Week Eleven – Untold Stories, People, and Places

Final week!! Sort of. Final week before the exhibition. This week has just been a whole lot of final preparation, as would be expected. Tuesday we were in the editing suites, even though we didn’t actually go into the suites… We got the rough cut done for the last video we needed to put together, so now we’ve finally got everything we need at least somewhat edited. We were all working pretty individually today, so I can’t speak on behalf of the other girls, but it’s the fine tuning of everything that is going to be the most difficult.

We were all super productive between classes, so coming into class today (Friday), everything seemed to be coming together really well. BUT, we have come across a couple of teeny tiny technical issues, but what’s new? Last week we made a mockup of our map, which looked incredible, but for some reason, now that we’re trying to input all of our final pieces into it, it isn’t quite coming together how we thought it would. Luckily we have the week to work through this, and I’m pretty confident that we’ll be able to figure it all out.

The next week or so is going to mostly consist of just editing all of our pieces, and making sure our videos don’t have too much unnecessary content in them. We also need to put some thought into how we’re going to present our work at the exhibition in week 13. So far, I think we’re going to keep ours quite simple. I would like to present some of our online photo essays in physical form, and have them up on a wall/board at our ‘station’. The photos look nice as part of the map, but I think they will look better when they’re all up in one place, and the audience can just view it how they would like to (did someone say Open Space??).

Having to actively think about how audiences are going to be viewing our work, has got me thinking more about Open Space Documentary, at least more than I have been since we started planning. Thinking more directly about real people coming and physically interacting with our piece, is allowing me to analyse more closely about what makes our piece fit into the Open Space style box. Looking back at some of what we’ve done so far, I think a lot of it is coming of in quite a traditional style, so I think this is something we can change a little as we finish up in post-production.

 

Week Ten – Untold Stories, People, and Places

This Tuesday, I found this to be one of our more beneficial classes, as it was our chance to show the class, as well as Kerry, and a guest called John Hughes, the rough cuts of some of our pieces. I found the feedback that we received quite vague, but still with that, I came away, with an idea of what we needed to work on by time the exhibition came round. The main thing we needed to work, was making the link between our videos/photo essays clearer. Our idea is based all around the sense of community, and at times, they pointed out that we strayed away from this, and our videos became a bit too informational, and dragged out a bit. This week, in between classes, we’re all going to get together to try and fine tune all of our work, and refine everything in regards to the feedback that we received.

As well as receiving feedback, it was great to get a chance to see how the other groups were going. Being able to get some ideas, and even use the feedback they got, and apply elements of it to our own pieces, I found to be extremely beneficial.

Friday was our last chance to go to the museum, but I didn’t end up staying there for too long. Saskia and I used the time to take one last visit to the Heavenly Queen Temple and gather any last resources that we could. It was actually really beneficial as we were able to put together a small photo series as an added ‘bonus’. It was a very on the spot decision, but one that I think will add quite a lot to what we already have. Georgia stayed back at the museum for a while, and had a look through some of the archive material.

We want to jazz up our exhibition station a little, and give the audience a little more to physically interact with. We found a number of short books/journals that fit perfectly with some of our pieces, so I think we might display some of them. This gives audiences the opportunity to explore further into the culture and history of the areas/places that we looked into.

Week Nine – Untold Stories, People, and Places

Week nine! Three weeks away from the exhibition. When I type it out, it sounds like a long time away, but it’s creeping up, slowly. This Tuesday, again we were doing a lot of planning and preparing for the evening. We were all under control when it came to our role of preparing food and drinks for the event, it was now a matter of planning the logistics of things.

We also did a writing task, much like in week seven, where we just shut up and WRITE. I accidentally forgot to save what I wrote, but I will summarise what I wrote about here:

  • What is the relationship between aesthetic choices (sound, framing, editing techniques, website, form etc.) for your project?

As a group, we didn’t really have any aesthetic choices, at least ones that we made intentionally, however we wanted to keep a certain ‘feeling’, within all our pieces, if that makes sense at all. When I say this, I mean our whole project is being made to create a sense of community and togetherness, something that is meant to be a positive and joyful experience. We have avoided including footage, sounds, interview footage etc that doesn’t fit into this. This also allows us to keep a nice flow between our pieces.

  • How do you want audiences to engage in your project and what do you want them this think, feel, know – as the work itself and in the exhibition space?

We hope that audiences interact fully with our work, otherwise it wont give up the full experience that we’re trying to offer. I’ve always felt that the way a lot of people (including myself) view the Western suburbs can be quite negative, because of a lot of stereotypes and assumptions. I hope that audiences can view the different suburbs with an open mind, and from a different perspective to what they are probably used to. Our piece is less about throwing facts and figures at the viewer, but more to create a sense of closeness, and a sense of familiarity, even if they don’t have a lot of past experience with the West.

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Week Eight – Untold Stories, People, and Places

Week eight!! The end… keeps getting… closer!! This week in class we’ve starting gearing up to plan for the end of semester exhibition. It’s going to be held at the museum which is pretty cool, getting off RMIT grounds. ‘Party’ planning is all fun and games, until I realised we were planning for something that was only a month away. Big pressure.

We came across a few problems this week, in regards to organising interviews with some of the volunteer workers. We had our production timeline set out around times we had pre-planned with our interviewees, but last minute date changes means we’re setting ourselves back at least 4-7 days… Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but with the time restraints we have, it’s not ideal. Despite this, we’ve reorganised around the changes, and having a plan again gives me a little confidence boost.

