Author: yasintagrosser

Currently trying to edit the saturation issue out.

This week’s experiment was my favourite so far. I found it fun to look for a new location (Bluebird Park) and access the area. The park area I travelled to sparked a new Train of thought for me. I looked at the areas where nature had been trampled or polluted by humans and began to think about the way/ if any this damage could be undone. Anna Tsing poses the question of “What emerges in damaged landscapes, beyond the call of industrial promise and ruin?” (Tsing, A 2015) This stood out to me as an important question to be thought over in relation to the location I chose. It was important for me to not only consider the immediate damage that the environment faced, but also consider the ways in which the environment transforms and alters, around and because of the human impact it experiences.

Reflecting on the first five weeks of Invisible Environments whilst videoing the Bluebird Park location, I found myself able to focus strongly on paying attention to different sights and sounds I wouldn’t usually. That past five weeks have equipped me with the tools I need to pay extra attention to my surroundings and objects that do not stand out.

The park I chose to focus on had a native conservation area and signs that marked out human free areas. Tsing writes that “Restoration requires disturbance- but the disturbance to enhance diversity and the healthy functioning of ecosystems”. I found this could be linked with Bluebird park. The signs aiming to protect the native flora and fauna and human additions helped to keep some areas cleaner and less polluted.

 

REFERENCE:

Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins (1st ed.). Princeton University Press.

 

LINK TO EXPERIMENT #3 —-> 

For this experiment I feel I could have applied myself a little more. When it came to the sound and photography experiments I was excited to try new things and navigate the different adobe functions to create the work. With this experiment I struggled to figure out what to focus my short film on and think I might have misread the focus of the footage leading to my film most likely not capturing the idea we were meant to convey.

“The Earth now sustains billions of inhabitants, all of whom have physical needs and material desires. The result is that those dimensions of the Earth that encapsulate something like continuity- particular landscapes, specific biota- are increasingly circumscribed and infiltrated”.( Rust, S, Monani, S, Cubitt 2012)

When I spent a bit of time breaking down this quote it was interesting to consider the ways humans do tend to take something with continuity and scramble it to strip the earth for its materials.

Some suggestions that were brought up when receiving peer feedback was the way I could manipulate the environment I am focussing on to create different feelings around the work and what it is presenting. An Idea that sparked my particular interest was using the holes in the leaves of plants to create windows and a sense of being apart of the small and quiet spaces in the environment.

Rust, S., Monani, S., & Cubitt, S. (Eds.). (2012). Routledge companion to media and activism. Taylor & Francis Group.

 

Experiment #1

Experiment #2

(I could not figure out how to export my audition soundscape to this post so ended up recording the sound onto my phone for the time being, which is located above)

I found week two of Invisible Environments a lot of fun! It was exiting getting to know my classmates better and taking part in more group activities with them to look into the ways in which we can become so oblivious to our surrounding sounds and the variables that affect them.

Garth Paine highlights this in Acoustic Ecology “Often ignored or underrated, simple active listening, that is, being truly present in the environment, can reveal an immense spectrum of information.” (Paine, 2017) After week two class, I decided to try implement this activity in my own life and began to actively listen to my surroundings. I found it took my brain time to adjust and really tune into the location I sat in. This began to alter over time and I found I was able to tune into the way different objects and landmarks affected the way sound travelled when I moved locations.

Something I was interested by way the way that a sound can take you back to a certain place. One morning I caught the sound of birds that sounded exactly like the ones that I hear back home in the country. This made me think of memory based listening which “demonstrates the manner in which sound is embodied, retained in the body as a kind of visceral experience.” (Paine, 2017)

Overall, I aimed to consider these aspects carefully when I created my soundscape experiment, and although I am not the brightest when it comes to using Adobe audition, I feel I was able to create something I was proud of and that represented Alexandra Gardens Kew in a slightly quirky but authentic way.

After receiving a peer review it was encouraging to hear that the intent behind my soundscape could be heard and interpreted in different ways. Something I aim to take on board is my preparation for due dates of assignments. This would enable me to figure out how I plan to upload different types of media for example my soundscape for this assignment.

