During this project, I had to think about the sort of techniques to use such as having a simple atmospheric video or have a screen recorded video. The process itself didn’t take a long time after figuring out what kind of film I was aiming for but I had to first overcome the problem of procrastination during the filming process. What I learnt from this project is the variety of techniques that I could’ve utilized for this project but I eventually still came to the to conclusion of using a desktop documentary as I found it to suit my own personality as a person who is in front of the computer or laptop screen on a daily basis. I also had to experiment with different kinds of sounds that would’ve helped me create a good build up for the film.
As for addressing the prompt, I had to brainstorm different ways of how I could’ve engaged the environment. I first started with an idea about recycling as I thought we had to focus on environmental issues and the idea got scraped instantly but after getting some feedback, the idea of having a film about my own experience about the environment. That basically gave me the idea of using a desktop documentary and give the audience a different perspective of the environment through a computer screen in the virtual world, through the internet and other forms of entertainment.
Throughout the classes, I found some of the source materials, clips and videos both, having really interesting ideas and some of them gave me a different view of how I can sort of ‘enhance’ the film experience as a viewer instead of being the filmmaker. It really put me in a mindset as to how certain sounds could affect the mind of the viewer and such and how some footage might be entertaining.
This semester is truly a different experience from the semesters in the past, having to stay home at all times due to the horrible situation we are in. I feel as though the quarantine limited the kind of experimental videos I could’ve made.
In my project, I’m not really sure what worked well to be honest. During the filming process of this project, I encountered many times where I would do sudden improvised moments and I would realise it later in the recording and it would somehow end up in the video. In addition to improvising, half of the voiceover recordings were mainly improvised as I, personally, find it hard to follow a script sometimes as it would make the recording sound monotone and not interesting but I think it still ended up being monotone at certain parts of the video.
If I were tasked with such a project in the future, I think I would try to test other techniques if I am able to actually go outdoors instead of being cooped up at home and maybe try to create a script but also not make it sound so monotone when I am planning to record a voiceover.
When I was editing my final project, one of the thoughts that came to mind was how I could have used sound for certain scenes in the film without ruining the overall sound. First off, in Fox’s (2017) reading, he highlights the points of having an organized track and also the use of sound masking. So during my editing, one of the main parts that made my whole editing complicated was the way I arranged everything in the Premiere timeline but by doing what Fox suggested and rearranged everything to a certain timeline order, the editing process was made easier for me as I could find which audio file I wanted to use. Sound masking is something I’m still not familiar with so my sound edits would mainly contain parts where I try not to overpower a certain sound with another therefore not distracting the viewer’s attention.
During this project, definitely one of the hardest things was finding the right sounds such as music for certain scenes. As I am doing a desktop documentary, sounds that are happening on my screen are already recorded as I am recording my screen. One of the main feedback that I took to mind was how the film itself could reflect on my own personality as I wasn’t trying to do that earlier on in the semester. Overall, the film itself is nearly done and all there is to do now is to look for the sounds that I want to use to convey the message shown on screen I guess.
Fox, Broderick, Documentary Media : History, Theory, Practice, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/RMIT/detail.action?docID=5103711.
So how does someone who stay at home all the time experience the environment around them?
Through entertainment sources of course, such as movies or video games.
You see, although it doesn’t necessarily look at the environment in reality but through a computer screen, it is still considered one of the ways of looking at environment. It might be a different way of experiencing it but in the end, the result is still the same isn’t it?
You see, in the virtual space of the internet, one can easily gain access to information about a certain location, let’s say for example, the film Extraction, the location used in the film was Bangladesh and just by typing Bangladesh into a search engine like Google, we are able to find countless information. The information we find is basically information we could’ve found on a newspaper article or something.
Whereas, when you look at the world through entertainment such as video games, the computer generated environment might be one of the best environments to explore as they are still referenced to real life locations. Take this for example, I am able to explore the vast lands of the wild west from the comfort of my home without actually travelling to another country. I can also explore the city of Los Angeles, however, redesigned into a virtual world for people to enjoy.
You see, there’s not really much difference from the world we live in, whether it is real or computer generated. Everyone is still able to experience their own kind of environment.
Reflection:
Narration, it sucks to know such a horrible thing exists but also an informative aspect of a film. Narration is one thing that I will never get used to as I prefer to improvise at certain points of an event compared to having a sheet of paper telling me what to say. The perspective that this is written from is the perspective of the person that stays home all the time, trying to show the world how there really isn’t much difference between reality and a virtual space. For the narration in my film, I will be doing it from a first-person’s POV as it is a story about me instead of having a third-person narration. As Das (2007) mentioned, I want to keep the narration in the film simple giving the audience the sense of feeling that it is not too complicated allowing them to follow the story.
