Month: April 2016

I use to be- and still am, a fan of certain types of anime. Especially television and film series that focus on conceptual ideas and or thinking as well as futuristic soceities (this would include shows such as Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist).  Thus it was no surprise that when a live-action re make of the film ‘Ghost in a Shell’ was announced that I was more than interested.

The original anime ‘Ghost in a Shell’ directed by Mamoru Oshii was created in 1995  (more than twenty years ago), as IMDB fronts as it’s sysnoposis the film is about“A cyborg policewoman and her partner [as they] hunt [for] a mysterious and powerful hacker called the Puppet Master.”

It is surprisingly a very philosophical film and possibly not to far off from our own future. One of the films main themes focuses on rise in technology. The film itself is set in 2029 were society has become“interconnected by a vast electronic network that permeates every aspect of life.” 

Questions the film pose are, “What exactly is the definition of ‘human’ in a society where a mind can be copied and the body replaced with a synthetic form?”, “What exactly is the ‘ghost’ —the human soul— in the cybernetic body, or ‘shell’?”, and “Where is the boundary between human and machine when the differences between the two become more philosophical than physical?” For some these questions may be confronting but for me personally they are ideals I think about quite often, hence my interest in the film and future project.

The protagonist of the film is Major Motoko Kusanagi (草薙 素子) who is a a fictional law-enforcement division of the real Japanese National Public Safety Commission as well as an augmented-cybernetic human. The character can be seen in the above image, recently it was announced she would be played by Scarlett Johansson. To many this was extremely controversial.

Although Scarlett Johansson is Polish-american (western) and the film is of Japanese heritage- this comes as no real surprise. Generally speaking the American film industry (especially Los Angeles based and major studios) have always aimed to keep their majority of characters western so that the masses of un-racially diverse Americans can relate to these redesigned commercially produced characters. This is consistently happening and examples are foreign remakes of films that never needed to be re-made to begin with. A prime example is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there are two versions one Swedish the original and another American, both very similar and both received mainly critical acclaim the main difference; language.

An article I read recently gives an interesting insight into why Americans watch less foreign films and are less tolerable to foreign languages on screen.
“As so many American independent films use short theatrical runs to promote their ancillary releases, “companies are releasing 30 movies a year because of VOD [as well as other platforms like Netflix],”the marketplace [has become] so crowded, that the theaters that would be playing foreign-language films don’t have enough room.”

In regards to all this and referencing back to the film ‘Ghost in a Shell’ what you may not know is that the android protagonist within the film was in fact based off a western ideal of an american women. The character in the 1995 film was also intended to have an androgynous face which did not show much emotion thus leaving the character more open to interpretation.

Overall I believe in keeping to a level of tradition, if you are creating a film based off source material of a different culture it is important not to appropriate that culture as well as giving respect to the original material.
In this case it would be casting an actor with Japanese heritage, instead of artificially creating the aesthetics of the race which a VFX production company associated with the production are apparently working upon- this would be to give Scarlett more of an aesthetic Asian character design, (tests were done with the company Lola VFX who also did the aging affect on Brad Pitt in the ‘Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ but they have yet to confirm their involvement).

For more information on the project click this link here and It will guide you to the original sourced article.

A few crucial steps to writing a critical analysis and or evaluation is to understand your target audience. In this case it will be lecturers, tutors and students- although from the lectorial understanding we are also writing for any whom happen to stumble across our blogs so we must write as though these people have not always read the materials we have.

What I have learnt from this weeks lecture (week six) is that I must (in order to form a habit) is to not only reference the readings but also write about how they interconnect with each other and how all the content we are learning comes together to form a broader picture.

The substance of what is in the post must also be checked, in reflection to the lecture I remember that there must be a key point in that every post- a push and pull. This would be to create a piece that has balance, purpose and meaning and overall create an argument or point.

My focusing point for this week would be how should I go about improving my writing, after finishing high school I went into a Diploma that required almost no theoretical skills (essay writing, referencing and critical evaluations included). For me this means I’ve lost touch in my writing, I believe in order to regain the structure that I once had and wrote with I must continue readings outside of the original set list.

How often do we pick up a book and analysis it without having to write an assignment, at my age hardly ever. I think for me it would be important to start analyzing books I read and really breaking them apart in order to understand how to write better reflections because these posts as stated aren’t just meant to reflect there meant to be argumentative and include critical thinking.

Finally I also believe to always be aware of the reading biases and when reflecting on a reading write what the biased would have been on that particular author this will help create an argumentative piece without having to pull very far.

