Category: Workshops with Robbie

Self Portrait: Video Edition. (Naivety)

Alaine Thompson on

Here is the second assignment of the year, a video self portrait combining all the mediums from the previous self portrait:

Through this piece I really wanted to show an emotional journey, the kind I feel my life has been and still is. From the beginning of this project I knew I wanted to create an emotional crescendo through the music, which starts out calm and peaceful but quickly becomes hectic, crazy and cluttered, as my mind often is.

I also wanted to show myself through images of my favourite places, and as I have grown up literally surrounded by parks, I have used trees as a motif to convey different areas of my personality throughout the piece. At the beginning I use trees moving in the breeze and fades to show my calm and positive side. This then develops into the idea that I myself have been labelled a tree because of my height. The vascular tree images, which I created using Adobe Illustrator, also give the idea that the tree is alive, through the use of montage theory which makes the tree pulsate.

To me, trees also symbolise growth and development, as each bump in its trunk was created by some event, it grows in a certain direction, it has many branches and thick roots. Trees to me also symbolise life itself and the journey of growth and change throughout life.

I found it very difficult to get the right meanings and ideas across in the middle of the piece, where things become more hectic, as I was originally going for a quantity rather than quality approach to the editing. But once I really thought about it I found an idea that worked. I still think there is a little too much going on, but I like the meaning that comes across throughout the piece through the editing.

The main idea I wanted to get across through this piece is that I changed so much in Year 12 that over the summer holidays, I felt I had finally gotten to know myself, only to discover once I reached university that I had continued to change and now I feel as though I know nothing again. I really wanted to capture that confusion and feeling of both freedom and being trapped at the same time.

Less is More can be a Hard Lesson

Alaine Thompson on

Today we looked at editing and I honestly found myself stuck in that annoying hole that I often find myself in of using more rather than less, as I tried to create a montage of images (as I weirdly enjoy the use of montage theory and alienating people), but the more images I used, the more I found that they started to loose meaning and just simply became dizzying.

Luckily Robbie was there otherwise I would have dug myself a very deep hole in the quantity rather than quality category. After chatting with Robbie I realised the need to dissect my content and really play with ideas and meanings.

I hope my parents are ready, because they’re about to become my guinea pigs.

Self Portrait Reveals

Alaine Thompson on

Today we revealed our self portraits and explained why we chose to create those products, as well as gave feedback to all the other people in our little groups of five as through the use of four of the De Bono six thinking hats. Either the ‘positive’ yellow hat, ‘gut reaction’ red hat, ‘there’s something wrong here’ black hat, or ‘oooh! Now do this!’ green hat.

six thinking hats

It was surprisingly comforting having all these creative minds appreciate and accept my work and give me advice and ideas and inspiration. I was so anxious for no apparent reason and it felt so good to just de-stigmatize so many things for myself through photos and film and audio. I can’t wait to try and create a one minute fluid sequence with new, fresh ideas, footage and images as well as some old ones from this project.

Self Portrait: Naive and I know it

Alaine Thompson on

For Media 1, for our first assignment, we had to create a self portrait of ourselves. So, this is what I thought of myself when I started Uni;

 

Bird Cage

 

Through this image I wanted to convey the way I felt throughout high school, and in a way, still feel now as I learn to adjust and settle into the style of university life.

This is not Alaine

 

This is an homage to Rene Magritte’s ‘The Treachery of Images”. I wanted to show that this self portrait is only a representation of myself and not actually me.

My View

 

Through this filter I aimed to show my unique and whimsical view of the world.

Tree

A while ago I had surgery on my back and in order to de-stigmatize it for myself and give it a new kind of beauty, I decided to get my dad to paint a tree around it, to show growth and strength.

This is a recording of my favourite place to just relax.

This is a recording of me singing “Singin’ in the Rain”, as I feel this song best shows my positive attitude towards life in general.

‘I’m naive. But I embrace my naivety. “So it goes” – Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Slaughterhouse 5’

I chose these words to somehow sum up myself, because I found this so hard to do and wound up writing in circles, until I finally decided to go with something simple. But how do you sum up one person in 50 words, let alone 10, 000 words? not even a film could achieve such a feat.

Through this video I wanted people to feel the way I feel when I walk my dogs, which for me is having gorgeous furballs constantly smile at you, and feeling the sunshine as I walk through along this path. Hence, why it’s called sunshine in a lense, an inherently Australian thing to capture.

This, for me, was yet another way to de-stigmatize something and show the world how I see things, both literally and metaphorically. I have a condition known as visual snow, which, as you’ll see from the video is like having the static of a TV screen over your vision all the time. I wanted to show that although I may see the world in a literally different way to most people in the world, I really do see the world differently to everyone else. Not because of my condition, but because of me.

First Day in the Life of a Uni Student

Alaine Thompson on

So yesterday was my first day at uni at RMIT. I had quite a few bumps getting there. Not as in, into the course itself, as in to uni on the day. You’d think it would be easy to get into the city unscathed, but no. I almost forgot to charge my laptop and I tripped UP the stairs on my way into the building, leaving me breathlessly asking if I was in the right place.

Luckily, I was organised enough to get myself to the right building, level and classroom and even had the skill to get there ten minutes early. I know, right? The struggles of university life. Bumbling haphazardly from place to place. Once I was in the classroom though, I found it was far more relaxed than I thought it would be. Hey, I’m doing a media degree, I should hope these people are as happy and open-minded as me.

We even got our first assignment. I’ll admit, at first I felt like I was being thrown in the deep end, but once Robbie started explaining it to us and how we can do anything, bend the mediums to our will so we can show the world who we are, show ourselves who we are, I couldn’t help but get excited. And the ideas just started to flow.

I honestly can’t wait for this degree to really push into motion, because I know that it will inspire me and challenge my creativity at every turn. And I can’t wait for it.

Here are some helpful places I’ve found over the past year or so that I know I will need at some point, and you guys might too:

‘No Film School’ is a great website for the filmmaker on a budget. They have all kinds of crazy solutions to problems, you possibly might need one day. And also all kinds of interesting info on the industry and its technology.

‘Film Riot’ are a bunch of cool people who do video tutorials on YouTube on a regular basis that could also help you out in a jam.

Here’s a list of Auteurs whose entire filmographys you should watch, because they are incredible.

Enjoy! (: