Author: yasintagrosser

THE PLOT THICKENS- BLOG POST THREE

THE PIGGYBANK PLOT ACTIVITY –

Protagonist of film: Agnes (young female Australian woman)

OPENING.

  • Agnes and Jasper hurriedly run into empty streets.
  • Woman reveals a wad of cash from a black bag and they almost share a kiss before the sound of sirens fills the air.
  • Jasper looks around frantically and questions the location of the getaway car.
  • Cut to Camille sitting in her car at a parking lots boom gate. She studies the ticket machine carefully.
  • Agnes and Jasper argue about the location of the car as they enter the parking lot.
  • Camille feeds her parking ticket to the machine as Agnes pulls up behind her with the getaway car.
  • Jasper frustratedly tries to help Camille get our of the parking lot and Agnes frustratedly threatens to shoot Camille.
  • Jasper gives Camille Agnes and his ticket and aim to tail her car through the boom gate.
  • Agnes is too slow to follow and gets trapped in the parking lot. The police arrive with sirens blaring.
  • Jasper quickly jumps into the drivers seat of Camille’s car and they both speed out of the parking lot with Agnes left to deal with the police and getting arrested.

ACT ONE.

  • As Jasper swerves the car down and around dark, dimly lit alleyways, Camille (an elderly woman) begins to rustle through the bag that was flung across the seat. Jasper is unfazed by this movement.

 

  • Camille asks Jasper if the money is all there and he responds about all $25,000 being present. Jasper comments on Camille’s excellent plan to get rid Agnes and secure the money for an even $12,500 each way split. Camille doesn’t comment on this statement and Jasper begins to wonder why. 

 

  • After parking the car in a nearby alleyway Camille and Jasper get out and Jasper reaches for the backpack. Camille pulls a pocket knife from her trousers and hands it to Jasper whilst slipping the backpack over one of her shoulders. Jasper humphs and slits the cars tires before following Camille out of the alleyway and toward open park land that also has  a nearby bridge. 

 

  • Jasper questions Camilles direction and she tells him there is one more thing they must collect before travelling toward the safe house. They turn a corner and begin to approach a dishevelled looking bridge. 

 

  • Jasper stops in his tracks. He tells Camille if she’s up to something he will blow her brains out. Camille tells Jasper to Shut the hell and besides, the gun was left with Agnes. Jasper hesitantly follows.

 

  • On approaching the side of the bridge Camille tells Jasper to climb down the side of the riverbank ledge to grab a black box from the base of the closest ghost gum. Jasper says no way in hell and Camille reinforces the importance of this so called box.

 

  • Jasper climbs down the ledge slipping at different points but eventually reaching the ghost gum.

 

  • Jasper claws through the scrub at the bottom of the tree but comes up empty. 

 

  • Upon finding no black box his anxiety begins to grow and turns to face Camille who is surprisingly no longer alone. 

 

  • Agnes stands at the top of the slope blood splattered on her clothing. A shaky hand raises with a gun and she claims that Jasper shouldn’t have tried to double cross the double crosser. Before he can properly stand and scream he is shot in the forehead and collapses to the ground. 

 

  • Camille stares blank faced and then turns to Agnes smiling.  Camille says good job and that its time to go and begins to walk a toward the bridge entrance with the bag still over her shoulder, by the time she enters onto the bridge she realises Agnes isn’t following her.

 

  • Camille turns around to find herself staring the gun used to kill Jasper face on.

 

  • ’Nice try gran’ says Agnes before shooting her in the forehead. 

 

  • As Camilles body falls over the bridge railing, Agnes grabs the bag draped over Camilles shoulder. 

 

  • Cut to later. Agnes sits in a vehicle and unzips the black bag. When she opens the bag all that is inside is a parking ticket, the same one Camille first fed into the machine at the car park.

 

  • Agnes swears and panic crosses her face as she frantically looks over her shoulders. She then returns her attention to the ticket and turns it over to find an address on the back of it.

 

  • After the dress the ticket reads, “want your share?…Ive got a couple odd jobs for you to do first”.

END ACT ONE. 

 

THE PLOT THICKENS- WEEK 2 BLOG POST

It was great to settle into class and get the hang of my timetable this week.

