DEVELOPMENT POST 4 (PB3)

This week we commenced the production process of our project. I am not going to pretend that it has not been challenging as we encountered a few roadblocks along the way. However, moving from the conceptual stage of this project to actually creating has allowed me to further develop my understanding of what we are trying to achieve. I can often find myself stuck in the conceptual stage of projects in the sense that I struggle to realise my creative concepts for online media. For the last project I wasn’t able to construct the project in the way in which I wanted to, which consequently caused me to feel a disconnect between myself and the final actualised project. However, we approached developing this project through an understanding of the software we would use and the interface we intend to create for the numerous media fragments.

I really enjoyed the process of filming the media fragments for our project. While we had pre-planned the possible fragments of media or SNUs we could shoot, we found ourselves inspired by the actual location. Also some of what we had pre planned simply was not easily possible to film, such as scanning items in the supermarket – no one wanted to buy anything and we would have to get the shot in one take which is incredibly difficult. We did not have one person filming, rather we shared the filming. Choosing to share filming was an interesting decision considering the need for accuracy in shots, particularly those of the same action in different locations. However, sharing the filming actually helped us as other group members would remember if a shot was taken from a certain angle or distance and this helped us to recreate the shots of actions in the various spaces.

In terms of the post production side of creating the project, following discussion with Hannah on Thursday we decided to have two interfaces. One being the initial interface we developed early on, with one landscape shot and the six close ups surrounding it. The audience could then click on one of the close ups, and the relevant close up from another location would come up. From here the audience could either click through the close ups from the current location or click on the close up from another location to bring up the second interface. This interface has two screens, one being the close up and the other being the landscape shot from the related location. The audience could then click on the landscape to be brought back to the first interface with the relevant landscape and continue this process.

However, creating this using the Korsakow software was actually relatively difficult. Nagini did majority of the editing using the software, however we all tried to help her in this process. We knew from the start that what we wanted to create on Korsakow was possible, as both Mia and Nagini had previous experience with Korsakow. I think the most difficult thing was troubleshooting the issues in Korsakow. While on the one hand Korsakow is relatively user friendly as it does not require coding, if you run into an issue it can become difficult to figure out how to fix it. Moreover, we had a large number of SNUs which also made the process a bit more complex.

In the words of Adrian Miles cited in Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries “[Korsakow] proposes a reading and making of the world that is not pre-determined nor fully controllable, for maker, reader, narrator, or the work” (Wiehl 2016).

While it has been testing utilising the software at times, I can acknowledge the value of what Korsawkow affords to our project. Korsakow seems to be so innately a product of new media through its generation of a user based experience and audience interaction. It has allowed us to realise a project that I would never have otherwise thought I could create.

Weihl, A 2016, “Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries”, NECSUS Journal