Finding it really difficult that there are no tutorials for anything about Korsakow (except on the company’s own website…) I feel like I’m just stabbing around in the dark and I need some further instruction and tutorials to watch ugh. It seems like everyone in the class has taken to the program so naturally and I’m stuck on struggle street….. I just can’t wrap my head around exactly what I’m doing wrong, all I know is my brain REALLY doesn’t like ‘keywords’

150-250 word summary.

• we did our seminar summaries but i was away… they said they did high culture, folk culture, pop culture. elite culture etc. things can morph to different cultures. (get definitions)
• mass culture: (get definition) film as a mass cultural product. industrial revolution makes mass production possible. it affects the population by making people have similar experiences, in terms of the movement of people to the cities to find work.
• the ‘masses’ are potential audiences for cinema. sometime thought to have agency to do with demand, other idea is that masses are passive at the same time. double characterisation of the masses.
• criticisms of mass culture: REPETITIVE AND ALL THE SAME excludes other cultures, everything ends up being the ‘same… what people like (e.g. show types), do they manipulate audiences??? “feel like a proud american” from war- subjected to idealogical, advertising (product placement), hollywood is a money seeking industry. it is cheaper to mass produce because of production costs and factory line style. one studio rather than many. it is faster too. repetition and variation (for different audiences). eg. variations of cars. more luxurious the car, more expensive. targeted for women (always in the city) bag holders, small cars etc….. to hollywood film: all have hollywood stars (familiarity and know the genre), big budgets, music, genre, marketing (trailers and posters etc), resolved, rounded ending.
• classical hollywood: period between 30’s and 40’s… why does it end in the 40’s? because gov steps in to change how ‘system’ works. what system is classical hollywood? ‘studios are vertically integrated’. paramount >production>distribution>exhibition. called vertical because one company owns all. complicated by what they can achieve. if paramount owns the means of production… what do they own? PRODUCTION: cameras, tech equipment, directors(contracted), stars (actors had contracts up to 7 years), writers (contracted), composers (sound), producers (contracted), costume department, sets and soundstages, set designers,… hollywood as the “dream factory”, waiting for the next project. can recycles. DISTRIBUTION: package film known as “block booking” which maximises profits: crappy outweigh the risk of one failing), EXHIBITION: theatres (whats showing when: first screening, second screening, third screening and also the ticket pricing). control the concession stands
• when gov came along, said we need a free market, can’t have the vertical line anymore. so production, distribution and exhibition could be entered by “smaller players”.
  • “Sullivans travels is a reflexive exploration of the conditions of protection of hollywood and its relation of its audiences” Do you agree? Why? It’s a film about film, and it is overtly discussing film not trying to conceal. Reflexive is self aware.

Feeling so relieved to get some structure into my uni life. I’ve been pretty lazy in getting myself organised for upcoming projects, and today I printed off all my course guides and wrote due dates into my big RMIT calendar. Sounds simple, but I really love being able to see the big picture for the semester and it stops me from feeling overwhelmed. *Mental note to self to do this every semester*

We got introduced to our new interface design software today, Korsakow. It is a German program that allows the designer to create documentaries that may be viewed on the internet, but that involves user interaction and allows them to have control over their viewing of the doc (kinda like “choose your own adventure”.. But NOT, we were told it is NOT that at all). It looks completely different to an form of digital technology that I’ve worked with before (and ill admit, pretty confusing) but I’m excited to learn some new things and hopefully create a very unique new form of I-documentary. Sometimes I find learning new technology really challenging, so I hope in doing this course, I develop some skills with some new forms of media production and also end up coming up with some good problem-solving strategies for when things become difficult.

We will be designing the interface to engage users and motivate them to continue to keep viewing the documentary. So here’s the big question… I wonder how we can engage and motivate users to watch something about cycling in Melbourne? Do we need each video to be rewarding? To have continuity? Or would it work better with the software if they were self-contained videos that were all interrelated… Hmm need to play around to work it all out… For me personally, I believe that users want to be rewarded for what they are seeing. Like watching a television show, the show will always cut to an add break to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat and to engage with them enough that they continue to keep watching. I think my group has decided on user demographic being female, adolesent Melbournians. There’s a lot to think about, but I would we have to remember that an online digital product is very different to a traditional documentary.

Today was the first studio for media 2, new doco. We went to a cafe and ventured off in pairs to collect photos and audio of anything to do with cycling.

We walked around with Bliss and Dominic and for some reason all decided to take portrait photos. Here are a few of the landscape ones I got though:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/elise-milner/2015/03/10/magical-maitreya/

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/elise-milner/2015/03/17/120/

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/elise-milner/2015/04/19/rookie-error-1-and-2-and-possibly-3/

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/elise-milner/2015/04/18/voices/

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/elise-milner/2015/05/28/feedback-for-draft-2/

My first semester as a university student has been an absolute rollercoaster. I’ve learnt new things, such as juggling a student workload with my employment, the fact that organisation is key and that completing work as I am assigned it is a far more logical decision than leaving everything until the last minute. There have been new self-discoveries, such as the fact that I love writing about media and that I am able to learn new skills faster than I thought. I have been out of school for two years working and travelling and thought it would be extremely difficult to adapt to a studying lifestyle again, however with much practice I managed to establish consistent study habits. The skill I most proud of developing is independence, especially in relation to using new equipment and software. I have never had difficulties working as a member of a team, but in the past I have doubted my abilities in operating new technologies and applying new concepts by myself. I feel that the course has prepared me really well in not only educating me with the skills I need, but also how to work independently. I now feel more confident moving forward to new studios with a combination of second and third year students.

