Directing Lecture

The main point that stuck with me from the lecture on directing is that when talking to the actors it’s important to encourage them to arrive at the same conclusion that you do as the director, rather then explicitly give stage directions, so they better understand their role, and give a more motivated performance.

The other main point I took away from the lecture was the director needs to be paying close attention to the actors as often as possible and to keep them as comfortable as possible in a set that might be full of people all doing different things; it is the director’s primary concern to ensure the actors are focused and aren’t distracted by anyone or anything else on set that might alter or hinder their performance.

Blow Up (1966) Scene Breakdown

The depth of field seemed to stay the same throughout the scene; the focus would remain on the characters. The lighting on the characters is soft, which contrasts the harder lighting, and hence shadows, in the backgrounds that filter through the geometric objects in the room. A lot of the actor movements are repeated, or mirrored such as when the actors lean against the triangular wooden frame. The camera accentuates this by moving closely with these movements.

The framing of each shot has in it a large portion of the background, showing a lot of the objects in the room. The shots are hence rather busy ones, and select shots have objects obstruct the view of one or both of the characters. I imagine this would have involved firstly positioning the camera in a desirable position, then directing the actors to move to a position that has part of their body obstructed to create this effect.

Shadows seem to play a big role in the scene, and the lighting creates varying shadows on the white wall from objects in the room, and the character’s themselves. The shadows are not dark though, and with the lighting does not create much contrast. From this I assume that the director would have had to work closely with the cinematogapher to ensure that shadows were being thrown on the walls, while working with the actors to stay close to walls or spaces that show the shadows.

Reading Notes from Week 5

The week 5 reading with passages from various directors was a very interesting reading. I liked the way Scorsese explained that he enjoys the restrictions of the frame as a creative prompt, and how to make use of that restricted frame with what you show. He describes that it’s what’s in the frame that informs a viewer, and it seems he thinks about the camera placement in terms of the space that the frame captures and depicts, which can then be filled with objects and characters, as well as movement.

Makavejev’s description of the frame was even better, saying that, “There’s an incredible erotic tension in the edges of the frame.”; that what’s suggested is outside of the frame can be as dramatic as what’s inside the frame. “castrating action” seems funnily apt, and it makes sense because if the filmmaker continues to tease something off the edge of the frame, it’s a response for the viewer to ask what that thing might be.

I just thought it was really interesting to consider the frame a part of the mise-en-scene; as a physical entity that physically interacts and constrains the physical space in front of it.

Lighting Lecture Reflection & Relevance

Sunlight, continuity, lighting coverage were the main points of the lighting lecture, and after doing some test shooting with the equipment it was certainly all relevant. Sunlight is something that we found affected a scene dramatically over the course of the day. This was something that prompted us to consider how long we should shoot each scene for, and how to maintain continuity with changing sunlight.

Coverage was finally something we had to consider after all this, to control the lighting continuity with planned setups, while of course staying within the schedule so the changing sunlight does not significantly affect the final product.

Lenny Exercise 2 Reflection

Ensuring the sound was recording properly was the major issue we found when we went to edit the piece; there is noticeable crackling on the audio track, something we could not fix. In the future this would be fixed by double checking the sound recordist is happy with the audio before filming.

The only other thing that could have been improved was more extensive planning beforehand to improve on the edit which we did not have as strong a plan for.

Apart from that I feel the shoot for the piece worked out well: communication between director, actor and crew was good, each shot was filmed efficiently thanks to planning beforehand, and we all worked together quickly within the hour limit to film.

Lighting Lecture Reflection

Lighting being something I’m more interested in, the lecture was all quite interesting, but as for things that were particularly intriguing to learn about were concerned with how lighting is positioned, including the sun, and maintaining continuity with lighting.

The position of lighting was interesting to consider as a stylistic choice. The examples of hard and soft light, while something I’m already familiar with, illustrated much better the effects they had on the scene were. The demonstration of using reflectors helped with this too, and as accessories to the lighting were something  had never even thought about before.

Something else I hadn’t considered before was sunlight, namely it’s position and colour over the course of a day. As my group for the short film undertook the test shoot the weekend of this lecture, it was something I paid closer attention to, noticing the difference in light from the start of our day, to the end.

While on that shoot I also paid extra attention to the other important point brought up in the lecture, that is, continuity. Despite keeping the lights in the same position between each shot setup, there was a major difference in how the scene looked, so it makes sense that lighting must be changed often to maintain visual continuity, even if the light falls differently between shots.

Weekly Response | Week 5

Rascaroli’s article on the film essay was intriguing, but seemed to be a little narrow minded citing only ‘major’ films and legendary directors. The film essay – I assume that is an essay in video form – seems like it could apply to much more than simply 90 minute films.

I regularly watch videos on YouTube – of lengths varying from 8 to 15 minutes – that explore an idea in a logical and musing way. Two particular channels are Vsauce , and PBS Idea Channel.

