May 2014 archive
The feedback we received from our second and more improved prototype was great. The class enjoyed the interface design and background image, especially that the edges blur out into the surrounding black. Jasmine said that the background image in the circular shape made it appear to be a balloon or a bubble of fun and celebration which adds to the theme of our film.
The class said that our balanced background and interface was more engaging, however they would like to see more vibrant and colourful clips as many of our current clips are dark. Jasmine also asked us why we had included vision of a hummer and Crown casino, and we explained our three different clusters and that we will include more everyday celebrations to add to that particular cluster so that the pattern becomes clear rather than having just a couple of clips that appear random.
The chosen text thread was received well, however there was a consensus to move it from below the thumbnails to above the main frame so that it doesn’t distract the eye from the main clip playing. Another suggestion was to add more lyrics from a different song to add more ambiguity; this was also something that we discussed as a group as there aren’t enough lines of lyric in the song for 60 clips.
26/5/14
What each of us did in our meeting on Monday:
Tom – put film prototype together and include more clips.
Torika – Song lyric suggestions and added more clips.
Me – Song lyric suggestions chosen for text thread, worked on 1st draft of the essay and discusses keywords and clusters.
Plan going forward:
Another meeting on Monday 2nd June to add more clips (hopefully final). All of us will add.
I will have another draft of the essay done.
Choose another lyric to add to the project to add more depth and so that there is enough of a text thread for 60 clips.
Tom or Torika will edit the clips so that the volume levels are consistent.
Consider Sandra’s lecture “Directing Actors” and describe at least a couple of points that you took away from it (even if you’re not the director).
Director Sandra Schibberas’ lecture on directing actors was insightful and interesting. Having been to theatre and acting school herself, she is confident in working with actors and communicating with them about exactly what she wants for a particular scene.
Her first important piece of advice was to ensure that you cast actors that understand the story of your film. She explained that casting a great actor who has the look you want and has a great voice won’t be the right fit for your film if they don’t understand or grasp the story you are trying to tell. Ensuring that they understand the genre of the film and demonstrating an awareness of changes in their character’s mood or perspective is also very important.
In regards to our film ‘Getting By’, we were very fortunate to cast a fantastic actor, Kostas, as our main character. He immediately understood the genre of the film as being a drama and we knew right from the first audition that he understood his character Arthur’s emotional arc as well as the story of our film.
Her advice was great in that she emphasized the importance of preparation and rehearsals before the shooting of your film. She recommended that when rehearsing with actors, you shouldn’t get bogged down in technicalities or specifics of movement. I brought this advice to our rehearsal with Kostas and when he became flustered with some of the dialogue, both Torika and I encouraged him to find his own way of expressing the same emotion.
Getting any and all questions from the actors prior to the day of shooting is also integral to ensuring that the shoot runs smoothly. Sandra recommended this as on the day of filming, the crew needs to be able to talk to the director at any moment to solve any issues or ensure that they are setting up the shots the way the director wants. This is something that we could’ve done a bit better on our own film as preparing the actors for the following scene took up a lot of the directors time, which did put more pressure on the crew.
Sandra also advised that you should always give encouraging feedback after every take so that the actor/s feel positive about their experience. Being aware of how you are communicating to the actor/s is important and trying to influence them to think that your idea for their delivery is actually theirs will make them even more positive about their performance.
In this clip screened in the lecture from the Coen brothers’ ‘Blood Simple‘ describe what is happening in terms of the edits specifically in terms of the audio and video. Also name the different kinds of audio you can hear.
This excerpt from ‘Blood Simple’ demonstrates that when editing together a conversation between two characters, there are more interesting ways to go about it. Rather than always cutting to vision of the person speaking, showing the other characters’ reaction to the information they are being told can provide an insight into the character’s motivations and emotions. For example; the hitman’s anxiousness to be paid by the man who hired him (Julian Marty) and not be found out that he has faked the photos is highlighted as the camera focuses on his reaction to the Julian’s dialogue and him being sick. This is also used to show Julian’s reaction of being sick after seeing the photographs and hearing from the hitman that the kill has been carried out.
The sounds implemented in this scene are all diegetic, or a part of the story world even if not all of them are onscreen. There is no added music or other nondiegetic sound in the scene. The sound of the fish slapping the table is heard as well as crickets and the fan which are heard constantly throughout the scene. Noises coming from the street including sirens are heard. The chair creaking, envelope rustling, the lighter being used, cigarette being butted out, and footsteps are all included. Sliding the fish across the table, the creaking of the door opening, Julian being sick, flush of the toilet and running water are heard. The fly buzzing, safe being opened, pushing of the money across the table all lead up to the sound of the gun being cocked by the hitman and the subsequent echoed gunshot.