REFERENCES:

Paine, G (2017, May 4) Acoustic Ecology 2.0, Contemporary music review, Vol 36, doi: 10.1080/07494467.2017.1395136, Routledge, Abingdon, 

 WAYS OF NOTICING

The first week of semester two proved to be very busy and interesting. I’m definitely excited to see where the class Invisible Environments takes me and what I learn and apply.

For Assignment one I have chosen to focus my three experiments on the location of the Alexandra Gardens in KEW.

 For the first experiment titled ‘ways of noticing’, I took my camera to the gardens and spent around half an hour walking around and trying to look at different aspects of the area I’d never noticed before. To do this I would walk to a location that I usually hang out in or spend time in and then stand and focus on aspects of the area I hadn’t noticed before.

I found that this activity was useful in helping connect to nature and take a break from my desk and study. I found I noticed lots of details I didn’t expect to find such as the pattern on a lamp post. In Keywords for environmental studies edited by Joni Adamson, William A. Gleason and David Pellow (2016) , Dorceta E. Taylor describes a landscape as “an expanse of scenery that can be seen in a single view”. I found this an interesting thought to take with me when taking photos for experiment one. I focused on standing in one location and looking at what I could see in front of me, paying extra attention to the landscape and looking carefully at areas I hadn’t before. Something that also stood out to me from this particular reading was the idea that “the positionality in [a particular] landscape can be a reflection of the political and social hierarchies in a society” (D E, Taylor 2016) I made sure to pay extra attention to the layout of the gardens and the reason for each statue and water feature after reading this. The gardens had some very interesting old lamp posts and specific statues scattered throughout which I look forward to learning more about over the next coming weeks.

Reflection: During class I was able to listen to the feedback given by my peers. I was told that my photographs gave a peaceful and quiet feeling and a fresh after rain sort of vibe. It was interesting to hear different ideas about how I could improve/change my work such as focusing in a little closer on specific elements of the photos or changing colour gradings. Some ideas I was given on how my work could be further expanded on a larger scale was the idea of creating a large exhibition that could be walked through, possibly similar to The LUME Melbourne (but if my work were of better quality and importance).

REFERENCE:

Adamson, J,  A Gleeson, W, Pellow, D (2016) Keywords for environmental studies, Vol 3, New York University press 2016, 

The Plot Thickens 2024 semester one studio produced exerts from our movie treatments for the week 13 exhibition. The aim of presenting these works was to highlight what we had been working on in our studio this semester and display the lengthy works we had collaborated on and submitted. We aimed to display these on screens in our regular studio classroom and some printed out examples on the tables in the room. I’m glad we stayed true to our script writing instead of attempting to create trailers or film scenes from our work. Our studio aimed to focus on the ways plot, story and narrative are all slightly different but intertwined when it comes to the movie making process and treatment/script writing. For those coming to look at the work that The Plot Thickens studio produced, I hope they would be able to look at a large collection of our completed movie treatments and visualise the incredibly intricate stories that my group came up with. My classmates and I curated a variety of different movie genres, and I am certain that there would be something that interested everyone who walked through the door of our exhibition. For my work (although I was absent on the day) I hoped to convey a story that played on the post-apocalyptic genre and the importance of the truth, and family connection. When originally joining this studio, I wasn’t able to fully comprehend how much work goes into producing a movie treatment and didn’t realise the number of scripts that never make it to the screen. After writing my own movie treatment I am in awe of the intricate scriptwriting that takes place and incredible ideas and plot twists that produce magnificent blockbuster movies. I am incredibly proud of the treatment I produced for one of my last assignments because it took a lot more brain power to come up with and execute than I thought it would initially.