As I am doing a computer related theme for my final project, I decided to create a sequence that could relate with other computer users. This resulted in the sequence that I made, the glitch effect on the text. However, before coming up with this idea, I initially though of something simple like having scraps of paper with text that would come together through a stop-motion animation to create the title ‘Iso-Exploring’ but this wouldn’t correlate with the theme I’m going with so I scraped this idea. My inspiration for the glitch idea came after I was watching a film on VLC Media Player and a scene cut out for me but later continuing on with the next frame while still sort of displaying the previous frame. I thought the idea for this was pretty interesting so I started testing it out.
When I was having an attempt of creating this sequence, what came to mind was that the glitch effect, if done on purpose and done well, it could create a really cool effect that could draw the viewer’s eyes to the video instead of having plain text with nothing interesting happening. One other reason why I chose to animate this glitch effect was also because of my own interests in animating. In my previous courses, I used to create animations as well therefore, I thought of this as a new experience that I could add to my arsenal of creativity and also maybe that I could use this effect in my future projects.
Overall, I think the outcome of this glitch effect animation turned out pretty good for a first attempt, with the help of tutorial videos of course. I want to see what else I could experiment with that I could use to my advantage for future projects.
For my film, majority of it will be utilizing the desktop documentary technique so there will already be sounds or music that would have already been recorded. However, I am also planning to research certain sound effects or music that I can use in the film which can create a certain atmosphere for the audience enabling the emotions of the screen to be conveyed to the audience. As I am not well-versed in sound editing, I feel that this would be slightly challenging for me and entertaining as well. An idea I am planning to experiment with is the idea of just having no audio in certain parts of the film. So just absolute silence, no music, ambience or sound effects playing giving the viewers their own thinking about what might or what is happening in the scene they are watching.
In the reading Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice by Broderick Fox (2017), he states the functionality of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds that will enable the rich sound design possibilities. I intend to make use of this idea in my film and research sounds that would make my film more entertaining as well as interesting. From my understanding the use of diegetic would be sounds coming from the frame, meaning the videos and sounds that would come from the audio of my laptop whereas sounds like non-diegetic would be that of out of frame sounds. I think my challenge for this project would be that of finding sounds that are non-diegetic such as sound effects and music.
The short clip of Daybreak Express by D.A. Pennebaker (1953) is interesting to me as the use of sound is simple yet quite engaging as the sounds that are used in the clip truly captures what happens in it. Another aspect that peaked my interest is that the music, from a relaxed kind of scene which transitions into a kind of rushing scene showing the daily lives of New Yorkers, taking the train from point A to B and always looking at the same surrounding.
As I am not well-versed in sound editing, I feel that this would be slightly challenging for me and entertaining as well.
I feel that when thinking of a story for a film, one of the main points that should be put into consideration is the sort of objective or purpose of the film, what is the main reason for the film to be made. In the reading Documentary Storytelling (2013), the authors Bernard and Sheila Curran talks about how the story is the narrative of an event or series of event that will engage the audience on an emotional and intellectual level, resulting in motivating them to want to know the next outcome of the story. For the story I am planning to talk about, I want to make it simple for the audience to understand the main idea for my film which is to see how there isn’t much different from viewing the environment in reality and viewing it from a virtual space.
In the short reading Radio: An Illustrated Guide (2002), Abel, Jessica and Ira Glass mentioned that for having a story, it is possible for it to be told as a sequence of actions. By looking at the illustration that showed the example of the sequence of actions, even I wanted to know what the person at the subway was telling people. I guess the idea of building suspense in the audience is what I got out of that as it peaked my interest to want to know what was going to happen in the scene.
If I were to experiment with these ideas for my film, I think I would want to focus on getting the attention of the audience first and seeing how the film would play out in the end, expecting the unexpected from the audience. Whether they will be interested or uninterested, I want the film to be the deciding factor.
Part B – telling a story
Hook
So the main idea for the story is basically an idea that I thought could attract the audience as it would show how someone life a shut-in experiences the environment.
An inciting incident
Throughout the film, we will be looking at how the environment is viewed through the Internet such as how a certain location in the video has had environmental issues and have a short segment focusing on it.
Character
The character that will be portrayed in this film is that of an introvert played by the filmmaker.