The edit of the vision to show Julian’s knowing and scared reaction to hearing the gun being cocked is well executed as it shows that he has realized that he has been played and is about to die.
Find the keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Premiere and note two or more functions that you’ve never used before that may be invaluable to editing.
One of the keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Premiere that would be really useful in editing is the shortcut for Ripple Delete which on Mac is Shift+Forward Delete, and is Shift+Delete on PC. When you’re adding clips to a sequence or have cut a clip and want it to snap to the previous clip so that you can watch the sequence continuously, this keyboard shortcut eliminates the empty video space between the two clips.
Another shortcut is Cmd+G (Mac) or Ctrl+G (PC) which is used for grouping clips in a layer. This means that if you want to apply the editing techniques to multiple clips you can do so without doing them individually.
Cmd+D (Mac) or Ctrl D (PC) is the keyboard shortcut for applying a video transition for a clip. This makes placing transitions between clips much more simpler and quicker as you can easily add the video transition at the playhead.
If anything good was going to come out of the now infamous elevator video of Solange Knowles’ fight with Jay Z, it was that suddenly the world noticed Bey’s younger sister. She might have had some recognition in the States, but her music was definitely not on the radar in Australia.
After freaking out like the rest of the world over the elevator incident, I immediately searched Solange on YouTube and was surprised to discover her refreshing style of music. A little bit of funk, hipster cool, the girl definitely has style as well as singing chops. In my opinion, she’s stepped out from her older sister’s shadow and owned her own spot in the music industry, creating interesting and catchy melodies and riffs that you can’t get out of your head.
Then there’s the cool as cucumber music videos which not only match her style, but are unique in their own right. ‘Lovers in the Parking Lot’ is by far my favourite, both musically and visually.
This webseries was created by one of my good friends from the Screenwriting Program. Now with a team of writers and creatives on board, we are continuing to produce more episodes that are becoming more and more funnier. Our team is called ‘The Drop Bear Dynasty’ with our goal being to create a channel of a variety of shows as well as producing other people’s shows under our banner. We hope to one day be up there with the likes of College Humour and Funny or Die.
‘Letters To Satan’ is our flagship show, which involves people writing to Satan via social media, and Satan answers these questions in his unique way. He tries to con the audience into believing that he can be trusted by them as he is giving them such ‘great’ advice, but really he is just trying to get them onside for his impending takeover of the world. He is so out of touch with the modern world, making the gags come naturally from his personality. It’s just as fun and lighthearted for us creatives as it is for the audience and we hope to continue to grow.
We recently entered the show into Melbourne WebFest, which is a competition for webseries, however we weren’t successful. We will continue to make the show better and produce more shows, and enter as many competitions and festivals that come our way.
Here is an example of the show; an episode that I wrote, directed and co-edited.
This is the most recent episode released, and is definitely my favourite so far! It’s a different format from what we have been used to writing and took a lot of hard work on the day to film as well as to edit. The guys did an amazing job on their episode.
The latest episode that I’ve written, directed and co-edited will be released shortly.
Here is an example of what I’ve been doing at my current internship at Goldeneye Media. I have been interning there for 8 weeks now and will be continuing over the mid-year break. I wrote the voice-over script for this video that they made for one of their biggest clients; real estate agency Kay & Burton. This video was sent out to clients and subscribers of the Kay & Burton report.
Kay & Burton Report, Episode 3 – Inside Story from Goldeneye Media on Vimeo.
This week’s reading discusses database documentaries by using modern examples and describing them in detail. The authors discuss the spatial montage and the power of juxtaposition as has been discussed in previous readings aswell.
One of the most interesting points for me was the discussion of the ‘Are You Happy?’ project. This question was posed in various cultural contexts, getting quite personal answers as well as universal responses. What is really interesting about this project is the inclusion of the twitter feed alongside the video, juxtaposing between the cosy feel of the video and the jarring twitter feed. When Jasmine suggested that we include a text thread for our major project, this project came to my mind. I will endeavour to research different poems, or even twitter threads about celebration to see what we as a group like and find interesting.
Another interesting project was the one focusing on how people feel. I found it really interesting as it has long been so difficult for researchers and scientists to find evidence of how people really feel as they usually don’t reveal their true feelings. This project gave an interesting insight into the true feelings of people and is something I will use as an inspiration.
