Link

Assignment 1

Assignment 1: https://vimeo.com/698211252

Assignment 1 Reflection

The prompt for Assignment 1 was to create a short video on what the workplace of tomorrow might look like and identify growing technologies. Through my research on future the development of new technologies, I was able to identify that while they promise to enhance our current workplaces and make working life easier, they also come with a host of new dangers. For instance, will these new technologies replace real workers who rely on their job? Or will these new technologies be safe to use?Ultimately, bringing us to the question- what are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of advancing our workplaces?

For my assignment, I focused on the development of brain implants. Companies like Elon Musk’s, Neuralink, are designing brain implants to link the brain with technology, allowing you to control your electronic devices with a thought. This brain implant is designed to help relieve the symptoms of certain neurodegenerative diseases and illnesses. However, as we continue to develop this technology there is the possibility that it may eventually integrate into the lives and the workforce of the general population. My project focusing on the introduction of a brain implant named “Neurachip” in an office environment. The implant designed to improve typing and communication with coworkers, making it faster and easier. However, as a new technology, the risks of brain implants have not been fully explored but can include health problems, such as- seizures, strokes, headaches, blood clots, brain swelling or inflection, it can also include learning difficulties or memory loss, and there is also the potential risk of someone hacking into the brain chip. All these risks are serious and could possibly be fatal to the individual with the brain chip.

For this assignment I structured the video as an advertisement for the ‘Neurachip’ within an office setting. The advertisement is designed as a typical corporate advertisement of a product. A voiceover describing the benefits of the product with an actor demonstrating its use, with upbeat music playing in the background. However, at the end I made sure to list all the negative side-effects of the product. Modelling my advertisement for the brain implant after the advertisements that air for prescription medication (mostly in the US)- for example the Trulicity commercial or the Vyvanse commercial. The negative messaging at the ending creates a sinister undertone to the advertisement overall, making the positive and upbeat tone appear fake and artificial. Overall, highlighting the sacrifices that our society are willing to make for the sake of progress and advancement.

In terms of the execution of this assignment, I believe it was relatively successful but there is definitely room for improvement. The positive and upbeat tone was reflected predominately in the background music, and the bright blue logo for the Neurachip. In the process of editing this project, I also learnt how to create a hologram effect through Premiere Pro to create a hologram version of a computer screen and a phone screen. However, the audio for the voice-over in the final cut is not the best quality, coming through the microphone on my iPhone. In order to avoid this in the future, I am planning on investing in a better-quality microphone. Additionally, when filming I was limited to my small apartment which does not resemble an office space and as a result, all my shots came from my study desk. Therefore, the office-space environment that I was aiming for in the advertisement was limited.

 

Week 1-3 Reading Notes

Privacy Attitudes of Smart Speaker Users (Malkin et al. 2019), is a paper on the privacy risk to individuals that smart speakers pose. Through their research Malkin and colleagues discovered that smart speaker users were unaware of the policies surrounding their data storage, and they were opposed to the retention of their data from the smart speakers. This paper highlights the manipulative ways in which large smart speaker companies collect data from their users. The findings from this research paper, can be applied to future and newer forms of artificial technology. Although, in future technologies like a brain implant, there is a greater pool of information accessible, and the scope of privacy breaches are significantly higher than the data collected by smart speakers. Therefore, if the manipulation and deception of artificial intelligence companies that was identified in the research paper continues, data collection that users are unaware of and opposed to will likely worsen.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Employment (Petropoulos, 2018) considers the impact that developing Artificial Intelligence technologies may have on employment in the future. Petropoulos outlines the two main ways that technological advancements can impact employment- through the displacement effect (workers lose their jobs) and the productivity effect (it creates more jobs). However, the rise of Artificial Intelligence is occurring on a larger scale than previous innovations, and the displacement effect is more likely than the productivity effect. Therefore, technologies like a brain implant which enhance ability rather than replacing workers may be necessary in order to reduce the displacement effect.

The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation (Brundage et al. 2018) is a paper that explores the threats that future Artificial Intelligence technologies pose and how those threats should be mitigated. In addition to the threats identified in the Malkin et al. (2019) reading and the Petropoulos (2018) reading, this paper explores how Artificial Intelligence can be used or compromised to create new dangerous threats and expand existing ones. Their research highlights a range of sinister uses of Artificial Intelligence, those that may be a targeted threat to the Artificial Intelligence, a brain implant includes a vulnerability to hackers and the threat of a privacy breach. In order to combat these threats- they propose that further research into the implications of Artificial Intelligence is necessary and, ethical standards and policy should be developed to manage the output and usage of Artificial Intelligence. Although these changes may reduce the threats associated with Artificial Intelligence, they are still in the research stage and have not been implemented yet.

 

Reference List

Brundage, M., Avin, S., Clark, J., Toner, H., Eckersley, P., Garfinkel, B., Dafoe, A., Scharre, P., Zeitzoff, T., Filar, B. and Anderson, H. (2018). The malicious use of artificial intelligence: Forecasting, prevention, and mitigation. arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.07228.

Malkin, N., Deatrick, J., Tong, A., Wijesekera, P., Egelman, S., & Wagner, D. (2019). Privacy attitudes of smart speaker users. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies2019(4).

Petropoulos, G. (2018). The impact of artificial intelligence on employment. Praise for Work in the Digital Age119, 121.

A5 p2 Studio Review

Deconstructing/Reconstructing Genre Studio 1 Reflection

The deconstructing/reconstructing genre studio focuses on how different stylistic features of a film can be used to influence genre. Throughout the studio we have employed this into our own work through lighting, sound, and camera angles to reflect genre or subvert genre expectations. The work this semester has helped me develop as a media-maker and taught me a great deal about the pre-production, production, and post-production processes of making a film.

The two films I will be exploring in my reflection are “Spiral” and “Let Go”.

Spiral

“Spiral” by Annabel Cohen, Sarah Menegon and Courtney Joyce is an experimental horror film. Watching their film, I was drawn to their use of colour with the contrasting blues and reds (reminding me of the film Suspiria, which if I recall correctly from their presentation was an inspiration). These two colours that made up majority of the lighting within the film are often used to represent the conflict between good and evil. This plays into the narrative of their film, which leaves the viewer questioning whether the main character killed her husband or is simply spiralling into insanity. Another aspect that I was drawn to in this film is the sound. The combination of music, background sounds, and the news reporter- all work together to build suspense and the horror genre.

Let Go

“Let Go” by Jack Bailey, Jack Holland and Jonathon Christian is a drama and thriller film. I particularly enjoyed this short and could see the amount of effort that had been put in, in terms of the camera angles and editing. Watching the film, the cuts between shots with and without the ghost ran smoothly and didn’t affect the viewing experience at all. Similarly to Spiral, the piano music in Let Go played a significant role in reflecting the genre and pushing a sombre atmosphere- particularly in the first scene of the film where the main character entered the apartment.

 

 

Directing Performance Reflection

Based on what I’ve read about the studio and the final projects on the studio site- the directing performance studio primarily focuses on the communication and relationship between a director and an actor to produce the best performance.  Looking at their studio website the films that I’m drawn to are “Long-Distance Relationship” and “The Pier”.

“Long-Distance Relationship” by Bronte Hall was the first short film that I was immediately drawn to from this studio. Feelings of boredom, isolation, sadness, and frustration that we all experienced during the COVID-19 lockdown are demonstrated through the actor’s performance as they’re stuck inside. The short film “The Pier” by Cem Belici, explores two different personalities and completely different people having a conversation. This is demonstrated not only through the script, but through their costume, their facial expressions, and their mannerisms.

Overall, although this was a studio that I would be least likely to pick, I’m able to see its value. Both short films from the studio were brilliantly made and driven predominately by the performances of the actors.

Link

Assignment 4 Reflection

Assignment 4: https://vimeo.com/655747872

“Life is not a party” is a short coming of age film of a girl celebrating her 18th birthday during a COVID-19 lockdown. The film is shown entirely through the desktop of a teenage girl’s laptop and the footage shot entirely through a laptop. We all decided that setting a coming of age type of film in lockdown could be an interesting exploration of isolation and loneliness. Along with the social isolation from their friends and family that adolescents typically experience, there’s also the physical isolation from all your friends and family during lockdown. Additionally, we contrast these themes of isolation and loneliness with the bright and fun nature of adolescents- shown through the layout and aesthetic of the film and the soundtrack.

 

Genre

The coming of age genre is usually marked by a number of different tropes. The soundtrack/music, social gatherings/ friend group, some form of symbol to mark their transition from adolescence, and in more recent coming of age movies- the impact of technology.

The Soundtrack

One of the most important aspects of a coming of age film is the soundtrack, so we decided that a lot of focus had to be on deciding what music we were going to use in our short. Ultimately we decided on an upbeat fun song- which reflects the bright and fun nature of teenage life, and also contrasts with the boredom of lockdown that the main character is going through.

Social Gatherings/Friend Group

The main protagonist in our film is an unnamed girl celebrating her birthday in lockdown. As the short is set during lockdown we couldn’t showcase the typical friend group that you see in the coming of age genre. However, the film does show the minimal social interaction that could occur during this time through a zoom birthday party with her two friends.

Symbolism

At the end of the Zoom party, the main protagonist brings out a birthday cake with candles in it, the film ending with the singing of happy birthday. This represents the character coming of age and growing up during this extremely weird time of isolation and lockdown.

