In this studio, throughout making short media sketches as well as a final work being an experimental video, I developed a further understanding of a list and its potential qualities of being made into something poetic and a contemplative piece of media. 

Across making these sketches I noticed a similarity in my media work consisiting of ideas from  non linear storytelling through glimpses and it being an interactive device for the audience to also construct the list outside of the author/s intention. Not having continuity in editing creates a “fragmentary nature of the material and the lack of narrative closure are indications of completeness” (Frankham B.L 2013, Pg140) . Having spaces of non continuity between fragments belonging to a list can be intentional from the author in making a media work that evokes thought and questions of how items are related passed onto the audience. This then also makes the audience an active participant in structuring the list based on their own  perspectives and logic in response to the lack of closure and information between each item on the list. 

With poetic videos and media work being abstract and left to audience interpretation, it can give a list to be built off areas from a micro and macro extent in  capturing an idea. An author can construct a list that is micro based which stems from their own persoanl perspective of how they see a set of items, experiences a certain series of events of their own and thoughts provoked by a word or an action to be translated into an audio visual context. In contrast to a list that can be quite personal in presenting an idea, it can also have macro properties that explore the unseen and multiple perspectives which go beyond the individual.  With the intention of capturing an idea that shows its complexities, multiple facets can be created where “something immaterial or abstract can become material or concrete, or conversely how something material can become abstract, virtual, or ideational. ” (Miles, 2018, Pg305)  In thinking of listed items to have their own type of energy and relations whether it be historical, based on reality or fictional, it can widen the speculative nature of interpretations and extend a list captures which go beyond mundane of the author’s personal experiences and thoughts. 

A key concern of the studio that my group’s final project engaged with is by covering the poetic everyday. Originally we thought of making a work that was an experimental new media piece. However, having similarities in our footage being the way we captured affection, it turned into an experimental documentary. By having each group member gather their own media related to affection and combining it in the end, we were able to create an infinite list where reflection from the audience and affection in their own everyday lives can be stemmed off from these videos and voice messages.  Also this was my first time learning about how a video can be made through a process based method as a guide to create a media where each media gathered contributes to the overall aesthetic and form that may have not been seen in the initial stages of planning the work. This process can also construct a narrative which in relation to my question of “How can a poetic video creative a narrative?”, I learned through our final assignment it can and go beyond the traditional story narrative I initially thought of.  I saw a story to form in our video as st the start I  our fragments in video and audio visual present affection from different people in a segmented way but  in the ending all these perspective to come together which convey that despite the differences, they all have something in common and are connected letting the audience further contemplate of types of affection they have experienced. 

The most successful aspect in my group’s video was the consistent use of poetic techniques being of mosaics and categorical relationships through the use of close ups and layering. These techniques let us visually translate the emotions tied to affection being comfort and warmth with the coloring and composition of shots. Even though in our work these techniques can be seen as chaos and randomness, it also acted as order to since it served as a pattern to intentionally represent multiple perspectives of how we express and receive affection, assisting and supporting our research question. 

If I were to continue this piece I would try to make our work less literal as at times in our work the voice messages and sometimes its accompanying visuals makes it obvious that this video is about love languages and the types of affection. This then takes away audience contemplation and creates a media that evokes thoughts and questions. Changes I would make would be having the audio messages to be more vague as to what affection is compared to asking what their love language and to also intersperse the fragments of the affection types as compared to each one being segmented 

Comparing and contrasting the obvious and not so obvious meanings of a list is something I learnt about listing as a poetic approach to a media that is of experimental documentary type much like my group’s. At first my initial thoughts of list was always being functional and literal but in this studio I learned how it can also be abstract and subjective and can be obscure, letting the association of each time on the list to have a loose relationship. In the process of creating the final work I began to focus on a “peculiar choice of montage” (Boczkowska, 2017,pg18)  as I  “developed a heightened awareness of all the changes and rhythms that take place in nature” (Boczkowska, 2017,pg19). I found this helpful in focussing how we see affection in the mundane to bring that human aspect of feeling into our video. Learning how to take detailed notice of a type of feeling throughout this studio whether it be the obvious or abstract observations is an aspect which can help me in my professional career as it can assist me in exploring multiple perspectives and facets beyond the literal to create a work that has properties of human feelings and is also contemplative which creates audience interaction and triggers thoughts for them to create their own perspectives. 

