Nagini's Blog

Food On Film – Week 12

Project – Tah’s Shinmai Tasty

Reflection

The studio Food on Film brings people who interested in food together and me. It allows us to understand and explore the beliefs behind the food. In contemporary society, increasing awareness of cultural diversity has resulted in a growing quest for authenticity in the consumption of products and services (Gilmore and Pine,2007) Tong and I, we both are international students, and that why we experience ethnic restaurant in Melbourne from the same perspective. We are seeking exotic and authentic cultural experiences.

The micro-documentary we made Tah’s Shinmai Tasty go through Tah’s journey of her experiences of understanding authentic Japanese food in Melbourne. Melbourne is a dynamic city with its multicultural background. We find the contrast of our main character Tah, a Thai manager the first Japanese restaurant in the Maribyrnong area. In this film, Tong and I want to bring the term authentic food into people’s minds. Food is everywhere; it is part of our everyday life. Authenticity can be defined as the quality of being genuine or real. However, how do we define authentic food? It is complex to put a definition in that term, different people may have different authenticity perceptions, as they have different levels of familiarity with the knowledge about the restaurants. However, I think authentic food is something that brings traditional ethnic understanding to you. I believe authentic food doesn’t force you to love it, but you can understand a country’s culture and history in it.

The most successful aspects of our project are the quality of it. Tong and I use the equipment: Sony X70, click-up microphone (wireless), tripod and tractional microphone. It’s a unique experience for me to be familiar with those types of equipment. Besides that, in the process of post-production, we use B-roll works well, the footages we use matches Tah’s voice over. We focus on background music a lot, two different types of music, Thai music, and Japanese traditional music support the culture conflict of Thai and Japanese in our project. In addition, in our observational footages, we still put the environment sound in it, even with the title pages. The documentary Spoetnik (2016)inspires me that environment sound can bring the footages alive and it sometimes can also emphasize viewers ‘emotion into our project.

If we have a second chance to do the film, we probably want to film Tah only once, rather than do the second time voice record. We struggle with the audio soundtrack in our project too much. It’s very different for us to edit two different time audio record together. Because the way Tah’s emotions and flow of her talking is different. However, the good thing is in the process of editing, I’ve learned how to Adobe Audition. This experience teaches me when I do an interview next time, I need to chat with my interviewer deeply and communicates with she or he, instead of I just go through the question I plan to ask before.

This semester shifts so fast, I couldn’t believe now is the end of this semester, many many many thanks to my project partner Tong, my studio tutor Kim, my project interviewer Tah!! Authentic food is a huge topic, some people think it is important, some people believe is not. Tah thinks authentic food is important and it is a culture and history of people lived in the past. I believe authentic food is vital for me as well because it reminds true to myself of eating ethnic food tastes, character, and spirit. The purpose of our project is to allow our audiences to reflect on what they think about authentic ethnic food. The term food is diverse; it can stand with its own culture; it can be integrated into any different culture. You have your right to think about authentic food, but we should all respect to traditional ethnic authentic food at least.

“We need documentary. We need it to help interpret the world. We use documentary. We use it as artists, as viewers, and as activists to help us imagine new ways to engage with the world. We rely on documentary, in all of its eclectic variety, to record, trouble, explain, reveal, and share lived reality and our plans and hopes to transform it.”

              Alex Juhasz and Alisa Lebow, Beyond Story: A community-Based Manifesto, World Records volume 2, 2018

Reference

Liu, HB, Li, HY, DiPietro, RB & Levitt, JA 2018 ‘The role of authenticity in mainstream ethnic restaurants: Evidence from an indecent full-service Italian restaurant’, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, vol.30, pp.1035-1053.

