http://www.themediastudents.net/im1/2014/daniel.strangward/

Integrated Media One 2014 – Assessment Task 2 of 4 – Film Essay

Daniel Strangward S3429300

The Interactive Film ‘Scatology,’ (B. Spink, J. Khoo, C. Evani, and S. Ismail 2013)[1], uses a variety of seemingly simple patterns and links to create a rather confronting piece on the ugly habits we humans form. The work often adopts a light tone when listing our most disgusting behaviours and hence the pretty imagery is strongly contrasted with the discussed themes, making the voice-overs all the more prominent.

‘Scat’ is comprised of clips from mostly public places that run for approxiamately 6-10 seconds and have an audio channel that contains a voice-over. These voice-overs have more than 1 ‘life’ and can be heard on multiple of the video clips. For e.g. the voice-over of the man who “gets in fights on trains” and who’s favourite word was “cunt,” is played both in the clip of the café and the clip inside the church. One obvious pattern that is apparent in ‘Scat’ is the 2 thumbnails below the main viewing frame are shaped in the male and or female signs. This allows us to obviously take the path of hearing a male’s worst habits or hearing a female’s darkest practises.

The film is very aesthetically pleasing to the user/viewer because of its simple and somewhat symmetrical setup or ‘interface.’ ‘Scat’ is comprised of 1 larger screen (frame) and 2 smaller thumbnails directly below it. The thumbnails have been cleverly worked to show the preview of the next clip however it has been cropped into the shape of either a man or a woman. Each clip appears to have more than 1 ‘life’ (Korsakow clips can be set in the Snu Editor to play infinitely or a set number of times)[2]. The creators chose to have these clips play once in the main frame and then cut to black (end) so that the viewer is pushed to make another choice of clip from below depending on his/her taste.

The clips from ‘Scat’ will always contain a place, a character and more often than not, an action. The place or setting of the content is almost always public, for example the crowded market, the café and the church scenes are all places where people will see other people. It’s clear to us that the creators wanted to highlight the way our dirty habits are being thrown out into the public to been seen by others and no longer hidden and secretly practised. These habits are clearly a thing that we don’t want others to see, so placing them into a open and public environment causes acute discomfort amongst the viewer. Perhaps the strongest content is the clips that contain food and especially people eating food, this is due to the relations between hygiene and health and the risks that can arise from bad eating habits.

There is something about ‘Scatology’ that we can all as people relate to and that is what makes it such a strong and ‘imprinting’ documentary. The use of confronting audio content matched with linked public places causes the viewers to seamlessly engage with the piece via our own habitual natures and experiences.

Sources of Reference:

1. “Scatology” (2013) Makers: Brenton Spink, Joyce Khoo, Camilla Evani, and Sheilah Ismail. All work copyright by original creators and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License. http://vogmae.net.au/classworks/2013/Scatology.html

2. Korsakow Official Website http://korsakow.org/learn/faq/#snu

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