Monthly Archives: May 2015

Conversations: Azim

A conversation with Azim

– Memory in fragments, thinking back to our past

– Voyeurism, memory of eavesdropping

– simultaneous individual experiences, our ability to relate two individual experiences or events. (consider Soviet Montage)

– I am the camera, its my pair of eyes

– knowing what is beyond the frame vs. letting yourself be the camera through the screen

– presenting reality. Reality TV ‘more representative’ of America than movies are

– Ways of Seeing – John Berger, picture worth a thousand words

– Image or words are just different and equal mediums that can be suitable for delivering certain concepts depending on what it is

– The Nature of the Physical World – Arthur Eddington in David Lynch Swerves by Martha P. Nochimson

– imagery, visual aesthetics limiting concepts or imagination or experience down to a 3 dimensional visual experience that is then flattened onto a 2 dimensional plane

– act of filming being related to the expectation to present it to others. Filming for others

– Obsession with coherence in watching a film. A film as one story, has to make sense. rather than every bit of seemingly unrelated experiences or events being a part of one film (LIFE).

– Life is boring, spontaneous, random

– Film is a part of reality, films or film culture makes up part of our reality

– “Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.” – Stan Brakhage.

– The camera changed the world not just historically, but in a more recent context, globalisation would be a slower process. Moving images and images in the social network, or information world.

– Without TV I wouldn’t be able to articulate my thoughts. (We should have mentioned how language affect our thinking process)

– It’s more realistic to think of media depictions of culture as “what American like to celebrate or value” or “what Japanese culture like to celebrate or value”

– Australian identity? Australian cinema?

– conversation gets into hippy territory…

Conversations: Mia/Amy/Maree

A conversation with Mia, Amy and Maree

– beautifying through the camera (exposure, angle, editing)

– never able to replicating real life

– unpredictability of filming in natural light

– seeing the events unfolding with one’s own eyes before responding with a camera

– film is essentially life with all the boring bits cut out

– a non real life, not mundane experience

Walk Scene Reflection

A conversation with Jess

Whilst piggybacking on Jess’s exploration of the walk scene, I have discovered how others have approached this research of methodology differently. Looking at Jess’s project and mine, our approaches are almost opposite in nature. She has set very clear goals and parameters in conducting her experiments as well as always being aware of keeping it simple; whereas my own experiments tend to revolve around an idea of aimlessness and curiosity, with no perceivable goals or perhaps even more questions. I think the most important discovery out of working with Jess was keeping a dialogue going between two minds, despite how different our projects are. In one way, this helps stimulate our reflective thought process, and have someone to give you more available feedback. On the other hand, we can provoke each other as we respond to each others’ discoveries or epiphanies with a fresh perspective along with our personal experiences.

After our first conversation, it inspired me to appreciate the dialogue more than just working with or assisting other filmmakers. This added a new tool for me to explore my topic with, and a new way of documentation.

Research: Performance test

Tested the Sony camcorder today for the live performance. It was much more than i expected. It is less wide and distorted than a gopro which means that people’s faces will be more prominent in frame as this work is about the camera and people.

Testing the equipment raised a few question:

Interact with people or deliberately gaze with no interaction?
closer crop or wider?
Static or zooming occassionally?
Landscape or portrait?

Methodologies: an Update/a working Reflection

The beginnings of 4.2

After several weeks of experimentation and observations, it is time to review progress.

There have been several changes to the original proposed method and process of research in week 8.

Since then, I have conducted several exercises exploring the ways of seeing and filming and moving as well as the implications of their relationships.

I have also observed several classmates on their research projects as well as other productions outside of class. During these events, I observe and compare their methodologies to my own developing ways of working. This led to a further curiosity of whether or not they also contemplate about the meaning of the act of filming and the relationship between observing as a personal experience and the decision to frame or film something with the eye of the camera. With this in mind I will be conducting some recorded conversations with the people have been working with to generate discourse surround this topic.

An epiphany I had early last week was that rather than creating a scene or just written reflection, a compilation of my journey exploring the different perspectives on the act of filming would be a more suitable documentation. The experimental short clips and conversations with other filmmakers will be the main source materials for this final statement. It may also feature some reflections or quotes I have previously posts as well as some footage from other people’s projects which I have participated in.

