Author: Gloria T

The role of themes

What are themes? a categorised idea? They do make statements that generate different reactions to the audience as well as the authors yet have the ability to teach them about each theme. From the readings… I’ve realised that some themes expresses a value, say of love, family and etc. and take a side on an issue. It is in fact a product of story elements, emerging from combinations of those elements, like the principle of art when a colour is the elements of art. We can say that red tones and colours as the elements gives a sense of love and passion themes. So basically, storytelling can be described as theme-telling.

But where do they come from? According to the reading, it is evident from our own experiences and explorations of feelings. Have you heard anyone said “everyone’s an artist”? But are all of us really? So what makes us an artists? I’ve found that everybody has humanely qualities but artists are the ones driven to “investigate, arrange and organise them”. They are the ones who has curiosity and the urge to understand needs, wants, feelings, life… and that is how and where we find theme. It does depends on ourselves and our values.

This notions of finding themes to know my own identity encourages me to a further self-discovery in order to make films. The process in which I can learn this notion is practice, keep creating, putting down ideas into screenplay because “storytelling is a process of self-discovery”. This is why auteurs like Scorsese, Spielberg, Burton and many other great filmmakers each have constant themes within their films. An example of this is Scorsese’s constant use of comedic elements to share ideas about guilt, faith or manhood as it is presented in gangster films Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street.

https://equella.rmit.edu.au/rmit/file/0efcc57c-cc65-5cf6-4d62-67229e1e4f9c/1/31259008892189.pdf

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/retrospective-the-films-of-martin-scorsese-20131217

From Painting to Film

David Lynch, one of the two most inspiring directors I have encountered in “Finding the Ear” studio so far, started off as a painter whose painting had a blown feather stuck on it and moves. Then he wanted to make his painting “move”. Like Christopher Nolan, he has a sense of ambiguity, abstract and non-linear style among his films which is why I’m interested in his works, just because I am into ambiguity myself. David Lynch’s The Alphabet struck me with an inspiring way to portray nightmares. I’ve learned that he is able to both comply harsh reality combined with loving innocents in a marvellous way in his films such as Blue Velvet. Similarly in his short, The Alphabet, He incorporated an innocent girl with a childlike-heart with a harsh, disturbing dark nightmare. Abstractly complemented with blood, monsters in various shapes and scary form of subjects shot in german expressionist style of chiaroscuro lighting and costume, Lynch provides a mash of these horror aesthetics with a likeable little girl character who sings herself the alphabet to get over a nightmare disturbance. This has truly inspires me in which there is an art in mash-up of two or more completely opposing idea/concept.

Lynch’s sense of making a painting move has motivated me to appreciate both visual art and moving image at the same time. I have always liked painting but did not actually try to see paintings and moving image as something that could be combined. I wonder as I’ve taken a framing studio course, if frames, drawings, and films are one type of artistry in a different form just as abstract yet another form of painting. But what about the audio that incorporates films? Can sounds exist within a painting, as if audience can really hear a painting? or do they always hear ‘silence’ as the sound that exist in paintings? Maybe even an imagined sound can be considered as a living component of an artwork.

https://equella.rmit.edu.au/rmit/file/c172f46c-300d-4235-b285-f8130d55854d/1/160225_3_005.pdf

The art of self expression

Upon reading Michael Rabiger’s ‘You and the creative process‘, I came across the notion of self-discovery through constant production of your own passion. I, as a media practitioner still have no idea of what my own personal style, theme or identity presented among my films/artworks, in which why I am so interested in Rabiger’s article. I’ve learned that this self-exploration is indeed messy, slow and probably will never end. But we have to be willing to take chances yet courageous to trust and show who we are to the people around us just as he said “You cannot excel as an artist and stay in hiding”. Thus, it got me thinking and lead me to be a risk taker in order the become fully alive.

To express yourself is to master the art of non-conformity. Chris Guillebeau in his book discusses about creating your own ideal world. I understood that listening to your own thoughts and actually making them alive creates an inspiration. In Lynne Ramsey’s Small Deaths she expresses her true self of impressionistic creativity through her unique, unattached use of non-diegetic audio. She also cleverly conveyed a beautiful imperfection and rather broken cut editing such as jammed cutting shots repeated throughout parts of her film. This to me is a wonderful self-expression/discovery of the beauty in every individual’s imperfections. To her, the characters, visual and the audio aspects of a film is very important. Hence the details in cuts, unattached sounds, etc are little but powerful components. This way, Lynne Ramsey did push the boundaries of her comfort zone and took these risks.