In discussing my successes, it is important to describe the low points in this course that I have also experienced. The most challenging aspect was brief 3. Perhaps I chose a difficult person, but I think it is an incredibly difficult task to do someone justice in a short film in a mere couple of weeks. Especially as a first year student, as I would have loved to have more experience before completing such as task. It was a very overwhelming point in the semester and my exhaustion led me to make mistake after mistake. I got very upset and stressed that I would not do my Nana justice as a person or even begin to illustrate the type of person she is to me and love I have for her. What helped me during this stressful time, was understanding that all my peers were in the same boat, with the same pressure and anxieties about the brief. I did the best work I could after the large mistakes made, but it was definitely one of the most difficult assignments in the semester for me. However, I did learn and grow from this experience, which I think is best highlighted in my final assignment with Jack. Working as a pair allowed me to progress the independence I had learnt, as well as consolidate skills of cooperation and negotiation. A light bulb for me was the breakthrough of a relatively simple concept, that I can only do my very best. I often strive for excellence and perfection in my work, sometimes where it cannot be achieved with the limited media knowledge I have at this point. Mistakes and challenges are apart of life, especially in the creation of media content, and as a media practitioner it is important for me to develop resilience and problem solving skills. I learnt that most mistakes can be amended through re-shooting and re-editing, and not worth stressing over in the early stages of drafting my work.

Overall we were happy with our presentation of our video. For a second draft, we received really positive feedback from Kristian, and also a couple of laughs the amateur editing (of sound in particular, when I say “such as”). We also received some really helpful constructive criticism including:

• Match up the B-roll to its correct and relevant section
• Fill in the black spaces with footage to match the dialogue
• Adjust the audio levels of the video
• Make sure to reference all content, including images
• Match up the ratings categories with their corresponding colour logos
• Shorten James Franco dialogue, only use key lines from his vlog.

After class, Jack and I went to our new stomping ground (the edit suites) to edit and smooth out all the issues in our video… Yes! We began the final stage of post-production- the all illusive, final draft! We decided to smash it out until we finished, which turned out to be 9:35PM at night (very unfortunate for the girl who lives an hour away and also starts work at 7:00AM Friday)

Before beginning editing, we went through the video and came up with a list of things we needed to fix, combining the feedback from class also. We meticulously went through it, and also made sure we referenced all the footage we found (mental note to future Elise: compile a list of links so you don’t have to search for AGES trying to find them all again)

• (Beginning of video) fix titles
• 1:45 irrelevant footage, use correct match
• 2:10 get ratings images (with corresponding colours)
• 2:35 swap explosion, sexual activity around to match script
• 3:17 communist footage here
• 3:20 “few, for the many” dialogue, use crowd footage instead of elise’s feet/hair to make more relevant
• 3:39 more footage of streets
• 3:40 audio needs fixing
• 5:04 james franco come in earlier
• 5.20 cut up james franco footage, to shorten.
  • 5:20- 5:38 (keep)
  • 5:50- 5:55 (keep)
  • 6:09- 6:52 (keep)
  • 6.54- 7:10 (keep)
• 7:43 remove repeated footage
• 8:08 find money footage from archive.org, write prices of classification
• 9:09 fix audio
• 9:22 add credits and reference

We had some major difficulties with audio which made the session last longer than it should’ve, as it just disappeared from some of our crucial ending footage, but we figured it all out by using a previously saved draft to get the footage again. It has really been great working as a part of a team, bouncing ideas off other people and working together to solve problems.

All’s well that ends well.

We’ve re-grouped, re-filmed, re-recorded and are now up to re-editing for the second draft phase! This time around not only was it FAR easier to remember my lines (I may be an actor yet… not) but we managed to get a lot more B roll of both Jack and I. It will mean matching footage to my long answers/dialogue wont be such a struggle when editing.

We still have a long way to go, but I’m really happy with where we are at, and can’t wait to get some feedback on Thursday!

Few weeks ago I received an email offering up free tickets for RMIT students to the opening night of St Kilda Film Festival. I thought it was a relatively small thing, but boy was I wrong. I went last night with some fellow students and it was packed! For some reason Mitch and I managed to get really good tickets from the sales desk and were seated in a pretty good spot, amongst quite a few recognised faces. It was really cool as I’ve never attended anything quite so prestigious before (why do I assume more well known peeps= more prestige…) ANYWAY, it sounds very cliche, but it truly felt like an honour to view films on an opening night for a festival, in such a beautiful place as the Palais.

The films that were shown were obviously awesome! I loved most of them for differing reasons such as the soundtrack or cinematography, but ‘Pink’ particularly stood out to me as I couldn’t quite work out what was going on, the film intrigued me and felt like I needed to piece parts of a puzzle together. I love films like that.

I did get a parking ticket, but even that couldn’t dampen a great night

This was a quick rough draft we presented to Rachel for brief 4. Jack and I worked really hard to write a script, film and audio record the past couple of days and we’re pretty have with the progress of our work. In saying that we realised there are a few elements to be tweaked if we are to present the best work we possibly can. An example of this is that we thought that it might be a good idea to re-film my segments with a lapel mic in order to cut out the atmospheric sound that accompanied my dialogue. Rachel seemed to echo this idea and also suggested that we re-write, re-film and re-record the ending of our video for it to represent the conversation surround the classification board with more clarity and truthfulness. It will add more work to our plates, but we’re happy to try and live up to the challenge to do the best work that we can. Looks like it’ll be a Filming-Friday tomorrow…..