Monthly Archives: April 2014

Week 8 lecture, Media 1

Korsakow clips mean nothing on their own, they gain meaning through their connections to other clips.

Filtered through the subjectivity of the maker. Doesn’t have to be grounded in reality. It’s all about the voice of the filmmaker. The essay and its relationship with experience. Documentary is all non-fictional cinema. Essay films are a category within documentary. Not so much telling you what to think as an invitation to think with the creator. Exploratory as it is a thinking through of a … who knows what.

Style and genre differ. Genre has specific qualifiers that make it a specific genre, styles have different elements that are similar but can fit into different genres. Genre is more about content than how you make it go about. Style is about what it is about. Our Korsakow films can be any genre, but the style is important.

We cannot know what our intent is. Intent does not survive anything. Parody and satire undermine intent. Intent counts for nothing.

Lighting Class, Film 1

I am really excited by the fact that the lights are easier than expected to set up and operate. As a videographer who uses natural lighting for all of my work (as a low budget events videographer must) I was used to making do and working with what was there. The idea that I can manipulate lighting, and quite easily, is really exciting and opens up so many possibilities. I know that soft lighting is really dreamy and easier to work with, but I really like the theatrical possibilities of using direct, hard lighting. Films such as Sin City and The Graduate did it so well!

Self Portrait as a List

DSC_4520

(I have no idea why this is sideways, the original file is the right way up and when I tried re-inserting it after adjusting the photo it did the same thing.)

Here’s a list that I made as a self portrait, following the advice from the reading where the purpose of the list is to evoke an idea or an emotion rather than a narrative and meaning. It is similar to the lists in the Lists as Art post, and I really like it. I think our group Korsakow project should be similar to this in theory.

The best Korsakow reading so far, week 7

This was the best reading so far, it inspired many ideas and my desired approach to the group Korsakow assignment. I am now thinking that rather than create some kind of story or some kind of meaning, I want to create a poetic experience. The aim is “evocation and experiential knowing” not a hard and firm meaning, which is what my rational mind fought for when it came to the abstract and ambiguous Korsakow medium.

This reading finally made me understand how it isn’t about information or story; it’s about the experience. In my discussion of the last reading here I argued that even linear films are experiential, but now I realize that it is in an entirely different way. It is aesthetically experiential and guided by plot, information and meaning. Korsakow films are entirely about the feelings that they evoke, the emotional experience. A logical and informative interpretation is not necessary and in most instances not even desired.

Lists as Art

In order to compliment this week’s Media 1 reading, I looked into the art of lists, or lists as art. As mentioned in a previous reading, lists are considered naïve compared to traditional literature because they lack narrative and story. However, this doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable or beautiful.

I read this article about artists and their lists, unrelated to their art

And this list of artists who use lists in their art

It was interesting because the lists say so much about the people who write them, and in my opinion are more personal even than a story written by these artists might be. This because they are true, they are not fiction. Lists are compiled by what is chosen to display and what is chosen not to display. You can tell a lot about a person, or an artist by what they choose to list and what they do not.

Week 6 Reading Media 1

An interesting point to this reading was the fact that digital interactive documentaries are limited as much as they are innovated by technological advances. In this way works become outdated and not accessible anymore as online languages change.

Another point is that Korsakow stories are “contemplative, interpretive and explorative” rather than “propulsive.”

I would argue that Adrian Miles and the writer are wrong, and that even linear narratives are experience based, not only information based. I also think they’re rather interpretive works.

“Works that challenge easy consumption of ideas…” Does this statement infer that all works that are difficult to understand are challenging the easy consumption of ideas. And what is wrong with this easy consumption of ideas, what is wrong with clarity and transparency? Even metaphor and symbolism are easier ideas to consume (for example in literature) than many ideas represented in Korsakow works. The ideas are ambiguous. Difficult and potentially not even there, and therefor audience-constructed.

Behind the Candelabra

I watched this movie almost by accident, I had nothing to do and was procrastinating wildly when I found it on my housemate’s hard drive and gave it a play.

I belong to Gen Y. A generation that is so used to hypermedia that we refuse to pay attention for more than two minutes to anything we stumble across on the web. So naturally, I found myself skimming through the movie.

I watched this semi-non-fiction, fictional narrative, in a non-linear way. It was an interesting way to go about it. Completely different to the Korsakow project that I created and the ones we viewed. Those were not narratives, they were lists. The interface guided the user between objects on a list, whereas in the movie I guided myself between different stages of a story. It didn’t matter that they weren’t in order.

This I think would be the only way to effectively tell a story through a Korsakow project. Rather than trying to tell a narrative, take different stages in a story. It needs to be a story such as the exploration of the deterioration of a relationship, where the cause and effect aren’t necessarily the most important thing, more rather, the beginning status and the end status are important and different events that show how the protagonists got there.

I now have an idea for a Korsakow fiction project where it explores one person’s life through a diary. Each clip having a date but the viewer not having the opportunity to watch them in order, only relatively randomly. So you can explore someone’s journey not from start to finish but from random state to random state and piece together their personality gradually. I think it’s a great idea and could work fictionally or non-fictionally if you were to use a real person and a real visual diary, or to create a person and their story through fiction.

Week 7 Classes Media 1

Because I enjoy doing it.

You’ll never really excel at anything- to the best of your ability, unless you enjoy doing it for the sake of doing it. No exterior motivators will motivate you as much as the pure enjoyment of doing that thing.

 

Group dynamics are important.

Try to establish who enjoys doing what.

 

When brainstorming, don’t filter. Judge later, not initially. 

The Korsakow project is more about telling a non-linear story than the content. This is hard for me to get my head around. I try to think of really clear meanings and stories rather than the abstract types that Korsakow needs. Brainstorming for this will lead to some weird possibilities.

Behind the Candelabra

I watched this movie almost by accident, I had nothing to do and was procrastinating wildly when I found it on my housemate’s hard drive and gave it a play.

I belong to Gen Y. A generation that is so used to hypermedia that we refuse to pay attention for more than two minutes to anything we stumble across on the web. So naturally, I found myself skimming through the movie.

I watched this semi-non-fiction, fictional narrative, in a non-linear way. It was an interesting way to go about it. Completely different to the Korsakow project that I created and the ones we viewed. Those were not narratives, they were lists. The interface guided the user between objects on a list, whereas in the movie I guided myself between different stages of a story. It didn’t matter that they weren’t in order.

This I think would be the only way to effectively tell a story through a Korsakow project. Rather than trying to tell a narrative, take different stages in a story. It needs to be a story such as the exploration of the deterioration of a relationship, where the cause and effect aren’t necessarily the most important thing, more rather, the beginning status and the end status are important and different events that show how the protagonists got there.

I now have an idea for a Korsakow fiction project where it explores one person’s life through a diary. Each clip having a date but the viewer not having the opportunity to watch them in order, only relatively randomly. So you can explore someone’s journey not from start to finish but from random state to random state and piece together their personality gradually. I think it’s a great idea and could work fictionally or non-fictionally if you were to use a real person and a real visual diary, or to create a person and their story through fiction.