Monthly Archives: May 2014

On misogyny versus mental health: the Santa Barbara massacre

BY EMILY MALONE

(Photo: Derek Bridges via flickr)

Trigger warning: violence against women. 

Late Friday night in California, Elliot Rodger, 22, shot dead six people, wounded a further 13, then turned his gun on himself.

Publications around the world were quick to report that Rodger was mentally ill. He was diagnosed with high-functioning Aspergers as a child, and his family confirmed that he was receiving psychiatric support.

What many media outlets neglected was that this man’s actions stemmed from a noxious culture of entitlement and misogyny. The silence of this one sentence excuses his actions as the result of a deranged, troubled young man, instead of addressing the deep-rooted societal problems of male privilege.

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Participation during IM1

What did you do well? 

  • This semester I did very well at learning how to condense what I learnt, read, and written, and consolidate them with my thoughts in order to produce concise but detailed blog posts.
  • I explored may new forms of interactive media, and reviewed them using various insights I had learnt through the course material, as well as strengthening my critical analysis/evaluation skills (using De Bono’s method).
  • I grappled with concepts until I really felt that I understood them (at least to the capacity I can understand them at the current time in my life/academic career).
  • I have participated fully in the group project, and tried to play to my strengths and support my team members.
What have you learnt to do better?
  • I have learnt to embrace the possibilities of different forms of media, change how I think about conceptions of film/audiences/authorial intent/making/linearity/narrative/sketching.
  • I have learnt to think about poetics, and focusing on what a work can do rather than what we want it to do.
  • I have learnt how to understand database documentary much more than I originally did.
  • I have learnt how to let go of ‘old media’ traditions which don’t necessarily apply to the current entangled media sphere we operate in.
  • I have learnt how to use the content management system of a blog much more effectively.
  • I have learnt how to communicate some of the lessons from the course material in a relatable way, as evidenced by the conversations I held with friends and family and documented throughout the twelve weeks.
What could you have learnt to do better? 
  • Time management was not my strong point this semester, and I frequently drafted many blog posts, but never went back to edit/publish them. Although eventually, I did get all of my blogs published, I could have been more responsible to my deadlines.
  • I also could have engaged with the reading materials more comprehensively, however I believe that I still gained valuable insights from them, and became more lateral-thinking and ideas-driven in doing so.
  • Whilst I did complete most of the troubleshooting posts I endeavoured to do, I didn’t use as many of the resources I said I would have (such as YouTube and Lynda.com tutorials).

You can find my participation criteria and contract here.

Week 12: Summary

And here it is: the long-awaited summary of Integrated Media 1.

Some of the take-away lessons I’ve learned over the past 12 weeks are:

  • To embrace the infinite possibilities of lists.
  • To question the Hollywood model of film and what you can achieve through the medium.
  • To understand that our current media environment is fragmentary.
  • To think about how to make things differently using poetics and meaning.
  • To think about the concept of linearity and where it sits in our life.
  • To understand that we are in a post-industrial state of media making, where all of the rules about practice and value are different.
  • To consider what an artefact can do instead of thinking about what we want it to do or what we think it ought to do.
  • To realise that it’s not about the instrument, it’s about what you can do with it.
  • To surrender any idea that you can control an audience or how they interpret a work, but instead understand that they have agency and you can empower them through interactivity.
  • To reassess how I conceive the process of making/sketching/emergence.
  • That I will strengthen my media-practice if I continue to develop as an ideas-driven practitioner.

(Image via flickr)

 

Week 11: Meeting notes

In this week’s meeting, we began file consolidation by renaming all of our files for consistency and moving them to Imogen’s hard drive. We looked at the .gifs Ren had made, but then decided to instead go with a shorter, smaller clip that had the colour drained out of it and would move as a .mov file when rolled over in Korsakow. We decided our constraints for this would be three seconds of video (with the audio wiped), and we will experiment with colour drain to get the effect we want.

