the crew members taking a bigger role in the storyline. Since we were limited to 20 minutes, we did not have a lot of time to explore that side of things, but perhaps if we had cut down some other parts of our story we could have included more ‘behind the scenes’ footage and give our character Mira more of a chance to tell her own story. Mockumentary is all about “performing authenticity” (Wallace, 2018) and I think that what made our story effective as all of our actors took their roles seriously and as if their wacky characteristics were real. I think that if we had more time, we could flesh out this character more and give her a chance to be even more comedically authentic and overly serious.

Working with other people in this studio has been really interesting. In terms of our group sketches, working with different people made it clear how important it is in comedy to find people with similar visions and comedy styles. Everyone laughs at different things so each comedy media product is not going to make everyone laugh. Hence, I think it is important to find a like-minded crowd and be really dedicated with that comedic style.

Working with Nia, Zach, Yusuf and Lewis has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had over the course of this degree so far. Situation Tragedy would not be what it is without each and every one of us bouncing ideas off of each other and being dedicated to our storyline and vision. Originally we were set on doing 2 episodes, and if I were the one to make all the decisions on my own, I wouldn’t think of linking them together to one episode like in the Brass Eye example we watched. However, Zach suggested this and it turned out to be a really effective idea in practise that I’m really glad we ended up doing. We did realise that ‘episode 2’ was basically third act and wouldn’t make sense as a whole episode. I do think the biggest difficulty we had as a group was stubbornness with the editing stage. We all had agreed upon most things before and during filming, but this was where we all had a few disagreements (although things never got heated) about the importance of different things and how they were portrayed in the final cut.

Overall, my experience in this studio has been unforgettable. I’ve met and worked with a lot of different people and have grown much more comfortable with pre-production and production. I’m so proud of Situation Tragedy and I can’t wait for people to watch it.

References:

• Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P. (2015), “Benign Violation TheoryLinks to an external site.” in Attardo, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.
• Meikle, G. (2012), “‘Find Out Exactly What to Think—Next!’: Chris Morris, Brass Eye, and Journalistic AuthorityLinks to an external site.“, Popular Communication, 10(1–2), pp. 14–26.
• Wallace, R., 2018. Mockumentary comedy: Performing authenticity. Springer.

Week 11:

We paced ourselves in the lead-up to this week as it was the biggest and most ambitious week so far. This week was finally filming week.

Our studio was booked from 9am-4pm so we knew we had a tight schedule to follow. To ensure that we could set up the studio and put everything else in the dressing room, the crew met on campus at 8am. All of our amazing cast members arrived by around 9am and had time to get into their costumes. At first, we were falling slightly behind schedule, but after we finished the opening sitcom sequence, we decided to have a lunch break. We had already arranged catering ahead of time, so we knew that our actors were comfortable and fed before the next few scenes. After this break, we got back to work and were on-time and on-schedule again. Despite the stress of getting everything done on time, we all had a lot of fun on set and made many fond memories.

As for the second day of filming, we just needed to record a few extra behind the scenes footage and interview scenes. This led us to our second location – the Reach Foundation in Collingwood. There was no need to set up much other than lighting, the camera and a chair for the interviewed characters. We finished filming here before expected and were now ready to export footage and audio before post-production. Everything went smoothly and this is attributed to all the planning we did in the pre-production stage, especially with the call sheets that Nia made ahead of time.

Then, Nia and Zach got to work on the first rough cut (I would’ve loved to be there but I was given more shifts than normal this week), but I was told that the continuity sheets helped the initial syncing process much easier and we were looking good in terms of finishing our film before the due date.

Week 10

This week was probably the most stressful week for our group, as we were knew how big of an undertaking this project was and we really wanted it to align with our vision. We started off the week by presenting our idea, vision and progress in making our final media project for the studio. We had made a vision board, character profiles and had a very clear direction we wanted to go in for the final product.

We also outlined the roles each member of our group would take in each step of the process towards finishing our product, which we have decided will have the title ‘Situation Tragedy,’ a play on words of situation comedy (sitcom) and to playfully dramatise the story.

My favourite part of this presentation was the table read of our second episode. It was very validating and rewarding when our peers laughed at our jokes and narrative. We purposely redacted the information surrounding the incident so they could find out through the script what happened. It was super validating hearing laughs from people in the audience as it meant that it wasn’t just funny to us but to other people who are well-versed in comedy.

Then, we needed to finalise the casting of the actors, make sure we have booked the studio (we actually struggled to get a response from them so we may need to work with our studio leader to get in touch), and making sure our filming dates are locked in with our cast and crew.

Yusuf, Zach and Nia ended up speaking to those in charge of the studios as it was difficult to digitally get in touch, and successfully booked in a time slot for us to film our sitcom scenes and behind the scenes footage. Once this was set in stone, we put together all our final pre-production documents and sheets we would need during filming (such as continuity/editing), and finalised our shot list. We knew this would be vital for us to utilise in post-production as this was already a very big project with such little time and we wanted to make the process as seamless as we possibly could.

Week 9

We really got the ball rolling this week. Lewis wrote out the first draft for our second episode script and we were so happy with the results. He turned our brief synopsis and character profiles into a hilarious and well thought out story that fit in exactly with what the rest of the group and I had envisioned.

Yusuf took the initiative in location scouting. We were really keen on getting a realistic sitcom set for 0ur film as we knew a lot of our scenes would be on the sitcom set and we wanted to make the opening scene feel like a genuine sitcom. We had a look in the studios at RMIT and the props department and sure enough, it seemed the perfect spot to film a believable sitcom scene. The studios are pretty high in demand at the moment though, so I’m really hoping we can successfully book a time to use it.

I was tasked with confirming filming dates with actors. We first used lettucemeet to schedule when all or most of the crew was free to film as we really wanted to have as many of us on set at all times. We really see this as more than a university assignment, and all want to be a part of it every step of the way. I also took on the role of costume design. To do this I made a google slides and got to work on Pinterest. I took a good look at the character descriptions we had typed up as a group and pictured them in my mind.

Overall, everything seems to be going at a good pace, and we’re looking forward to presenting our script to the class next week when we present our idea and work so far. Nia’s setting up some slides to present and some character descriptions so that we can give the class and the industry representatives a better idea of our vision and plans for the mockumentary.