For careers, collaboration is important. When I made my short film recently, collaboration was a huge, massive part of what took place over the months leading up to and during production, however one of the things about your career is that everyone handles themselves with professionalism. They are hired, there is an interview process. I feel like at University, this wall, the kind of filter, doesn’t exist and you could end up with anyone in your group. This presents a problem for me as an only child, seriously, it’s hard work.

In Rachel’s lecture she said that everyone has a different style of collaboration. My style of collaboration is getting ideas, making a definite plan that we all understand and dividing sections of it up, not so much just all in collaboration. I need a piece of the action I can take total responsibility for, end-to-end. Mostly this is just because I can get these moments with intense focus and I can’t share those. My best work is done alone because I can’t get everyone to ride these creative focus waves that I have with me.

Rachel listed the following things as the most important for collaborating in group project settings:

– Consistency

– Respect

– Support

– Responsibility

– Equitability

I think the most important of these is responsibility. In my experience when someone feels like they have no ownership, they won’t buy in. There doesn’t necessarily have to be anything in it for them other than the fact that some of it is theirs, and this is one of the reasons group assignments are so hard because it’s hard to say, this part of the assignment is yours when it’s so important that it be a team effort.

Can someone tell me what non-narrative is? Click here for a totally inconclusive discussion

Okay so here comes the academia. Prepare thyself:

Audiences have a temporal framework that they use to put things together. Imagine this as a tower of lego bricks on the ground and then the media work chucks you a new brick and you gotta find it’s friends and stick it in there. Eventually you’re gonna have a really big tower but you only have as many bricks as the producer gives you. Sometimes you’ve got a linear or non-linear sequence of events. Narratives and non-narratives alike can have these things. So they are not necessarily related. But they could be. Imagine if someone took lego bricks that didn’t fit together and then threw them at you and you tried to connect them up but couldn’t. Then here you are with a non-narrative work. Is documentary non-narrative? Does it depend on the documentary?

“A narrative is typically: Cause and effect that brings about an end for the narrative.” Cause and Effect is usually sited as the most important element of narrative structure, however that completely discounts all the other elements like point of view, structuring of time and more.

“Non Narrative fits within these categories: Abstract, Categorical, Rhetorical and Association” Let’s have a look at an example of Abstract work, Ballet Mechanique, An experiment in editing things in a completely nonsensical fashion, as far as cause and effect, this is absolutely devoid of narrative. And honestly, it’s creepy to watch. Seth showed us a categorical work by a guy named Jonathon Harris, he used dispersed shots of five second length approximately every minute of a day and uploaded it to the web with some fancy algorithms. Similarly, the Gap teeth women documentary is another categorical piece of non-narrative. Rhetorical non-narrative, I can really only think of Grizzly Man it’s a documentary that leaves me actually more confused about the world than I was going in. It asks so many questions and answers none. Lastly association, this one I don’t quite get.

Non-narrative is a growing form and many believe it is due to a desensitisation to story. I disagree. I don’t think it’s possible for us as a human race to get sick of story. I think it’s simply just a lack of story. A feeling when you go to the cinema and they serve you up a spectacle of explosions and implied meaning and don’t give you anything remotely interesting or well written.

JORDYN: a creative portrait by Amber Ryder

PB3: JORDYN – a creative portrait

For this video I was given the black hat and though I really like the way the interview works as a personal portrait I need to respond to the negatives of the work.

I think from a focus (narrative) perspective there seems to be a lack of controlling idea. The audio was very disjointed which Amber says was because she didn’t know how to control the levels in editing. The audio was a little disjointed and often lines were cut off. Unfortunately, this also highlighted the lack of singular vision.

Born to Dance by Samantha Phelps

Project Brief Three: Video Portrait

For this video I had the Red Hat. My initial feelings was how beautiful the video was and how well it flowed. The music was a really effective addition to the video and the found footage fit perfectly like a puzzle it really all works. It did feel like there is a lot of dialogue and very quick.

I do feel like the end of the piece is a bit sudden how it shifts from talking about dance to talking about how people are worthy of dance, it became very inspirational very quickly.

Interview with Wendy Milne by Hannah Starkins

Project Brief 3

Yellow Hat: I really love the subject, she really seems like such a lovely person. I love the way Hannah brought her home and photo books and videos to the screen, it really feels like we were invited into her home. The setting is very intimate and despite the lack of music you absolutely nailed that homely feeling.

Allegiance by Emma Knaus

Allegiance

Green Hat:

I really liked the shots that Emma chose, I think they really complemented the style of the video. I still think the training montage could have been taken out seeing as though the video is plenty long enough and the training explanation seems very monotonous and really doesn’t contribute to the controlling idea. The music was great and overall the video was a success.

This is my final project brief three, an interview with Asher Johnson, head of the non-profit, Act Three. Asher is an extremely dedicated man and it really shows in the final edited project.

The video is entitled “A New Kind of Theatre” and it explores the idea of humanitarian theatre and the effect theatre performance has on students in a high school context.