We had a further discussion about the compression of each file and the size we were trying to get to. One of the benefits of how we’ve structured our shooting schedule is that we are doing our recording and post-production at the same time, which is helping us stay on top of our tasks.

When another group was presenting their second prototype, Seth mentioned something about fine tuning your fragments so well that you can then go on to mass-produce them. I think this is what we have effectively done so far – even though it has been a learning curve along the way.

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Thousands March in May and Australia finally noticed

(Image via flickr)

Thousands of protestors have gathered across Australia over the weekend to rally against the Abbott government’s contentious federal budget.

A sequel of sorts, March in May was similar to the grassroots March in March held earlier this year, which protested a rejection of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister from various societal groups.

However the reportage of both protests by the mainstream media has been vastly different, raising the issue of the politics behind what is included and excluded in our media coverage.

Many people were quick to jump on the fact that Australia’s mainstream print publications and television stations largely ignored the March in March. However, this time around, many outlets have seemingly learnt from their mistakes and joined in the reporting of the protests.

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Week 11: Reflections

This week seemed to give us an arsenal of knowledge for how we can think about things as filmmakers. Below are my observations.

Interface design is incredibly important in Korsakow. Think of it as mis-en-scene. You are composing a visual space, which you will use to direct people. Don’t underestimate your audiences by showing them everything. You’re creating a world which you want to invite someone into, so that they can explore on your behalf. Don’t signpost everything, because there is poetry in absence and presence. It’s about seduction and reward: that’s what exploration is.

When thinking about how you curate your k-film, you have to think about what you include and exclude (because we all know about the politics behind these actions, right?). You have to think about video, sound, and if there will be layers in the piece? You also have to consider which software/medium is right for your message, such as whether you will used a participatory form of creation or a closed database system like Korsakow. Decide what kind of linearity it will follow. Start sketching. Think about the indexing, key wording, themes, patterns and taxonomy you are creating as you go along. Think, using granularity, about your fragments as individual units – what do they look like? How long are they? Consider remix, and how they are going to be put together, combined or recombined.

As a filmmaker, let plurality and multiplicity happen. There will never just be one relation, and you won’t ever get to decide what the relation/s is/are. Listen to the content and the meanings behind it. Don’t subscribe to the colonising idea that we treat our media according to what we want it to do, instead of thinking about what it can do. Don’t invest so much in the notion of conclusion – this is not a trait that bestows quality on your work. Make a film that lets the viewer have an experience that they want and like. It’s all up to you as a filmmaker.

(Image via flickr) 

Week 10: The City Through a Window Pane

I’m going to be reviewing the student k-film ‘The City Through a Window Pane‘ (2012) using De Bono’s hats.

RED – A very visually interesting piece. There is a lot of variety and it makes me think about all the reasons why I love Melbourne. It’s the kind of activity I do mindlessly but never acknowledge (that being looking at the city through a window pane contemplatively). The entire piece is tied together by the theme of observation.

BLACK – The background image of a street map with landmarks and cartoon images is a bit too ‘busy’ for me, and it almost looks amateurish. Some of the clips are too slow to load and I lost interest quickly. Also, some of the clips had too much to look at and I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t find a pattern between which cartoons Korsakow suggests to click through to next. Some are about food or art, whereas others are about culture, or iconic Melbourne landmarks.

YELLOW – I like that the interface has a window pane built into it, however, I’m not sure I like the design of it. I like the continutiy of the text below the fragments, always starting with “I see…”. I like the creativity behind some of the clips, such as the tram clip which shows the same view from night and daytime to illustrate convenience.

GREEN – In a similar way that it uses the start SNU as an introduction to ‘set the story’, I wonder if there was any way that they could have anchored some more ‘narrative’ sections amidst all of the footage to help the viewer learn a little more about the person who is doing all of this ‘looking’ through the window pane. This could make it more personal. The music which is created to suit each clip/mood tries to do this a little too obviously/forcefully for me to enjoy. It hits the viewer over the head instead of being suggestive, which in turn puts constraints on interpretation.