Group 4 – canon2.0

Exquisite Corpse Task

https://vimeo.com/mediafactoryrmit/review/469968293/a6ff3d246f


Link to canon2.0

https://s3839845.wixsite.com/thecanon2


Vivian

Positioning Statements

The old guard is dead. The critical darlings of the past have ascended to canonical heaven to live out in eternity. Their time in the sun is finished. We are done with celebrating films from the past millennium. Anything before 2000 is no longer canon in the new millennium.

A new canon is born. The Millennium Cannon. A canon that is representative of society’s technological advancements. For film has upgraded. YouTube. Virtual Reality. TikTok. Vine. Video Games. Whatever new technology that unfolds over this millennium. It is all film if it stirs emotion. It can all be canonised if decreed.

The Millennium Canon calls for modern values. This is a new millennium that favours representation and inclusivity. This is not past canon. A past canon that canonised particular voices over others. The Millennium Canon cannot fall into the traps of old. This canon calls for all voices to the table. To bring unique film to the table. The Millennium Canon embraces you for canonisation. The old canon’s gatekeeping is done. The sins of the father have perished with it.

 

Summary

The manifesto we created as a group took the form of a website. It was a process of designing the theme, creating video content and a bit of coding to generate canons and create the final vision for our manifesto in web form. Overall, our mission was to break down pre-existing canons and reorder, recategorize and redefine them into something entirely new. This was an extremely enjoyable project to work on during the semester because it involved a lot of discussion and creating to bring our vision to life. The work involved in figuring out how to have variety and representation through a redefinition of film was challenging but always fun to debate and talk about. I’m looking forward to people exploring our work and interacting with it.

Erin

 

Reflection
In creating our manifesto, we discussed the issues with the canon, and how to address them. We all agreed that the canon was outdated and out of touch, with classic films of the 1930s to the 1970s overshadowing recent films in most canonical polls. We also thought that the canon should be shaped by the audience, not the critics, so we came up with the idea of canon 2.0 – A film poll that is voted for by the audience. I focused mainly on the issues with the canon, and made a short video that highlighted the three main aspects of the canon that we wished to address; the underrepresentation of recent films, the lack of diversity in film forms and the strong influence of critics and award shows. We chose to create a website to present our ideas in both written and visual formats. The process of creating canon 2.0 made me reflect on the films that I chose as my five favourite films for assignment 1. I realised that they were all feature length, well known American films, and it made me wonder whether the canon had influenced these choices.

Positioning Statements:

Films listed in polls should not be individually ranked, but rather a part of a collection of celebrated films.

Once a film has been listed in canonical polls several times, they should move to a another category, to make way for new films to be recognised.

Canonical lists should have different categories for different forms of film, to ensure that short films, documentaries and other forms are represented.

 

Emily

Positioning Statements

  1. “Length of brewing” for a film before considering it as part of a canonical list is important, but also should not be limiting works of art from deserving recognition. Therefore, there should seperate lists for films released within the decade, and films released before. 
  2. Historical relevance is of major importance when analysing and ranking past films, so for modern times, considering the progressiveness of the 21st century, the involvement of a team from varying cultures, ethnicities, and genders should be a major contributing factor in considering whether a film is worthy of being on  canonical list. 
  3. Each piece of art is made with a specific purpose, for example to bring light to important issues, to explore history, to entertain, or to just express one’s creative mind. Therefore, they should be ranked together with those of similar purposes, rather than putting all different types of a particular art form into the same category and ranking them together.

Reflection

I felt this project was one of the most rewarding, impactful, and enjoyable to work on and produce. Personally, I felt the process of trying to determine the overall ideas and image for our manifesto to be quite insightful as each member had something to contribute that opened my mind and even challenged my original thoughts and perspectives on the canon. I actually enjoyed creating the website, and developing a manifesto that was so driven and well established. We went through multiple stages before creating our final product, including discussions, producing documents detailing our ideas, sending out a survey, and creating drafts and mockup designs of our website. We were very thorough, and wanted to ensure that we all had a clear vision for our manifesto, and I hope that comes across in our final product.

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