Lectorials

As a director…

You’ve gotta be…

Respectful

Responsible

and

Keep Calm

Before we had our shoots, I attended the studio workshops James had organised for us. These workshops allows us to explore a deeper understanding of lighting principles and cinematography techniques and some directing tips from James himself and Peter White. Our group have had tries to set up our camera and lighting points and figured that we won’t need much LEDs, spotlights or other heavy lighting as we will take advantage of the natural sunlight. Beside cinematography, we’ve also gain a great deal of tips and knowledge about producing and directing. Here are some dos and don’ts that will save us from glitches during the shooting days and the process after.

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Modes of Adaptation

Celebration
Adjustment
Imitation
Revisions
Colonization
Deconstruction
Analogue
Parody/Pastiche
Secondary adaptation
Allusion

Photography- The Gestalt Principles

In week 3 studios, James elaborate a lot about filmic photography and the Gestalt Principles. This creative device is crucial to create dynamic visual composition, hook the viewers and impart implicitly emotion and logic. These principles include an arrangement of parts altogether as a whole is greater, with each part has meaning on its own as Koffka mentioned. He also explained that the whole is not necessarily made up by the sum of the parts, where actually it is different.

Figure/ Ground

Dominant figure

Figure meshed with ground

The object and its surroundings, with figure begin the object or subject while the ground is the setting or pretty much the background/foreground/mid-ground.

Closure

Lightbulb

With closure principle, the viewers fill the gap; where our brain does the work to interpret meanings.

Continuance

Leading lines formed by the river flows

When the eyes follows around within the frame yet also outside of the frame. This can be generated through the use of especially leading lines, directional repetition and lighting.

The law of common fate

Perpendicular position suggests disconnection

Parallel composition among the children shows common fate

Where two or more subjects share or oppose common situation or fate.

Similarity

The woman in the centre being an anomaly (different)

There are similarities or pattern among images like colours, forms, etc. In this photo it is that every man as similar subjects concerned about the injured subject except for the woman smiling and the only different subject who stands out. She will be the anomaly of this image.

Proximity

Flower as skirt

Something off put together as a subject.

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)

Institutions

What are institutions?

Our week 10 Lecture describes this as a term from sociology concerning with organising the structures of a society. In relation to its social, cultural, political and economic factors, there are principles, values and rules that underly these structures. We see a community or an organisation structured to govern the behaviour of a set of individuals like universities, hospitals and even marriages. When watching a film, say Fast and Furious, its narrative is comprised with institutions such as the drivers, gangs and polices. These are examples of institutions and we as students are part of an establishment.

Media Institutions

Broadcast television . Community Radio . Journalism . Cinema . The News . Newscorp . ABC . Public Service Broadcasting

Google

Media institutions, like any other institutions are enduring. The cinema industry would have regulations and structured activities, while developing working practices to produce its films. Furthermore, institutions are a collectivist, reaching to own’s particular goal as the community share expected values. Finally, the public is aware of its status as how google is widely recognised of its status.

Marriage as Social Institution

Marriage is not just based on love and relationship but a social structure involving a set of usually two individuals with expectations. As a widely accepted cultural rules and practice, it is legal and a community recognition that can be known as a legal framework. Often we associate marriage with religion because of its superstitions and rituals that are symbolic of religious practices. Containing moral values, these expectations may involve to be faithful in which the relationship is monogamy. When two are married, the public is aware of its status from the rings they wear. They share certain values as they develop the relationship and working on a particular goal in life through a utilised set of regulations/ compromises discussed between the two. These conventions conveyed in a marriage makes this practice a social institution.

Audiences

Audience is the primary topic of our week 9 lectorial. Wide range of community including advertisers, commercial broadcasters, individual program makers, government policy makers, psychologists, cultural theorists all care about their audience. One of the characteristics of a post-broadcast era is that there is a change in audience practices, making TV for instance, as cultural technology. I’ve thought about myself watching the New Girl show during holidays instead of actually “going out”, or my mum being glued to the telly watching episodes of CSI and Doctor Who all day and even my friends on Spotify. Many of us as audiences are affected by the digitalisation and as mass culture and audience progresses, the idea evaluates that real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies.

I’ve also remembered my little brother undergoing the process of interpellation after watching Avengers and acting like that Captain America hero. Interpellation is, in other words when an individual is prompted by a text to recognise themselves as being a subject belonging to a role. Not one of us has not been there let’s be honest. Furthermore, binge watching (or some other kinds of reading). Been there, done that… like these two here.

Moreover, audiences have specific tastes or desires and makers may think of them as the public, social glue or an imagined community. So we did a little activity talking about our uses of texts and this is what Bianca and I came up with:

Listen to me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rgvyz7Yq1Y

In reading media texts, we need to listen to the sounds being produced. I found this video from You Tube by thebigtinonetwork about a little boy learning and behaving as his parents from observation and listening. Like what the kid is saying… Listen!

