MEDIA INTEGRATES THEORY AND PRACTICE

Adrian Miles proposed ‘What is the difference between thinking about what things are?’ Like a dog, a bat and snake are things but do they think? Well, they do but humans are set apart because we tell stories.

As Descarte said, ‘I think, therefore I am.’

Our job, argues Miles, is to narrate the world, to give it meaning, or put it another way, to document ontography, that is, to be concerned with  the relationship between the environment and organic beings.

He posed this line of enquiry:

• What do we know?
• What we don’t we know?
• Of what we don’t know what do we need to find out that matters
• How will we find this?

This does read a bit like a snake eating its own tail and it would be interesting how he would apply this. It was like a friend of mine saying to his girlfriend in a bid to get closer to her, ‘Tell me something about me that I don’t know.’ They broke up.

Miles went on to say that ideas arrive yet he has no idea from where. ‘Ideas are things. There’s High Art and Low Art but when thinking is translated into action it becomes a ‘thing’.

This reminded me of the shows that I’ve put on like, ‘The Portrait of John Howard’. It was a reverse storytelling of the Dorian Gray version where the portrait got better looking and John Howard became more evil and disfigured. I have no idea where that idea came from or why that happened. Yet, I took this idea and formed it into a thing.

Mile raised a provocative thought that the media industry needs ‘in betweeners’. In other words, people who are able to function in a variety of roles or as he coined them, pejoratively, as ‘bottom feeders’. He explained that technology has changed so much that anyone can be an editor, cameramen. You need to specialise.

I don’t necessary agree with Miles on this point. Like any tool, it’s how well you use it. A good cameraman is a good cameraman and excellent editor is an excellent editor. But I will anchor the idea of uniqueness (I don’t, anyway, intend to be an editor rather a writer).

STORY

Lecturer, Liam Ward looked at narrative and non-narrative stories. ‘It’s the kernels that makes story important.’ So with that in mind he provided a set of ‘kernels’, cards in fact and told to make a sequence.

These were the questions in regards to our story.

What are the difference between the three sequences? What qualities, as a narrative, do they have? What sorts of content or fragments/sentences/paragraphs seem to work best as ‘movable’ parts? Why? What characteristics do these parts tend to have?

Then we were told to re-order and reduce the information on the cards. So it looked like this:

1st Sequence

1. She woke up far to early
2. She ate free food
3. She spoke at parliament
4. She went to media 1 lecture
5. She went to bed and work up in a spaceship.

2nd Sequence

1. She work up far to early
2. She ate free food
3. Turning point card – ‘She lost her voice’
4. She spoke at parliament
5. She went to bed and work up in a spaceship.

3rd Sequence

1. She ate free food
2. Turning point card – ‘She lost her voice’
3. She spoke at parliament
4. She went to bed and work up in a spaceship.
5. Accidentally walked into a media conference

This was challenging but its easy to see how you can totally change the outcome of the story just by moving the sequence around.

WHAT IS EDITING? 

Editing, Ward instructed, is deliberately smashing things, filling gaps with meaning. A classic example of this is Stanley Kubricks, 2001: A Space Odyssey where the dawn of man throws a bone to the sky it fades to that of a satelite, thus condensing the evolution of humankind in a moment. This, Ward says, is the power of editing, taking us on a journey by showing us two images vastly separated by time leaving our brains to fill in the rest with meaning i.e. story.

Another good example is the 1920s film is the Kuleshov Effect. An actor looks to camera then follows a girl in a coffin. Ah, he must be grieving. But then, back to his face, same expression and it changes to soup. Now, is he hungry. So what happens here is that there is meaning here is meaning outside the shot, before and after.

Thus, we project a meaning for ourselves. This is something I will consider when I attempt the second project.

Furthermore, Ward went on to explain that things only have meaning because we give it to them. Take the Game of Thrones Chair.  If it wasn’t for the TV series (ie. given meaning) it would be…well, the most uncomfortable chair in the world! Instead, it is a symbol of power and authority.

Furthermore, its also how often something is broken up can be culturally specific. For example, European films tend to have less edited frames than do American films, and less is explained in them, allowing the viewer to assemble their own story.