Technology

More recent coming of age movies, such as Eighth Grade, also showcase the importance of technology in adolescence and while growing up. An idea that became true for all of us during lockdown and had many of us living through the internet. This is a focal point of our short, with the entire film shown through the desktop of a laptop. The graphic and bright layout of the laptop was inspired by Gen Z and the e-girl aesthetic and gives the viewer an insight into the personality of our main character.

 

Production Process and Finished Film

When beginning to work on the assignment, after planning out what we wanted to do, we assigned each member to a different role and outlined a production schedule for shooting and editing the project. Although the team roles remained consistent throughout the project, due to circumstances beyond our control we were unable to remain fixed to our schedule. The main challenge was internet difficulties- the shooting for the film (primarily done through Photobooth) wasn’t uploading to Google Drive in a format that was accessible to the other team members. Additionally, Zoom wasn’t working for Nina on the day they were planning to shoot the final scene (unable to start a session or join one). As a result, by the time all the shooting was complete and accessible to everyone, we didn’t have enough time to edit the project before the final deadline. However, in the beginning of this project we had an idea of the type of film that we wanted to make and a plan to get there. A coming of age movie, that explores themes of sadness and isolation in association with the fun and liveliness of teenage (often gen-z) culture.  Visually, we were inspired by films that are based in online culture and technology, like Unfriended or Searching- and decided to set our film entirely on the desktop of a laptop, a concept that would be visually unique and also relevant to teenage culture, as well as the coming of age genre in general. Although it took longer than we planned to complete our film, I believe that we hit all the points that we aimed to and I’m happy with the final product we produced.

 

Final Reflection

Overall, this assignment re-affirmed how much I struggle with working online, as opposed to in-person. I find that the gap between you and the other group members makes it difficult to communicate ideas very clearly and maintain a consistent schedule. However, I’m definitely happy with how we worked together to turn this assignment out. In the future, I would like to learn how to collaborate better over the internet, and perhaps to also encourage more face-to-face interaction with the other group members on an assignment.

Assignment 2: Film Reflection

Film Reflection

Jemile Kendjer

 

I selected the script, “Midnight Intercom” for assignment 2. When choosing this script I saw the potential to play around with genre, rather then the drama film implied in the script- I looked to the horror genre in order to create a foreboding and uneasy atmosphere. I did this primarily through sound- adding suspenseful music that I managed to find online to the start and end of the film. I hope that this came across but looking back on my final product, I should’ve added made other stylistic choices in order to emphasise this.

When it came to shooting and editing the film I struggled a great deal and I’m not entirely happy with the final result that I produced. I did not allocate enough time to pre-production and planning everything out, so as a result I found that I had to change the lighting and camera angles around while shooting and had to re-shoot a lot of times so the shots would come out presentable. As a result, my partner who was acting as Nathan in the film was getting tired and I had to stop before I was entirely happy with how they turned out.

In terms of editing, I found that the dialogue did not come out as I imagined and my phone didn’t pick up the dialogue well. I moved the audio to Adobe Audition and tried to fix it. I attempted to increase the volume, but in doing so all of the background static noise increased as well. To fix this, I tried to add the denoise effect which improved it some-what but the audio still came out very patchy and the background noise detracts from the scene a bit, particularly in the final shot (I’m definitely planning on getting some mics for my next project). Then, because I spent so much time playing around with the audio, I didn’t leave enough time for transitions and the transitions between certain shots aren’t very smooth. I also picked up on the fact that the lighting between different shots wasn’t consistent, but by that stage it was too late to fix it.

Team-work also proved to be difficult, because of conflicting schedules and the short time-frame of this project my group were unable to meet up and it was primarily done by communicating and offering suggestions over email. As I was struggling with this project, I believe that in-person assistance and in-person classes would’ve helped me more, but unfortunately it just wasn’t possible.

I’m planning on using this assignment as a learning experience and hopefully I’m happier with my next project.

Assignment 2: Reflection and Practice

Reflection and Practice

Jemile Kendjer

 

I selected the script “Midnight Intercom” for this assignment. As there was such a short timeframe complete the project, I planned to get the pre-production done in 1 day, allowing more time to shoot and edit it.

I chose this script because it worked well with the layout of my small studio apartment (unlike a lot of other scripts) and just involved the entryway (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MCom-N7V73843a86k_1DFLYhHkrK4Bke/view?usp=sharing ), and could be shot at night because I work during the day-time.

In my shot list (https://drive.google.com/file/d/17flelFvq7ECnl3NC-NZekdjjdOGDQPQH/view?usp=sharing) I limited my shots to wide-shots, mid-shots and medium close-ups and didn’t give much thoughts to camera angles. I believe that using different shot types and considering the impact of camera angles could create a more dynamic piece.  Additionally, I didn’t plan out my lighting effectively for the scene and struggled to get consistent lighting across the different shots.

