Public publication of my final project:

PlayBack Opening Night Documentary

Final reflection on the studio experience:

A5 Festival, Publication & Reflection

Being part of the PlayBack team has given me so much happy memory. Not only will I cherrish these moments forever, but I will also constantly reflect upon them and continue to learn new things from them. To me, the overall festival was a huge success, especially the opening night where tickets were fully sold out.

I remember a saying about how we will ‘always have a bump at the big day’, and honestly, that was kind of what I thought would have happened. I thought there’s definitely going to be a bump during the opening night, but I have faith that we will overcome it. But to my surprise, everything turned out to be just perfect! No tech issues, no camera breaking down, no drunk students… Most importantly, we all worked alongside each other full heartedly. I saw the Production wearing the professional headphone sets and working with the ACMI staff, MC’s practicing their speechDuring the evenet, us (Documentary) and Social Media welcoming people and taking photos in front of the media wall. Even for people that weren’t assigned for a major role, they were not resting but running around checking on everyone else. I could say with full confidence that we have tried our absolute best to make every audience and guest feel included and welcomed. I even met a person from the Vietnamese Department at SBS who was working at the venue upstairs. He seemed very intrigued by it and asked me what event we were hosting, which proves again how good the atmosphere was.

There are still areas for improvements. I’ve noticed that people were leaving throughout the way, which could probably be improved by splitting the screening into two sections. An one-hour screening consists of 18 studios were quite demanding – and quite impossible for audience to pay attention through the whole screening, making people feel bored. Therefore, it might be better to play 9 studios first, and then hold the first Q&A sections in which we interview the representitives from these 9 studios played. Then we could have a 10 minute bathroom breaks and come back for the second screening sections for the rest of the studios. Then, we could have the second Q&A section to interview these studios. As described, arranging the screening in this way could also split up the Q&A section; by making each section shorter, audience are more likely to stay intrigued through the process.

Another improvement I noticed was on photography. I felt that it was needed to take photos during screening, and perferrably shooting from near the stage to capture the whole view of the audiences. But if we were to do this, it might be better to have mentioned and warned our audience first when the MC’s were speaking. Since we haven’t communicated that through, I wasn’t sure whether I was allowed to do that or whether that would disturb or scare our audience, so I didn’t end up taking photos during the screening. Furthermore, I think we could even assign one photographer to document ourselves because I think it is equally important. Photos of the MC’s speaking on the stage, Tommy using the stage equipments, etc. I believe that these are all important footages that we should be recording.

Three core ideas that I’ve learnt from the readings across the semester include conceptual framing, project management, and creative collaborations. From the documentary Film Spa, I learnt the importance of conceptual framing, or in particular, setting a theme and atmosphere, as they are the foundation for every future discussion. Although it took much longer than expected, we have come up with a mission that we were all happy of. And now as we have run the festival, I am confident that our plan was successful, and all the effort we put into defining the concept of PlayBack was paid off. From the Creator’s Handbook, I learnt about project management and creative collaborations. To me, this was the piece of reading that gave me the most inspirations, probably because it was the most relevant to my role as a member in the documentation team. It made me realised the importance of assigning roles and investigating effective channel of communications. I think the Production Team has done the best job in managing projects – I honestly cannot imagine how it would be like if I were the one managing all those sheets and files. Yet, this also means that I have studied from them, and this is definitely going to be something I will take into considerations in future making and thinking.

In conclusions, taking this course and being one of the curators in PlayBack was a valuable experience for me. I think I have already said this in one of my previous blogs – but I honestly think that this studio was the best that I have ever taken. The teamwork experience I gained from this studio was also exceptional. I will cherish these memories forever.

Week 6: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/xiangfan-chen/2025/06/09/a4-festival-production_week-6/

Week 7: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/xiangfan-chen/2025/06/09/a4-festival-production_week-7/

Week 8: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/xiangfan-chen/2025/06/09/a4-festival-production_week-8/

Week 10: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/xiangfan-chen/2025/06/09/a4-festival-production_w10/

Week 11: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/xiangfan-chen/2025/06/09/a4-festival-production_week-11/

Making: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/xiangfan-chen/2025/06/09/a4-festival-production_making/

I have enjoyed the last five weeks of the semester the most, and I have definitely been contributing a lot more during these weeks than before. During the beginning and middle part of the semester, there was a lot of planning and scheduling which I was not very good at. Therefore, I mainly contributed in the final weeks to edit the interviews with the studios for socials, and the documentary for Opening Night. I was the main person editing the documentary, which I was very proud of.

Editing

The process of editing was very fun for me, and I have definitely learnt a lot through editing this time. Since we had so many people filming content, I didn’t know what footage we actually had while I first started editing. I then spent almost an hour going through the footage, uploading and organising it into different folders on the RMIT media server. I was then able to compare the footage we had against the documentary plan that we came up with, to see what was missing. This was later proved to be a very critical process, as it allows us to have sufficient time to film / re-film during class time.

I think the hardest part in the documentary to edit was the opening, as our plan was very abstract and conceptual. Unlike the rest of the documentary, where interviews and voice-over were threaded through, the opening that we’ve planned was basically a movie trailer composed of quick clips and montages. I had barely edited anything like that before, so I had to spend a lot of time watching movie trailers and studying how they were edited. Finding the right music for this part was also very hard; I wanted to find music that has its final beat at exactly 30 seconds, so I could create a cinematic end while making sure that it’s not overtime. Luckily, the opening ended up being quite successful, so my effort was paid off!

Another skill that I gained was using Premiere and Audition together. As mentioned, the footage that were used in the documentary was shot by different people with different devices in different environments, which made the sound collected quite inconsistent. I discovered that Audition can be linked to Premiere to edit audios, which became very handy when editing the interviews. The interview with Taylor and Amy was a big part in the documentary, so we decided to borrow a film camera from Tech and shoot it in Log format. As the editor, I was therefore able to learn how to colour grade and apply LUT to log videos on Premiere, which was also very fun.

I also discovered that footages can be organised within Premiere as well (very exciting), called ‘nest’. A nest is basically creating multiple timelines within the same project, each independent from each other yet can be modified together. That was very handy when I was editing the interviews with different studios, and to make them play simultaneously on the same screen.

Teamwork

I think the way that work was distributed amongst our team members was quite successful, as there were different people contributing during different stages. We were clear about our own strengths and had utilised them very well. It was also surprising how early we had this conversation about work distribution, and everyone was very happy about their role and had all fulfilled them very well. We have also actively and constantly updated our status in the group chat, which makes every step clear and trackable. I have to say, this is the best team I’ve ever worked with!

We have also worked closely with the social media team throughout the semester. All the reels posted on social media were shot by us, and edited by Emma and me. Although we are proud of them, I think the workload has become quite overwhelming, especially towards the end of the semester when we were also filming and editing the documentary. It would be nice if the social media team could help a bit, as the graphics were already covered by the identity team.

Other Skills

I think my communication skills have improved quite significantly through this course. Since English is my second language, it has always been quite nerve-raking for me to actively communicate with people (especially when I have to be professional). But throughout the semester, I have been actively communicating with two studios, sending them reminders and updates. I have also invited my sister’s Year 12 media teacher to our festival, who also forwarded my email to her media students for them to attend too.

I spent most of this week on editing the documentary. We have come up with a final plan for the documentary in Week 10, so the editing is straightforward – all I need to do is just follow the structure. There is no but after this – the process was indeed smooth and fun! I guess I’m just the type of person that doesn’t mind sitting for the whole day. I spent an average of five hours in the sweet for almost the whole week, which wasn’t actually that painful!

Now that I am reflecting on the week, I think that I’ve made a pretty smart choice on the first day of editing this documentary. I had the feeling that we weren’t going to have enough footages to support the whole structure, so I started off by editing the studio interviews first, even if it’s supposed to be the third part of the documentary. I figured that in this way, if I found something missing from editing it, I could send out requests to studios immediately to ask for more footages.

This turned out to be very useful, because while editing, I found that many interview footages weren’t actually usable. For example, some interviews were shot using mobile phones vertically, so when I zoom in to make the video match the frame, the quality became really bad. I had to therefore eliminate a few studios, so the ones that remained weren’t necessarily the ones that we obtained the most behind-the-scenes footages from. Sending out requesting emails on the first editing day was therefore able to give us enough time to wait for their responses.

For future students studying this course and joining the documentary team: ALWAYS USE A CAMERA TO FILM STUFF, even if it is less convenient!

In Week 10, we had the opportunity to study booklets from famous international film festivals. I was unfortunately absent from this week’s lessons, so I only got to browse through their digital copies. I heard from other group members that the physical booklets were not just different by contents or sizes, but also by the texture of the paper. I love everything about details, so I think using different types of paper to contribute to the style of the festival is absolutely smart and fascinating.

Based on the mission of our festival – which is to ‘playback’ student’s work this year to advocate a sense of participation and involvement – I think having a booklet resembling a newspaper would be suitable, as it is slightly nostalgic and documentary. The newspaper that Sarah made as mentioned in week 8’s blog would be handy.

However, if we are going to use it, adding in a few more pages to introduce every studio would be necessary. The booklet from the French Film Festival is a good example, as it uses each page to introduce one different film. We could use the same approach to attract people to the festival, and to increase the sense of participation for the students. Having a full screening timetable at the end of the booklet would also be clear and useful. I have also noticed how the French Film Festival has slipped in some information about their sponsors in between the introductions of the films, which might be a good idea for us to imitate if our sponsors demand more exposure.

