Monthly Archives: July 2018

Assignment 1

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Part A: About you

 

I decided on my original course Professional Communication, being undecided and wanting a taste of four different pathways. I decided on media very early on as I found it to be the only creative institution I was exposed to and had a deep interest in. I love creating things and have no desire to simply advertise or market products but rather create art or show people what I see. I’ve always had a desire to travel and document the world. Initially wanting to be a photojournalist, It seemed a natural progression my interest in documentary and I enjoy filming artistically and physically doing the work, using equipment to make something that can be widely enjoyed. My goal is to end up making media and collaborating with people, telling stories and showing this to the world. I need to develop my skills and I want to learn more filming techniques and creative editing. This includes the types of programs to use to edit and how to go about it. I want to know what is considered to be a good documentary and how different they can be. I studied the true lies documentary subject last semester and thoroughly enjoyed watching them and uncovering the ethics (or lack there of) involved.  It has given me a drive to create a film I’m proud of and learning new schools I can apply to a job I’d enjoy. I’m interested in quite artist/arthouse works which I last created in year 12 and I love working with people, showing the human spirit but more recently, landscapes, architecture and places have been my main source of inspiration and I love capturing this in unique ways.

 

Part B: Influences

 

As I’ve been interested in photojournalism for some time, I’d say my main source of inspiration from a non-fiction source would be street photography and photojournalists from early days where pictures were taken on film cameras and relied on quick judgement to take an aesthetically pleasing shot. Some of these works include a photograph by Robert Frank of passengers on a bus where coloured segregation is clearly occurring. The natural framing that cuts off people and hides their truth takes up most of the image and the eye is drawn to the faces and the varied expressions. I like this style as it is spur of the moment and not staged, revealing more truths about society and most accurately depicts a moment in time. Another similar work is that of Henri Cartier-Bresson. The children pop out of the photograph and it seems as though they are interacting with an outline, with the frame. It’s so well taken and naturally balanced and the children are aware so it looks as though they are characters in a shoot. I’d suggest the radical element of these works is their shock factor, the realism of the pieces is what resonates with people. The fact that such attractive imagery can portray gut wrenching truths is what sticks with people and I think digital media forms can exploit this and create the most appealing and interesting ideas people can connect with.

 

 

Robert Frank

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson

WEEK 3

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This week broadened my exposure and my understanding of the documentary genre. I figured I was interested in the expository style, leading on from my earlier want to learn about the voice over style. Being a subcategory of that, it seemed to offer some creativity and opportunities to explore different techniques.

The reading explains that the expository mode offers a linear, logical, didactic argument, typically structured by a disembodied voice-of-God narration to which the image track is subordinate. Human subjects, whether experts or lay individuals, typically appear as talking heads, recruited not as agented participants but as sound bites to advance or support the linear argument of the piece.  Expository methods can be a quick and effective means of imparting background information or context necessary to understand the rest of a documentary, which can then be designed using some of the other more progressive modes. This to me implies it is a prequel to a film, the trailer before the show, getting the audience ready for the feature and not having to adhere to such a strict style constraint. The freedom is really what drew me in.

Cinema Verite also excited me especially with the example, Chronicle of a Summer.the participatory mode includes interviews that I wasn’t a huge fan of but I still would like to attempt. I think it would be an easier mode to edit as you rely on the subject involved, not your own specific artistic skills. A more recent example is 3 Faces a feature that explores the suppression of youth and again is interested in  humanistic elements and society’s interactions in general. I think that may be a common and important aspect to this type of film as it rely’s on people’s participation and the results you get is dependent on the individual’s involved, the uncontrollable variable.

 

WEEK 2

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Beginning this course a couple weeks later than my peers was a major setback in my mind. I hadn’t begun this course with the intent of missing the start and needing to play catch up. I was lucky I’d studied media before. I loved physically going out and filming and then returning with footage to play with and documentary fit my love between “realism” and creativity. This week, narrowing down on forms of documentary I learnt about Montages, Interviews and Voiceovers. I like how startlingly different they all are to each other. Of course there are similarities but they each obtain their own unique qualities that make them stand apart from each other. I like how artistic montages can appear and how their seems to be less constraints or limitations.

I was really drawn to this documentary montage as it’s teachings were secondary to the artistry and unique editing we saw on screen. The focus was on the image quality not so much the actions in the film. The sequences, the frames were all styled to juxtapose and contrast the next while remaining on the same topic. Thus creating a fun, unique experience and one with a different meaning for different people.

Interview’s I always traditionally found quite boring. I would lose interest in the person speaking after a prolonged period and would find myself wanting to see some imagery and artistry on screen again. I like different, sharp, fast edits or having a big contrast between the previous frame by slowing down or changing direction completely. I like having to decode the message and not be fed information so one-way. Using old, found footage as interviews or as a hybrid of styles such as in Amy, made it seem more interesting as you could tell the filmmaking was reactive rather than proactive and the footage used was more “real” and raw as the intent to make it into a film wasn’t there. There was no agenda.

Amy

 Narration and voiceover is something I am less familiar with. I understand it can be poetic or informative and the only works I remember of this kind are those by David Attenborough where the audience is being taught, lectured. This is more appealing to me however as there are two works simultaneously working alongside each other. The audio and visual works relate but can be seperate entities that merge into one artistic form. This is one style I’d like to explore.

The ‘Re-imaging Documentary’ reading talks about pushing documentary form and function and what limitations we place on the forms documentary can take. How media looks and sounds, how it is exhibited, and how audiences interact with or process its content. This makes me intrigued about what functions can documentary media serve in society beyond simply to inform? As I believe the yearning for knowledge would likely come secondary to what we the audience finds pleasurable and appealing.