Whilst looking at experimental films in another class, a quote from a reading intrigued me deeply and also began to answer the many questions I have been thinking about this semester:

“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.” – Stan Brakhage.

Throughout the first half of this semester I have been constantly trying to project my own living experiences on screen (or more accurately in this case, recreate it through the act of filming). I saw the camera as only a lifeless tool that assisted my intentions (to communicate a sense of oneness with nature and a less human centered worldview through relationships with non human characters). But it wasn’t until coming across Stan Brakhage’s idea of defining the camera as a non-human perspective that we often take for granted. It has its own perspective, sees things that we are too limited to see. His film Window Water Baby Moving (1959) presented the events of a birth from a neutral perspective yet portraying a realistically fragmented reality that is truer to our experiences in life than the conventional device of filmic continuity.

As well as a video compilation and a final written statement, I will also like to do a performance piece that summarises the relationship I have had with the camera.

Research: Walk Scene

A conversation with Jess

This week, I have decided to join Jess’s in her investigation of the walk scene. Although we will be investigating different aspects of the exercise, it is a great way to keep the conversation going as well as making the organizing of a shoot a lot more manageable.

Research: Movement

Following the first scene I posted that initiated this research, here are some of the self conducted investigations of movement:

Dancing Pedestrians – This exercise was originally aimed to film the movement of the escalator. It was one of the most uninteresting footage I shot when I first reviewed it on my phone. However, when transferred to the computer, the file was registered upside down. It suddenly became an amazing study of our physical movement from an unfamiliar perspective. We are so used to watching each step fall downward toward the earth below that watching this in any other direction seem almost like floating or defying gravity.
Streetlights – an attempt to capture the movement and pacing of a car through its relation to its surroundings. The frequency of the streetlights provide a rhythmic indication of the car’s speed. The effects are also seen in the unstable handheld gestures of the camera as it is subjected to the physical vibrations of the cars movement.
Sun Dance 1 & Sun Dance 2 – after 5 minutes of wandering around with a camera in my room to some music, I found something to focus on. The music, my movement, and the visual that was captured in the camera merged into one performance that felt like it had a purpose. The result was mesmerizing and meditative. One of the videos is played backwards. It surprised me how the music sounded just as melodic and emotional when played backwards and also provided another level of interpretation to the piece.
Cat project scene – Over the week I also assisted on a project outside of class. The project was a story from a cat’s perspective. Although I was volunteering to act and provide location, I also participated behind scenes in working out how the ‘cat’ was suppose to move around. It was a unique exercise in trying to understand, mimic and capture its liveliness without showing any part of the cat itself. I chose to include this shot because it also captured an unexpected technique I may use in the future. When the camera is inside the box, it captured the pin hole image of the exterior world inside as I moved around. This was a unique way of capturing movement that we accidentally discovered.

As I am investigating movement in these exercises, some of the videos have been muted so that the viewer can focus on the visual movements in frame.

These exercises may be inspiring and creative endeavors, however, they are no more useful than poetry. I hope that in my next lot of investigations, more methodological process will be discovered.

Found Scene: Door Scene

The coverage in this scene was focused on synchronization of performance and spatial interaction. The interaction with doors are the key element that drive the plot and performances. Cine only sees Van because she closed the door behind her. When Van crashes into the door after following Cine, the noise this made disturbed X, which leads to their encounter. The camera is placed behind the door which X enters. When X opens the sliding door, the viewer’s attention follows X as he enters the center of the scene. However, it is soon obvious that the sliding back of the door acts as a count down, causing tension as we may no longer hear or be part of what is happening in the scene behind the door. The rush against time is relieved as the brief conversation ends with a synchronous closing of all doors.

Week Eight: Reflection/Epiphany

This week I attempted to investigate camera as movement.

