Korsakow Film: Street Disposition

Makers: David Lo Monaco, William Ho and Tiffany Potashnyk

Essay Link: Street Disposition Film Essay

A great deal of inspiration for this Korsakow project was derived from the website Humans of New York, a blog turned best-selling book created by Brandon Stanton in 2010 to create, “an exhaustive catalogue of New York City’s inhabitants” (Humans of New York, About). On the about page of his blog Stanton notes how his initial project changed when he started collecting quotes and short stories from the people he met, including these snippets alongside the photographs. “Taken together, these portraits and captions became the subject of a vibrant blog… with daily glimpses into the lives of the strangers in New York City” (Humans of New York, About). Street Disposition is driven on this notion and the project is based around the interaction with the people of Melbourne, whether they be the people we know, or the strangers we would never meet if we didn’t stop and pay an interest in their lives. We believe this subject matter is a perfect theme for Korsakow, as there is a, “focus more on the stories, [and] not just the composition behind the photo,” (Green, J, 2011) therefore creating a collection of ideas and moods rather than a visual statement about what Melbourne ‘is’.

In our film we talk to the people of Melbourne, hearing their stories, moments and comments, and accumulate them to show how Melbourne is a character in itself. This is achieved through overlaying people’s audio to videos of Melbourne; giving the audience an immersive relationship with audio, and observational relationship with video. We wanted to capture the interesting characters on the street, then take these people and link them through space and place, appropriating their comments or character to scenes of Melbourne. In development we thought the best way to achieve our goal was by asking people in Melbourne a series of questions the primary being, ‘What is your fondest memory of Melbourne?’ Through this we introduced a type of constraint to get the direction of the interviewee’s responses on the same page. A question like this gets a reflective and nostalgic way of talking from the speaker as we listen to their story, making the narration a lot more personal to the audience. We were intrigued with the fact everyone has a story and through this project wanted to appreciate all those little things that come to together to make Melbourne the city it is, and highlight that it’s the people that keep Melbourne a constant discovery with a myriad of stories, thoughts and emotions.

In order to correctly portray Melbourne in its vast diversity, we centered our film on obtaining footage of as many various different locations as possible. Upon editing our film we also decided that if we were to include more than one shot of the same landmark or area it would need to be from a completely different angle as well as being filmed from another group member, in order to accentuate the notion of the range of lifestyles, cultures and ethnicity within Melbourne. By having more than one person capture the same scene we hoped to ensure that many interpretations and perceptions of the city were represented. We also took an unconventional approach with piecing the audio with the visuals we had captured, as we consciously filmed all the photography first and then once that process had been completed we recorded all the interviews. In doing this we then created another process of having to draw links between qualities that had been filmed to what had been subconsciously expressed by our participants. This idea was inspired by our experiences of having patterns noticed by others when showing our individual sketch films earlier in the year, as we aspired to recreate this practise and ultimately ending up with a more organic product. Lastly in post-production we chose to include ourselves in the aural landscape, predominantly through clips of us interacting with the recorded subjects, adopting what Bill Nichols would describe as the Participatory Mode in his taxonomy of documentary, where “the filmmaker… interact[s] with his or her subjects rather than unobtrusively observe them” (Nichols, B, 2010).

The use of this mode is mostly applicable to the interview of the old Italian lady, where we portray the rapport we built through the inclusion of the interviewer asking, ‘What was the first thing you remember seeing in Melbourne?’ and therefore demonstrate the difference interactions we had with people and enhanced a sense of community.

The diverse range of demographics as interview subjects was an important aspect of the project; to show aurally, that different ages have different relationships to the city over time, and visually how there are a multitude layers to the city in such things as art and culture. However, there are some common themes developed in the project, one being time – seen in the multiple shots of clocks, for example Melbourne Central and Flinders Street – something we didn’t set out to do intentionally but when compiled all our footage at the end, noticed that the city’s most populated areas are built around the idea of time. The concept of strangers is also a common occurrence, as the audience does not know the voices they hear, but the stories have the ability to be personal and there is an interesting association in appropriating people’s voices we don’t know to fit to places we may be familiar with.

Street art and many other variations of art are also a very conscious recurring element in our film, as we wanted to acknowledge the artistically friendly environment that this city is. In various SNUs we have different representations of Melbourne art like the murals of graffiti, street performers, restaurants, galleries and concert venues. All of these mentioned themes and patterns contribute in expressing Melbourne in it’s multiplicity, and the lack of order to which these images and stories become an option for the user absorbs the ideal of spontaneity and haphazardness of the city scape.