Conflict
The kind of conflict I’m am aiming for is not exactly a conflict as I am just thinking about showing how the life of an introvert is not exactly so different from those who would normally venture out into the world. I guess one of the conflicts that can be shown in the film could be that of choosing a suitable link to find information as there are a lot of information on the internet.
Change
I want to show how the idea of looking at the world through a screen is not that different from experiencing it in real life. I think people would normally think that someone who stays at home all day would not normally know about the events that are happening outside as they are cooped up at home.
Abel, Jessica, and Ira Glass. Radio: An Illustrated Guide, 04/99. Chicago, Ill.: WBEZ, 2002.
So with this video, I found it tough to find the footages I wanted to use as there were so many to go through. I ended up deciding to talk about pollutions such as air and water pollution. The reason I ended up with pollution as my topic in the video was because I basically ran out of ideas as to what kind of ideas can I talk about in the environment. I thought pollution was one of the main things that the world faces aside from climate change and such. One thing I enjoyed about this was the reading Steal Like An Artist. As a guy who typically draws when he has time, I find this reading really relatable as everything people have drawn or created isn’t really an original, there is always an older version of their creations and the same goes for their references, the older versions also have an even older version of it and it goes on. The statement Kleon (2012), said in the reading “Everything is up for grabs. If you don’t find something worth stealing today, you might find it worth stealing tomorrow or a month or a year from now.” was my situation for this exercise. Browsing through a few archives of footages, watching a number of videos I thought was not useful for the exercise, then after few days of scrolling through the archive, I ended up using some of the footages I recently watched.
I feel as though after reading Steal Like An Artist, I’m more tempted to steal things more selectively instead of randomly as this would help in my future endeavors as well. If I were to select something at random and it’s a one time opportunity, I wouldn’t be excited if I got something I can’t use instead of selecting something which I have put thought into. One idea that interested me in this exercise was just the use of archival footage, this is because I don’t watch many films or documentaries that involve footages like these, archival or found footage. It really puts the audience in a different perspective when they watch it, like how the situation being explained on screen can be related to an event that happened in the past.
Reference List:
Kleon, A., & Ebrary, Inc. (2012). Steal like an artist 10 things nobody told you about being creative. New York: Workman Pub.
When watching the documentary Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary (2008), one of the lines that I liked from the section we had to watch was when Kim Longinotto talked about having things naturally in real life during an interview. I personally don’t watch interviews to educate myself or just pass the time but if I were to use an interview for assignment purposes, I think that I would only choose to use an interview when I think I can get a lot of information whereas if compared to when asking someone a question we can find answers to easily, I think interviews wouldn’t help much in that situation.
I think one of the ways we can have a great interview is depended on the location we have, for example, in a library where everything is quiet and its easy to record audios for the interview, maybe a café or in this case, an online interview. I think during an interview as well, it’s good to give the interviewee some silence giving them a more clear mind to expand on the story they are giving us.
With the interview I conducted, I planned to ask a friend about what was one of the important moments in their life. The friend I interviewed was from Indonesia and before coming to Melbourne, encountered a problem which caused her some problems.
Script:
Introduction:
Me: Ok, Hi Belli, would you like to introduce yourself?
Belli: My name is Bellivia, I am a final year student studying in the university of Melbourne. I came from Indonesia to Australia in early 2017, I’m studying psychology and media in communications.
Me: I guess what I wanted to ask is, are there any important moments in your life that kind of made you into who you are today?
What happened:
Belli: I think so, I think… I don’t know, every single day if you’re open to it you can learn something but the biggest thing that I realized is that I learn a lot from the people I meet and there are of course the key events in my life where.. you know I’ve had to overcome adversity or just things that hold more weight in terms of memory and how I develop but yeah other than that I truly believe that you learn a lot from the people you meet.
Me: Are there like any specific point in your life where you thought was a really important moment?
Belli: Yeah for sure, so umm, I think like most people as well going through the different phases of life, lets say from high school and then graduating into uni. That’s probably such a huge phase of people’s life making that big decision and for me it was huge in a way that not everything went as planned so when asking about a key event that is probably one of the biggest ones. I’ve always been one of those achievers in high school, I’m pretty sure I peaked in high school even. So after that it was like the world is my oyster but then nothing went as planned.
End:
Belli: When I was about to go to university financially we weren’t really capable of it yet so I had to defer a year so that was probably one of the biggest moment of my life.
Reference:
Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary. 2008. (film) Directed by P. Ferrari. Canada.