“In the first volume of Cinema Deleuze reclassifies classical narrative filmmaking as a cinema of movement-images – naturally structured stories in which we do not usually feel the attitude of the camera (for example, the film will normally simply follow and react to character’s movements), and where edit shifts are there to deliver an indirect (realistic) image of time, time in its empirical form.” – Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy

A few ideas came to mind…

camera being pushed around by natural causes, moved by unintentional physical influences.
perhaps the camera doesn’t capture the moving object visually or photographically, but through the physical influences of its movement on the camera. This led to the next idea.
A dancer/performer with a camera strapped on in front or attached to them as they move and react to music. The dancer is never seen on camera.
a character sets up a camera ready to film, walks away, different characters come in, without predetermination, interferes/moves the camera around and displaces it or alters its visual settings.

…but nothing practical or solid that I could really shoot a scene on.

What I realised this week is that the research I have set for myself was inspired by an aimless experiment which led to a discovery of subconscious methodologies upon reflection. And what through me down the rabbit hole was the attempt to design the experiment by determining its outcome before conducting it. Therefore, the investigation from now on can not be “designed”. Perhaps the experiments are focused, not on such discoveries, but on technical/narrative/conceptual investigations. Another thought is to assist and participate in other classmates’ shoots to study their methodologies, whilst working out my own without having too much concern with narrative or the end product.

Nevertheless, and feeling rather desperate, I shot, with my phone, whatever movement I could capture.

Week Eight: Research Proposal Feedback

My research proposal

Objective:

In my research I will be exploring the role of the camera and the implications of the act of filming.

Producing our own scene last week have set my investigation on an early start. I realized in the filming process, or during the process of ‘decoupage’, that I started to develop my own set of film ‘rules’ that are based on how I interpret my experience of reality. In this scene, the camera is used as a representation of the act of observation – playing my consciousness or awareness of my sense of self within the scene, as well as the absence of it when I am doing the observing upon others. Having established this representation, I then applied them to the different events or shots in the narrative depending on their nature. Whether it was a personal observation of another individual or just consciously observing my own self, a simple task quickly became an exploration of ontology and a question of the nature or act of observing anything.

Noticing the way I think about and respond to films, I find that I am generally trying to make sense of or rationalise the existence of a camera:

Camera as perspective
Camera as movement?
Camera as a participant/performance
Camera as an omniscience/omnipresence
Whether it is depicted as a physical object recording or baring photographic witness to the events in front of it or an invisible window through which the viewer is looking.

This led to an epiphany of how I can explore my research through methodological experiments.

Schedule:

The language I develop over the next weeks will reveal how I seek to interpret the world as I create them.

I will first develop a series of filming exercises.
Through observation and reflection on the exercises, I will set up a list of my own devices that expresses and represents implications about the characters’ or my own experience of reality.

This list will be applied to the events or acts in the final scene according to express what they indicate.

So far, what the exercises will be is undetermined. But I have come up with a few possible directions that can further explore method (or the filmmaking process itself) as an act of creating meaning or documenting the experience of reality:

Covering an unscripted scene that is dictated by the firsthand experience of a place or event
Composing a narrative dictated by any kind of sensual data of a piece of non-lyrical music or the space in a building etc.
Writing down an action or event that occurred each hour/day/week etc. to form a story that is condensed and flows continuously in time.
I am also open to work off found scripts or something anyone else has written.

Outcome

This list of ‘codes’ is not a canon to how to use or communicate with film language, and it may not be an absolute treatment of reality and neither are the more institutional and traditional ways of filmmaking. It is merely a personalized and individualized artistic expression that may potentially be a way of consistently expressing my own experience of reality.

Last week all focus was on our proposal presentation. It was interesting to have teachers and mentors from other different courses to sit in on our project proposals since everyone is interested in conducting research in different areas. It was very helpful to get feedback from a diverse panel.

Some of the things that were mentioned in my feedback:

Dziga Vertov’s writings
documentary or drama
heightened reality or fiction

The next step from this point is to set up some exercises. I also plan to participate/assist in other’s exercises in order to observe and compare our different approaches to methodology. As my own research is mainly to do with reflecting after filming a scene, I have no need to form a story or construct an actual scene myself at this point anyway. Also, working with others keep my non structural investigation grounded as it may easily become too conceptual and irrelevant to methodology in the end.