Loozen, N 2016, SPOETNIK, short of the week, Netherlands, viewed 27 May 2019 <http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2018/03/06/spoetnik>

Food On Film – Weekly Blog Post

Week One 

Week Two 

Week Three 

Week Four

Week Five

Week Six 

Week Seven 

Week Eight

Week Nine

Week Ten 

Week Eleven 

Week Twelve&Final Project

 

Food On Film – Week 11

Process

Last week, Tong and I went to Shinmai Tasty again, we interviewed Tah again with only audio. Thankfully, Tah accepted our requirement. From the previous feedback that Kim gave to us, we want to explore Tah’s personal experience of Japanese food. This time, I think we got enough content of Tah’s own experience. However, we Tong and I put her soundtrack(second-time audio), we recognized that two soundtracks, which are the firster interview and the second interview soundtrack, they couldn’t match together. It because the way Tah’s volume and her flow of speaking are totally different.

In order to fix this significant problem, Tong and I learn to use Adobe Audition by ourselves. Audition is a very useful software that features both a multitrack, non-destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive-approach waveform editing view. We use it to edit the volume and the flow of Tah’s talking. I think audiences can still hear some differences between those two different soundtracks, but background music will help us to figure this problem as well. Not only in documentaries, but also many types of films, background music used to be neglected. But after the leaning process of this studio, I noticed that background music is really important. I need to pay attention to the music of my project.

Process Photos:)

The first thing to choose music, we need to decide what role the music is playing. In the website, Audionetwork notes that background music can weather support your content or driving it. Tong and I decided to choose two different types of music, Thai music, and Japanese classical music. I think when Tah talks about her personal experiences, Thai music allows our audiences to feel the heartfelt emotion of Tah’s cultural background. On the other hand, when Tah speaks about her restaurant, Japenese’s music creates the senses that let our viewers set into the scene of the restaurant.  Moreover, Tong and I analyzed the content of our project and did some sound editing. Before we turn to our last step of the credit page, we plan to find the fit background music of our project this week.

Feedback from Kim

The content of our project is all good now, but we need to put the volume around -6dbp(first time to know that, thanks to Kim:)), finish the title and credits, then it good to go.

Reference

Audio Network, Music for documentary, viewed 23 May 2019, <https://www.audionetwork.com/content/music-for/music-for-documentary>

Food on Film – Week 10

Reflection on the process of final project

Tong and I filmed the interview with Tah, the interview takes 8 mins in our camera. From what Tah said to us, we shot some environmental footages of the restaurant Shinmai Tasty and some observational footages on their food. I think the light and the voice record of the footages are the strengths of our project. The location we filmed her in Shinmai Tasty has good sunlight. The voice over is 6 minutes(without me asking questions), we won’t use all the content she said, so we need to do some editing on it. However, after Tong and I organized the content she said in the interview, we think the content of her personal experiences may be a little bit weak. In week 9, we asked Kim to give us some feedback on our project. Kim also thinks that we should interview her again. She suggests us to do an audio interview with her. We believe it is a good idea, and we also need to more observational footages Maribyrnong. We can do B-roll on our project when she is talking. In the website MKW Creatives, Williamson noted that B- roll “refers to accompanying footage intercut with the main shot in an interview or documentary.” I think it can make our project ‘stereoscopic’ than now.

We plan to do an audio interview with our main character Tah this week again. We expect our audiences can go through her journey of a Thai who managers a Japanese restaurant to understand what food means to us. On the other hand, we need to do more film of the area Maribyrnong as well. Because for now, although we did enough footages of inside the restaurant, I think film some outside footage can help our audiences understand the location better. The project we are working compares to what we want to make, we still have some to do. First of all, we need to find relevant background sound music(Thai music and Osaka music). Then, next week in class, we are going to work on the edit on our rough cut.

Moreover, we want our audiences to know why we want to make this film and why it is essential for us. Because the theme ‘authentic food ‘ is our daily life topic. And the food we are eating every day is a medium to build people’s relationship.