Sound is…

Pervasive
Multi-directional
Complexly layered
Prioritised by the ear
Intimate

As aural semiotics, it place the listener in a mediated or imagined perspective. These perspectives include figure, ground and the field. There is a difference between perspective and the system of social distance. Where social distance applies to single sounds, perspective applies to the simultaneous sounds and has relatives rather than absolute levels. Moreover, social distance creates relations of different degrees of formality between the representation and the listener.

Figure: The focus of interest

Ground: The setting or context

Field: The background or ambient space, what is heard

Soundscape

Soundscape refers to representations of a place or an environment that can be heard, rather than be seen. It is understood by individuals in different ways. Some of us can listen to music and actually understand its sounds and notes. But some does not. Some are more sensitive with particular sounds like the air whooshing when others just listen to its silence. Silence itself doesn’t exist and when I think about it, I hear every time even of the fridge whirring when nothing else seems to sound.

Man Of No Ego – Slowing Down (Web of Life)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=204&v=TwuF2mJA3Gw

Textual Analysis & Semiotics

I’ve been doing this a lot in high school. Taking three portfolio subjects in year 12 have murdered me. First of all, studying visual arts required art historical studies in theory classes which made us prepare for the exam. Yes, our exam had a couple of picture of artworks where we had to write an essay on them. Then another “essay” of reflection on our practical piece. Secondly, I also took fashion; materials design subject where in my inspiration page has lots and lots of analysis on historical designs as well as influential designers. And finally media, which is all about film theories and ANALYSIS. Obviously, that’s not all. English! books, films, quotes,… just english. But I remembered one of the great things about english class is watching Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener and reading the alliteration, The Rabbits with your mate the night before the exam and I quite liked that movie.

Our week 7 lectorial explores text, which is a practice of sense-making. It is an empirical evidence of how others make sense of the world. Texts are sites where we can see social production and are vehicles for production of cultural meanings. Therefore include semiotic tradition of analysis in which refers to procedural systems of related conventions for correlating signifiers or signified in certain domains. Textual analysis requires relation of formal codes to social/ideological codes and our in class activity demonstrate the theory.

Formal codes:

Technical

Composition

Genre

Social/ideological codes:

Family

Gender

Sexuality

Race/ethnicity

Class age

Nationality

Narrative vs. Non-Narrative

As our week 8 lectorial focuses on narratives… and non-narratives, we’ve learned about the “Hero’s Journey”. This theory outline is used in most narrative forms such as in religious storytelling, popular culture, myths in books, films and etc. Narratives include a process, development or a progression of the character within the story undergoing a journey. It is exemplified in the Bible of Christianity in which Jesus was born and went on an adventure called from the Father, then faced challenges in which He had to die on the cross. These events are then followed by a revelation and transformation of how Jesus rose from the dead and return as the Christian God.

A simpler and general outline of the Hero’s Journey is presented below. We have seen comical movies like Marvel’s heroes and its narrative undergoes this process of storytelling. Similarly to the disney characters such as Cinderella or Mulan would also follow this outline. Therefore, the “hero” in this case does not mean a saviour in the story, but is any main character undergoing a process of journey.

And now to the non-narratives examples. This refers to the method of storytelling with series of unrelated events, no connection or logic… Basically, it’s nonsense if we read the text in a general matter. It has no chronological order or development of the character or subject and also has no specific clear context. Unlike the narratives, non-narrative sequences are lacking causality. We would see this in abstract, or experimental films such as “Koyaanisqatsi” and from what I’ve seen in one of my cinema studies screenings, “Ballet Mécanique”. Non-narratives often focus more on motif and rather more poetic in terms of its order of sequences. In our lectorial this week, we were shown this film.

https://vimeo.com/34459710

What is Editing

Quote of the day: “The bigger the space or gap, the higher the art is”.

Editing is deliberately breaking things to encourage audience to fill the gaps themselves. It is so that when audiences read texts, they would give itself the meanings. Representation consists of connotations that we understand through our own experience of our own understanding of the “world”. Contexts also contributes to we understand representations. Therefore, editing is about creating gaps by taking away time and place, while making sequence that doesn’t go in an orderly manner. This encourages the audience make their own readings, to “think” and creating meaningful meanings. In this week 4 lectorial, we did a little activity involving cards and had to create series of events that can be reordered in different chronologic. The activity therefore, represents editing sequences in storytelling.

i.e. Continuity editing:

The 180 degree rule.

The Koulechov Effect:

Is a montage editing technique. It is about interpreting events and meanings based on the gaps they fill. An example of this effect is a close-up shot of a person’s face, that is followed by a shot of a food in a plate. We would automatically infer that the person is hungry. While our mind is separated from the body, making conclusions without thinking. But if that shot of a person’s face is followed by a shot of a crying young girl. We would infer a different meaning, where the person is sympathising the crying girl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNVf1N34-io