Looking at the 2000’s movie Miss Congeniality and analysing how it aligned with Blake Snyders 2005 text ‘Save the Cat’ was very interesting to me. Snyders comment on what he calls ‘the B story’, was especially insightful as he states  ‘ It is Sandra’s interaction with the girls of Girl World that carries the message of the picture and is its heart’-Snyder(2005) This struck me as out of the ordinary compared to the way he previously described B stories to work where Snyder touched on the “B plot’s” tendency to be the love story/interest of the main character. In class we discussed why Snyder chose to use this term apposed to subplot, or relationship line.

This week I was lucky enough to see Dune Part two in cinemas. During the movie I was thinking about the B PLOT and how it bounced off/connected to the main A  plot of the film . Although the movie centred around Paul’s (the main characters) rise to power and leadership, it also focused on the B PLOT story of Paul’s relationship with Chani and the conflict they both face when having to choose between power and love. According to Snyder ‘the B PLOT does a lot. And you must have one.’ -Snyder (2005). I agree with this statement because I feel without the B-PLOT the film wouldn’t have been able to show the weight and sacrifice of the decisions characters were making.

In relation to Miss Congeniality, I found it interesting to try and ‘Beat out’ the movie in class time. My group broke down the different scenes through thinking about critical moments or turning g points in the script, signifying a change in movies direction or outcome. A couple of B PLOT’s my group and I discovered were the backstories of different characters and the main characters relationship with other supporting characters.

Snyder, Blake. (2005). Save the Cat!: the last book on screenwriting you’ll ever need. Studio City: Michael Weise Productions

 

WEEK ONE- THE PLOT THICKENS.

Week one is over and although I am now completely exhausted, I am excited to see the direction all my new classes take me this semester.

This week looking at Plot, I teamed up to adjust and recreate the story of Little Red riding hood. My group began by fleshing out how we wanted the story which ‘consists of all the events which are to be depicted'(- Copley 2014(2001), 5) to look. We chose to stick to a couple choices consisting of a jail visit between and father and daughter, a Mob boss mystery person switch and ultimately a kidnapping and fight scene. It was interesting to discover how plot works as a way to tie the different events in the story and relate them to each other. Reading the Copley’s definition for Story, Plot and Narrative was fascinating to me as I was able to discover the difference between the three and was introduced to a new way of thinking about narrative. Narrative is not only a book or tale written it can be defined as ‘the showing or telling of events and the mode selected for that to take place”-Copley 2014(2001),5 . Overall this activity was very insightful, as it helped us to break down and picture the differences between these three aspects of a tale/movie/novel etc.

Another group activity that really stood out to me was the photos sequence activity. This was an activity that allowed our groups to plan and discuss the ways we could develop a story and convey what we were trying to portray through a series of photographs. I found this activity very engaging as it allowed us to really think about the way media aids our ability to show and not tell a story. To plan our photographs we worked through a story spine template that focussed on an eight part story telling process that focussed on capturing how the phrases “Once upon a time…, And every day…, Until one day…, And because of that x 3…, Until finally…, and ever since then…”.

Throughout the activity my team spent a fair amount of time on planning. Originally we thought this would be a good idea and would help us to plan how we wanted each photograph to look, we soon discovered that this wasn’t the smartest choice as we found throughout the creation process we had much less time than expected to adjust the shots when original ideas didn’t work out.

Overall, I look forward to applying these new ideas and techniques to my future story telling.

Cobley, Paul. (2014). Narrative. London and New York: Routledge.

 

‘A5 pt2 Studio Review’

Reflecting on Uses of Photography

Through looking at other Uses of Photography students work I was able to explore the different ways that individuals took the portfolio prompts and really made the assignment their own. I focused on two other students work to analyse one being titled ‘Soul’ the other titled ‘Mindfulness’. Both these portfolios presented contrasting photography styles and colours. The portfolio soul captures bright greens colours and reflects different shades of yellow and cream off of the green background to bring out the deep skin tones of the subjects in the image. The short description of the portfolio explains that the photographer was trying to capture and explore deep, human authenticity in their work and present a ‘tapestry of emotions’. I found that they achieved this through their variety of different shots and angles in their work. I really liked how the photographer had some images of the subjects facing the camera and then some images presented them either looking away or looking at each other. I found it very interesting to see how the creator implemented different lighting techniques to the photographs highlighting the subjects faces and strategically using natural lighting to illuminate the lighter colours of the clothing whilst contrasting the dark backgrounds. Contrastingly to the Soul project, other students work I looked at titled Mindfulness presented dark black and white images that highlighted certain parts of image to have full colour and stand out against the rest of the image. The photographer has selected certain items in each image to be coloured and contrast with the rest of the image. I thought this was actually a really innovative idea and enjoyed discovering how the creator specially selected the items with colour to show the ways that these objects can instil a sense of mindfulness into everyday life.