Is art the same is therapy? Well, I’ve always thought whenever I have conflict emotionally, making art would help. Always thought that it is my own therapy and medicine to keep me satisfied with living. Apparently that’s not truly the case. The text states that if we do really need therapy to survive, it must be self-directed and art is not about self-direction, rather a creation that is meant to explore mysteries of human existence.

Chapter 2. Rabiger, Michael. 2006, ‘You and the creative process’ in Developing story ideas, 2nd ed., Focal Press, Amsterdam, pp. 15-19

http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/theDailyArticle/60303.html

Guillebeau, C 2010, The Art of Non-Conformity, publish Penguin Group, edn. 1, New York.

Nolan’s “what in the world?”

First week in “Finding the Ear”

Our first week in this studio focuses on obviously, introduction. We did watch some clips from three widely-recognised filmmakers though; Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson and Christopher Nolan. What most interests me is Christopher Nolan’s distinct and unique style across his films. Especially an analytical research on Nolan’s pattern of styles and filmic conventions across his different films. Nolan’s imagination of high concept within his films has been not only creating an idea outside the box, but it is like Nolan has also create his own circle somewhere in a space outside the box. This is like what is shown with the man killing his little self and in turn killed by a bigger self of him, in which can represents the idea of karma. I have learned that he consistently portray the sense of uncomfortable time passing through the use of clock ticking. Most of his characters has some kind of psychological instability or rather obsessive, as seen here in his short Doodlebug.

Another aspect I have noticed across his films are that he often present subjects within a subject as it is presented in Inception with the idea of dream within a dream. Similarly, Doodlebug with the character in a parallel world meeting himself in smaller size (and bigger). His usual film attributes chiaroscuro lighting, dark messages, slow camera movements and disturbing subjects (actors, setting, etc.) all determines film noir kind of filmic aesthetics. We can say that Nolan has mashed up different ideas and characteristics of film conventions combining them repeatedly to identify his own sense of auteur style. Thus, this leads me to encourage myself to find my own “voice” as a media practitioner, finding what I value and what my purpose is with my own style. Possibly in the future though, I am interested in different audience reactions to certain styles directors have communicated. This is because probably I do value the audience reactions as I communicate my ideas through films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhKt_CkXD0

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411302/reviews

Doodlebug

Back to “life”, back to inspirations

This is my life now. Getting up for the purpose to do what you’re supposed to have passion for, which turns out to be such a pain. University. Media and Communication courses. Nevertheless, like other average person out there, we go to university because we’re supposed to, not because we want to learn. But to take authority in doing what we are supposed to in order to do what we want is cruical to my ritual as a media practitioner.

Having been enrolled in “Finding the Ear” studio is such a luck for me. I wanted to study the cinema and the filming bodyworks and its industry. So the first week of my second year was familiar. It is like being a new uni student in each course, but not really because you have already done this before. I guess I’ll just have to get used to it and see what happens as another year will pass like it did in a blink. But summer was awesome! Being in Bali while rushing to catch up on all the Oscars nominated films before the ceremony is like the heaven version of studying media. No such thing as official assignment. Period. But let’s be honest here, we’re not supposed to do this but we can’t help it anyway. Movie piracy is BIG in Bali, Indonesia. Even if you can avoid it, some movies aren’t even distributed it local cinemas, making us having to buy these movies to watch it anyway.

But during this holiday I have finally got to watch Room by an inspiring director, Lenny Abrahamson to create such a unique drama/thriller film. It is an adaptation of a book of the same name by Emma Donoghue. It is a film about a captive held in an enclosed and isolated room for seven years, being a victim of abduction. She was pregnant then and had a seven year old son never seeing the world outside and finally escaped to see it for the first time. What got me interested in this film is that despite its genre, the film is portrayed mostly in the child’s point of view and presented in his childish voice over as he narrates his perceptions. The film became a unique up-lifting presentation of the harsh-reality of thrilling world.

Another great film that had opened my eyes over the holidays is The Danish Girl, director by Tom Hooper. The film that made me cry after The Notebook (2004). Just because it reminded me of Caitlyn Jenner. It also got me thinking, is gender the same is sexuality?

Studio Exhibition

In our week 10 to 11 studios, we were focusing on how our studio presentation will be delivered. When put into groups to brainstorm some of these answers, I have found so many similar interests and results experienced by my colleagues let alone inspire each other. Then the whole studio contributed in a single, shipwreck of a G-doc to answer these three questions that some of us cannot, for the first fifteen minutes of the studio, write anything on.

