Category: Reading

Reading: Complexity, Flaux and Webs of Connection

This week’s reading explores the way audiences interpret fragmented information in the form of storytelling.

Changing media literacy’s means that audiences are able to understand shifts in flows of information and develop strategies to deal with gaps.

Frankham says the narrative is in itself a list also, but it exists in within a framework with which we are more familiar. Relations between elements are more closely established.

She believes that because the list is open to interpretation, there is room for a deeper engagement with the text. Frankham says: “The option of being able to choose how to engage with a work often results in a kind of cognitive consumerism where an artwork is reduced to a set of ideas to be mastered.”

Reading: New Documentary Ecologies

Korsakow is one of many freely available tools on the internet that can be used for non-linear storytelling and to create interactive documentaries.

All claim to be easy-to-use and do not require any programming skills.

There is an interesting distinction between ‘Theatrical Documentary’ and ‘Web Documentary’.

Theatrical documentary tells a specific kind of story, which is usually a big event, often in one characters life, like an incredible cinematic journey.

The web offers an opportunity to examine and understand very small, everyday details of our lives. This is the kind of storytelling Korsakow founder Florian Thalhofer has been creating with his own work in Korsakow.

Week 4 Reading: Film Art – An Introduction

This week’s reading from Film Art: An Introduction by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson introduces different styles of film making.

 Narrative

Narrative can be described as a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space. Typically there is one situation presented at the beginning of a narrative, a series of changes occurs according to a pattern of cause and effect; finally a new situation arises that brings about the end of the narrative. An introduction, a complication and a resolution.

“I had actually trapped myself in a story that was very convoluted, and I would have been able to cut more later if I’d simplified it at the script stage, but I’d reached a point where I was up against a wall of story logic. If I had cut too much at that stage, the audience would have felt lost.” – James Cameron, director, on Aliens

Plot and Story

  • The viewer makes sense of a narrative by identifying its events and linking them by cause and effect, time and space. Viewers also infer events that are not explicitly presented. Adrian used the example in the lecture of time passing in film. Day to night.
  • Distinction between story and plot (sometimes called story and discourse)

Cause and Effect

  • Characters are usually the agents of cause and effect – they make things happen and respond to events. Their actions and reactions contribute strongly to our engagement with the film

Time

  • The viewer constructs the story time on the basis of what the plot presents.

 Space

  • In film narrative space is usually an important factor – events occur in well defined locales.
  • Cinema employs screen space – the visible space within the frame

Experimental Film

Experimental film is intentionally unconventional in the way it avoids the content mainstream cinema produce and the style in which they create it.

Experimental films are made for many reasons

  • Filmmaker may wish to press personal experiences or viewpoints in ways that seem eccentric in a mainstream context
  • Filmmaker may want to portray a mood or a physical quality
  • Filmmaker may wish to explore possibilities of the medium itself

Types of Experimental Film

  • Abstract film – often organised in around theme and variations (usually refers to music)
  • Associational Form – groups images that may not have immediate logical connection but the very fact that the images and sounds are juxtaposed prods us to look for some connection – an association binds them together.

Week 3 Reading: Digital video and Alexandre Astruc’s caméra-stylo: the new avant-garde in documentary realized?

This week’s reading by Bjørn Sørenssen looks at the predictions made by French film maker and critic, Alexandre Astruc, in his 1948 essay in which he “envisioned a new breakthrough for film as a medium, no longer only as an entertainment medium, but as a fundamental tool for human communication” (Sørenssen 2008, p. 47) and compares them to the realisation of the contemporary world.

Sørenssen highlights the foresight Astruc demonstrated when discussing the fundamental changes to the medium’s production and distribution. Astruc’s prediction that everyone will possess a projector was remarkably accurate with the introduction of DVD players and even more recently, computers and smart phones.

