We got to watch everybody’s projects today and my goodness, am I situated in the middle of an extremely talented class!!!  I saw some really spectacular ideas that I’m already planning on stealing.  My personal favourite choice made by another group was having Peter reading a poem as part of the audio for their piece.  I think it was incredibly moving and effective, and, in my opinion, completely negated the need for exposition.  This will definitely find its way into my future work, whether it be for this class or outside of it.
The critiques my group got were definitely fair.  As much of a cop-out as this response seems: I was genuinely confused by the assignment.  Looking back, my confusion is silly; the task was very clear.  But I did not realize that the videos should be similar at all.  And I suppose they didn’t have to be, but if they weren’t going to be, everyone in the group should work on all the videos.  This was, after all, a group assignment.  Watching the others videos, there was a very clear sense of collaboration and teamwork that my group’s videos were missing completely, despite the fact that we all tried to work together and support each other.  There was also, of course, the note that my video didn’t make sense because nobody can read that fast.  Which is fair.  I really didn’t think through the form and the length together going into this.  Lesson learned.  Moving forward.  All that good stuff.

I, unfortunately, missed the next class, in which people started to form groups and work out what they wanted their next project to be about.  I would really like to continue my research into Footscray Technical School, so hopefully, this is able to fit into one of the pre-formed groups’ ideas (SPOILER ALERT: it doesn’t.  Note to self: ALWAYS ATTEND CLASS!!!  EVEN IF YOU PHYSICALLY CAN’T!!!)

“Documentary film is a magical imitation of reality” – Harum Farocki

I am absolutely LOVING how much these short documentaries are messing with my concept of truth and documentary filmmaking!!!  While The Art of Nonfiction wasn’t necessarily my thing aesthetically (it just didn’t flow the way I wanted it to), the point it raised was really interesting.  The Kuleshov Effect was in full swing, and it really makes you realize how much editing changes your experience in “knowing” the truth, even if films that claim to show more in order to give “unedited truth” (looking at you, Nick Broomfield!).

The writing project at the end of this weeks reading really threw me into crisis mode.  When you can’t answer the first group of questions, you know something’s gone terribly wrong.  I’m going to continue working on it but I am Very Concerned about my inability to complete it.  As much as I want Footscray Technical School to inspire me, I have a feeling it won’t, and I”m not great at doing work that isn’t inspiring.  Hopefully, the inspiration will strike through further research (or, SPOILER ALERT, I end up doing something completely different…)