https://vimeo.com/654787968 

References: Frankham, B.L., 2013. Complexity, flux and webs of connection,’ in: (Links to an external site.) A Poetic Approach to Documentary: Discomfort of Form, Rhetorical Strategies and Aesthetic Experience University of Technology Sydney, Sydney. pp. 137-176

Adrian Miles, 2018, “Critical Distance in Documentary Media” pg301 – 319 “https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/96991/files/21322219/download?download_frd=1

Boczkowska, Kornelia,  2017 “Suspended Moments of the Mundane Routine: Testing the Possibilities of Slow Cinema in Sharon Lockhart’s Lunch Break (2008) and Podwórka (2009)”  pg 17-33

Prior to the rough cut critique session, my group and I were able to compile most of our footage together along with some voice recordings in response to our overall theme of affection. Using sound in video in my opinion is my weakest area so being able to get feedback related to audio as a key concern from Hannah as well as the class and my group members helped a lot. Class feedback related to this topic was to refine the sound design and to think about including background sounds initially was mentioned to fill areas of silence as well as a way to create a more immersive experience when viewing the video. But at the same time the moments of silence between each audio piece was also seen as a positive as it created space between the thoughts of affection as it gave the audience time to think about what was said. 

For a coherent and balanced structure and randomness, a tip mentioned was to have the voice overs come earlier and to even be placed over the prompts and quotes. I thought this was a great idea to display various perspectives simultaneously as to what affection is to different people through speech and text. This also aligned with the question and tips to how our group can go about thinking of the poetic nature of our video being sounds mixed together and overlapping voices as a suggestion of  an audio technique to implement. Eventually this idea led to having voice overs being placed over one another with one of the voice recording layers being made to sound like it is at a distance but can be noticed but not heard easily. Then as the video progresses, the use of sound can create a pattern triggered from a sense of familiarity in wondering about similar sounds heard before.  

Also the idea of progressive overlays was applied in making improvements to how our  visual collages were presented where each type of affection has their own animated collage. My group also decided to place these animated collages in the end where there would be multiple snippets of videos acting as the exploding list of multiple perspectives of affection with multiple voice messages being laid over each other to accompany the videos. As well having balancing in the structure of  consistent use of visual and audio patterns, a chaotic ending where many videos are shown could potentially end the video well as it brought in the infinite list giving the audience a wide visual of the different ways affection is expressed and letting them contemplate the types of affection they have experienced or can think of related to the mundane. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv_zldfbh7

After experimenting with using Adobe Spark to see what would work on it as platform to present our media pieces consisting mainly of videos, we discovered and decided that it is not the best option for us as we did not present our work in an easy flow as to what we imagined.  As we uploaded our test footage the content looked disjointed and each part we worked on was quite separated. For uploading the videos onto Adobe Spark, it did not embed videos the greatest as it was difficult to just show the video. This was the opposite as to what we envisioned where all these different interpretations and perspectives of affection were tied together, creating connections between each media fragment. 

Something positive that came out using Adobe Spark and importing some of our creative pieces to it was the process based method as we were able to recognise a structure as to how the group can work better for the final project where each member was in charge of a type of affection to be conveyed utilising poetic techniques and other methods we discussed as a group. A common theme in our videos was movements in the hands and from that we close-up and tight shots in conjunction with the shakiness in handheld shooting to share intimacy and create a stylistic approach in capturing affection. Also in capturing hand movements with close up camera angles, it can create a sense of wonder like Hannah mentioned as to how it relates with the idea of affection and the purpose and how it is similar. With seeing how our videos together on Adobe Spark were not just similar but are also different, we thought of a nice way to compile everything together and end the video which is the use of a collage using videos creating an exploded list which can also maybe be accompanied with a question to construct an infinite list on how we perceive affection.

In the end as we understood that we do not have the time to fully learn how to use Adobe Spark or a web page in presenting the work the way we wanted to, we instead decided to make an experimental video where we all contribute our own work and compile it together. 

Some feedback my group received for our studio presentation was that there is a positive being  including collages and mosaics being a smart link to affection as love and affection are very fragmented feelings. Some feedback that linked to this comment was to gather other people’s material and perspective on how they see affection to really bring in the infinite to our list of how people express affection.  And through these multiple perspectives, embedding aesthetics to our fragments was another tip as it can bring a structured consistent type of stylised look to our project whilst showing many interpretations of affection.  A creative work example suggested by the panel which could help us was looking at the We Feel Fine directed by Adam Luxton, Jeremy Dumble as it is a film which shares similar components to a gathering list as it captures different emotions from various characters. Despite not watching the whole movie, I did watch the trailer and found that it had similarities with the creative work I presented which was Is Anyone Coming For Dinner by Audrey Lam as it also used shaky camera movements for a more intimate and personal tone to the film as the consistent use of close ups and cropped body actions just enough for the audience to understand what is happening. 