REFLECTIVE PORTFOLIO WRITE UP TIME

What stand out for me is:

• the idea that story is dead. That we are the only species that tell stories (well, apart from Klingons).
• images are connected depending on cultural relevance otherwise they’re just an ’empty’ image.
• Space between images – the large the more artistic they can seem eg. Hollywood explains much more. Art films less.
• Lastly, here’s a link which reminded of what Miles was saying about being not being a ‘bottom feeder’ (or inbetweener) in the contracted skills on Blade Runner http://io9.com/142-behind-the-scenes-photos-reveal-blade-runners-minia-1691950942 

MEDIA IS A PUBLIC PRACTICE

I was absent for this lecture thus I will make my comments based on the reading The ethical stance and its representation in the expressive techniques of documentary filming: a case study of Tagged Kay Donovan a Centre for Creative Practice and Cultural Economy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology , Sydney.

This paper discusses the ethics of documentary film making. The writer, Kay Donovan,  uses her own film as an example: the 60 minute documentary Tagged about four young people over three years as they transition into adulthood. Donovan states that ‘we expect a documentary to represent in a fair and honest way somebody’s experience of reality’ and that ‘In doing this, documentarians make judgements about inherent right or wrong, goodness or badness, and they also contribute to our social discourse about what we value in our society and how we deal with it.’
Therefore, filmmaking becomes reflexive, that it is ‘checking in on itself’ as it tries to follow an ethical path. However, the portrayl of the subjects comes with the director’s own set of values and so can not be considered authentic but rather a subjective examination. There are dilemmas that the film maker must encounter from omissions of material, editing out truths to portray one that suits the narrative and the consent of the subject become a blurred proposition (i.e. how much are they consenting to?).
‘According to Nichols (1991), the key purpose of documentary is to create a representation of the historical world, which is focused around an argument that is being made about it and within that argument there is an ethical perspective.’ (Donovan)

Donovan goes on to describe that axiographic space that is ‘the Gaze’, ‘the observer and the observed’. When does the filmmaker intervene? We have seen this recently on the SBS program Struggle Street when neither the crew nor other subjects intervened to stop a pregnant woman smoking. Whereas, John Pilger in Land of Fear, actually stopped filming to help a boy that had become trapped in a trench he was digging. Pilger appears to be acting within his own and widely accepted set of ethics as opposed to the SBS filmmakers who were roundly criticised for their lack of theirs.
For Donovan, on her making of Tagged, concludes that it was reflexive one, that she took into her account her ethical standards and reflected those in her work with her subjects.

REFLECTION

Having made short documentaries, it is all too tempting to make subtle changes of ‘a truth’ of the subject in the filming and editing process. You can portray your subject positively or negatively simply with taking what they’ve said out of context or through gross omissions. I’ve always tried to make my subject to be put into a position to be judged unfairly. This aside, if we examine the famous documentary maker, Michael Moore, we can see that he has manipulated events and people to tell and push his own agenda. In a Canadian documentary Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore (2007) about him, it was exposed that he had indeed had meetings with the head of General Motors when he had claimed in his own documentary Roger and Me (1989) that he had been continually rebuffed. Furthermore, there were scenes he had staged such as when he was at a shareholders meeting and the lights were turned off on him as he tried to speak. Apparently this never happened.
Anyway, it’s something to keep in mind when approaching a documentary making project in the future for we assume that if it is this genre then we assume it is documenting reality.

Media is not a ‘thing’ out there 

‘The media are not so much things as places which most of us inhabit, which weave in and out of our lives. Their constant messages and pleasures seem to flow around and through us, and they immerse most of our waking lives.’

Branston and Stafford, 2010, The Media Students Book

Yes, I often feel this on the train. People immersed in their media worlds, smiling to themselves as their read their tablets and listening to music or checking their phone. Nobody really wants to engage with is around them.

MEDIA TEXTS

Sites where meaning are generated through manipulation of materials and codes.

• Do not simply ‘picture’ or reflect a reality where meaning resides

Dorothy Smith (1990) argues ‘textually mediated communicative action, social relations as integral part of al our social environment’.

‘We get passports…entered by technology.’

PRE-MODERN SOCIETY

• Face to face interactions
• Direct experience as an authentic experience

MODERN SOCIETY

Predominately were interact through media texts – maps, books, papers  – less authentic. We are moving away from this model of media. send – medium – message – receiver.

WILLIAM MERRIAN, 9/3/10

‘Studying me-dia: the problem of method in a post-broadcast age’ from his blog Media Studios 2.0 (see blog).

‘Post-broadcast…media ecology than ever before.’

Shibiya – social relations

PROJECT BREIF

We watched an excerpt ‘My Lobotomy’ Howard Dully Journey.

NOTICING

Media is everywhere.

‘Disciple of noticing’ Mason, J (2002) p 31.

