Natural Encounters is a Korsakow Film which can be viewed here.
Reflection:
What I have discovered about noticing and nonfiction through this assignment is that nonfiction, and the world around us is constantly changing, and as humans we usually do not see these changes. Changes I specifically focused on in this assignment was how bugs can change nature such as the dirt they are walking on or how a butterfly or bee can change the way a flower moves. How wind can change the position and direction of leaves on a tree or tree branches, and how rain can change the colour of a rock or the texture of dirt. I have also discovered that nonfiction changes in a non linear manner. The world changes in random ways, and nature is constantly being encountered by other forms of nature and weather, which is what I focus on in my video.
The reason why I wanted to continue with using the theme of ‘encountering’, the theme I used for assignment 3, was because I became fascinated with the idea of nonhuman encounters. I learnt throughout doing this assignment and the last assignment, that encountering does not just have to involve humans. In fact, I discovered that humans do not notice or rarely notice encounters within nature occurring, and only when confronted with close-up footage of these encounters, like the encounters shown in my video, do they realise this. Whereas humans notice other humans encounter things all of the time, and that is why I wanted to direct my focus away from human interaction.
The process of noticing, to make audiovisual nonfiction has evolved for me from creating this video, as in the very beginning of the semester, I found the idea of noticing what I usually do not notice in my everyday nonfiction, extreamely challenging. I began to try to notice nonfiction by marking and recording down each time I would notice a ceiling for example, which is what I did for the first unmarked assignment for this course. Because I was not used to doing this in my everyday life, I did find this method quite forced as a lot of the time I would forget to film a new ceiling when I entered a new location.
Therefore, for assignment 4 I took a completely different approach and decided to simply go for a walk in the Wetlands near my house, knowing in the back of my mind that I must film natural encounters that occur. This was successful as I was always looking, yet not forcing to find encounters in nature, and did find many opportunities to take close-up shots of bugs encountering nature. However I realised that bugs encountering nature was the only types of shots I took, and I began to realise I had made my process of trying to notice too broad. Once I knew I needed to film natural encounters between bugs, rain and wind, I could then decide to film on a day it was raining or windy, in order for me to achieve the types of shots of encounters I wanted.
Looking back on the Semester as a whole, the three major learning outcomes for me were; in week 3, learning about noticing by only using sound and no visuals. I thought this concept was interesting, as I did learn that without visuals, the mind wonders, and the brain notices more as it tries to imagine what the matching visual to the sound is, and a person notices more about a space. Peter Cusack in his chapter in ‘Field Recordings as Sonic Journalism’ writes sound can “transmit a powerful sense of spatiality, atmosphere and timing.” Which is true and what I discovered in class when listening to ‘Starry Night’.
Another learning outcome throughout this course was the idea of a ‘blind spot’ in a photo or piece of media. In week 4, I remember as a class we looked at a photo Tiahne had taken of a building situated in a laneway, whilst also hearing a voiceover of her talking about everything else she noticed in or outside of the frame of the photo, which then made me notice more details about the photo. This also became evident in the reading for that week, ‘Ghostly forms and forest histories’ by Andrew Matthews, as he includes a photo of a tree stump, next to immense description of the forest the stump is in.
Finally, the last major learning outcome for me was in week 5, learning about James Benning and his work. This quote in the interview Benning gave where he says he can “see everything that moves because the camera doesn’t”, influenced my video for assignment 3, as I then decided to use a Tripod to make the camera still, so that even the tiniest encounter between an ingredient could be seen. I wanted to use this exact notion for assignment 4, yet without a Tripod to give the video a more personal effect, to bring the audience inside of the frame.