This week I played my biggest role in the team with the making of the film.

I was the DoP for the promotional video. I contributed ideas to the development of the video and also brought my camera equipment to be used in the filming. I filmed the video (other than the scenes in Building 80, where I was absent) and used creative direction to decide on many of the shots. I also contributed greatly to the editing of the film. Our group spent hours in the editing suites making the first cut of the film before the scene with Shelley was shot.

They’re not the best photos, but that’s me in the striper top with the camera.

I also was active on social media channels.

When I was very young I invented an imaginary world, called Exalfar I think, and I built the imaginary land out of sand in a small box with green food dye and sand for grass, and the people were sticks that I dug into the sand. I drew the people that lived in Exalfar and I day dreamed up stories about each of them. It lasted about a whole month, and it was probably my first introduction to (non-digital, basic) transmedia, although I didn’t know it.

My next would probably have been The Matrix. I loved it. I loved Neo and Trinity and my favourite character was Morpheus. I felt that I got it, and I got excited about it. I found the a few of the Animatrix films online and they were fascinating, they added to my understanding, but that was the extent of my journey into the transmedia aspect of the film and after being devastated by the second, I lost interest and didn’t see the third. I still love Hugo Weaving though.

I believe that Umberto is correct in his belief that cult films must be constructed from archetypes. They must be so familiar that it is easy to place yourself in the story, to become a character and extend the narrative. This is why I loved The Matrix, and why I created my own world from the story. It took the familiar, the world that I lived in and also the tropes that I had seen before numerous times in films. The martial arts, the serious guy in sunglasses, the long black jacket, the hand on the glass before Trinity was nearly hit in the phone booth.

I believe that the most successful transmedia objects would be cult objects. The expansion of a story into something like its own world, through different media and explored openly by fans of their own will, to great success, would make a fiction something of a cult object, as we can only assume due that it would become so beloved due to familiarity and simultaneous authenticity of the story itself.

We used the Fast Colour Corrector predominately because it is fast and precise.
The horror we wanted to mimic an early horror film, as seen in the above still from Dracula. To do this we went black and white, and tried different levels of contrast.
The comedy uses a much warmer, more saturated tone and is slightly softer due to the lack of shadows and also the lack of contrast boosting in post. We had trouble colour grading these shots because the window was way over exposed, naturally because the sunlight was streaming in. This wasn’t too much of an issue with the below shot because it lights up the scene well and the window doesn’t take up too much of the frame. With some basic colour correction (darkening and saturating the mid-tones) we were able to make this match the colour quality of the other shots.

This shot however was much more difficult as it is backlit and the window was fully blown out. This means that Gina’s face has an odd halo that doesn’t appear in any other shot and her skin tone was dull. We had to up the saturation and warmth of the skin tones in order to get this up to scratch but it is still not an aesthetically pleasing shot.Otherwise we were very happy with our colour grading and the obvious contrast between the two films.

I apparently had a flat out week the first week and didn’t get the Analysis done, therefore I do not have a written account of what I would like to get out of Film/TV 2 this semester. However, I do recall having a pretty shit time last semester and not managing to get a short film screened. I felt that while this experience taught me some valuable things (detailed here) I missed out on some technical elements of creating a drama.

I have to admit that I wasn’t keen on this semester’s group’s idea at first. Mainly because I knew I was going to have a tough semester out of uni and wanted to do something that was less work, which is what I developed my original idea of creating a poetic documentary about the people of Melbourne around.

Being bunched into the group of people that really had no one else to group with was the best thing that happened to me this semester. We created two short dramas, so I feel like I caught up on the practice that I missed last semester. And most importantly I learned that a good group can take anything and make it work.

I learned to voice my opinions, kindly and critically, whilst having an open mind. I learned to take every idea on board and try everything. I’m proud of the piece of work that we’re creating, and I feel that every person in our group is equally responsible for how it has turned out. I wasn’t stressed, because I knew that my group was there to back me up.

These are the main two points that I hoped for at the beginning of last semester, and things that I thought I’d failed at the end of last semester.

