Judt Wajcman discusses the idea that we live in a ‘acceleration society’ in which technological advancements lead to a busier faster pace lifestyle and not a more leisurely one like Keynes wrongly predicted. Further Wajcman questions whether a busier life complete with impressive gadgets is a better life, especially with the trade off between time and money leading to every hour being like rush hour. As a full-time students who also work it can often feel like its difficult to get a break to enjoy everything that we are working towards. Take the example of a successful business man who is constantly working, he may earn alot of money but what is the point if he/she does not have time to enjoy what they have earnt.

Wajcman reveals that the superefficient ICTs which work to help us take control of time seem to end up controlling us. It feels like these machines bring a ‘growing sense of time pressure’ (p.163). In other words, even though these technologies are designed to make tasks quicker and easier for us, they also succeed in heavily consuming our time. While advancements in technology are used to help organise our time are also used for our leisure. For insance if I spend hours on laptop watching Netflix is that defined at wasting time or am I simply enjoying some digital leisure. At the end of the day its not solely technology that leads to this rushed lifestyle, it’s the pressure of society and often our addiction to this technology. If I check my Facebook every 20 minutes its not Facebook doing. Its mine.

To conclude, I think the advancement of these ICT’s are for the better and aid us to live our everyday lives.  However, its possible that sometimes we get so caught up in increasing efficiency and our comfort that we end up inconveniencing ourselves more than we would have originally.

Judy Wajcman, 2015, ‘Finding Time in a Digital Age’ in Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, ch.7.

Student collaboration has made many of our projects possible. I’ve found that working with people within the class is normally a lot easier than getting friends to help you out. My fellow classmates understand why it might take a long time to set up a certain shot etc. However, when I got some old friends outside of RMIT Media to help me out they seemed to get impatient. Furthermore, by helping out other students in ‘A Scene’ we all gain knowledge on each others chosen disciplines. This results in us learning about particular aspects of filmmaking that we might not of otherwise. We can take this knowledge, apply it to our chosen area of study and hopefully improve our work. I remember being influenced by one of Sams scenes where he staged out the thing proficiently using tape and this resulted in me actually going out and buying hi-vis film tape for staging and focus pulls.

When I shot my sensor size experiment I got my girlfriend and a close friend to help me out. They were awesome and very helpful. However, I feel as if they didn’t understand why it was taking so long and appeared somewhat impatient. Which resulted in me feeling pressured to hurry along ultimately damaging the quality of the work. I know if I had gotten Sam and Matt to assist me, whether they were acting or helping me with the camera, I wouldn’t of felt that pressure as they understand that quality takes time. The collaboration between us three has really made the semester a lot easier. They are the ones that helped me out last-minute when my other helpers couldn’t make it anymore. As a bonus they are both actually pretty good in front of the camera. Some people just don’t look good doing certain simple things such as walking and running. Sam and Matt don’t look awkward at all and seem to move about the room/outside space in a natural way. My only regret in terms of collaboration is offering my help to more people. I’m always happy to help out and I like seeing what other people are working on.

I hope everyone in the studio have made some connections so in the future if they need a helping hand they can comfortably ask for it.

Over and out,

Luke

 

I’m writing here to admit that I should of blogged more earlier in the summer semester rather then pump half of them out in the last week. It’s been a bit hard with moving house and not having internet. All this on top of working more than I normally do of late. At least I’ve learnt to stay on top of my blogs for the busy semester ahead.

I’ve come to a bit of an issue tonight though. I finished work and came to the RMIT library to finish off my last couple of blogs including the Final Music Video Relfection. Unfortunately, Andrea came across some difficult issues with the export, which is quite common and can be quite hard to figure out what you’ve done wrong.  Luckily Rohan and her figured it out although the video won’t be online until about 11pm tonight. The problem here is that I have to see the video so I write my Final Music Video Reflection. I actually haven’t even seen the fine cut as I was moving that day and Andrea has been doing majority of the editing. I guess its somewhat my fault for not being overly involved in the post-production side of this project.