Reference

MKW Creative n.d, What is B-Roll and Why Do I Need it? , viewed 18 May 2019, <http://mkwcreative.com/b-roll/>

Food On Film – Week 9

Before the editing

In the class, we learned the process of editing a micro-documentary. Name all the files of what we’ve got is really important for me. I also think that watching the footages that we shoot as many times as possible is very useful when I start to do the edit. I agree with Fox (p.215) states that ‘it is the director’s responsibility to be familiar with all the footage and collected materials for a project’. I think the strategy of re-watch those footages allow me to organize the materials as well. It is easier for me to separate which footages is good to use, which is bad to use.

Edit techniques

Our project Shinmai Tasty is an expository and essay style documentary, Tong and I plan to start with her personal experiences of what she feels authentic food is, why and how does she understand Japanese Food as a Thai, and making those answers become a large-scale theme. Our project theme is that authenticity is one of the key factors to run a successful ethnic restaurant, and that will earn consumers’ patronage and keep it to be a mainstream restaurant. Therefore, I think our project soundtrack dominates by an interview-based soundtrack, Tah’s voice over. And also, it should with supplemental imagery placed into the visual track to illustrate what Tah said. For instance, when Tak talks about Shinmai Tasty décor has a Japanese style, we should put B-roll and the environment footages of Shinmai tasty to support what she said. Fox mentions that ‘the use of musical score to heighten the emotional impact of certain moments’. When we guide the journey through her experiences as our audiences try to find the meaning of authentic food. I am now considering that the musical soundtrack of she talks about her personal experiences in Thailand should be typical Thai music. And when the content of her voice overturn to this restaurant, it should change to an Osaka style music. I think the creation of those moments can involve the relationships between images and sounds to produce the meaning of food cultural blending.

On the other hand, different types of transitions between shots also began to carry specific connotations in the minds of viewers. I think we can apply the  dissolve to the transitions of our film, because Fox (2017, p.219)notes  “A dissolve – essentially an overlapping fade out and in, where for some determined duration, images of both the incoming and outgoing shots are both visible on top of one another—has become associated with the passage of time.” I think this transition could help us to edit two shots softly. For instance, from Tah’s face to the sushi Shinmai Tasty served.

Shot 1

Shot 2

Question

Although it is a 6 mins micro-documentary, I believe our audiences defiantly don’t want to watch and hear Tah talks 6 mins. The pauses between the shots are very important as well. When should we give our audiences a break in the film is the main problem for Tong and me now.

Reference

Food On Film – Week 8

Route B

Route B is a micro-documentary directed by Jennifer Anderson and Vernon Lotte. It talks about what Jennifer Anderson and her father see when they deliver food for Meals on Wheels on every Saturday morning. This documentary doesn’t use music to increase emotional impact and make it more ‘entertaining’.  I can hear the background sound of each location and the voice over of Anderson. Route B shows that simplicity is the best approach. With her objective voice-over(no much mood in it), and it perhaps makes things more emotional. I think the information she says doesn’t need to be preachy and it brings me to what she and her father saw on every Saturday morning.

On the other hand, the environment sounds give me the feeling of ‘being there’ as well. Martin (2011)states sound creates continuity of time and places. The scenes of this documentary are starkly simple. However, the environmental sound, for instance, the twitter of birds, the chirping of cicadas, the rubs of a dog runs on the grass. All those nature recordings bring aestheticism to me and let me understand that documentary films focus on real-life events at that moment. I am curious how do they record the beauty of complex soundscapes without any noise. After I watched this film, I realized simple is not a bad thing for a documentary. Moreover, in this documentary, I’ve never thought to simplify of sounds creates a strong emotion for me to reflect the politic in live action. I think the sound of this micro-documentary creates a sense of reality for me, the sense of ‘what’s they saw and hear on each Saturday morning’.

