Reflection on Draft One

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Chrys

Today we were able to present our radio like clip to Dan in our tutorial. He understood the campy direction we wanted to take our research in but suggested we needed to “ham it up” because he wanted to see the whole pig.
To achieve this we have begun revising the script to highlight words or phrases that should be accentuated for comedic value.
We’ve also made note of Dan’s suggestion to use expressions, hand movement and acting because they can be heard even through the recording. A challenge we face however is that to improve sound quality we’ll have to record alone, hopefully we’ll still be able to achieve that intensity and comedic timing by remaining in the room to play off each other, even if only one person is running through their lines.
When addressing sound quality we were also make sure we are not only using individual mics, but proceed to test sound levels and statics to ensure a clear recording. The use of a fuzzy and testing of different recorders has also been suggested.

Overall we’re moving on into our second draft with a clear idea of what we need to fix to improve our artefact.

Moving Forward

Posted on May 14, 2015 by Chrys

Today we presented our script on informing people how to navigate the film festival circuit. We explained we’d be using camp to push what an important role programming plays in attracting the intended audience, however we were
given the feedback that it was important that our research didn’t get lost in all of our camp. To allow the research to flow through more clearly we’ve devised some questions to ask a range of people as to why they attend film festivals to really bring together and define our scripts. On the weekend we’re working on conducting interviews and finalising scripts. We are on track and have set goals to record everything by Tuesday. I am happy with how things are progressing and look forward to seeing how our script will translate to film or broadcast.

The questions we have decided to focus on are:

Why would you go to the film festival?

How did you hear about any of these film festivals?

Out of these three film festivals which would you be most interested in going to? Why?

Are you interested in learning anything from attending this festival?

From this program which movies or events would you attend?

By showing a range of people the programs, along with the questions I think it would really help us grasp what techniques draw people towards the festivals.

BrainStorming Artefacts

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Chrys

In todays tutorial we were able to get together and share our research. For my articles I found that the programming of LBGT festivals to be a interesting because it showed how the organisation of the festivals could inform and define the collective “we” within in the audience. The article which can be found here also includes missions statements an information about the film festivals, which is not only informative but provides us with an idea of how to start our research. Georgina also suggested how it was interesting to see if film festivals should be seen as a business or something for the community which I feel also fits when looking at programming.

When braining storming for our artefact, Emily suggested doing a snappy news reel, that talks current film festivals about how programming is being used to capture each audience. We continued our brain storming coming up with ideas such as; podcasts of interviews, vlogs of our film festival experiences, a feature article, a program of the festival involving the same tongue and cheek tactics involved in the news reel. We also considered establishing a hashtag on twitter where people can share there experience attending certain festivals exploring why they went and how they enjoyed it.

Overall we all really enjoyed the news reel idea and have decided to pursue it by Tuesday next week we are all expected to come up with a script and ideas surrounding a film festivals program and how their trying to capture audiences.

Mindmaping

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Chrys

Brainstorming done in todays tutorial about institutions. We as a group started with the two institutions that interested us, Cinema and Network TV. We began to list different forms of cinema and tv and connect issues to them under: economical, political, cultural and social brackets. Some of the ideas and issues we came up with are:

– What are the benefits of watching movies at an institution?
– Censorship and cultural control
– How cinema is used to breach cultural gaps
– How cinema uses it’s practice to target it’s audience

From here after a discussion with Dan we were able to narrow down our focus and look at how Film Festivals as an institution capture a lot of the ideas we were toying with above. We as a group are looking at how Film Festivals are an institution and what role they play politically, culturally and socially. A good starting point for us, when looking for articles would looking at how film festivals are defined as institutions, what they afford and prohibit their audiences or a good case study of how film festivals are used in Melbourne to cover the four main issues we’ve identified.

To start we’re each going to look at least five articles around film festivals before we meet on Tuesday where we will then see what we’ve found and what we can add. Overall I’m pleased with how well we all worked as a group today and excited to continue our brief.

Peer Feed Back

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Chrys

Emily

– I really enjoyed how Emily used camera shots to capture her subject. She focuses on shots of the hands, eyes and lips to capture body snippets of body language and character rather than letting it go unnoticed. This allows a more intimate relationship with her subject resulting in the viewer to more readily connect to her story.
– With the footage Emily used I felt that because she had a lot of stuff recorded and found, she wanted to use it all. Her film wasn’t overly cluttered or hard to understand, but could have been tightened up with a little bit more self editing.
– Otherwise I really enjoyed her film and the story she was able to capture.

Georgina

– I was effected by the powerful juxtaposition of the clinical images and the homely family conversation at the dinner table. I thought it was a powerful way to capture both sides of the subject and the situation.
– The sound was sometimes distracting as it would cut out at times and bits were louder than others but that’s something that can be improved on over time.
-I really connected emotionally with the story being told and thought she did a great job.

Dummy’s Guide to the Zoom Handy Recorder H2n

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Chrys

During our ‘in field’ recording experience, we encountered the following problems when it came to the quality of the audio. The first problem was setting the setting the input sensitivity as a lot of the first recordings I took could not be heard over the white noise. In the future I need to be more mindful of the recorder and adjust settings when something is wrong with the playback. Playback was also another issue as I found myself to eager to find sounds rather than check the quality of the ones I already had.

The second problem we encountered was proximity, a lot of our recordings could have been louder and clearer had we positioned ourselves correctly to what we were trying to record. For me I found myself timid to really get up and record things I wanted to, so this is something I’d like to correct the night time I work with sound.

Apart from proximity affecting our recordings we also were interrupted by a lot of unwanted city sounds, or even just us communicating when someone else was recording. To fix this, it was suggested that we, go somewhere remote for our sound effects, and make sure everyone knows that it’s “quiet on set” before the recording begins.

A Process

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Chrys

“Quick hands up, who’s never used a camera.”

I am the only one with my arm in the air. I try not to be embarrassed remind myself that I am learning. It’s a mantra a lot of us seem to have especially when it came to presenting our work today; I am learning.

After viewing everyone’s self portraits I am inspired and intimidated (this is a part of learning). I now am aware of new things I want to improve on going into project three. A few things I’ve noted down are:

– sound and sound editing
– narrative and structure
– avoiding cliques
– improving on footage used in terms of quality and relevance
– learning when to cut back

Self Portrait – Reflection

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Chrys

How did you represent yourself?

I was sorta afraid to talk a lot about myself, I choose to represent a past version of me, something I wasn’t anymore.I didn’t really talk about family or who I was, making it hard for people to give me feedback. I’m worried that without me really wanting to put myself out there a lot of people maybe didn’t understand what I was trying to go for. Other people weren’t afraid to get super personal. For some people I was able to see what they were trying to represent quiet well in there pictures, there stories only helped clarified a few things.
It’s uncanny how much a single photo or piece of audio can strum up a lot of memories, even though some of us really didn’t choose to share them.

Artefacts work like that, they are meant to invoke a sense of story and understanding. Nothing exists in a vortex, every piece of media you put into the world is representative of you so it’s important to understand how your artefacts present you.
For me, I felt like some of my artefacts were to literal, they were of me rather than a representation of me, which is something i’ll have to be aware of in the future.

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