I think I found a solution.. ahh the security gaurd in the library is yelling at me so i have to go ahddf

Melbourne has an extremely large ‘coffee culture’ with cafes on every street serving a vast variety and strains of coffee.  So what would happen if for some reason coffee was banned in Melbourne? Much like a prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s. I propose to create a short film which follows a melbourne hipster/self-confessed coffee adict and his struggles to obtain a cup of coffee in a city where it has been outlawed.

For example:

Scene 1: The man awakens to his alarm playing the morning news in which the reporter is commenting on the prohibition of Melbourne is causing more and more people not showing up to work. (This is somewhat a documentary style implemented into a fiction film). Man struggles to get out of bed and walks to his kitchen, where he walks past his TV which is also reporting on the coffee prohibition. Opens and cupboard and realises that his stash of Coffee is gone and curses loudly.

As I am still unsure on what to do for my film project I decided to watch a bunch of Australian short films for some inspiration. A bunch of the films I watched are from the group bluetongue films, a group made up of directors such as David Michod and Nash Edgerton. Part of the reason I chose only Australian short films is because I’m currently studying Australian Cinema.

A film that caught my eye was Scruples directed by Adrian Powers, which was a finalist for the 2012 Your Film festival. The film is about an undercover cop and the terrible things he has to do within a organised crime faction to remain undetected. I enjoyed this film as it really conveyed the internal struggle this character was having. I have an interest in the genre of Australian crime films and enjoy films such as Chopper, Animal Kingdom and Snowtown. Australian crime films don’t seem to exaggerate or glamourize the crime lifestyle like Hollywood. They are more realistic and gritty.

Now the question is, would I like to make a crime film? I have to take into consideration that it may be quite difficult to do the genre justice. I did have an idea for a film starting to form where in the first scene you see the protagonist being held at gunpoint and then killed. Then the rest of the film would show how he managed to get to this point. It’s just a thought at this point and I haven’t stretched the idea out.

Over and out,

Luke

‘Maps, Things, Boundaries’

 

My gallery of 100 videos is a spatial representation or map of the beach-side from St Kilda to South Melbourne. It is a list of objects that exist along this landscape. Maps simplify and make “reality” easier to understand.

 

 

For this project I set the following constraints:

• Start from St Kilda Skate Park
• Walk towards the City
• Take a video every 30 seconds
• Each video must be 5 seconds in length
• Film facing inland
• Take 100 Videos

 

I choose these constraints as I did not want my ‘selective noticing’ to affect what was filmed. I did not choose things I found interesting as I wished to create without imposing. I simply documented what was in front of me. In the words of Bogost I attempted distance my project from ‘‘anthropocentric narrative coherence in favor of worldly detail’. Therefore, when I look at my list I attempt look at how these things exist in their own world, rather than what humans use them for.

 

When we look at a conventional map we see the topography of the land, yet the objects that inhabit the area are not revealed. It is easy to draw a map of roads and boundaries but it is difficult to represent objects and their facets in such a way. The use of video however allowed not only the mapping of the landscape but the objects that inhabit it, allowing examination of these ‘things’ and their facets in detail. I call this study ‘ontological cartography’.

 

The list maps the structure, shape, color and movement of individual entities along this particular beach-side. Through this we able to see what these objects mean beyond our own existence. When I go to the beach I normally look out to the ocean and take little notice of the objects around me. By examining these videos I am able to focus on the specific objects along the St Kilda beach-side.

 

Maps have boundaries and interestingly I learnt that the placement of ‘things’ acts a boundary for the beach. The brick wall meets with the sand acting as a barrier between nature and the vast amount of man made things beyond it. I am leaning towards commenting on this with my final AV work.

For the first stage I set out knowing only the constraints and the overly general topic of the beach-side and extracted the idea from there. For the next stage of this ontograph I would re-shoot videos to focus on the objects more closely academically and visually. Rather than having a video which contains a fence I will have multiple videos showing the facets of the fence. For instance the ground, the wooden post, the paint, where the chain link connects with the post and the chain link itself. My mistake the first time around was attempting to map a large area and therefore a large number of objects. I have now realised I can present more detail by narrowing down my documentary to a singular object per shot. To truly map an object I must capture all facets of it. Then I will be able to draw more questions and understand further in relation to my idea of mapping.