Collaboration partners; Margret Tanjutco and Liwan Li.
“A survival guide to your first six weeks of university”

What problems did you encounter?
Making sure the tripod was  set up evenly and that the location of the interviewees eyes was not directly at the camera but rather in the spot where the interviewer would be sitting (as they were on camera at the same time as asking the questions so it did not look as natural). I also found the answers were slightly different which made connecting them harder as the interviewee didn’t always remember what they were talking about in the first take. Also the close ups were off in terms of where the eye-line was directed at.

What were your most successful shots?
The two shot was set up quite nicely, and the establishing shots were quite candid and really gave an indication towards the setting. I think there was quite a contrast between the back light for the interviewer shot compared to the interviewee shot which didn’t make it run as smoothly but that was due to the background for the two shot being quite colorful an toned.

What did you discover about the camera techniques (eg. Composition, framing)?
It was hard given the time to really set up alright shots that at least hit what the brief was looking for in terms of practice. The close up of ‘Margret Tanjutco’ was quite aesthetically well framed in terms of rule of thirds this made the shot more interesting compared to the close up/mid shot of ‘Liwan Li’ which was must more symmetrical.

Stone the flaimin’ crows!
SBS2: Thomas the Tank Engine has a new Aussie mate called Shane

Diversity, It’s almost a compulsory thing now days- we see period dramas with not enough people of ethnicity and we start to get angry. I do however think this was a great idea, any children’s Television show that adds diversity is teaching our younger generation from small ages to respect and acknowledge cultural diversity, especially within out media industry and visual programs. As a child myself I was glad there were many programs with cultural diverse characters (Hey Arnold, The Powerpuff Girls), but then there was an era within Disney (especially aimed at Pre-teens) where characters were predominantly white and attractive but this was also due to the change within childrens’ cartoon shows and children’s shows with real life actors. It will be nice to see more diversity in the real life action shoots for children especially within Disney, hopefully more come along soon.

This weeks tutorial was Brian teaching us examples of how to use Adobe Audition, we talked about increasing gain which can cause distortion and it’s one of the principle things with digital recorders were trying to avoid. Slightly less gain is always better than more because you can amplify but you can not take away distorted audio.

An equalizer is very important as frequency is one of the key qualities of sound. The equalizer works by suppressing or taking out frequency’s as well as enhancing some frequency to give more vocal brightness. It also helps get rid of lower signals that weren’t originally meant to be there (lower gain) for example background noises of a coffee machine or people talking.

Below is a sample image of what Adobe Audition looks like once it’s open and you are working on a project.

Textual analysis was the main focus for Week 5’s lecture, for me a little of the content reflected on my year twelve VCE media class with the terminology; Denotation (the literal of first order meaning and it’s partner) Connotation (cultural or second order meaning). 

Both Morris’s and Alan Mckee’s ‘guides’ (2001) were an interesting read- they focused on interpretation and judgement. Both the readings focused on the idea of labeling and how we should not label a text ‘inaccurate/biased’ but instead analysis the assumptions within the text, weather a piece is subjective (which is impossible not to be) or how it can be interpreted in various ways.

The activity completed in class focused on a clothing advertisement the denotation would have been a man throwing a boy into a pool but with the knowledge of ‘connotation’ we could see the advertisement was aimed at the clothes the two were wearing and the idea linked to it about comfort and freedom.
It was nice to have the repetition of the terminology replenished into my mind as it had been a while since I had talked about textual analysis especially after studying the practical Diploma last year.
Textual analysis including connotation and denotation obviously helps in the presentation of mise-en-scene especially for ‘Project Brief 3’, which is creating a short interview or portfolio on someone else within our lives.

Last year I shot a semi-professional interview as apart of my Diploma and it will be interesting to see how this independent more freedom shoot will look like aesthetically, metaphorically (especially with the layout) and technically as the equipment will be completely different (No LED kits or three point lighting, no mixer and boom mics). Below is last years completed edited and audio mixed interview.

I think my skills have been building and i’m quite looking forward to this challenge or brief so below are a few of my ideas. I want to focus this project on a subject who has the ability to travel on limited budget by using the resources he has to their ultimate potential having traveled in Europe for six months on two thousands dollars and recently working in Japan for another six months, I think it would be an interesting project to watch and alongside some nice images the subject has taken it would be aesthetically pleasing as well. The backdrop will be the subject home but in an area where the mise-en-scene can be surrounded with souvenirs from the subjects adventurous. I’ll get back to you soon.

Mixing this sound was interesting; in the brief given we were informed to use external sound effects and add them into the narrative of the interviewee, I thought I’d take a Jazzy podcast-ed sort of take to the project. I’ve used Adobe Audition before whilst working at SYN (90.7fm) so it wasn’t too hard, I do like adding a backing track over interviewees weather that takes away from the actual content i’m not sure but it’s my personal artistic style at the moment but it will be interesting to see how this style develops in the coming weeks, I’ve recently bought a RodVideo Mic and I can’t wait to use it and mix more audio together.