‘As multisense beings, we are inundated with senses…’

We learn from noticing:

• Intentionally
• Consciously
• Disciplined forms
• Making and recording heightened forms of noticing.
• Your blog is diary of noticing.

Even when there’s nothing to supposedly listen to, we listen. For example in John Cage’s masterful experimental work4′ 33″ (1952)  where nothing is played at all. But the audience, even though they were listening to nothing, hear everything else -ambient noise, people moving, coughing, traffic outside. It focused attention on ‘the other’.

We sat for some time in the lecture theatre repeating this experiment. We noticed:

• ambient sound become louder
• ‘Silence does not exist’
• Anxiety of audience – not prepped about the concept
• Silence of meditation
• screens, posters, business cards, graffiti, hand outs, buskers, traffic lights, phone – goggle maps, packaging.
• 3 lines of reflecting on process of noticing

TASK – FED SQUARE – NOTICING

Here we gathered at Federation Square and observed our surrounds. Traffic noise was the most obvious but as we walked around the square the video images of the Gran Prix took our attention. Then the running text on the Fed Square building advertising events and times before seeing the smaller things: signs to not cycle, no smoking signs, menus at restaurants.

 

REFECTION

Having made aware of noticing things, it of course affected my daily life and now I can’t escape listening to the smallest of sounds like my mother-in-law making these unusual popping squeaks when she’s cooking (no, she’s not on fire). I didn’t notice it before. Or the sound of the freeway near our house. I hadn’t really paid any attention to it before (is this a good thing?)

 

MEDIA IS RELEARNING

Today our lecturer, Brian Morris, asked about different types of learning. So far my learning hasn’t been going so well. I wrote down the address of the lecture room on a post-it-note and posted it to the fridge and left it there. Because that’s what you do when you want to remember things.  Anyway, I had to wait in queue at the IT desk, trying to sort out why I’ve got no connection on my MacBook. Strangely, it worked when I arrived in the lecture auditorium…eleven floors up which I had walked.

So below are some of the main points of the lecture:

1. LEARNING AND THE STUDIO MODEL

Learning through making. This is where learning is more student focused rather than teacher focused. As Pablo Picasso said, ‘I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.’ I often feel that I learn better by making mistakes, experimenting with new form.  Like this blog for instance!

II. LEARNING AND (THE) DISCIPLINE

Michelle Focault. Power and organisations. I’ve read ‘Birth of the Prison’ so it was great to hear that schools,Focault observed, were similar to other forms of repressive organisations.

‘A home is not a fortress’ by Meaghan Morris ‘Ecstasy and Economics (1992). Home can be anywhere, it can be, like media, amporhous. It is what you make it.

 III. LEARNING INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF THE CLASS

Taking extra-curricular classes. I’ve done this with writing screenwriting classes, comedy writing with Tim Ferguson, acting and even Chinese cooking.

IV LEARNING BY…

ANALOGY/ PRACTICE/ REPETITION/ MIMICRY/ FAILURE/ METAPHOR

‘Or per Herzog, who describes himself as a product of his cumulative humiliations and defeats, ‘filmaking causes pain.’

PAUL CRONIN, WERNER HERZOG: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

V. THE GIFT

ITERATION/ PRESENTATION/ FEEDBACK

About repeating the fundatmentals, receiving criticism.

VI. LEARNING & HIERARCHIES

READING AND TALKING

Extract from N. Katherine Hayles, ‘Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generation Divide in Cognitive Modes’ (2007).

Deep thinking versus hyper attention. For further reading go to:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/apr/08/susan-greenfield-rise-facebook-zombies

Here’s something to think about and one of the many causes of hyper attention. Apple, one of the most profitable companies in the world, has been caught out being supplied by workers in slave-like conditions. Go to the link below:

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/03/02/4187424.htm

TASK – DEAR FUTURE SELF

To be completed by end of the degree.

1. Blogging
2. Video game writing
3. Broadcast skills
4. Film making
5. Work Placement
6. Editing
7. Social media skills
8. Scriptwriting
9. Technology usage
10. Make collaborations/contacts
11. Writing stories.
12. Presenting

REFLECTION

I am good at learning new things and do well when I teach myself something through trial and error. I’ve done since the day I was born of course, but even when I know there’s a theory or instructions on how to do something I prefer to work it out for myself (and that’s why it takes me fours hours to put an IKEA flatpack together!). Doing the task has given pause for me to think out the direction of my career and where I’d like to specialise.