If i… vs I need. Robert McKee in his article The substance of story discusses the foundations of story laying focusing on the protagonist and their relationship with the audience. Within this reading, McKee briefly touches on the differences of reality … Continue reading
Noticing
Reflective practice is one of the main methodologies of the media discipline. For those who are in a practical based occupation, reflective practice allows us to understand how to build something creatively and why we’ve chosen the elements used. This supports the developments of your professional expertise as it helps int he development of your professional identity. Within the media program at RMIT, our media self identity is set up through blogging through day 1, representing the interrelationships between expertise, identity and satisfaction. This usually results in a change of nature in your practice symbolising both practical and creative growth.
How to do it:
Noticing — media is everywhere, can you even see it?
Week 2 media audit is an example of this identification of media. “As multi-sensate beings, we are inundated with sense impressions all the time” – attempt to bring into consciousness ‘the intentional’. Conscious noticing vs. Disciplined noticing.
How to reflect on the light bulb learning moments
DIEP. Describe objectively ONE thing you’ve learned, Interpret the insight, Evaluate the iffiness and usefulness
Narrative
Key elements of narrative/story
Controlling idea
Character
Conflict (competing goals)
Structure (progression)
Character change/ growth
Mistaken for Strangers, 2013, Dir. Tom Berninger
All stories need an inciting incident, which for this documentary is the popularity of The National.
We have a first act turning point where they the protagonist going on an ‘adventure’.
Narrative Codes
Story telling is the creative demonstration of truth. A story is the living proof of an idea, the conversion of idea into action. A story’s event structure is the means by which you first express and then prove your idea” Robert McKee STORY (1999)
How do you prove your controlling idea?
Protagonist is the person who changes the most.
Janet Cardiff is a Canadian artist who works chiefly with sound and sound installations. She uses audio as a wrap around medium that encourages the stimulation of time and space as an experience, pushing its flexibility of interpretation by our senses. Most famously known for her ‘audio walks’, installations where the audience is positioned in an area either inclosed or in an outside environment (40 Part Motet positioned in a studio, whereas Forest was conducted outside in an actual forest), Cardiff surrounds her subjects with speakers that transmit sounds and create a transcending audio experience.
One of her most famous works, 40 Part Motet (2011), is an audio installation that comprises 40 speakers that surround the audience in a circumference. Each speaker projects audio of a singer, categorised into groups of soprano, mezzo-soprano, or alto. Together a virtual choir is created that sings mid 1500’s music, using the complexity of 40 different harmonies which create a 3D audio sculpture with a narrative you can feel emotionally through music. The music lasts for around 10 minutes until there is a quick interlude where the choir talks informally among one another. Cardiff purposely used this section of audio to create a humanised experience for the audience where you are subjected from the transcending nature of song to basic everyday ‘human stuff’. Once the interlude is concluded the choir prepares to sing once again, all taking a harmonised breathe before proceeding to their angelic sound.
Within Forest, A Thousand Years 2012, Cardiff positions her audience in an outside environment that is surrounded with trees and nature. Each speaker is placed up high within the tree’s branches that creates a filmic soundtrack that portrays a choir moving through the forest. The audio is also edited with sounds such as planes overhead and birds chirping. This makes the audience question what sound is real and what is not, thus questioning what they should be taking away from the installation’s experience and what is ‘really’ authentic.
Through audio installations Cardiff plays on her audiences’ need for emotional release. By overwhelming the sense of hearing she enhances the presence of different and sometimes forgotten spectrums of reality, complementing life’s spirituality.
https://soundcloud.com/joss-utting/formal-edited
This is my edited version of a formal interview for our H2N sound recording exercise in Week 4. Pre-production included a quite and empty classroom, using the H2N zoom function of X/Y (that records only on one side), heightening the clarity of subject’s audio. As this interview was appealing to a ‘formal’ criteria we adjusted our approach in ways such as introducing the broadcast interview, interviewee and interviewer. Further, the questions and answers were discussed beforehand which allowed the participants to hold an eloquent discussion, rather then thinking of answers on the spot which could have made for badly established presentation.
Within Leeuwen’s article of perspective (Leeuwen, 1999), Edward Hall is quotes that “we carry with us a set of invisible set of boundaries beyond which we allow only certain people to come”. When listening to formal interviews such as This American Life and Sereal you can identify such boundaries the subject’s language and attitude, and also physically through editing. It is for such reasons I attached an intro and outro to my ‘formal’ interview as it enhances the the enargia of power relations on a show – such as Sarah Koenig’s position as an interviewer, and her relationship with the interviewee and audience. When being introduced I allowed my intro to fade out into complete silence in order to grab the audience’s attention as they sit, eager to hear what the show will be about. In conclusion however, I let the outro cross-fade into the final answer creating a smooth exit out of the program.
