Practical skill list:

This week we learnt about:

Colour temperature
Manual white balance
Using the zebra tool as a reference point on the viewfinder

We also reviewed the group interviews we conducted during the workshop on Wednesday. As we critiqued each group, we discovered some of the biggest shortcomings could have been solved with simple fixes. For example, our group’s audio was pretty bad and echoy, if we just moved location it could have been much better. Similarly in another shot, a simple and slight change of framing would have eliminated a down light that was overexposed and ruining the shot.

Twiddling Thumbs

Doctor’s offices all look the same, minute variations of the same patent. I could be anywhere in the world right now, just another doctor’s office. Last time I was here I was wheeled into surgery wearing practically nothing but a tasteless patterned hospital gown. This time I’m wearing overalls.

My surgeon, a soft-spoken man, is cradling my recently reconstructed left thumb in his hands inspecting his handiwork. After 8 weeks in a cast I too am able to properly have a look. It looks…different. The skin looks deathly pale and somehow thin, delicate. The two symmetrical cuts the surgeon made and then stitched back together again, have healed into angry red lines.
Seemingly totally absorbed, I realise he had said something.

“Pardon?”

“It’s healed well. Try and bend it from here” he gently taps the top joint.

I stare at my thumb trying to will it to bend, the result a pathetic general wriggle.

“That’s good” the surgeon encouraged.

A strange feeling of dissociation comes over me; I was so sure I could move my thumb and the only thing preventing that was the cast. Now with that gone, I suddenly realised how wrong I was. Suddenly my thumb didn’t feel at all like my thumb. It was jarring.

I bring my right hand up for reference, was the request to bend your thumb towards the palm of your hand an unreasonable one? My right hand didn’t falter for a second, I’m slightly distracted by the fluidity and ease I can move that hand.

I return to my thumb that’s not my thumb with annoyance “bend you idiot” I think. I try harder; the only difference is the addition of pain, a lot of it. I wince.

“Don’t push it too much” he cautions.

I am older then you
I am wiser then you
I don’t really need you, but you need me
You need me more then you need roads
You need me more then you need cards
I was here before them all
My roots run deep, yours are shallow
I’ve watched over you for hundreds of years
I’ve seen you look at me from through the polluted haze
Inside your little metal boxes
I clean the air for you
So you may continue looking

I felt hands of pity lay on me
I felt their kindred spites guarding my life
I thank you
I watched as they too are taken away
Good-bye friends.

My loyalty is to this land yours is to your pocket
I hear the anger of the machines
Cutting me
And I know I am not long for this earth
But neither are you
As the black sludge of bitumen is poured over my grave know who you are really killing

There is a tree I pass most days, for as long as I can remember.
Yesterday it was unceremoniously cut down. It made me really sad and angry at the same time. I wanted to scream out “help!” on behalf of the tree. The lemon gum from 1890 didn’t have a voice I tried to give it one.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/parkville-residents-furious-with-plan-to-destroy-famous-tree-for-citylink-project-20160414-go69ma.html

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/parkville-tree-that-predates-cars-felled-to-make-way-for-citylink-road-20160726-gqea0u.html

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/protesters-face-off-against-police-in-bid-to-save-flemingtom-road-gum-tree-20160726-gqdvry.html

Skill wish list:

Dunning Kruger effect: The less you know about a thing the less you know how bad you are at the thing.

I now know how bad I am at the thing.

The skill set I would like to have at the end of this studio was highlighted most poignantly during Friday’s class exercise with the Sony EX-3.
It became quite obvious I didn’t know a whole lot. Not just about this specific camera, but cameras in general. I mean, sure, I can find the ‘on’ button and hit record, but as Robin addressed; nothing in the shot should be an accident. If my shot is lop-sided it should be because I wanted it to be, and not because I forgot to level it. Robin also mentioned we shouldn’t be learning the ins and outs of this camera but the general principals of all cameras.

So beginning my wish list…

1) I would like to be at least competent with cameras, and all practical gear for that matter by the end of this semester (ambitious).

2) I also hope to become more observant, become less of a passive passenger and become more engaged in my surroundings. It’s easy to complete my 30 minute commute to and from uni in a mindless march, that often ends with me sitting down to my first lecture of the day genuinely not being able to recall the specifics to how I got here. However, when I juxtaposed those days against the days I set out with the intention of observing something to write about, it became obvious how much I was missing! I would like to have more days like that.

3) I also hope by the end to have produced a quality, well thought out, short film/s and for it not to have been an accident. I hope to be then able to repeat the process again and again, well after this semester has finished.

4) I hope to make friends and to collaborate with like-minded and wonderfully different people; I hope our creative minds clash spectacularly and we challenge each other.

Overall I’m excited to learn and hopefully check some of these things off my list.

Wish list over…for now.

Week 1 Observation #2

Glasses Speaking

He seemed like a content man. He smiled often, almost at the end of every sentence. It was almost like the physical manifestation of a full stop.
He spoke, paused and then smiled. A full teeth affair that seemed to be inherently linked with the muscles in his eyelids, as they too slid closed when he grinned quickly before continuing with the next sentence.
After a while, it felt a little disingenuous, but I didn’t mind.

If I had to describe him, I would say he wore glasses. If the police asked me to describe him to a sketch artist, the result would probably be a detailed and accurate depiction of these glasses. The thick, black, rounded, rectangular frames were the most distinct feature of a rather forgettable face. The glasses had blended into the features that comprised his face so much, that when he removed them mid-sentence to clean the smudged lenses, it was quite shocking. It was like he took off his nose, or removed an ear to scratch behind it more effectively.
Using his untucked collared t-shirt, he pinched the bridge of his glasses and nestled them in-between a fold of the bottom of his shirt. He began cleaning the glasses. His did this for a while, rubbing the shirt material back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, over the lenses.

I felt like it would make for a faster process if he brought them up to his mouth and breathed condensation on the lenses (I am no expert on the process but I’d seen lots of people do that when cleaning glasses.) But then, of course, I realised his mouth was very much occupied with talking and his manneristic grinning punctuation.

After a longer while still, a quick glance down must have revealed satisfaction with the cleaning endeavour, because thankfully, he then put his face back together.

Week 1, observation 1.

I always wondered how much of ourselves bleed into our actions; how much we subconsciously reveal and then release into the world, set free to be seen and judged by others. When I use the tip of my elbow to press the pedestrian button to cross the road, did anyone notice? Did anyone see that and know I didn’t want to touch the plethora of germs that live there? That I have a low-key fear of germs and getting sick? Could someone possibly deduce that my distaste for germs is prominent enough that I broke up with a boy I’d been dating when he gave me tonsillitis in year 12? Probably not. Or maybe so?

Yesterday morning- Sunday morning- just like every other Sunday morning since the dawn of time- mum arrived home from the gym with groceries. After I helped bring them in from the car, and had them all piled on the kitchen counter, I noticed something.
Through the cloudy obstruction of the white plastic bags was a single colour palette. I scanned to the next bag, yes… another single palette. I peered inside the bag: carrots, tomatoes, capsicums, apple juice, savory shapes. The next bag: avocados, lettuce, zucchini.
Someone had colour coordinated our groceries. Perfectly.
Who had done this? Why? Was the act of sorting our fruit and veggies into their designated colour scheme, as soothing as it is for me to look at them now? Is this a physical by-product of OCD or was the shift at work just getting dull? I wondered all these things as I quietly chuckled to myself. I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions, yet I felt like I did. I felt like if I went back to the Happy Apple Green Grocer now I’d be able to recognise the person responsible. We’d make eye contact and give a slight nod and a knowing smile to each other. As if to say “Nice one”