In interface design, we decided not to include a text thread, as we wanted the audio to be the primary link to the video. Furthermore we believe the addition of a text thread would have created confusion for the audience, and there would have been the potential of them getting lost in the interface instead of sitting and listening. We also decided not to place the title of the project in the Interface design, but to create an opening title video in the form of a start SNU to play at the beginning of the piece.

The opening SNU displays footage of a footpath with the natural sound of the street, the title ‘Street Disposition’ then fades on to the screen and is positioned there until the clip ends and the viewer clicks on a thumbnail option. This decision acted as a foreshadowing element to the whole project, as the lack of visuals emphasies the audio, an imperative sensory element used throughout our piece. The title ‘Street Disposition’ also explains the project on two levels, the word Street relating to Melbourne and Disposition to character – therefore the character of Melbourne. The font choice was based on it’s timelessness, but also artistic quality, portraying an almost street art aesthetic in the formation of the words.

In the background, we decided to use an image of a black and white laneway within the streets of Melbourne for a combination of reasons. On a completely shallow base it is quite aesthetically pleasing especially in the way that the lines of the footpath lead the viewers eyes to the main SNU, and makes the  loading of videos interesting as there is always an image to look at. There is also the fact that Melbourne’s alleyways are a very iconic feature of the city, which was even commented on during an interview with a tourist. However, the main reason why we decided to include the image of the alleyway was due to the connotative meaning it has of leading the viewers down the path of further discovering Melbourne, acknowledging motifs present within the audio of finding hidden bars, restaurants and alleyways. The fact the alleyway we chose was Hosier Lane was certainly no coincidence as it perfectly conveys a sense of being a locale which houses and nurtures art, which is a theme that is rife throughout our film.

It should be noted that in some videos there is no audio accept that which resides in the clip. This was an intentional decision based in the development of our project where people we shared the project with expressed their appreciation for these clips or even breaks between the stories, allowing them to recollect their thoughts. The choice of clips was strategically based, as we decided to use the famous places or even ‘tourist attractions’ within Melbourne as the basis of this aesthetic. We drew this conclusion as these places are so well known that there is a high probability the user has been there, and consequently has their own stories for these sites. Therefore it prompts the viewer for a moment of reflection, inadvertently asking them to participate in the piece and, “to play a role in the story” (Soar, M, 2014; p.160). We also believed if we were to place audio over these images it may become too ‘promotional’ and get caught up with promoting Melbourne instead of trying to express it, and by portraying these locations ordinarily we have been able to reinforce the idea Melbourne is a place beyond the poster landmarks.

Upon looking at our film in context of the pattern, content and interface it seems very clear to us that our film is about the vibrant, spontaneous, explorative and unexpected nature of Melbourne, filled with a communal sense of creating and gathering art both low and high. This can be seen through recurring themes graffiti, street performance art, musical performance centers like the Forum and the Art Center, locations which cultivate high art like the National Gallery as well as culinary experiences of Melbourne, reinforced by our interface which leads the audience to an unexpected place. This is paired with content of stories of hidden bars, restaurants known only to locals, and reflections of the diverse accepting communal nature of Melbourne.

Korsakow is a project platform that is as much about the finished project as the journey it takes to get there. Through our project we wanted to create a compilation, a “collage… demonstration of the many becoming one,” as an, “evolution beyond narrative” (Shields, D, 2011), of stories that represent and form the foundation of the city of Melbourne. Our project required us to go out onto the street and talk to people, to immerse ourselves in the city that we have become prone to ignore, therefore evaluating and developing our critical and creative ways of noticing.

References

Green, Jonah. “Humans of New York: Brandon Stanton’s Interpersonal City Catalogue (PHOTOS).” The Huffington Post. 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/04/humans-of-new-york-brandon-stanton_n_831310.html#s248946, May 2014.

Soar, Matt. “Making (with) the Korsakow System: Database Documentaries as Articulation and Assemblage.” New Documentary Ecologies Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses. Ed. Kate Nash, Craig Hight and Catherine Summerhayes. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 154-73. Print.

Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary film, Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2010, pp. 179-194 [extract: The Participatory Mode].

Shields, David. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage, 2011. Print.

Stanton, Brandon. “Humans of New York.” 2010: http://www.humansofnewyork.com/, May 2014.

Screen Shots

Stanton, Brandon. “Humans of New York.” 2010: http://www.humansofnewyork.com/, May 2014.