Experiment. Screen. Sensation

RMIT Media Studio 2019

“What Melbourne Means To You” dir. Rachel Shijie Luo

As the name of this studio is EXPERIMENT.SCREEN.SENSATION, I think my work should refer those three words. However I think the corn heart of the studio is the SENSATION part, because it presents a feeling of the work, the director or a feeling for audience, and this feeling can be presented by the ‘EXPERIMENT’ and ‘SCREEN’. Thus I hope my exhibition work can cause the reflection of audiences’ emotion for Melbourne and also make them think about what is Melbourne in the visual part of the film (screen). Moreover I hope my concept of my work reminds the audience of my source of inspiration — Agnes Varda’s work, and also reminds them how I develop the inspirations in shooting style, the colour tone of the film and the shots composition because these can be understood as my experiments during my creating process, and in this way it communicates the key concern of this studio as well.

For my work this time, I think there are a lot of things need to be improved, no matter on editing or camera movements or other things, however the most important thing need to be improved is my idea and the idea development. If my work is lucky to be screened in film festival or screened in other media pieces in somewhere else, my work in some extents may not have many attractions because of my film’s topic. I always pick the most familiar and the closest thing of my daily life to shoot, however this thing is not that unique and interesting enough to attract audience, thus I think I need to explore more on other artists’ work to find inspirations, and develop more ideas which are unique, interesting or things I have never tried. Moreover in this studio I gave a lot of presentations about my work (idea, working progress and some introductions), so I think a good presentation may be a part of my work as well. Thus in the future if I have chance I would like to bravely and confidently give a short presentation before the screening to introduce my work, though my film has a lot of things to improve, it is not a bad thing to share my idea and process.

I really love the film by James, the emotion of family and time changes are presented so well and produces the key idea of ‘sensation’ as well. He uses way of comparing modern footages and old footages, the both of them are shooting the same object of family and shot in the same way, however difference of the quality of those two footages directly show the sense of the times, and give audience a feeling of nostalgia. Also there is no background music in his film, only the peaceful voiceover to tell the audience what happened, and this reminds me of Chris Markers work. Im not sure whether James did historical research and got inspired by Chris Markers work, if he is indeed inspired by Chris Marker, I have to say he developed and presented his inspiration so well! Additionally Sienna’s film is very impressive to me as well. Her work is talking about the school and its test system, and I remember this idea is developed from the very beginning of the film project 2 (around Week 8 or 9?), thus I think her work presents her creating direction and promotion of idea. I think her ability to push her idea into a film is also advocated by our studio.

As an audience at the event of this exhibition, I felt and reflected a lot. The exhibition gave audience a great opportunity to watch and think about other students’ works. For the films in the exhibition, they might have the different concept from each others works and have different things they want to present, thus other’s works for us were interesting and unique which we could think about and even get inspired from them. Moreover, the exhibition is also a great opportunity to see the advantages and disadvantages of different works. For the advantages of other’s work I would willing to learn and even imitate, just like Yi’s work, it worked so well when he used the red light and red tone to present the desire, so maybe in my future work I can imitate the same lighting as Yi’s work to present desire. And when I saw the disadvantages I would to avoid to do the same thing in my own work in the future. In addition, to be an audience in the exhibition the reaction of others to different work could directly be felt, like I can feel whether they understand my work, this true reaction can help me to improve my work, others as well. Thus I believe the exhibition is a super great event which every audience will enjoy and learn or reflect something.

jamesthompson • November 12, 2019


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