I’d like to come out of the course with a polished, semi-professional looking creative film piece that would improve my portfolio. I’d like to learn how to collaborate with other people well…

More than anything I’d like to do my best work. As in, to the best of my potential. I let lots of little things slide all the time, things that I know could be improved, out of laziness, or not wanting to say anything, and I want to stop doing it and start producing my best work.

I know that my technical ability is improved, and I’m thankful for that, but mostly I’m glad that I overcame these two hurdles. 

This is abit silly and I might ramble a bit, but I’m interested in how documentary makers manipulate the truth, and more importantly, why?

I took this from Megan Cunningham’s documentary, The Art of Documentary, the conversation with Haskell Wexler.

He states that he manipulates the truth in every element of film making, and that once something is filmed it is o longer reality, it is the “filmmaker’s reality.”

I wonder how one could film true reality, and all I could think of was undetectable cameras placed in random locations shooting constantly with no editing. But who would want to watch that? So what is the point in documenting reality? We manipulate it to make it more interesting, or to create context. Documentaries generally focus on something, so the documentary for example might focus on reality in the context of survivors of WWI, or would it focus on survivors of WWI in the context of reality? Super confusing. But my point is that documentaries don’t necessarily portray reality as it is. Reality is boring and we get enough of it. If I were to make a documentary on supermarkets, why watch a film of people in a supermarket when you can go there and experience the real thing? If I were going to make a documentary about supermarkets I would talk to people and find interesting elements and focus on those to create some kind of story worth experiencing. This would document real things that happen, but selectively, only showing some parts and not showing others.

I think the shots that get tossed is the more realistic footage, as it would be the boring stuff that we already know, that we don’t need to see again, that’s reality. And I’d be interested in seeing that, but then I wouldn’t because it wouldn’t be interesting. I think this would really just show us that in reality, when we’re not doing interesting things (and we can’t be all the time) all people are the same and therefore quite boring.

That’s kinda poetic though, something could probably be done with it. I’d love to one day collect off cuts from documentaries, see what got scrapped, and choose the most boring of all of it, and use that to make something.

Points taken:

• Got’ta get me one of those cool strollers
• Everything sounds better/more artistic in French
• Everything looks more artistic/contemplative/deep in black and white
• I can make a beautiful short film with “found” footage, that is footage of real things that isn’t staged, and my own voice
• Documentary can be creative and poetic
• People are weird and the face tells all and nothing
• The work is nice and I get it, but it’s kind of boring
• The chaotic cuts match well with the music that they’ve chosen, nice. I’ll take my tempo and rhythm of cuts into consideration when choosing music now
• I like the observational style of shooting, I feel as if I were really on that street, particularly when the camera follows a particular person from a distance. Super creepy though.
• Beautiful women always get the most attention and men are stupid because they give the beautiful women the most attention

Duplicate – Shift Cmd /

I’ve always just right hand clicked, this will save me a lot of time as I use this a lot in duplicating sequences and clips.

Render effects – Return

I have never rendered my effects in a clip before, I will now do this after using effects like Warp Stabiliser

Increase audio track’s height – Opt+ =

I’ve always clicked and expanded the audio channel like an idiot and dragged it up, it’s a pain in the ass. Never doing that again if I want the whole track lifted.

Slip tool – Y

Here I was using my mouse to click the side bar like an idiot.

The audio makes use of dialogue, SFX and music, in order to create a humorous contrast between the obviously false fiction of the book, and the truth as the journalist uncovers more and more lies.

The music at the beginning of the clip us used to emulate the ridiculousness of the love-story, and creates a dreamlike scenario. SFX are used in the transition from the dreamlike fantasty into reality, as a humorous quip, again poking fun at the ridiculousness of the ficticious story in ‘Forbidden Love’.

These special effects are used again in the documentary each time the journalist uncovers another false fact from the book, and is like a recurring theme reflecting the fantastical sounds of dramatical love stories as the SFX are reminiscient of the sound effects you’d hear in typical modern TV soap operas, particularly in non-western countries.

The dialogue was recorded in interviews and is obviously quite formal, set up and the diologue has had an element of preparation. In the scene where the journalist’s reading of the book overlaps the author reading the same lines, the journalist was obviously asked to read out that part. It again creates a contrast between the fantastical way in which the author portrays the book and the funny way in which the journalist regards it as bullshit.