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.
When we presented our second prototype, it was met by positive comments and helpful suggestions by Seth and our classmates. One person commented on how the ‘close’ audio recording really works to build intimacy. Seth asked us to seriously consider using text in our project to tell the viewer what they might expect in the next clip (and pointed us to Grayson Cooke’s ‘Live AV in Australia’ as an example that we could look to. Ren, Imogen and I spoke about this afterwards, and we’re just not sure if this would work in the way we want it to. We said from the beginning that we want it to be a visually-driven piece so that we’re not ‘spoon-feeding’ our audience. However, we are still very open to the idea of emergence, and potentially changing something to make it feel like it’s working better. We’ll see how we go in our final build once we’ve consolidated all of our footage.
We had a good chat about interface design this meeting. Ren mocked up a great interface that had a ‘frame’ of preview clips surrounding the viewing window. We chose this design because it reflects the premise of our film – that you can learn a lot about a person from their mannerisms, body language, and habits. For example, the outer-ring will be all about snap judgements we make day-in and day-out about a person due to what they’re wearing, etc. But once you click on their thumbnail and enter their video, it’s clear that you learn a little more about them through their glimpse into how they found their feet.
One thing I need to find a way to articulate before we write the essay component of the project is how we have embraced the idea of spontaneity. We have tried not to construct and control the content, as this is entirely counterproductive to the mission behind our prompt (to view a small snapshot of people’s lives in the manner they wish to reveal it). This way, the relations that an audience will make will (hopefully) be much more authentic and they won’t think we’ve constructed a narrative world for them.