Positive Reflection:

I started the project relatively simply, I had conducted a few interviews before and had a fairly strong understanding of where the video was headed from the outset. For this reason, I didn’t create a shotlist or storyboard as I knew I would only be using a few key angles from the recorded interview and mixing in B-roll of specific key moments I could find from others who had been on trips who were happy to share their footage with the internet. Once I began cutting the footage together, I noticed how fantastic the mood worked. Each answer seemed to fit even better than I expected which is absolutely a testament to Asher’s charisma. I asked only a few questions and he was able to very quickly latch onto the key ideas I was trying to draw out and talked for a long time and knowing him this was not surprising. The interview went for nearly forty-five minutes but I ended up with some fantastic content. The process of finding music was long and painful because it was hard to find something that matched the ambient/non-culturally specific feel I wanted for the soundtrack, in the end the YouTube Audio Library was incredibly helpful and I found it had the best music of any Creative Commons website.

Questions:

“When did you personally first realise that bringing theatre to disadvantaged communities was something you wanted to do?”

“What kind of experience do the students get out of the trips as a whole?”

“Where would you like to take the organisation and the trips in the future?”

and “What effect does performing in a theatrical environment have on young teens and do you think that the impact changes them for life?”

Negative Reflection:

Looking back on the interview, though I do feel that it is a great video with a well constructed idea, the video feels more like an advertisement than a portrait and this was frustrating, as I think the problem resided in my questions. I really felt that Asher’s dream was important in capturing who he is, though the interview is very extrinsic and doesn’t really look at Asher under the surface on a personal level. I think in many ways, the actual interview was extremely successful but it doesn’t, to me, feel like it nails the brief because it lacks the depth of a real video portrait. I did try in my interview to encourage Asher to share more about why he came to Australia and his specific family reasons, without getting into detail, I think a lot of that is very private and I didn’t feel there was a comfortable way to approach the subject, though, I wish I had have found a way in hindsight because it would have added a dynamic to the video I would have liked to see.

The following is mostly satirical (emphasis on the mostly):

EDIT: Upon actually completing PB4, I can tell you that it is quite honestly an extremely difficult task and would be at least 400% easier alone. Because of this I propose a new part of the collaborative contract that says, “should the student be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a substantial breakdown in communications has occurred, the student can elect to just do the whole damn thing alone”

Here comes Project Brief 4, the single most difficult project brief imaginable, not because the brief is hard but because of the sheer number of documents that need to be completed including (but certainly not limited in any way by or to) The Brief itself, topics, collaborative contract, audio essay template, video essay template, annotated bibliography, collaborative troubleshooting document, individual SWOT analysis (seriously that’s a real thing), and many, MANY more. This assignment looks too hard even from the outset, I’ll be honest. I thought I could just churn out an audio essay but apparently group work needs a huge amount of Red Tape. I mean, fair enough, what if everyone does absolutely nothing, then what? What will be do? Well thank goodness we have a collaborative contract. BOOM!

I’ve never really been in a group that hasn’t pulled their weight, honestly. All my groups have been pretty good. To those people who are yet to let me down. Please don’t. Much Love.

1. What is the ‘controlling idea’ (Robert McKee) of your portrait?

The controlling idea of my portrait is that theatre (specifically the theatre that Asher creates) has the power to profoundly affect not only the people who they perform for but also the performers themselves. My goal is to show that Asher’s dream of creating humanitarian theatre has brought him to change the lives of many students.

2.  How is your portrait film structured?

The interview is structured with effectively two plot lines, the first is about the overseas trips themselves and how they affect the people overseas and the performers and the reasons why students have such a great time experiencing another culture. The second plot line is about theatre in general and the power that it has to change students and the country even back home here in Australia. I asked four questions and I’m intercutting two plot lines throughout rather than just giving the one perspective the whole time. I think this will create a more engaging piece.

3. What do you want your audience to make of your interviewee?

I would like the audience to see that Asher is not only very intelligent and well researched but also passionate and caring towards his students and I would like them to feel uplifted at the end of the interview.

4. How is your portrait being narrated?

The only narration in the the interview will be Asher himself. I do not want to speak at all as I feel it will break the feeling I am going for which is very flowing, the speech should be rarely broken.

5. What role will the ‘found footage’ play in your portrait?

I would like to find a lot of found footage of theatre performance and maybe use some of the footage people shot on the trips he has done with students. Also music is very important but I think it will really hard to find the right track because the mood in my head is very specific.

6. Does your portrait have a dramatic turning point?

Yes. I would like there to be one when he says that art should have no agenda, that the agenda should be love because I really think that that’s a really great point. Maybe I’ll find some more softer pieces of narration to place after this moment to tie the interview up. As I am editing the interview out of order, it will be a little difficult.

7. When does this turning point  in your portrait and why?

The turning point takes place at approximately three quarters of the way through, in many ways, this is similar to the three act structure, it has that end of act two, beginning of act three feeling

8. How does your portrait gather and maintain momentum?

I think I kind of talked about this in Question 2. I think through the fact that the two different topics will be happening simultaneously will make the pace feel like it’s building until I focus more on the one topic and then it will feel like a nice resolved denouement.

