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

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

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.