Shinmai Tasty Sound Record Plan

b) My final project Shinmai Tasty will mainly about my main character Tah talks about her personal experiences as a Thai runs Japanese restaurant. Tong and I plan to record 1) Tah’s interview sound with a miniature lavalier can be hidden on her chest. It will be the leading voice over of our documentary2)The environmental sounds of Shinmai Tasty kitchen. 3) Chefs are making the food. 4) Environmental sounds of Shinmai Tasty. We also need to find a free copyright Thai music, which I think we can put at the beginning of our film, it can tell the viewers Tah’s identity. Martin (2011, p.288)states that ‘documentary film strives to be closer to reality and sound is crucial for creating a sense of reality for the viewer, the sense of ‘being there.’’ So I plan to find some Japanese free copyright music, it can come up when Tah talks about Shinmai Tasty. Hope Japenese music can bring our viewers a sense of ‘being there’.

Reference

Martin, J 2011, ‘location and post-production sound in documentaries’ in de, Jong, Wilma, et al. Creative Documentary: Theory and Practice, Routledge, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=1602050. Created from rmit on 2019-04-29 03:10:00, pp.288-304.

Jennifer Anderson & Vernon Lotte, Route B, Short of the week, viewed 4 May 2019, <https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2017/06/27/route-b/#read-more>

Food On Film – Week 7

Pre- Production (Plan, equipment)& Reflection on the reading

There is no doubt that technologies and approaches Tong and I select in producing our documentary already come bundled with certain stylistic propensities. When we talked with our interviewee Tah last week, there is one idea comes up to my mind. I learn sometimes the interview style can be very personal and it just requires me as an interviewer to listening to that person’s experiencing. For the visual design of our interview, the camera (Sony X70) will defiantly be on a tripod.  We are thinking that we probably will let Tah sit-down in a closed location in Shinmei Tasty. As Fox mentions in the reading, “Camera placement also affects the vantage point onto action and the resultant meaning audiences can derive from a shot”.Tong and I plan to let her sit in a position that we can film her and the environment of her restaurant as well.

An interview’s background is really important for giving audiences information about the character and the content of the documentary. Thus, the frame of our documentary allows viewers into the world of our main character Tah, to permit them a fuller sense of who she is. Fox states that “The real world provides an infinite number of visual and auditory feeds at every moment”(p.122) We decided to choose a wireless interview microphone because we want to have a good quality audio piece from Tah. It’s five minutes micro-documentary, Tah’s voice will give our audience’s content of our documentary. Tong and I haven’t thought about the sound alternatives of our documentary, but the sound of a documentary is really really important. We probably won’t just have one sound for our background music, we will consider it when we do the editing of our documentary.

We plan to interview her next week, and we found a micro-documentary named BLD Restaurant in Los Angeles, it gives us an idea of what our project may look like for the end. We will follow the same structure of this documentary. One main character talks and some observational food and restaurant environment footages to support the voice over.

Feedback for the pitch

Thanks for Kim inventing Ryne and Sophie came to our class, and also thanks for Ryne and Sophie gave Tong and I feedback for our final project – Shinmai Tasty.

They give us two suggestions for our documentary, the first one is we can interview our main character Tah by a personal perspective and exploring her personal life experience, or we can focus on this restaurant and explore the authenticity of its food. After the discussion, Tong and I chose option two, we will still focus on exploring the meaning of authenticity in food from Shinmai Tasty to a large scale. As well as the location, we will interview our main character Tah in her restaurant, and it will provide information to our audiences of her and her restaurant.

