The End – Studio Reflection

 

In what ways do you hope your screenings/exhibited/screened work (whether individual or group produced) engaged its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio? 

 

I hope that the films we produced for this semester in our group were able to convey some of the key aspects of the studio. Trying to create a group project, I guess in this case two, during a pandemic where we weren’t able to actually converse in person and get things done that way was rather tricky. As complex as working within a group during a pandemic was, it only allowed me to further develop my skills in being adaptable to sudden change and work more collaboratively with others, which is essentially a big part of the essence of this studio.

In terms of the studio’s key concerns, the poem film and essay film each hold elements of non-representational theory (a theory that I’m beginning to make a lot more sense of) in different ways. The poem film, whilst housing 99% found footage, only shows one distinguishable human face, the rest of the selected clips showing movement or stasis to help portray the words of the poem.

The studio’s namesake of soft choreography, along with phenomenology, is also brought into consideration in both films as the audience can interpret them however they please. There’s something very interesting in the essay film because, for the most part, the audience is unable to see what we’re looking at – they’re not privy to the memories that we’re coming to realise and it may leave them wondering about their own memories.

 

Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it into a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why?

 

I feel like, for me personally, there would’ve been a few things that I would’ve changed about the final products if given the opportunity and resources. I would love to further develop the soundscapes of each film, potentially adding some soft background music for ambience, incorporating it into the background of the essay film, as just having the voiceover didn’t sit right with me – there is a lot that could be done with this including making our own music from scratch (somehow), or combining elements from various creative commons songs or sound effects. In the essay film also, I think that using some extra footage aside from just ourselves, such as found footage, could’ve worked effectively also. In terms of the poem film, I would’ve liked to dive a bit deeper into getting our own footage, but unfortunately, COVID restrictions didn’t allow for that to occur. All things considered though, I’m happy with the works that we were able to produce in the end, it was a welcomed challenge!

 

From your studio, reflect on an aspect of two other students/group’s media work on the website in terms of specific insights they produced about a key idea addressed by the studio?

 

From the poem films, I found that I quite enjoyed tumtum jubjub snickersnack’. It was quirky and imaginative and held a different tone to the other poem films, which I liked. The use of pets and props within the film was fun, and Harry’s ‘character’ added a layer of comedy. The use of both colouring and sound was used effectively to help showcase the story of the Jabberwocky, a lot of the sounds allowing for the idea of phenomenology to come through. It was quite whimsical and fantastical, which is the feeling that their group might’ve been going for. 

One of my favourite essay films was ‘From Inside The Hive’. The written accompaniment for the piece came before the film and was definitely an effective precursor – it was well written and a really good introduction for what was to come. The soundscape of the film drew me in from the very beginning and the voiceover narration was thoroughly interesting and engaging to listen to. This essay stood out to me most I feel because not only was it different from the rest, but it was incredibly well made and engaged with the studio’s key concepts well in terms of phenomenology, non-representational theory and soft choreography.

 

For the other studio website, you engaged with,  describe a key idea that you think the finished media/studio work communicated with reference to a specific example (i.e. a particular individual/group work)of the assessment asks you to submit a reflective and critical piece of writing which draws on the material from your individual blog in order to provide a summative statement about your learning throughout the studio experience

 

The studio I engaged with was ‘Getting Into Character’. I watched each of the films and really enjoyed all of them. One film that I think stood out to me in the way that it was created was ‘AHhhh!’. In the description, Bridgette O’Byrne, the film’s creator, said that “‘AHhhh!’ is a film about a spider and a girl that doesn’t like spiders.” The response to the studio’s ideas of ‘character’ and what that means was intriguing and I think that by having the two inner monologues of both Melvin and Julia allowed the viewing audience to enjoy a playful depiction of what their own thoughts might be when seeing a spider, but also how the spider feels.

The different editing and filming techniques used such as filters and POV shots were great, and the internal dialogue from each of the characters combined with facial expressions/acting allowed the film to stand out to me – the adorable animations definitely helped too and I thought it added an extra layer to the film by introducing a different type of world.

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