Sørenssen summarises Astruc’s conclusions into three main points:

  1. New technology provides new means of expression. As a result of this film medium (i.e. forms of audio- visual expression) develops from being exclusive and privileged to a common and publicly available form of expression (Sørenssen 2008, p. 49).
  2. This, in turn, opens space for a more democratic use of the medium (Sørenssen 2008, p. 49).
  3. It also opens up new possibilities for modern (contemporary) and different forms and usages (avant-garde) (Sørenssen 2008, p. 49).

The article then goes on to discuss the introduction of new and expensive technology used for creating, editing and distributing media developed into more ‘consumer-friendly’ versions that became more readily available (Sørenssen 2008, p. 51). Examples cited in the text include Apple iMovie, the internet and mobile phones.

Sørenssen summarises the rise of user participation within the audio-visual culture into three points:

  1. Economic availability: The gap in costs and quality between production and editing equipment and software for professional and mass consumers has closed up considerably (Sørenssen 2008, p. 51).
  2. Miniaturization: Equipment that previously demanded considerable resources in terms of logistics has been replaced with equipment that is lightweight, does not occupy much space and is well adapted for individual operation (Sørenssen 2008, p. 51)
  3. New and alternative forms of distribution: From being forced to circulate in a very restricted public sphere, the establishment of distribution sites on the World Wide Web has opened up possibilities for mass medial distribution for alternative for alternative audio-visual products (Sørenssen 2008, p. 52).

Sørenssen discusses the correlation between the developments of new media, in particular the Internet, and the impact it has had on the public sphere. It is discussed that these technologies provide users with opportunities for people to communicate, access information and comment on social and political issues. Although their characteristics are different to classical approaches and issues arise in regards to accessibility and commodification, new media provides users with a platform to accomplish change by communicative actions.

The internet has successfully invaded the private sphere and opened with websites such as YouTube providing a platform for free video uploads and sharing capabilities. Sørenssen attributes YouTube’s enormous success to “the fact that it operates as an open channel for the teeming millions of prospective content producers who, thanks to the technological and economic developments of digital media production equipment, now have the possibilities to exchange meanings, experiences and – perhaps most importantly – ways of expression through the film medium” (Sørenssen 2008, p. 54).

The text concludes by using an elderly YouTube user ‘Geriatric 1927; also referred to as Peter to support Alaxandre Astruc’s vision that “the perceived new media situation would open up alternative ways and means of audio-visual expressions, hence his insistence of connecting the new technology with the aesthetics of the avant-garde (Sørenssen 2008, p. 58)

Week 2 Reading: Interactive Documentary – Setting The Field

The week one reading by Ashton and Gaudenzi explores how the non-linear medium opens up possibilities of storytelling. The versatile and non-fictional form of documentary allows viewers to draw their own interpretations.

The four types of interactive documentary include:

Conversational: This style allows the viewer to engage with the computer by making their choices from an interactive video.

Hypertext: The viewer is able to create their own journey through selecting a series of existing options.

Participative: The digital authors engage in a reciprocated beneficial relationship with the users. The documentary evolves as viewers contribute to the creation at various stages.

Experiential Mode: This locative style of documentary combines the viewer’s virtual and physical existence.

These varied styles of interactive documentary result in different outcomes for the user, the author and the narrative.

The interactive documentary symposiums discussed in the readings allowed expert opinions and concerns regarding the future of interactive documentary to be shared. One of these included Nick Cohen (BBC) who “…referred to the 90-0-1 principle, as cited by Jacob Neilsen (2006), which suggests that there is a participation inequality on the Internet with only 1% of people creating content, 9% editing or modifying content, and 90% viewing content without actively contributing” (Ashton and Gaudenzi 2012, p. 131).

Interactive documentaries are tools for allowing users to understand our society in an engaging narrative format. They free the author from the restrictions of traditional story telling. The audience can be fulfilled knowing they have contributed to the creation of a narrative or perhaps by the idea that they have explored a documentary differently from all others. As a result of the expansion of possibilities within the area of interactive documentary there may be a need for a taxonomy to distinguish the conventions. The understanding of the genres would benefit the user and potentially the author by creating expectations and guidelines within these categories to help us understand the new format.