As the audio on my phone is not the best, I decided to outsource for the sound effect of the door knocking. I retrieved this from the royalty free site Free Sound (https://freesound.org/). I also chose to include some background music throughout the scene to add to the atmosphere of suspense that I was aiming for in my piece.

I also had to change the original script slightly (https://drive.google.com/file/d/18kwgYLn2m8qMwLSy512ZgifqFSsVE_e7/view?usp=sharing). Because I don’t have an intercom in my apartment, instead I substituted the intercom with the peephole on my front door. I took advantage of this to include a POV shot of a character looking through it. However, I don’t believe that this had any negative impact on the final product that I produced.

Overall, because I rushed this preproduction process (specifically the shot-list) I found that I struggled when shooting my project and I definitely plan on allocating more time to this in the future.

Assignment 1: Research

I have an iPhone X that I use for filming my projects. Although I find that the shooting capacity can be just as good as an expensive camera. 

Frame-Rate: 

I was unaware of this earlier but I learnt through the studio that the frame-rate of my camera can be changed through settings and it’s easily adjustable. The standard frames per second for a video in Australia is 25 fps, and I was able to change my camera to 24 fps in order to replicate this. 

Zooming: 

My camera can easily zoom in and out by simply pinching the screen while recording.

Focus: 

Like zooming, the camera can focus easily just by simply tapping on the screen whatever you want it to focus on. This is extremely useful and effective, particularly in contrast to other cameras. 

Sound:

However, sound quality of my phone is poor and I usually record it through voice memo after the fact and edit it in. I’m looking on investing in some microphones to increase the sound quality in my videos. 

Applications: 

I primarily use editing software after I have shot my video on my phone to enhance the quality of the shot. I haven’t really found any effective applications to improve my camera. 

At Home Assessment Exercise 1: Reflection

Jemile Kendjer

Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq9t-7fIjII 

 

I based my assignment on a scene from Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void. 

In this film, I enjoyed how Noe used a point of view shot for most of the movie to show life from the perspective of the main character, all the way down to the blinking. I also loved the colour palette of the movie and his use of bright and vibrant street lights that contrast with the often dark clothing of the characters. 

In my own adaptation of this scene, I attempted to replicate the point-of-view shot throughout my scene and the pops of colour he used. I set it up so I shot everything at night in order to capture the contrast of bright lights and darkness that the scene has (using both street lights and coloured lights).

One main thing that I struggled with was recreating Noe’s blinking when shooting my own point-of-view shots. I was unable to do it and make the blinking look natural- both while filming or in the editing process. However, it is something that I would love to learn. 

When filming this, I had a lot of different shots planned from the outset that I wanted to try but I had to cut many of them out in the editing process because it would’ve brought me well over the time-limit allocated. Additionally, spending this much time filming definitely didn’t leave me enough time to edit my project, and I should have allocated more time to the editing process. 

 

Link

Reading and Reflection

Jemile Kendjer

‘Troubling Genre/Reconstructing Gender’ by E. Ann Kaplan

 

For my reflection I chose the essay written by Kaplan on women’s film– the feminist rise in cinema. I grew up watching a lot of horror movies (in particular) and I’m familiar with the traditional roles that women and girls are often stuck with- particularly within this genre. But Kaplan shines the light on a growing genre in cinema that is subverting these stereotypes and creating more interesting characters to watch and relate to. 

Point 1: Film genres are used to reinforce gender stereotypes and power relationships.

Kaplan explores how film genres are used to reinforce gender constructs- limiting women to a limited number of roles based on outdated stereotypes. A system that prevents the representation of true and complex female characters in film. However, these genres, like gender, are also a construct that are utilised by Hollywood to market films. This means that genre can be collapsed and reconstructed. Rebuilt to break down power dynamics and gendered stereotypes that hold women back and provide true representation on the screen.  

Point 2: Women’s film integrated aspects of existing cinema genres, while also subverting the gender stereotypes and the viewers expectations. 

Kaplan provides examples of two genres of film that women’s cinema have reimagined free of the gendered expectations that are typically expected in these sorts of films- horror and film noir. This movement was pioneered by feminist activists and female directors who in spite of the largely misogynistic and male dominated industry created their own form of cinema. 

This was achieved by creating complex and interesting characters beyond the prototype characters that women were tied to “the virgin/whore” “mother/mistress” or the “femme fatale” . Therefore, breaking down these stale genres and opening the door for new interpretations that cross boundaries and re-imagine the old with fresh ideas. 

By deconstructing existing genres of film, women’s cinema is establishing itself as a new genre of film that is exciting to see, creating better representation on the screen and reflecting the social and political change we are seeing around the world in regards to gender.