So our class last Tuesday was centred around one main exercise. Basically, we needed some visual prompts to provide to the screenwriting students, to help them with potential ideas as the take on the writing process.
Our group was given the prompt of “location” or “space”. It could be an area with or without people – we got this along with a variety of other parameters. After quickly making some decisions on potential colour palette for what we wanted to film, we were out and filming around the RMIT campus.
The filming bit was a little disorienting for me, to be honest. At least initially. We didn’t actually spend a large amount of time discussing what we were actually going to film before we went and did it, so I had to sit back and observe the aesthetic that it seemed the rest of the group was going for before I really started to film some stuff that I thought would match that aesthetic nicely. To be honest, I think this was just simply a case of me being on somewhat of a different page to the rest of the people in the group, but eventually I got used to what we were looking at filming and was able to contribute my ideas.
Perhaps the bigger role I played was in the editing of the prompt, however. Once I’d received all the files, I briefly had a look at it and tried to think of what possible visual themes and contrasting locations could be provided as inspiration. It was tough, as the assortment of videos was quite vast, and I wanted to make sure that I could represent my group’s ideas for the prompt, rather than just my own visual ideas. Ultimately, I think I probably managed to achieve this, as the reception of the video from the rest of my group in Friday’s class ended up being largely positive.
If there’s anything I hope the writers get from our prompt, it’s the idea of two very contrasting aesthetics, and how they can blend together really well. We had a lot of footage of very angular, blocky structures with bold, and generally single-tone colours, but we also tried to include footage of “nature”, and how it can merge with these more modern, blocky architectural structures. I don’t necessary hope they approach that aesthetic in particular, but more the idea that two vastly different aesthetics can be brought together to work in harmony.