What is the studio investigating/exploring? How did it do this?

The studio has explored enlightening theories from past/historical thinkers and practitioners. By introducing these academics through readings, we are able to investigate a wide range of international knowledge from different directors, filmmakers and other media experts or founders. Furthermore, inspirational screened films in this studio implements significant exploitation that challenges previous restrictions and limitation. These new findings involves the use of mobile camera, IMAX 3D cinema inspired by Lumiere Brothers, media materialism, a mending of action genre in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and thinking outside the box. Like what Jafar Panahi did with his This Is Not A Film, he ‘told’ his film instead of showing it due to the restrictions he experienced as an ex-director by the government. The studio has also explored time and space as part of framing, that both of these elements can be manipulated. It further examines cinematic theories and the projection on the frames through technical use of cameras. Within the frames, there are communications thus, a relationship between the audience, the filmmakers, and also the cinema itself. Finally, “framing is a position of thinking” is the main topic generalised across ‘On The Frame’ studio.

What did you discover in terms of your current/future professional practice?

I discovered that as the studio runs, I am able to differentiate between framing and storytelling although both are closely related. It is because we are positioned to focus more on the visual framing rather than narrative contents or components of the cinema. By attending this studio, I have obtained the knowledge of framing our perceptions and discover the idea of camera as part of human body through the readings and experimental projects. What I will be taking out of this course for my future profession as a media practitioner is a greater knowledge of cinematic framing and development of aesthetics within the frame. Having seen and actually experienced the films of a variety of directors, my understanding of their films and framing techniques has continued to inspire me towards future filmmaking practices. I would also continue to expand my studies on cinematography for framing as what I have experienced in this course serves as a grounding base for my cinematic practice.

What about this studio would you recommend to potential future students?

Basically I would recommend the free-will that we have to the potential future students. The free to “think” and “do” things that we are interested in for our own projects and experimentations are the most important self-triggers of being a media practitioners. I insists on attending the studio’s screenings, especially to experience ‘hardcore’, mind-blowing films like Mad Max that were screened in class. To further endorse future students, what about the studio that most interest me is that we are then able to see the shift of the cinema from its primitive states untill what is contemporary cinema today as well as where cinema may or may not be headed. Learning this cinematic timeline across its histories does contributes to any student’s deeper understanding of how cinema came to be.

“On The Eye” progress

Brief 4 Final

Final sequences:

Finally, it is week 12 and every single assignment that has been haunting us is all finished. My Popular Cinema essay, Creative Advertising “post-card” campaign and now the On The Frame brief 4 exegesis and the test sequences are all over. The last blog update was about the process of this brief 4 project up to the point where Dyy and I just finished shooting. So here are some progress made since then on.

The editing process, which took a while longer as a result of technical (Premiere Pro) incompetence. At first we thought that we could include some background music and sound effects, though we changed our mind to stick with the natural background sounds recorded diegetically. This is because I think it works better in focusing dominantly on the frame’s aesthetics and movement rather than some music added in. While I was editing the opening scene, I found that it was quite hard to have the sequences matching up with the storyboard that I have sketched. Therefore while trying to follow my storyboard, I have also done some experiment on cuts and matching shots and have learned a whole lot more in how to overcome problems in Premiere Pro (mainly through You-Tube and Linda.com). There were shots that needed to be cut and put together. Though as the shot images “rule of thirds” do not match that it obviously show an unwanted cut between those shots, I have learned to use fast-forwarding the duration of the two shots while adding an “additive cross dissolve” video transition effects to make the two shots seems as one.

Focusing greatly on both the opening scene and the ending scene, we decided to only edit and submit these sequences as tests or experiments without having the whole film drawn in the storyboard fully finished. Throughout my exegesis, I am also able to answer the research question that if “the camera is an extension of human body, can then film think and develop just as human being do?” This is an interesting notion that film is able to, as it is a mirror to human mind therefore can think. Futhermore, film can stretch its ideas as a result of the possibility that it is a form of future thinking, hence develop its thoughts just as human being learns new knowledge.

High-Concept Cinema

When I think about Inception, its ambiguity always fascinate me and trigger an inspiration for my media practices. I’ve always been one interested in the ambiguity of a film such as Donnie Darko, Looper, Meshes of the Afternoon and Sex, Lies and Videotape which even influenced me to produce an abstract short film in media one as well as On The Frame brief four project.