As someone who loves writing, in future if I were to continue to work my movie treatment, I would be more likely to want to turn the treatment into a novel or transfer it to book form. I found that during the process of writing the treatment, there were moments I wanted to extend different back stories and character arcs chat I felt would be unnecessary to add to the script. The novel style of my story would be able to draw more into the lore aspect of my work which tends to be my favourite parts of dystopian stories. I feel that as a movie my treatment lacks a lot of explanation that I ran out of time to work on for this assignment. My treatment likely presents many plot holes that I have not yet discovered due to my best processing taking extensive amounts of time and planning. Some of the core parts of my plot I would like to extend through this format would be; the relationships characters have with each other, especially my main character Bronte and her brother and father and also the back story to the reasons why those in command of the underground created the aliens in the first place.

Reading the treatment ‘Linda’ by my classmate Lu Galante and ‘Frozen Frontier’ by James Houghton I was fascinated by the high-quality treatments all my classmates were able to produce. Both these treatments were incredibly different but equally captivating. On one hand I found Linda to be a beautiful and heartwarming story about friendship, grief and redemption and on the other, Frozen Frontier focussed on redemption, loyalty and past traumas. I loved getting to collaborate with both writers of these scripts and feel privileged to see what their original works looked like and how they have evolved over time.

Another studio that I interacted with is Instinct and Intention. For this studio I was fortunate to get to watch Alannah Vidic-Wirth’s Edit series assignment which compiled three different edits of various types of media on film. This video edit had what seemed to be a snippet from a horror type movie, a documentary segment and a television add with a dark twist. Through this edit compilation I interpret that the Instinct and Intention studio aimed to present how with little context, scenery/setting, filming and dialogue can direct viewers to identify different stereotypes in media and prompt them to expect outcomes. Something I found interesting in Alannah’s edit series was how her last edit gave a sort of middle finger to genre stereotypes. Although the video began as a 1960s style commercial it morphed into a dark almost mystery clip when those in the ad began to cough and splutter blood from their mouths. I was though roughly entertained. I wonder if the aim of the studio was to draw attention to the importance of familiarity when producing media and similarly creating shocking twists.

Overall, this year has been so eye opening for me. I loved my studio The Plot Thickens and felt so comfortable and welcome in my class. It will be missed.

Yasinta Grosser 

Jame Napoli highlights the importance of perfection in relation to scriptwriting in The Palgrave Handbook of Script Development when he states ” Never send out a script before it’s ready. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever! You get one chance to create a perception in Hollywood”. (Napoli, J 2022) Well, when I found this line I almost laughed out loud because my Treatment has got top be the most unpolished treatment ever made! And thats after a lot of tweaking and fixing up. I definitely have so much more appreciation for script writers in the industry after attempting my own treatment.

Another reading that stood out to me was Kathie Fong Yoneda’s statement in The Script Selling Game- 2nd Edition : A Hollywood Insider’s Look at Getting Your Script Sold and Produced Second Edition. Kathie states ” An idea is only a thought unless you build a viable story around it populating it with characters who are caught up in a physical and/or emotional dilemma” (Fong Yoneda, K 2011) This struck me as an interesting and yet very practical thought. Anyone can come up with a good idea for a movie, but it is much harder to create characters that viewers can relate to, lore that is interesting and scenes and dialogue that are emotional. This made me consider how I could take my treatment from a good idea to a proper movie viewers can be invested in.

In thinking about the progression of my Treatment in future, I can see it as a really fun and action packed movie to watch. Before even thinking about adapting this my treatment would need a lot of work to even out the bumps. I think when writing it I got passionate about cvertain scenes and red;ationships but was unable to tie some loose ends together. It would be important for me to flesh out the story more before taking it any further.

Collaboration.

Over this semester of The Plot Thickens I actually have learnt a lot about how I best collaborate with others and what I love so much about collaboration. During my first year of uni I found classes where I had to work with others incredibly nerve racking and found that due to my anxiety of social situations I would tend to avoid those classes and work from home and online. So much has changed this year! The first couple weeks of The Plot Thickens I was very nervous but the environment that was creatied was so inclusive, respectful and friendly that I found it hard to hide from such a fun class.

Each lesson was very open for discussion and willing to look at ideas from different views. Before long I started to realise how important this is, learning what other people think about movies and getting to chat to my classmates about why they did or didn’t like the directions stories took. Class quizzes provided fun ways to work as a team and added some friendly competition.