Equipments

1. Sony X70
2. Click up  microphone (wireless)
3. Tripod
4. Light

Scene breakdown

Reference

Food On Film – Week 6

I watched two documentaries that run by the same name – Our Daily Bread (1949) directed by Slatan Dudow and Our Daily Bread produced by Australian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter. I must say both of them have a lot of things I can learn. Our daily bread (1949) is a story about a father Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst participates in the building of a new socialist society in World War II. When I was watching the film Our Daily Bread(1949), be honest the first thing I noticed is that the background audio music really brings me to the environment that the director has been creating. Music by Hanns Eisler was the centerpiece of a contemporary review, he created a score that challenged, thrilled, and focused the documentary. And it allows me to realize how important the audio takes in a documentary, it defiantly shows the emotion and feeling in the film. On the other hand, Our daily bread produced by Nikolaus Geyrhalte collecting the vast product lines of animals, and some plants and flowers, are shown being harvested in huge rows, seen from dizzying, vertiginous perspectives which is incredible. There is no voice-over in his film, but his film brings me to the zones and areas I never see before. I feel that way even though there is no explanation, but I still get into the film. Geyrhalte takes me inside worlds of wonder and of terror in “Our Daily Bread”. From the reading of Helen Hughes ‘Arguments without words in Unser taglich Brot’, I think the strategies of telling audiences a narrative without any word is to create a connection between the filmmaker and the participators. The goal of a documentary which uses poetic mode is not to create a traditional narrative, but rather is to look into presenting patterns and associations to create meaning and evoke an emotional response from the audience. As Hughes adopts in the reading, the audiences will create their own mental representations of the object represented I the image is in the film. As what Tong and I want to explore the idea of our documentary, the authenticity in ethnic restaurant in Melbourne, what we really want to do is not the information about what is authentic food(well, we maybe will talk about it little bit), but more about capturing the relationships between people and food identity, we also want to provide authentic food categories for our audience of how documentary incorporates relationships into the interpretive process.

Technologically, a poetic mode documentary has no voiceover, no interviews and there is no obvious angle that the filmmakers are taking. “Mood, tone and effect” are stressed a lot more than “displays of knowledge and acts of persuasion” and there is also a lack of a rhetorical element. However, it has the ability to look into alternative forms of knowledge” that may differ to the traditional transfer of information (Nichols, 2010). It inspired me to think about create an open space onto which our audiences’ thoughts could be projected. We plan to do an interview this week of a restaurant which both of us is really interested in (culture and food identity) and shoot some close up of their chef making the food, in order to create some space for audiences to make up their own minds about authentic food. The poetic mode allows me to think about the documentary is not only about educating someone, but it also about brings people’s feeling together and allow them to respond to the film. I guess this shape me to thinking about a documentary is not something that is separate from the world, it actually comes from the world we live.

Reference

Food On Film – Week 5

In the class, we did an exercise of Vox Pop, in the reading, it says Vox pops defines as person in the street interviews. It requires us to ask one question to a range of people, their responses will create a rapid and instructive sequence. Tong and I did two interviews with the question of what you think about authentic food in Melbourne.

 The authenticity of the ethnic restaurants in Melbourne

During the process, I’ve learned a lot. First of all, it totally different from what I’ve done for last semester. Last semester, as a group we interviewed a scientist expert which helps us to solvate the question “What if a giant asteroid didn’t wipe out the earth?” And my group member and I, we need to prepare all the questions of what we are going to ask. And it also requires us to do a lot of research on our topic. Comparing with what we’ve done in class, Vox pop is more random, I guess. Only thing I need to do is thinking one questions and just taking all the equipment and go out, meeting new people. I must say it’s a great experience and I was a little bit afraid at the beginning, and when I start asking people, it more like a conversation.  I can just be a listener rather.

For our major project, Tong and I will interview an owner of a restaurant which has a different cultural background. The hardest point is we are not sure if people want to be interviewed or not. But we will send an email for the appointment and just wait to see if it’s possible. Sometimes, the beginning of a project is the hardest point, and if I go through it, everything will be fine, I think. If we are allowed to interview the owner, we will prepare the questions that we want to ask and the location will probably in his or her restaurant. Rabiger (2009)mentions that for interviewing a group, the director should use more than one camera, so we can always have reaction shits and cutaway I think it also works for ] interviewing an individual. Because during the exercise in class, there is one footage which we can control the focus of the camera, so always have a backup is a good way for some accidents may happen too. There is another part we want to do, which is interviewing random people, we want them to share their own experiences of authentic food in Melbourne in order to create the link from authentic food to our society. For now, the mode of our micro-documentary will still be interactive, but it may change when we move further.

Reference