Inception gives the freedom to its viewers to decide what they want to infer, leading to their own conclusions and respond to how the film “think”. In our week 9 studio Dan had put us into groups to write any thoughts and ideas about the film and this is what we came up with in the poster attached; all jumbled-up-drawings that “serves” as semiotics and messy writings. Inception not only portray the theories and psychology of the human mind, dreams and consciousness but does it in a way of thinking like a human being. With the use of loud heart-thumping soundtracks, matter of cognition with extreme slow motion corresponding to different levels of parallel consciousness (dream within a dream, the deeper the levels the faster we think), mise-en-scene according to different themes and architecture of the dreams and so on, Inception “thinks” and shows us the co-existance of perspectives and that there is no such thing as reality, only a perception (clearly because of different levels of the dream is of different person and also because of the ambiguity of the film’s ending). Hence, Dan set up different true/false statements on the screen and we had to decide where we stand, anywhere in the room, in which we agree to an extent.

“Cobb is dreaming the whole time.”

What an open ended topic which I guess left me question if Cobb is dreaming the whole time, the whole studio time. Someone else mentioned, “Which time?” and how does time actually work in the film where basically the film is an ambiguity especially of the timeframe and plot. We were not exactly sure and perhaps never will be, in regards to where Cobb actually is if he is free of his conviction or if he ended up in “limbo” where he is, in projection, free and went home to see his kids, who looked roughly the same age as what was shown in Cobb’s subjectivity before he got home. So the whole class had this argument. What I’ve concluded though, is that Cobb is not dreaming the whole time even when the shot cuts, not showing if the totem (Mal’s spinning top) does fall at the end of the film. Again, it is the understanding of off-screen space as Frampton pointed out. What is not shown on the frame does make a significant impact on my conclusions.

What we have here are notes and jumbled-up ideas my group and I came up with as we explore Inception.

Project Brief 4

The last project of On the Frame studio, or should I say “On the Eye” centres the idea of camera as an extension of man, therefore the vision presented from the eye. Our project (Dyy and I) was based on Dziga’s Man with a Movie Camera. Here we go, our racing-through-the-semester assignment again…

It has been a couple of weeks of painful shooting-editing and exegesis writing full of all-nighter sessions. Both Dyy and I finished our storyboard in late August and finally finished all the shooting by week 10. Our storyboard is quite successful in terms of clear drawings, providing that each of us has different responsibility (or part). Dyy is responsible for the test sequences sketches from the audience’s perception while myself focus only from the character’s perception. Therefore during the editing process, I would only edit the scenes of my part. Surprisingly, we only shoots for 3 days and most scenes took place during nightime. Though the preparation took us a while, since we have to do the make-up and costuming, getting to the set locations and waiting for every actor/cast to show up.

We were shooting during those days of cold winter-spring (that is supposed to be spring anyway) in the alleyway where the main character finally follows the girl and finds out she is a vampire. For us, there were a lot of re-shooting needed specially on that part due to the “fake blood” mess, re-makeup to do, unsuitable acting process and technical difficulties. Though it was great that a couple of “volunteer” friends came along to do the make-up and gave our actors tips on acting; “push the victim harder!” or something like “tilt only your head sideways as you pretend to bite”. One tiny problem had occured one day as the man lead, had a haircut as weabout to finish the shooting days, and that it turned out we had to do some re-shoot. Therefore, we had to do even more re-shoots despite the fact that it only took us three days of this process. So to leave it at that, we just had to do the editing and the final exegesis after our update presentation to the class during our week 10 studio. Futhermore, here are some sketches as well as photos during the process as we progresses.

Project Brief 3; Panel Discussion

Click here for fun

Our week 7 studios were open for our project presentation to the panels. My partner Dyy and I both presented our similar interests about framing and have developed our idea for a short film experiment. Upon exploring previous activities such as the gallery ramble, the 50 frames and investigative essay, both of us are inspired by the setting aesthetics of our photographs while interested in valuable theorist ideas. Our idea is based on Vertov’s idea of camera as extension of men and whether or not film can think. We are intended to portray this by using point of view shots of the character’s perspectives and include several test shots. What we are trying to acheive here is also using camera movements which then everything in the frame moves just as when an individual runs and views the surroundings. Along with dark settings and chirascurro lighting, this will assist our horror-genre approach in our frames aesthetics. These test shots comprises of different angles and perspective to compare to the original “point-of-view” shot and each of us will edit these footages differently according to our own perception or thoughts.

These are some of the feedback we have received from the panel:

How do you reflect on the process once you’re done?
Is it possible to make the film in sections, reflect in parts — do sketches