Month: May 2015

Genre(mixes)

Reading Log #10

Genres are what categorises different films in different belongings. It refers to the kind or type. This mode of categories also helps describe and analyse films rather than evaluate them. Film conventions therefore shape the viewers’ expectations of what belongs to specific genres. Though, movies are like music in terms of genre which can be remixed. Just like music remixes that we’ve explored in our week 11 Lectorial, great unique movies are not of an original idea but a mixture of great inspirations that are then created into one extraordinary piece.

Would we expect that a film starring Sandra Bullock is a romantic comedy? Or those starring Bruce Willis is an action or rather a gangster film?

When we observe a shot in a film with an advanced, futuristic technology or an experiment in a laboratory, would we infer that the film we are watching is belonging to the sci-fi genre?

Consequently, each genre or subgenres has specific conventions whether it is its style, subject matter, music, or even its actors. Vampire films for example, is a subgenre of horror or a thriller category. Though, a genre may not stay that genre and evolve overtime in history. Twilight, being one of the first vampire with romantic conventions are a mixture of genres and had influence other filmmakers, such as the vampire diaries show or A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014). This movie by Ana Lily Amirpour has some similar conventions to the Indonesian horror films, with the ghost or vampire wandering alone at night and hunt for its prey being that it is Iranian with similar culture to the Indonesian Muslim culture. Rizal Mantovani’s Kuntilanak (2006) has the ghost wandering only during the night-time like the girl in Amirpour’s movie, with its arousal of shock, disgust and repel or horrify. But unlike other vampire movies, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is the first Iranian Vampire Western ever made with a mash-up of genre, archetype and iconography.

The Satirical New & Old iPhone

One of the first assessments in our popular culture course started off as blogging and v-logs. Also relating to week 12 lectorial here. Focusing my idea on social networking and smartphone technologies, I did my video log based on a satire written in the past as a high school activity:

I love my IPhone 4s.

Its plain white colour, silver bitten apple logo on its back, its long touchable screen and soft slippery textured round button below its screen I have pressed 12 trillion times… Maybe more. Continue reading →

Blog o’clock; Technology & Media Materialism

Here are some of the ideas that Daniel discuss in our week 12 lectorial (Yayy! last lectorial of the semester):

Technological determinism is a valid way of looking at the world
Humanity is in charge of its own future
Innovation and progress is hindered by scientific regulation
Machines are becoming too intuitive/intelligent
Dust has negligible matter, but it has great power

Focusing on dust and its negligible matter, technological inventions has been assembled with these materials taken from our earth. Hence, it has great power in the world of technological determination and innovations, encouraging us the reliance to these resources. “…allowed dust to do the work: a temporal, slow compiling by the non-human particles as a work of art installed at the museum, ‘a purposeful inactivity'” (Parikka 2013). Obsession with resources, with what we take from the earth not only significantly build a constant progression but we also need to think about the people who literally obtain these resources from the mine. They are the ones breathing the dust into their lungs, having to live with the consequences of their own health. These people may have been the ones collecting materials for the consumers’ media materialism such as having an iPhone, computers and etc. Likewise, our planet itself is affected while geologists study and examine how the planet works and our impact on it. We’ve all heard of the global political issue; the climate change, the ‘dying planet’. See dust is only wall few materials but as obsession with collecting these resources occur, it has an enormous power in the impact of our earth and on us as ones living within.

Another one…

There comes a final assessment in the popular culture course and there comes another annotated bibliography like the one we did in media 1 project brief 4. The references I am using are the articles read for my group presentation on feminism in music videos, an article of the Simpsons and on social media. Writing 1,500 words summary for three references is definitely not an easy one. Let alone this assessment worths 50% of the whole course. But I guess being in the habit of “critically analysing” texts is crucial for the rest of your life unless you don’t mind being somewhat unreliable. Though I’m grateful having learned this skill, while it helps to investigate and study the artefacts of popular culture across times in which I am looking forward to.

A Whole New World

This weekend I went to ACMI Gallery after watching a kids 3D movie, Monster in Paris. Being a mentor in RMIT foundation studies mentoring program, I had to stick with this movie. But on the plus side, my fellow mentors and I get to discover the history of motion pictures in the exhibition. I’ve found the huge transparent “first” lucite television interesting, the first video game with that simplistic tennis simulator appealing and how we’ve managed to have the Thomas Edison peepholes at some point in history is somewhat outlandish. Though what had hauled me the most is the arrival of film, while observing how the invention of colour TV greatly impact film industries and the cinema. Films have been evolving as a result of the constant discoveries of past filmmakers and the invention of technologies. Like the Lumière brothers who invented a new photographic technology to project films into screen, George Méliès discovered yet another cinematic technique of special effects, adding significance to the film productions. Speaking of projections I did a mini abstract, black and white video using one of the exhibits just to see how cool it looks.