This portfolio inspired me to aim to create a more prominent purpose for my work in future. To quote the creator “My work highlights the importance to reconnect with our surroundings”. The work consisted of a video that played mindfulness advice slides before each image. This made me think about the ways that media can create both social change and be an individual tool, not just something that looks good. I also considered ways that I could have made my work a little more influential and relatable, but I realise that my portfolio aims to be more of a self-representative work and represents my daydreaming experience. The Mindfulness images represent ways that different editing tools such as Adobe Light Room can be used to edit images and change saturation and colour. I look forward to using Lightroom in future to edit my images in more detail. I’m also excited to explore ways I can give my work more meaning and purpose in future to help it promote more change.

During the Media studio exhibition, I sat in on a script reading from the studio Drop The Pilot. This class had worked together to produce an episode of a show they called Barrel Town. I found this incredibly interesting as the studio had worked to create a proper in-depth story with a variety of characters. I was fortunate enough to sit in on a script reading for the first episode of Barrel town and got to enjoy the storyline. I was interested to see how the class incorporated both comedy and a serious element into their scripting. It was interesting to see how they had worked on different character dynamics and left potential for future conflict and interest between these characters. The scripting was very clear in its description of what was happening in each scene, and I was fascinated how I was able to imagine exactly what was going on. I found that the script left room for a whole range of different storylines and ended leaving me wanting more.  It was interesting to observe the way this studio prepared their characters storylines to carry out over multiple episodes. The group had prepared a proper script that detailed from the ways they wanted the characters to look to the exact actions taking place in the scenes. The Drop the Pilot studio had prepared different QR codes that could be scanned to reveal the Pilot scripts. These were broken up into three sections: A, B and C and each had a group of class members work attached. This made me consider ways I could make my photography work more accessible to the public in future and more easily distributed. The studio prepared a synopsis before their readthrough which helped to provide context to the story.

Overall, through looking at my classmates uses of photography portfolios and the studio Drop The Pilot’s script writing work I have been inspired to improve my future photography work and how it can be both influential in peoples live and also aid people struggling with different things such as mental health.

-Yasinta 🙂

 

BLOG POST 12

BLOG POST 12 

Uses of Photography- Reflection 

My final product of Assignment 4, Self directed photography portfolio assignment was a set of pictures centred around the title “Dreaming of home”. These images displayed a collection of images that contrasted from bright, light colours to dark, warm colours and aimed to express the feeling of longing and reminiscence. 

A key learning that I discovered during this assignment would be the importance of planning photoshoots, but also the essentiality of meaning behind images. I found that the more I tried to express how I was feeling in an image, the more that photo stood out as having purpose. Without an idea of something I wanted to convey through my work whether that be a feeling or an idea, my photos would have ben pointless and purposeless. I only truly discovered this towards the end of my photoshoot. 

In future some things that I would need to work on would be; working on planning my project properly. I found that when I arrived home I didn’t know what I wanted to take photographs of and struggled to decide where and how I wanted to take them. Over the portfolio process I was able to realise the importance of staging out each shot and what exactly I wanted in the shots because when it came to the actual shoot, it took a lot longer than expected and I took a lot of extra shots I didn’t need to due to little to no planning. In future I would write up a run sheet for the day, highlighting what shots I wanted, what setting my camera had to be on for those shots and the locations I wanted to take them in. I also hope to in future, learn to properly work my cameras aperture, shutter speed and ISO.  If I know my camera better I’ll be able to start properly taking photos that will be able to focus what I want them to focus on and capture the right colouring and lighting that I want. By doing more research on my camera model and how it functions I should be able to figure this out for future projects. 

I found it incredibly interesting to learn about ‘experiments in controlled lighting’ and found the concepts we focussed on very relevant to my studies. I hope to apply these different concepts to my work in future, learning more in depth how to use light modifiers and other tools to manipulate the way light reflects of the subject in the image and also how it bounces off the lens of the camera. One of my favourite topics that we looked at in class would have to be when we looked at the documentary ‘Finding Vivian Maier’. I found this an incredibly interesting discussion to have as we focused on the discussion of what makes a photographer a photographer and the importance of privacy when taking street photographs and exposing artists work. In was very engaging to discuss the fine line between hobby and career and learn more about the reasons for Vivian’s photography. 