On a more creative note, Saskia came across a cool website that was used for the Olympic Games in Rio. It’s pretty much exactly how all of us had imagined our map being, but obviously, we don’t have the resources or money to make something like it. Despite this, it actually gave us a few ideas, on how we could make our map a little more dynamic, even if it doesn’t look as clean and stylish as this one. I think that having some ambient music or sounds playing in the background whilst people scroll around the map could be cool. This adds a little more than just visual aspects to the general project.

We also came up with a possible design concept for our map. We think it would be cool to find some archival images from the museum, and fade them into the background of a simply outlined image the western suburbs. Each photo would be placed in relation to where each suburb is on the map. I think this could look really cool, and it also adds another historical element to the piece, which I think is really important.

 

Week Seven – Untold Stories, People, and Places

Pitch week! One Tuesday this week, Kerry and Matthew came down to visit from the museum, to listen to all of our project pitches. It was sort of intimidating getting up in front of them, because both of them have put so much time and energy into their research and discovery of the west, and we’ve only been doing this for less that two months now. On the other hand though, as a group, I think we were all feeling pretty confident with our idea, and what we’d mapped out so far. We’re all excited about our topics, and our project as a whole, and I think that played a part in how we presented ourselves, and our ideas.

From how I took it, Kerry and Matthew both sounded pretty interested in our ideas, and Kerry even mentioned that our idea of an interactive map would be something beneficial to their website. Pitching to them both gave us as a group that little bit more confidence in what we were doing, so now we can go head first into it, and start pulling everything together.

On Friday, it was a pretty relaxed class. We had a quick twenty five minute session of ‘shut up and write’, which I don’t think i’ve done since primary school, or maybe early in high school. We were asked to write whatever came to our head, based on the reading for this week, which was based on open space documentary filmmaking. To save myself rambling again even more about it, i’ll include a screenshot of my speed written word vomit.

From just doing the reading, I felt like I understood what open space documentary was, but by just writing down everything I thought on the topic, and comparing it to more traditional documentary, even in the space of twenty five minutes I felt like I had my own understanding of it. It’s easy enough to read the facts that someone puts in front of you, but to get the thoughts and facts into your own words, I actually found really beneficial.

*** Please note that this is not my most well written piece…

Week Six – Untold Stories, People, and Places

This week was a huge research week, which I actually had a heap of fun doing. I’ve realised that unlike my last topic, which don’t get me wrong, I found super interesting learning more about, I have a much deeper interest in delving deeper into this topic. Our group has chosen to look at some of the scenes or places that different areas in the west are known for. At the moment it’s a pretty broad topic, but as we build up our research, we want to narrow it down to something more specific.

Tuesday’s class was super productive. We looked into a number of the websites that Kim showed us in class, that we could potentially use to ‘launch’ our virtual tour. Between us as a group, none of us have ever tried to make an interactive website before. We haven’t confirmed which one we are going to use, but I think we’re going to trial out a few different ones over the next week or two, to see which comes out the most effective. Right now it seems like the due date is pretty far away, but I have a feeling it’s going to sneak up on us pretty fast… We’ve come up with some pretty set ideas on who we want to interview for each of our respective suburbs. There is more detail in our proposal and our pitch, but one of our plans is to organise an interview/tour with the manager of the heavenly temple in Footscray. Zoe is going to contact them this week, and hopefully if it all goes to plan, we will be able to speak with them within the next week or two.

One thing I think we all need to do whilst organising these interviews, is just be thinking of some backup plans in case interviews fall through. I know from my last project that trying to come up with a backup idea last minute is extremely difficult, so being prepared early, even if we don’t have to use any of them, I think will benefit us in the long run.

Week Five – Untold Stories, People, and Places

This week was very much a show and tell week, at least Tuesday was. I wasn’t looking forward to presenting my work very much, but I think it was good for me to share it with the class, even if I didn’t believe that it was any of my best work. I don’t want to talk so much about myself, but instead how interesting it was to see how many different, and creative approaches there were to the project. I really enjoyed the group that made the short ‘series’ about female artists in the west. I really enjoyed how each video was linked to one another, but still in a sense, were very individual pieces of work. You could tell through the stylistic choices that they had a particular team vision, but as individual pieces, they each stood out as their own works.

Friday’s class was a lot of brainstorming and preparing for the next assignment. I will discuss the next assignment in later posts, but for this week, my group decided to pretty quickly lock in our idea so that we could get started straight away, in the lead up to semester break.

The reading for this week was about structuring documentary. The main idea that I took away from the reading, was that although Documentary is essentially a fiction form media, how it is structured is often similar to that of a non-fiction piece. Although not always, documentaries often have central characters, and a plot that is being followed through the narrative. The piece makes a lot of reference to a film that i’m familiar with called Hoop Dreams, but I thought I would put some of their claims into context with a documentary that I watched more recently. On the weekend I watched a film called ‘Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond‘. The film follows Jim Carrey’s journey as he took on the role of comedian, Andy Kaufman. The story of Carrey’s intense method acting throughout the making of the film, is followed through a general storyline of shooting the film from start to finish. Like non-fiction films, the documentary has character development, character issues, climaxes, and essentially comes to a sound conclusion when the film is finished production. There are central characters, such as the film director, and Carrey’s co-stars that help drive the narrative, and impact character decision making. This is all happening whilst there is the more typical documentary elements being inserted, such as interviews, and archival footage from different contexts.

 

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