When it came to writing my script and getting to work through my ideas with my table, I was able to get some helpful and practical advice on ways I could improve my work.

Overall, this was by far my favourite subject all year!

Taylor, S, Batty, C (2022) The palgrave handbook of Script Development, Springer International Publishing AG

Fong Yodena, K (2011) The Script Selling Game- 2nd Edition : A Hollywood Insider’s Look at Getting Your Script Sold and Produced Second Edition Studio City, CA : Michael Wiese Productions. 2011

BLOG POST 6

BLOG POST 5 (INCLUDING ALTERNATIVE FROM WEEK 4)

WEEK 6

Beat Sheet Below

•  Two individuals Oxley Scott meet in the alleyway of a post apocalyptic city You can tell they are of great importance through the way they discuss the affairs of two large groups of people who divide the city (apparently this happened two months after the collapse). 
• It has been almost six months since the catastrophic event happened (we don’t find out what this event was) and the rations of the city are now in critical supply.  Scott claims his people are going to move to rural areas to try set up civilisation. 

• Oxley respects his decision and assures him her people will be advised not to follow as they made their choice to stay in the city

• 13 years later Liza an 18 year old woman trains to fight in a war that has been threatened against Scottsville by Oxland. It is clear that Oxland aims to take over the whole region of Scottsville for their farm land and possesses a much larger army than originally thought. Eliza lives with a family that took her in and sticks close to their daughter Carter,  continuing to search for her family that she supposedly lost on the journey out of Oxland back 13 years prior. 

• Liza forms a romance with Eli on the side of her training. Scottsville stages an attack on Oxland and is critically unprepared. Carter is publicly tortured to death infront of Liza’s squad to intimidate and get answers from them. 

• A second wave of attack helps Liza’s squad escape but Eli is injured and the army of Scottsville is incredibly shaken as they receive new threats of Oxland wanting to infiltrate their farming district.

• Liza finds some concerning information in a note sewn into her clothing she wore as a child explaining the reason her family were not present during her childhood. She discovers they were trapped in the city of Oxland and knew she needed to get free. She finds out she is technically a citizen of Oxland. She burns the information and swears her life to Scottsville in an initiation ceremony for her squad. 

• In an overnight battle between both the city’s Liza comes face to face with a man who looks incredibly similar to her and discovers he is her biological brother Hade. He explains the role their parents held in the city of Oxland and how they were spies for Adam Scott the founder of Scottsville. And eventually torchered to death.

• Liza’s biological brother leads his men to join Scottsvilles side mid battle and they prevail. Scottsville expands after Lady Oxley (original Jane Oxley) is taken prisoner along will all her advisers. 

• Liza, Eli and Hade climb to leadership positions after helping to conduct the battle between both countries. 

• The movie ends with Hade revealing his plans to overthrow the city of Scottsville to his fellow soldiers converted from Oxland.  

REFLECTION:

When developing my beat sheet, I got a bit confused and struggled to write one that made sense. I found I got very lost when it came to creating all the different parts of a story such as conflict and the way it would be resolved and adding the correct aspects.

A text I found helpful when making my beat sheet was Paul Gulino’s text that focused on the 8-step sequence. This gave me a good template to work through because I often struggle knowing at what steps to incorporate different dilemmas and resolutions.

The 8-sequence structure was interesting to me as it allowed me to get my head around the importance of movie sequences and how they work together. The sequence A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H approach aided my ability to understand beating out scenes in depth. I found that the quality of my beat sheet is slightly not as good as I would have liked because I struggled to write an entertaining story, this will hopefully improve with time. Gulino explains that “Over the curse of a typical two-hour movie, the eight-sequence structure… will serve as a starting point” Gulinio (2014) I don’t think what I have created has the bones to be a two hour movie so am wary of that fact but also enjoyed trying to base my idea off a group of other movies. Something I did want to look at in depth a little more is the importance of “everything in the first two acts leads to the final, essence-confirming transformation of the central character” King, J (2022) I became aware that viewers need someone to root for and the importance of both the first acts building up an understanding of the world, the character and the importance of overcoming the conflict. King highlights the importance of the “climax of Act Three’ and how it “emblematizes the (usually aspirational) transformation of the central character so that the story can wrap itself up”. King, J (2022) I struggled with finding a way my character could change and evolve over the course of the beat sheet.