9. Where will your portrait’s dramatic tension come from?

I don’t think there is that much dramatic tensioning the interview. I don’t think that’s the kind of interview it is, I think certainly it has form, but I am struggling to think of a point in the interview where there is a juxtaposition strong enough to create dramatic tension.

10. Does the portrait have a climax and/or resolution?

Yes. Though I am only in the very early stages of editing the piece, I think the climax of the piece is definitely the turn of the third act as I mentioned earlier when Asher says that the agenda is love, it really has an emotional weight and I think between that and the ending there’s a really beautiful correlation and the way that line sets up the ending is really nice. The idea that the agenda is loving others and then that sets up the last line of the piece “let’s share something together” I think it really not only says something about Asher’s goal as a teacher but also him as a person.

Robert McKee, in his famous screenwriting Bible, “Story” suggests that every story must have a controlling idea and that audiences will become disoriented with a lack of discernible focus in a script. As I referred to in my earlier blog post on Story I absolutely love McKee’s book and read the entire book for the sake of my own research in year 11 of high school, prior to writing both of my last two short films.

When approaching my Project Brief Three I have decided that the controlling idea should be Asher’s (my subject’s) effect on the students who go on his trips and participate in his shows. As a former student of his, I can say, I have been profoundly affected by his generosity, professionalism and teaching over the course of many years in high school. Once I established this focus, I set about designing questions that engage with his love of art and theatre as well as the people he has directly impacted. I plan to use found footage of the previous trips created by students and teachers who were on the trips as B-roll with the main interview.

At the moment my ideas for questions are as follows:

“When did you decide to take a theatrical trip overseas?”

“Why do you think the trips have been so successful?”

“What are your plans for the trips in future?”

At the moment these are very basic questions and I definitely need to expand them before recording my interview!!

Story is the first of our Media readings that I have previously encountered in my media travels and by encountered I mean, I read the whole book about a year and half ago and loved it

My theatre studies teacher and mentor Mr Asher Johnson, who is also my interview subject for Project Brief 3 was a screenwriter in L.A before coming to Australia a second time. After he discovered a passion for writing, he flew to the US and had training at the Act One school of Screenwriting. On an overseas theatre trip, he then took us to the school and we were given a class in screenwriting and got a chance to talk to the writer behind the film Blended which, of course, she claims was a good script that was ruined by Adam Sandler’s people. In year 10, we were taught the fundamentals of American Hollywood screenwriting and structure including all the specifics the feature film formula and when and how to break the rules. As a young filmmaker, this was crucial to my understanding of writing and story and since then I have written six screenplays including a feature length one (which was admittedly the worst thing I’ve ever committed to paper). And in my quest to become better and better as I made short films for festivals, I picked up a recommendation by my mother’s cousin’s husband, (who also works in Hollywood) Story!. 

I absolutely love McKee’s book and the way he constantly uses examples of how screenwriters successfully (and spectacularly unsuccessfully) use and break the rules of modern screenwriting. And the most important thing that both the Act One school and Robert McKee taught me is that the rules are not simply in place to make money, and they’re not there to stifle creativity or to create a safe, easy money making machine, they are there because audiences identify with them. The three act structure Hollywood screenplay works because it’s brilliant, it captures something innate within us as story consumers and storytellers that speaks to us. A good strong protagonist, someone to root for, is important! I have seen so many people, particularly in academic circles that seek to push the boundaries of film structure and firmly believe that conventional narrative structure is pop trash, without acknowledging the reason it was developed, or more accurately discovered.

McKee’s taxonomy is based entirely on the academic study of what film writers have done well for years. No screenwriter sets out to write a three act film with an inciting incident on page 10, a wafer scene on page 91 and a change of the hero’s plans on page 65 but it happens, naturally, constantly, because for some bizarre reason, we are hardwired to respond to a story like that and therefore we create stories like that.

I leave you with my favourite quote from the book, it has not only inspired my work but also inspired the way that I think about creativity.

Talent is a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies. So we deliberately put obstacles in our path – barriers that inspire.

This week we begin talking about textual analysis and a key to the whole textual analysis equation is what has been coined as “noticing”. Noticing according to our lecturer Rachel, is the process of simply noticing media texts in our daily lives, she showed us an example of an ad in Vietnam for washing product OMO. We discussed as a class how it differs to an ad for the same product in this country and how the societal factors and ideas of wealth and cleanliness differ substantially across cultures.

From my high school Media and Visual Communication studies, I thought of the idea of noticing very similar to the techniques we used in visual analysis. This was a very important skill in VCE and I think it has become an important part of my life particularly in writing. My father and I have watched the advertising show The Gruen Transfer for years and the show is fantastic for drawing attention to the things we take for granted in the audience/producer relationship and how advertising has the power to influence you by essentially placing you within the ad itself. A fantastic example was the hotel ad we viewed in class, it showed a man and his child in a perfect hotel setting that had a very clear intended meaning.

We also discussed the difference between connotation and denotation. This, I found particularly fascinating because I have never known what the technical way of talking about surface observations in an analysis context was.

I am excited because I am started to see the separation of the theory and practical sections of the course and there is definitely a feeling that it is leading to studio based practise.