…Pop culture coming to an end.

Basically, our second last assignment in Popular Culture is a group project that needed to be presented in weeks 10 and 11. One thing that my group mates and I share is… that we’re all girls. So we had this super broad topic that we needed to research on, which was ‘music videos’ and thought that we could all make points on feminism in music videos including its history from the 80s, controversies, girl groups, individual female artists and dancing aspects. Like all other procrastinators out there, we started meeting up and had skype sessions weeks after we were introduced of the assignment and tend to practice the speech on the 7:40 AM before the pressie time. Even got a little bit confused whether or not we are presenting in week 10 or 11 to be honest. Yet, it turned out that we did pretty good covering our topic of how feminist artists came to be, what’s really behind Miley Cyrus’ expression in her “Wrecking Ball”, the obviously controversed “Blurred Lines” and etc. After all it was hell fun working with these girls, seeing that we would just have ONE more assignment to be done for the end of the semester!

Rachel’s tips

On 1st Draft

So we have quite a rough idea on what do to our media artefact on, which is an audio documentary. Bianca and Patrick have been finding sample soundtracks to put in the piece. As we progresses through our research with what was considered from Rachel, we had another talk in our weeks 10 and 11:

Ranging information from the past, present, and the future of sound history (Paradigm shift).
Research more on the future predictions.
Add more variety in sounds that will be included in the piece to give texture (with each of us; Bianca, Patrick and I have a go on recording our own voice).
Look forward into interviews with experts.

A Step Up to Brief 4

Another one started just as soon as Brief 3 finished. As a group project, it’s required that we produce a media artifact regarding a conceptual idea, ‘Technology’. Therefore, Bianca, Patrick and I have been exchanging Facebook, setting up our G-Docs, and dropping down brainstorming ideas about what might be of our interest for how we are going to produce the artifact. By week 8, we have done a collaborative contract and had a start on an annotated bibliography that was due in week 9.

From this “brainstorm poster”, we decided to make an audio podcast-like documentary consisting the history sounds that have evolved alongside technology. Sounds that undergo paradigm shifts, assisted by Rachel while pointing out about a timeline of the past, presence and future of sound productions and consumptions. Hence, in heading to this direction we divided parts in researching the history in a more in-depth investigation to support the script for our audio piece.

This are some of the task that I’ve started:

Do a research about audio technology from MP3 player to streaming period (1990s-present)
Find further information regarding the future possibilities.
Write a script consisting the research information.
Plan for recording meeting.

The Grizzly Man’s Road

Reading Log #9

It’s all about the director… mostly.

Like fictional films, documentaries have different forms and genres. The nature docudrama film, Grizzly Man (2005) by a German director and narrator Werner Herzog is a portrait. It is about a bear enthusiast, Timothy Treadwell who camped in a remote Alaskan land of Grizzly bears for thirteen summers before he died. Including Treadwell’s recordings of his bear interactions as archival sources makes the documentary a compilation film. The dramatic yet artistic sense is assisted by the Treadwell’s own footages he took of himself and his encounters with the bears, where he narrates his expedition. “It has been only five days since the baby (bear) died, … it’s so sad, it was so cute.” Treadwell had spoken out with informative yet dramatic and casual tone. Furthermore, chain of interviews of close friends, work mates, nature experts and relatives are selected and inserted to vary the genres in order to engage with the audience with an appeal of ranging techniques.

Narrated by Herzog, he is able to ask rhetorical questions and presents a persuasive, viewer-centered argument, making his film a rhetorical form and an opinionative issue. “… Could this one be bear 141 (Treadwell’s murderer)? What looks playful could be desperation.” To Timothy Treadwell, bears are his friends and believe in the gradual friendliness of the bears to him but Herzog doubted the bears and positions the audience to either side of the argument using the enthymeme. It is a rhetorical form also because it provokes an emotional appeal, even though the conclusion cannot be proved beyond question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjwLkKih1hQ

Remixes & Reproductions

Dan explains today that “There’s no such thing as an original idea”. Week 11 lectorial proposes an interesting topic on reproductions and how DJs come about from the histories of discotheque and night clubs. During the 1920s the people would dance to music on a piano or Jukebox. Where in the late 1970s, DJs would have been needed to provide music with seamless transition between songs. Even then, the birth of the Internet has allowed these artists to perform their art, downloading song whether or not there is still a matter based on copyright infringement. The question is how authentic is the reproduction and how much of the aura is captured? Because we can never capture a moment exactly as it is in reality which is different from the digital world. We can try but always have been fragments in our memory.

“This Is The Remix”

Girl Talk

Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans

“Pop art does not describe a style; it is much rather a collective term for artistic phenomena in which the sense of being in a particular era found its concrete expressions…”

(Osterwold, pop art, p.6)