The presenters cite many scholarly sources for the ideas they present, as well as non-scholarly ones, to follow a line of thought that doesn’t always necessarily reach an end point, but thoroughly elucidate each point.

While these are not peer reviewed pieces, they seem to have a strong affinity to what the traditional essay aims to achieve, that is, explore and share new knowledge, or restructure existing knowledge to propose an idea.

‘Scatology’; a review

 

Screen Shot 2014-04-02 at 10.21.38 am

‘Scatology’

This student Korsakow film titled ‘Scatology’ (2013) is by students Brenton Spink, Joyce Khoo, Camilla Evani, and Sheilah Ismail. They describe it as a “list work”, concerned with asking men and women their favourite swear word and worst habit. The piece is aware of the format, but overall it didn’t seem to quite reach it’s potential.

The interface is pleasantly simple, with a single main viewing window and two links below. The design of the links are in the shape of a male or female that act as a viewing window of the video clip it links to. They remain unobtrusive, allowing for the main viewing window to dominate, which made it easy to engage with each clip. The male/female shapes also indicate what gender will be speaking over the top of the video clip so a viewer has some choice as to the kind of person they want to hear from next.

However I don’t feel two options per screen fully embraces the potential of the Korsakow format. Two options per step feels limiting in contrast to the numerous options that are possible to include within a Korsakow interface. It would have been nice to have more options, perhaps in the shape of other objects that related to the audio or video clip it linked to, to further accentuate the multi-directional potential of the format.

The audio clips consist very simply of a voice over stating what they think their worst habit is, and what their favourite swear word is. I thought this was a hilarious choice of questions, and it’s amusing to listen to each one. It doesn’t take long to hear them all, so while the selection of audio clips is small, they are still fun to listen to.

Where the audio clips have the obvious overarching theme of favourite swear word and worst habit, I found the video clips to lack continuous fluid pattern making. For the most part there are noticeable patterns between each clip, for example a scene of people praying at a colourful open altar would link to a similar pious scene albeit in the quiet interior of a church. There were also numerous other clips of some sort of culture festival in Melbourne that would link to one another with notable relationships, for example, different areas of federation square with different parts of the same festival exhibition.

There are some clips that appear out of place however. For example, visible in the screenshot above, a shot of a library would link to a couple walking on the streets of Melbourne, or from a fancy cafe to a dress in a clothes shop. These links where the links seemed less relevant felt jarring in comparison to the other sets of clips, and unfortunately I felt they weakened the piece overall. If removed, I feel the piece would benefit overall from having fewer, but more dominant patterns and scene links.

The weakest part of the piece for me however was the lack of relationship between the visual and aural elements. While the video and audio clips were intriguing alone – the former depicting some colourful scenes, the latter being rather provocative – together they did not seem to depict anything greater. Potentially the the contrast between the more cultured environments, and the vulgar statements made by the voices could be the prevailing theme, though this still seems a tenuous link due to the sometimes random nature of the video clips.

Perhaps if the original question were extended on there may have been a stronger basis to shoot relevant video for them, maybe along the lines of why they had a favourite swear word, or where they picked up a bad habit. The video clips could have then been developed into icons, or maybe simply representative, or the bad language and habits in society.

In his article ‘Digital Memory and the Archive’, Wolfgang Ernst states that “Narration assimilates information by recounting it in the synecdochical mode” and this seems particularly relevant to the Korsakow format. The power of Korsakow comes from it’s synecdochical nature; depicting parts of a whole to portray the whole. ‘Scatology’ shows evidence of this; I got the feeling of several distinct scenes, but where the links would sometimes seem more random, the ‘whole’ doesn’t quite come together.

I think going by Ernst’s proposition of narrative, if the ‘parts’ remain more tightly linked through more specific key words, and any irrelevant media removed, an overall, ‘whole’ narrative in this format can be made much stronger.

Weekly Response | Week 4

“Narration assimilates information by recounting it in the synecdochical mode.” Ernst explains, describing the way narrative tells it’s story. Synecdoche is to use parts to depict a whole, or vice versa. This leads me to consider again the form of the interactive documentary. Pertaining to my last ramble on it, I maintain that this form of documentation cannot portray or tell a single narrative as it holds no foundation to deliver one.

The narrative in this form is elucidated on the viewer’s part with exposure to the fragments available to them. As they navigate sporadically through the piece, the order and pacing – decided by them – offers form enough for them to build a narrative out of it, if any at all.

Can YouTube be considered a form of interactive documentary? I realised that it acts a lot like Korsakow for example that recommends videos based on words in the video’s tag list and title. Though there’s no narrative intended between each video, it adheres to the form of interactive documentary; it allows for users to upload their own content which is added to the global pool of content that documents places, people, themes, or ideas.