Alan McKee’s A beginners guide to textual analysis (2001)* deconstructs the approach and motive of a textual analysis whilst studying Media and identifies approaches towards interpreting texts. McKee’s interpretation of textual analyses being a central methodology within Cultural Studies, usually developed through accounts of semiotics, acknowledges that when interpreting a text one has to be mindful analysis’ methodological abyss (Mckee, 2001). When the word ‘text’ is identified through a linguistics interpretation, we see that the word itself is not a singular noun but has many mediums and thus, reasons for connotations. The word text, detaches the medium from it’s physical restrictions, whether its a tv show, film, radio, image etc, transcending it’s mode of communication allowing textual analysis on a much wider circumference as it engages a spectrum of enargia reflective on experience. When we surpass analysis constructed through the science of it’s medium – understanding the physicality of a text is still important – we broaden our minds from a previously linear approach of analysis and inherit McKee’s multilateral approach. Seen in John Hartley’s example of television accentuating hidden undertones of political life through watchers’ D.I.Y citizenship of choice to watch what and when, exemplifies how even though we can annotate the text as ‘tv’ and therefore study it’s physical characteristics such as what is being produced by the tv (sounds and visual), we can also interpret it as a mobile community that generates messages that is part of a flowing debate, where skills are needed by each individual to process media’s message.
Therefore, McKee’s emphasises to never claim that a text does or does not reflect reality – similar to Leeuwen’s* discussion of perspective. Edward Hall stated that each individual “carry with us an invisible set of boundaries”, enforced through years of cultural experience. Although we might see a text and our reaction to it is that it contradicts or leaves out elements of subject matter and thus, isn’t a ‘whole’ representation, one must never discard it as ‘untrue’ or ‘false’ as there is no one singular truth. Therefore, we must see it as a reality, and not just the reality. Textual analysis revolves around the desire to make sense of the world we live in through others’ interpretations. Instead of approaching text analysis as what, we must cognitively shift to the concept of who, when, where, and why.
EARS. Although they seem like one of the most standard element of the human body with their not-so-fussy nature of the spontaneous one a month, behind the ear clean and conventional hole piercing structure, these little guys have an attitude that brings to bear our listening experience. Our own personalised eternal mediums housed by a subconscious power to hear or listen.
Roberts-Breslin** discusses the ‘wrap around medium’ of sound as continuous currents of physical vibrations carry through the air into our ears, choosing relevancy to our every second. This monitoring system divided into hearing or listening dictates our interactions both externally and internally, as the brain triggers the response to respond to a noise or to disregard it. This relationship with the brain is fuelled by sounds encouragement of mental imagery, as familiar voices within a crowd of screaming people sparks recognition in a friend in the audience or the sounds of the beach connoting relaxing experiences from the beaches of Italy.
Roberts-Breslin brings up sounds ability to be understood further than visual stimuli, something which at first I did not agree with. As someone that uses sight as their main sense, always having interest in the aesthetics and balance of view to shape an experience and opinion R.B’s exposing of sound’s easier nature to decipher attitude, geographic, age, mood, environment etc was an interesting point. His discussion points that sound has both a technical and aesthetic role in media through quantity, quality and direction – something i previously though relied on the techniques of imagery.
Thus, when within our practical we had a task to go and record an interview in two different styles: an informal ‘happening in field’ interview, and a formal studio based recording. We used a H2N Zoom Handy Recorder with an air muff that helps cancel out distracting background sound.
Here are the un-edited interviews from the project.
https://soundcloud.com/joss-utting/informalwav – informal
https://soundcloud.com/joss-utting/formalwav – formal
*Roberts-Breslin, Jan. 2003, ‘Sound’ in Making media : foundations of sound and image production, Focal Press, Amsterdam ; London, pp. 115-144.
David Gauntlett discusses what does it mean to study media, and how does one study it? Traditionally, media was organised into three main components; conversations, inspirations and transformation that throughout the 1980’s were driven by the ambitions of institutions, production, audiences and text. As Gauntlett introduces us to these topics in his clip, opening with the confession that ‘every video needs a gimmick’ – a remark with transcending irony as an audience of media students sits back in their chairs to process his wisdom of textual analysis – we are alike subjected to the modern media’s gimmick of creativity that verses in weight with it’s surveillance and data exploitation. Gauntlett presses the issue that the knowledge that we need to know now revolves around the concepts of how things work, how they feel and fit and how they can make a difference. In a society that continuously works with the framework of an even more ever growing, mobile framework whilst living and thus, even subconsciously studying media through new trends and real life gimmicks, students need to be aware of the technical, emotional and creative areas of the industry.
Gauntlett’s main point within these readings is to confirm that there has been shift from broadcast medias to personalised, privately owned organisations. The increase of technology has influenced a deploy of broadcast media’s that use to house information for majority to an age of transformational and unique relationships between brands and organisations. With cognitive shift that comes with the personalisation of media and it’s frequency of use is the reason why the post broadcast era has come to full effect.
Today in our practical the entire class’ PB2 were played. My first reaction to this was dread, a class of kids that I haven’t known for longer than a month was going to watch a film I’ve made about myself, … Continue reading