Some advice for using Adobe Spark as well as Hannah was to keep importing anytype of media into the platform to work intrusively as an interactive approach much like the processed based method in creating the video as mentioned in my initial ideas blog post as from then our group can let the content form around how we  organise it. Ordering our works of media on Adobe Spark I learned can also intentionally guide the audience in the way they interact with the works which can stem off providing or giving the viewers a prompt or question at first and then showing them our media works to contemplate the relationship between. Another idea mentioned was including the use of hashtags to accompany our work to create an infinite list where other online users’ understanding of affection can be brought in with our project. 

Since our group discussed how our videos will contain aspects of categorical listing, an  idea I found from Bogost Ian’s reading  Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be aThing  is where he analyses a list of likes and dislikes made by Roland Barthes is that a list can “draw our attention to the curious world outside his person, as filtered through the arbitrary meter of likes and dislikes.” (Bogost Ian, 2012, pg41). With this idea in mind, having videos which stem from our perspective of how we see affection in our lives creates a mosaic from personal lists which can then be categorised into the expanding idea of affection. Our videos being variations created from our interpretation of affection can leave contemplation between each video to act in “drawing  attention  to  the  couplings of and chasms between them” (Bogost Ian, 2012, pg50) This quote can be helpful in thinking about our final project to have videos which can evolve into maybe multiple narratives through the audience engagement of what they notice throughout their viewing experience.  

A creative work that I found which can assist making our videos is Audrey Lam’s short film Is Anybody Coming Over For Dinner. This video is made up of mosaics which expand into displaying affection in a family orientated environment. A lot of these shots use close ups on actions (e.g feet kicking the soccer ball or hands playing with a toy, cutting food) where in some aspects it crops the entire full body action but it is  just enough to create viewer contemplation and for the audience to figure out what is going on. This places emphasis on details in how people especially in families show affection for each other. Also with close ups in the film, tight compositions display the family members to be close together and that affection can be shown in a physical manner. A technical aspect that can help assist close up composition is using a 4:3 aspect ration like in the video. This can also give off a a home video aesthetic in conjunction with  ideo grain, light leaks, film burn etc which can elicit a comforting feeling as if you are in that environment with friends or family who you do exchange affection with.

Reference : Bogost, I., 2012. ‘Ontography’ in Alien Phenomenology. Or What It’s Like to be a Thing.’ University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. pp. 35-59

Some potential ideas my group and I discussed were different concepts to explore filming which align with our question of how a poetic video conveys a story but remains experimental at the same time. We started off with listing out broad topics such as home, love, comfort zones that had the potential to form a list that could be exploded starting with our own interpretations and perspectives of it. This approach was quite similar to how I started out making my earlier poetic video works where the visuals and sounds revolved around. 

However, a process based method in working on this video project Hannah talked about was something I found quite interesting and want to attempt is starting out with an emotion and having each group member gather some videos of how they interpret it. Then from that gathering list exercise of each person, the list will then explode and will potentially develop its own aesthetic and show us if a narrative has been created from it or not. 

Another concept in class discussed was the idea of thinking about balance and aspects of order and chaos in our poetic video. I see this as an important technique to help convey a narrative and give our video some sort of structure which can assist in generating meaning to the video. Structural elements being as the “order” whilst being combined with more  experimental shots accompanied with poetic techniques acting as the “chaos” hopefully the audience can take note of a narrative being formed whilst also in contemplation and questioning how each shot makes sense of one another. 

Also considering balance combined with our gathering and explosive list generated from our group allows “room for critical engagement and an experiential knowing.” (Frankham B, 2013, pg147) may also allow more than one narrative to be formed and discovered from the audience which may alter from our original idea of the story created.

Reference: References : Frankham, B.L., 2013. Complexity, flux and webs of connection,’ in: (Links to an external site.) A Poetic Approach to Documentary: Discomfort of Form, Rhetorical Strategies and Aesthetic Experience University of Technology Sydney, Sydney. pp. 137-176