Overall, I’m a little disappointed with the outcome of my beat sheet and am inspired to try and make a couple more to try figure out how I would improve their quality.

Gulino, P (2014) Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach, Vol 1, Bloomsbury Publishing

King, J (2022) Inclusive Screenwriting for Film and Television, Routledge, London England.

 

 

SEQUENCE ANALYSIS.

During the opening scene of Madame Webb or what Paul Guilino describes as sequence A in his 8-sequence movie structure, audiences are introduced to Casandra (Cassie) Webb. My group thought we could best classify the scenes where Cassie’s mother dies, and Cassie is given her powers as a baby. The importance of the A sequence is to set up the protagonist’s life before they are faced with any dilemma or controversy.

For sequence B, which aims to set up main tension in the film, my team found that Cassie’s car accident and first experience of seeing the future/possible futures fit well as it drew attention to an uncontrollable power force that Cassie possessed.

This is then followed by step C (The first attempt). This step can best be shown through Cassie’s first major conflict that is linked to her abilities. While on the scene of an accident she struggles to make sense of her conflicting future visions. Although having an uneasy feeling about her new visions Cassie doesn’t intervene as she sees them begin to unfold in front of her and ultimately discovers she could have prevented her co-worker and friends’ death.

When Cassie uses her abilities to save a small bird in her apartment, and then to save three girls lives aligns with Guilinos definition of sequence D where he claims the “protagonist [will] try one or more desperate measures to return his or her life to stability.” (Guilinos 2014) I also feel that the introduction of the three younger girls that Cassie takes under her wing could fit well into sequence E.

Sequence E focuses on the characters phase where they work through the issue the faced ‘in the first culmination’ (Guilious 2014) We chose to put the moment during the movie when Cassie takes the three girls whose lives she saves to protect from harm.

In Sequence F we find Cassie learning the reason the antagonist is after the three girls. In this part of the sequence the main conflict is supposed to be resolved. This is where Cassie learns why she has the abilities she does.

In sequence H we find the final resolution. This is where Cassie, whilst saving the girls yet again, is paralysed and blinded but still has the ability to see and control the future.

 

WEEK 5 POST.

Since beginning the class: The Plot Thickens, I have found it insightful to learn about the different formats or ways that scenes and movie sequences can be put together. This has completely opened my eyes to the ways movie scenes are crafted. When entering this course, I really didn’t think about the importance of structure in relation to scenes and movie plot. I assumed that the way a movie/show was structure was just one large story that unfolded line by line. Once taking part in activities such as creating beat sheets and looking into readings that distinguish the difference between Story, Plot and Narrative I began to find myself watching movies through a new lens. This majorly stood out to me whilst watching Dune Part 2 in the cinemas. I found myself not only enjoying the movies overall story and plot, but the way each scene was masterfully planned, and the way conflict was delt with in each sequence of the movie.

In relation to what makes a good movie plot twist, movies that have stood out to me as having an entertaining and catching plot twist would be the movies that fully engross the audience in the characters and story before presenting the twist. I have found that the plot twists I find most emotional or effective have been those from movies where I am very emotionally invested in the story and its characters. An example of this would be A beautiful mind. During watching this movie, I was highly invested in the main character, who turned out to be struggling from mental health issues effecting the whole movies vibe and outcome.

Another important element of a good movie plot twist is timing. Timing the right moment for the twist to take place is crucial to the reaction received by the audience. There is no point having a plot twist at the very beginning of the movie or too far at the end of the movie (which would become more of a cliff-hanger).

REFERENCE:

Gulino, P (2014) Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach, Bloomsbury Publishing