Well, here we are. The final week of the semester, at least for classes for me. I was sad to miss the last class for this studio, but overall, I have greatly enjoyed learning about and improving my skills in experimental film. Now that we are at the end of these twelve weeks, I looked back on the original pitch for this studio and at the original aims of the course.

To explore various ways language figures in the process and production of moving image works.
To work outside of dominant frameworks of writing for screen and making screen works from scripts.
To investigate the potential of cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Looking back, I think the course was overall a success. I discovered various ways of creating moving image works with multiple techniques and frameworks. I branched my skills out and developed new ones through practice and testing, and I worked alongside various people to broaden my collaboration skills in a group. I am a media student but my second preference was the creative writing bachelor’s degree, so it was fun to work with classmates from that specific learning stream and take on what they have been learning.

Admittedly I don’t think I used this blog to its full potential. I’m not the type of person to record down my thoughts anywhere unless they are story ideas (which frankly would go into my notes only as I wouldn’t feel comfortable publishing those ideas to a blog for people to see). I did strive to improve my severe lack of personal thoughts to the blog since I realised quickly I mostly posted my thoughts before and after the project briefs. But part of me felt that these smaller updates were more forced and didn’t feel natural to me. I will likely be using this blog again in future classes so who knows, perhaps one day I will grow more comfortable posting my thoughts down for people to read.

When I think back on the first collaboration I did for brief one, I enjoyed it. I’ve never been opposed to collaboration, I’ve just had my reserves about it since I know it can lead to disaster when people do not communicate or deviate tasks correctly. Fortunately, I think everyone felt the same about this, and with every group I had, people strived to give their all and divided work accordingly to our strengths and weaknesses. For the first Project Brief, (our film was ‘Sign Language’) Christie and I worked well together. Admittedly I did not share a lot of my filming techniques with Christie which I feel may have been the whole point of the collaboration between the creative writing students and the Media students. Often people stuck to their lanes in creating, which while I don’t think this was particularly bad, it meant not a lot of sharing of knowledge and skill could be done to the best of our degrees. But overall, we worked together well, and while I was nervous about presenting, everything went smoothly, and I’m happy with our work.

Brief 2 presented more challenges admittedly for my group. Logan, Qing and I originally had one idea about creating a concept of movement while remaining static, but there was no real theme to it, so we had to rework it to create our setup and film ‘Tension’. Similar to Brief 1, I did what I am fairly used to and focused a lot on filming and editing. I was frankly very proud of how I was able to use After Effects to create the hallway loop. It showed how much I had learnt from my previous classes and I felt proud of my contributions to the group.

Brief 3 tested a lot of what I was normally used to in truth. Filming with my group of Terrance and Chris for our video “Oh the places you’ll go” wasn’t hard, we were able to work together for part of it but overall had to divide in filming to create a proper film for the deadline. We trusted Terrance with editing it all together which was very strange and new to me. Up until that point, (not just in the semester but the entire year) I always had a degree of control over the editing of a film. I often took charge of that degree and would edit film for hours to make it to a standard I was proud of to send out. Relinquishing that control and trusting Terrance to create our brief video was strange. But in the end, Terrance did a great job, and we were all proud of how it came out.

By the time we had to do Brief 4, collaboration had simply become second nature to us; we were used to working with one another and knew we could all create high-quality experimental films and had the means to develop inspiring ideas about our themes. In truth, I felt more detached from this brief as while I worked hard with the filming, sound editing and artist statement parts I did do. I wasn’t able to attend the presentation, so I needed to put my trust in Terrace and Thai Anh to edit and present the project well while I wasn’t there. But in the end, after all, we have done through this course and all I have learnt, I do feel like I was able to trust them fully with that with little doubt they didn’t do their absolute best.

Overall I have enjoyed this course and have learnt a great deal about not only the experimental filming of the body to tell a narrative or convey a theme, but I feel I have learnt a great deal about myself and my skills as well. Material Choreographies has been a wonderful studio that I do not regret taking, and I highly recommend others to take it as well during their time in their course. Hopefully, the studio for the next year will be just as wonderful.
See you next year MediaFactory.

Admittedly, There’s not much I can say about this brief. Sadly on the day that we were presenting, I was away at a Fire Evacuation Training session for my job. I had given my work and all we needed planning wise from me to my group so I hope that our presentation went well.

I felt much more at ease trusting my group with so much to do this time. I no longer felt worried about it and knew I could trust them to give a great presentation.

This is the artist statement we included for the film.

For our brief, we decided to focus on the use of slow cinema to convey our meaning. We originally decided to use three different example of slow cinema from various locations to show the integration of the modern world without the environment. However, the forest depictions didn’t meld smoothly with the beach and city similarities. The movement between cars matches the movement of the waves. The graphics were very horizontal at the beach, contrasting the city with its vertical lines.

While this integration is obviously not perfect and a lot is still needed to be improved on, we decided to focus on the beauty this integration has caused, creating a balance with nature and the modern world.

Furthermore, we discussed that this was an assignment we could experiment with. So we tried to play with settings, different angles and settings. Although one of the shots, the beach shot, had to have the horizon line flat. That was because of Terance’s obsessive-compulsive disorder. Where if you can see a horizon line, it is to be nothing else but flat.

Having a large depth of field was very important, and our forest location didn’t quite encapsulate that. It felt like we were slapping together footage too much. So it was left on the cutting room floor, sorry trees, no one cares about you anymore. The beach sun has scorched your dreams.

The camera is locked off on a tripod because it resembles the slow cinema aesthetic. Other filmmakers who have created the slow cinema film have so in response to Hollywood making shorter cuts. We generally copy what Hollywood is doing, so it is interesting to complete something that rebels against what we normally do.

Having the transitions between the two clips, gave the impression that they are similar not in the sense of being identical, but in the way they are different. The lines and camera differences create a balance between the two which, they transition seamlessly between each screen and establish this connection between land (modernisation) and sea (nature).