Budget is a permanent problem. I realised how expensive it is to print things in Australia once again – if we were to print the newspapers or booklets in China, it would cost at most 50AUD.

In Week 8, we continued to read the Curator’s Handbook, specifically about the exhibition publication.

I learnt that many curators would organise book publications for their exhibitions. These books served two purposes: a) attract audience and increase income, b) leave a record. It was also mentioned in the Handbook that this is usually planned from the very beginning of curation and would involve many people for roles like commissioning editor, editor, and print production manager. This reminds me again of how organised one must be to become a curator, which is absolutely fascinating. If I could take this studio for the second time, I think I would also want to join the production team, to strengthen my skills on planning and organising.

Another thing I learnt from the Curator’s Handbook is that we absolutely need some paper form of documentary. A book is definitely unnecessary for our case, as our festival is small in scale and temporary. According to the handbook, ‘a free booklet providing some additional information, acting like an aid memoire, might be appropriate’, so I thought we could have some pamphlets or booklets handing out before and during the festival, as a form of advertisement and also to keep a record.

Sarah from our team is actually making a newspaper for the festival, which could serve a similar purpose. I think newspaper are even better for advertisement in social media, because the visuals creating from it is more creative and special than just ordinary booklet. However, it might not be too handy as it is big, so we might need to consider making booklets for offline advertisement. Once we made them, they could be placed on the information desks in building 8, or the Swanston Library in building 10. We could even have a few people handing them out at the entrances of building 8 during lunch time in weekdays.

I enjoyed this week’s reading on The Curator’s Handbook, because the content was practical and had inspired us a lot. I don’t think the handbook was too relevant to my role in the documentary team, but it certainly was to my role as a liaison with the studios. For the festival, Hafiza and I are liaising with two studios: a) Room With A View and b) Ready Camera One. I specifically want to talk about Room With A View because they are quite different to the rest – they are the two only audio-based studios for this semester.

When Hafiza and I went to their class to introduce our festival, we found out that one student from their studio had actually taken our studio last year, and he was also in the documentary team (if I remembered this correctly). He told us that they didn’t do well on showcasing the audio work last year because they weren’t able to find a suitable medium. This reminds me of how much or how often audio work has been underrepresented, not only in the media world in general, but also media festivals like us. We often just place our main focus on screen-based media and over-look audio work, henceforth not paying enough attention to explore more suitable ways to showcase them.

Students from Room With A View came out with an excellent idea about how they want their work to be presented. They wanted to create a ‘special corner’ at the venue with a speaker to play their work. The sound shouldn’t be too loud so it can create intimacy; at the same time, they didn’t want to use headphones as it might limit the number of people that can be listening. Through creating a space like this, we could encourage fluidity; people can come and go according to their interest and own will.

However, just as mentioned in The Curator’s Handbook, oftentimes we as curators are limited by budget and space. In this case, we had to use a cinema from ACMI as the venue for opening night, which means that audience are most ‘pinned’ to their seats, hence very little fluidity was allowed. Furthermore, it is likely that we have to hold their studio-specific screenings at a classroom in RMIT, which again means very limited public access due to a closing door. This process made me realise how hard it is to create a festival that suit perfectly every form of media, at least not when our budget and space is so limited.

Through the soft launching this week, I felt like our team (documentary) was larger than what it needed to be. Seeing the Production and Artistic Direction so busy and occupied, our team seems quite relax – which in some way made me feel a bit bad for not contributing.

But on the other hand, we have planned interviews for the following weeks. Emma and Farah were also going to help with the fundraising events. Speaking of this, I think for future students studying this course, there should really be more people in the Production Team, with maybe a sub-team from it specializing in organizing the fund-raising events.

For us as the documentary team, I think we need to improve our time management skills and plan everything a bit earlier. We haven’t assigned people to document each fundraising, or planned the outcome we were going to have from them (e.g. interviews with our team? Interviews with customers? Documenting the process and behind-the-scenes?)

At the same time, the social media team could work alongside to make reels. As of now, every reel posted were shot and edited by our team, which was a bit hard, as the style of those contents did not necessarily match the documentary style. Social media needed something shorter, in faster pace, and more eye-catching, yet the documentary would be more to unfold the story slowly. I thought the best solution for this would be for us to work independently – their content could be posted on social media, while we could post our content on the website. We could have a section on the website just to document the fundraisings, so our audience could track our work and process on the website, making us more trustworthy. At the same time, it might also attract more potential audience as that increases our transparency.

Post 1: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/xiangfan-chen/2025/04/10/post-1-_-deeper-…shing-a-festival/

Post 2: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/xiangfan-chen/2025/04/10/a2-post-2/

Post 3: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/xiangfan-chen/2025/04/10/post_3-deeper-re…shing-a-festival/