The Remote Journey is over, or has it just begun?

I just need to start off by saying I’m really really proud of the way we pulled off our seminar!! It was a success!! As a group we were super organised and excited and ready to share our concept and guests with the public and our peers. Aside from the minor emergency evactuation interruption in the middle of it,  I feel like it went really well and everyone would have walked out at the end knowing more about the TV industry than they did when they walked in. That was the goal anyway.

So I was excited that my backdrop idea was being used, Bec created it and it looked awesome. I also came up with he idea to have the theme songs playing whilst we ushered the audience in, just to add to the feel of the atmosphere that we were going for. I think this worked well! I put together the playlist and created the interactive theme song game for the audience, which I think was successful also in getting people to pay attention and physically participate in our seminar.

Now onto the set – I worked closely with Tiffany and Bec and together we sourced all of the props and things we needed to make the stage look the way we imagined it to from the first brainstorming session. Tiff was really great and brought along a bunch of old TV’s, and we created the mini ‘dining table’ out of said TV’s and a sheet of glass. We wanted the setting to look authentic and creative and I was honestly really happy and proud when we set it up and it looked so close to what we first imagined it to. The Chairs for the guests and our host were sourced from the RMITV studios, we originally wanted it to be a couch to add to the whole ‘living room’ effect, but I feel as though the chairs were super fitting and gave the guests their own platform and space.

Overall I am so happy with how it all turned out, our guests were amazing and insightful and it all kind of came together cohesively and naturally. The TV team were all great to work with and I feel as though my ideas were utilised and my own personal input definitely helped put everything together.

I had fun and I hope everyone who attended enjoyed the seminar!

SEMINAR WEEEK!

It’s week 6 and our TV seminar; ‘A Remote Journey’ is on Friday! I’m actually really excited for it, I feel like our group is super organised and has worked really well together over the past few weeks getting guests together, creating the format, script and coming up with the overall setting and staging. Tiffany, Bec and I have been working hard on the set design and catering. The main concept for our set was decided upon 2 weeks ago and I’m excited to create it and make it come to life on Friday.

My idea for a backdrop of an open window is being used – The open window is to create the feeling that we are in a lounge room! If we set i tup right on Friday i think it has the potential to look really awesome and create the atmosphere we are aiming for.

Media 6 – Week 4

So this week we worked quite well as a team and some big decisions regarding our seminar were discussed in a big group meeting. The format of our seminar, organisation of food, and most importantly guests, were some of the things discussed.

On my on personal end, I worked with Bec and Tiffany in the first stages of set design and props. We discussed the concept of making our stage area look like a suburban living room, where our panel of guests would be seated in font of a window, looking out to the audience as if the audience were a tv screen that they were watching. We all really liked this idea and began trying to think of particular props and things that we could use to create this kind of atmosphere.

Still working on it, but hopefully it turns out pretty great!!

 

Week 3 – Media 6

Hi!

S0, for this semester I am in the TV seminar group amongst the Epic Journey seminar series. This week we have begun a Facebook group and been discussing many options for our ‘Remote Journey’ seminar. The particular roles available to us have been talked of and we are in the process of splitting up what needs to be done, both in the pre production phase and the production of the day.

I have put my name down to be a part of the Marketing and/or Props design and decoration crews. I have also expressed my interest in being part of the video crew for the day of our seminar.

That is all the progress I have for you right now!!

Yay media 6!

Analysis & Reflection #4 – Q3

Watching this, I really love the way the people watching is done between the traffic. The traffic raging past the individuals being focused on make sit look quite poetic and just simply nice. The shots done with a long lens emphasise the distance between the people and the observer, which I think makes it even more interesting to watch! The diversity of people being shown is clear and the shots are just constructed really well! I really like the smooth edits also, they work with the camera movement to help keep the focus on the people in frame.

This entry was posted on September 17, 2014, in FILM-TV2.

Analysis & Reflection #4 – Q4

The week 6,7,10 reading ‘The Art Of Documentary’ was quite intriguing to me. The whole idea that a documentary film documents a version of reality, a manipulated reality, has always interested me. The very beginning of this reading discusses the way in which documentary filmmakers are ‘not the surveillance cameras in the supermarkets’  – That even though they are trying to capture an authentic as possibly piece, manipulation has to occur. Even before the camera starts rolling, the aesthetic decisions to do with mis-en-scene, lighting, focal length, etc, all play a role in steering the footage away from reality, with these decisions creating a version of the reality that the camera is trying to capture. From viewing participatory, to observational, to poetic documentaries, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is not. The audience can be deceived into believing a reality, when the truth is, the filmmaker is going to shoot and edit their documentary in the way that they want to tell the story. This again brings it away from true reality.