Overall, uses of photography has been and incredible class to take and has opened my eyes to the different techniques and ways I can use photography for all different purposes.

WEEK 11 BLOG POST

The Shoot. 

For my Portfolio shoot I originally thought of ways I could compare my country town to the city of Melbourne where I moved to study. Although this originally seemed like a good idea I soon found it hard to execute as I wasn’t quite sure how to tie the images together. I considered trying to make the shots look structurally similar or take the of similar objects or things but show how they were slightly different. When I traveled back to the country I soon realised that I no longer wanted to continue with this style as I wanted to pursue a different route focussing on the experience of ‘going back home’. 

I looked at ways I could capture the natural aspects of home and chose to incorporate family members into the images to focus on how home feels to me. I purposely didn’t include family members faces to give my images a sort of dreamy feel and aimed for a light bright vs dark warm colour theme to highlight and contrast the different scenes of being home. The images I took (both portrait and landscape) gave off a sort of dreamy vibe and I started to form an idea in my head  about what I wanted to call my portfolio and the exact feeling I wanted to convey to people who looked at it. The texts ‘Asthetics in digital photography’ by Henri Maitre comments on three factors that contribute to a photographs popularity. 

“- why the document is of interest, that is, its ability to draw and hold our attention by relating the document to contexts familiar to us;

– the surprise factor, that is, contrary to the previous point, its ability to give us a novel visual or cognitive experience by bringing in an unexpected contribution;

– beauty, that is, the pleasure it brings us, independent of its content, through the arrangement of its elements.”

These stood out to me after taking the photos I wanted to use and will definitely play a part in my future work. 

Maitre, H (2023) Aesthetics in digital photography, ISTE LTD

WEEK 10 BLOG POST

Uses of Photography- Week 10 Blog Post

Research for portfolio——————————————————————-

During week ten I made my main focus really honing in on the exact images I wanted to take for my portfolio. I decided I wanted to mainly incorporate nature from my home town and property but also wanted to take some shots that had humans in them and also my dog. 

When trying to discover different ways to inhance my nature and outdoor photography I looked at a couple different sources, one being Digital Nature photography: The art and the science second edition. Through reading this journal I was able to learn about the importance of different lenses types whilst shooting and the ways that “Modern lenses have special lens coatings to reduce flare and improve contrast”- J & B Gerlach (2015) This sent me on a journey to consider what lenses I was using for my images. After I  considered this I tried to think of ways I could use different lenses on my camera to aid my images. The text also spoke about ways Aperture, ISO and shutter speed could aid photography and brought up the use of a histogram located on cameras. “The histogram is a simple bar graph that displays the brightness values measured by the photo-site (often called pixels) in the sensor along the horizontal axis”. This was new to me as I hadn’t considered a histogram before so was prompted to look at my camera to find this and use it. Through reading this text I was able to learn a lot of practical skills that I could apply to my photography which I look forward to using on other projects of my own in future.

Gerlach, J and Gerlach, B (2015) ‘Digital nature photography:The art and science, 2, Taylor and Francis.

 

WEEK 9 BLOG POST Uses of Photography.

WEEK 9 BLOG POST 

During week nine of Uses of photography we had to create and present our ideas and action plans for Assignment 4 (Self directed project port folio assignment). I found this process very helpful in aiding my fine proofing and outlining of what I wanted my photo shoot to be centred around. 

Originally I wanted to capture the difference or ‘CHANGE’ between my home town and the city which I moved to for study but I soon found this to be a difficult prompt to overcome as I was unable to decide how I would best show the difference between home and the city. Originally I considered getting similar items or objects in each location and capturing pictures of them to show slight differentiations, but this proved to be far too difficult and I was forced to retire that idea. This lead me to replan and brainstorm what I actually wanted to show through my images. I realised I wanted to display what I love most about home, this included a variety of outdoor shots displaying different articles of nature and activities with the family. 

When it came to presenting my project I quickly realised that I hadn’t decided on a main theme word for my portfolio, this meant that on the spot I chose to try and link my idea to the word CHANGE which then didn’t go as well as planned. In future I think I would aim to spend more time on my presentation preparation process to help myself process what I wanted to actually do my portfolio on, and clearly explain this to the panel. 

In relation to the rubric I was scored Proficient on every level which although is satisfactory to me, I still wish I had put a little more thought into what I wanted to say and perhaps even written some queue cards out in preparation.

Overall, I think I did a good but not great job when it comes to my Studio presentation.