The reading discusses traditional documentary and its claim of having a privileged relationship to social reality in the sense that what we are shown we are lead to believe. It is usually about trying to get the audience to take a stand and change how they behave in their everyday lives. This is unlike new database documentary which allows for much larger interpretation, and a more personal and subjective view on whatever the maker decides to film. The juxtaposing between clips as well allows for greater depth, and larger interpretation, as well as allowing the maker to be more ambiguous rather than stating their ’cause’ or rather not even needing a cause at all. The reading states that “documentary film in the twentieth century was as much about changing the world as it was observing it.” My question then is, can we as filmmakers continue to ‘change the world’ by creating Korsakow films?
“In 1926 John Grierson defined documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’.” I find this interesting as documentary since has taken a more subjective and argumentative approach to its material, consciously leaving out or exaggerating facts to make audiences take a particular stance. So this to me isn’t ‘actuality’. As Adrian has mentioned over the semester, by using Korsakow to document our observations we can create our own ‘actualities’. But is this really ‘actual’ as it is highly subjective? What makes something an actuality?
Tom, Torika and I presented our prototype for our K-film around celebration in today’s tute. It was received well, and we were fortunate that the other students and Jasmine were all willing to give us some great advice and feedback.
The clips varied in sound volume levels, which is something we need to fix and normalize across all of the clips. We were also given the advice to include more colourful and saturated clips to bring some variety and vibrancy to them. Our theme of celebration seemed to come across clearly to the audience which was good to see.
Another suggestion was to include a colourful or interesting background to our interface, so that it isn’t just black as it doesn’t support the theme of the film. Jasmine gave us some great suggestions, including creating an ambiguous text thread to link the clips together. She also suggested that we include more intimate and personal celebrations, showing more subjective views of celebrations rather than general celebratory events you would expect and that we included. She also suggested using stock footage of colourful Indian celebrations and of other cultures that we would find difficult to film on our own.
- If you could sum up everything you feel we should have learned this semester in one sentence, what would you say?
- What is the motivation for viewers/users to seek out interactive documentaries (idocs) or apps like “Mappiness” as opposed to trawling through the “sea of data” to view regular documentaries?
- In these types of interactive documentaries, do the same rules around ethics apply for filmmakers as they do in traditional documentary?
- Although video content on the web has opened doors for documentary filmmakers will it ever receive the same amount of coverage and praise as traditional documentary films?
When we were first given the task of filming videos on our phones to specific constraints per week for Integrated Media 1, the challenge seemed a bit daunting and frustrating as I spent a lot of time thinking about what I should film. As the weeks progressed, however, I began to let go of the pressure I was putting on myself to produce beautiful and interesting videos to the weekly constraints, and rather just ‘noticed’ the little things around me that I had always put in the background and put them in the limelight of my videos.
After completing my sketch film, I felt relieved that I had finally made a Korsakow film despite all of the hardships I faced when it came to using the program. As I couldn’t seem to get it to work at home on both Mac and PC computers, I spent my time after the tutorial finishing it in the library. My thumbnails wouldn’t line up with my main frame in the neat way I wanted them to, and I spent some time mucking around with changing the size of the thumbnails and the aspect ratio before it looked the way I wanted it to. Another problem I faced was that I couldn’t centre the text the way I wanted to, as how it looked on my interface editor was different to how it appeared when it was exported and played. This was the only problem I couldn’t seem to fix and settled on keeping it the way it was.
Although I was relieved to have the task well and truly behind me, I began realising just how much I missed filming and documenting my daily life, and the little beauties that I discovered. While I could of course continue making Vine videos, I found that having a constraint actually helped focus my attention on the things around me, for example; circular things, something fast, etc. I really missed showing only a part of a whole and filming something in a beautifully ambiguous way and so am now trying to focus my attention more each day and finding something I want to film. The main problem is doubting and questioning why I am filming this particular object. It definitely is a problem I continue to face and that Adrian has mentioned before; the narrative filmmaker being concerned with filming something perfect and with a purpose, rather than just documenting something that catches your eye, or even something just ordinary.
With our major group K-film, we have stuck to the constraint of ‘celebrations’ in order to help focus our attention on the clips we film. However, I still find myself doubting what I’m choosing to film and asking myself many questions of such as, ‘does this depict a celebration in the conventional way?’, ‘can I film something unconventional that still refers to a celebration?’, ‘will the audience understand our concept?’, ‘how will the audience feel when watching it?’ These questions I feel are unavoidable, but if I want to contribute to the project in the way I want I need to let go of my doubt and film as much as possible, and filter through the clips later on.