Analysis & Reflection #4 – Q2

These are some keyboard shortcuts I age never used when editing with Premiere:

    Paste Attributes Opt+Cmd+V

This shortcut could be really important when editing our documentary. In order to colour match and grade all of our footage so that it aesthetically looks appealing and like it all flows really well. Last semester I was not a hands on part of the colour grading editing of our short film, so this shortcut could help me if we need it for this semesters editing!

  Find… Cmd+F

This shortcut would be hugely useful for finding our shots/footage/sound/titles etc, in a fast manner. Saving time on looking for things!

Save Cmd+S

This is a completely obvious keyboard shortcut that everyone should probably know, but even thought we know it, I know that we tend to forget to use it as often as we should! Saving is important, so this shortcut is really really important to us when editing!

  Edit Original Cmd+E

This is another keyboard shortcut that I had no idea existed. But I feel like this would be useful when wanting to edit a clip that has already been edited, without changing that edit?

This entry was posted on September 17, 2014, in FILM-TV2.

Analysis & Reflection #4 – Q1

In the beginning of this clip form Anna Broinowski’s 2007 film, Forbidden Lies, the audio is a mixture of folly sounds and music/song. The sound effects placed within the musical element provide a dramatised version of events. The audio then goes into a voice over narrative of the  women being interviewed. This interview is layered with sound effects such as the typing on the computer, the sound of coins, and other sounds that have been added to enhance the effect of the role-plays. This sound could possibly be folly audio recorded after filming, or it could have been sourced from somewhere else. I’m not completely sure…

This entry was posted on September 17, 2014, in FILM-TV2.

Abstract Exercise!

Whilst attempting to edit the footage and sound I had captured and recorded in previous weeks, it became apparent what the concept ‘finding order in the random’ really meant. The footage I had to work with did not really go with the sounds I had and vise versa, but I tried to come up with a kind of context to base the short film on. I relied on repetition of shots, mostly because they were the best and most usable that I had, but also to try and push the main point of my random story accross to anyone who views it. My intention was to create a documentary based on the concept of isolation vs nature and freedom. The whole idea that a big building with bars over the windows holds this person inside. While nature runs and flows thorugh life outside, this person inside is trapt and cannot leave to experience it.

The qaulity of my sound recordings was pretty good, it was clear, not distorted, and sounded quite natural. However, with my visual footage, some of it was quite over exposed. In saying this though, most of the footage was usable in my short abstract documentary! When actually out recording the sounds, I found it useful as I was never really very confidant with sound recording. Whilst recording these sounds, I learnt to listen more carefully to my surroundings, and to work with the mixer once again. Furthermore, as I stated, this excercise made me think about the way I could possibly put together footage that wasn’t really supposed to go together in order to make sence. I think I worked with what I had and tried my best to come up with a theme/context for my random short film.

 

Abstract Exercise – FilmTV2 from Shannen Carlton on Vimeo.

This entry was posted on August 14, 2014, in FILM-TV2.

Analysis & Reflection #3 – Question 2

As a student who studied ‘True lies’ last semester, it is really cool to step into the shoes of the documentary maker, and try to work with all the things I analysed while watching documentary films last semester. The reading entitled Documentary: The Margins of Reality talks of many of the misconseptions I had with the difference, and fine line, between fiction and non-fiction films. As it discusses, many people see any dramatization in a documentary style film as being a negative aspect – something that tips the film that is claiming to provide an insight into reality, over to the side of fiction. To this though, I say that documentaries claim to provide an insight into a version of reality. Everyone has their own perception of the world, and obviously, their own perception and veiws when it comes to issues, people, places, events, etc. This personalised view of things can be downplayed in documentary films, but that doesn’t mean the intention behind it is not still there. A documentary filmmaker will inevitably create the film that they see reflects the ideas and values that they want to push accross to their audience most. If this requires dramatisation, so be it. The use of dramatisation just hypes up the issue/topic, and helps portray the point in a way that might be more appealing and/or interesting. This is the main point I liked from the reading, and I feel like too many people have the idea that dramatisation in documentary just takes away from the non-fiction aspect, whereas I feel that it can definitely ad to the hype of the non-fiction aspect.

This entry was posted on August 13, 2014, in FILM-TV2.