Translating Observation Assignment One
Observational Writing
This afternoon, two young girls, both in the first grade, were actively engaging in an imaginative role-playing game in the outside play area of the out-of-school-hours-care service. One of the girls was acting as a mother while the other acted as her daughter. As the girls would play out their scene, going through the motions of what their character would be saying and doing at that moment, every few instances, having stated a few lines of dialogue and performed a particular action, one of the two girls would briefly interrupt their fantasy world they were engaged in to express to the other, in a meta fashion, what it is that their character will be doing, how it is that their character will be doing it, and how the other character will be expected to respond to this. “I’m going to balance on this basketball, but you won’t notice me, and I’ll say: “mum, mum, look, please look,” and then you’ll say: “that’s nice.” One girl instructed the other. At this point, without missing a beat, the two girls would get back into character and enact the narrative they had just discussed with all the earnestness of the finest method actor.
An umbrella stands alone in a small eight-car parking lot outside an unassuming building by a Northern-East Melbourne train station. The umbrella has been abandoned on the ground by the hood of a large SUV, spread open, with handle erect, standing upright and pointing to the sky. There is no-one around to claim the umbrella as their own. The umbrella is motionless, left alone it cannot help but be still, and it seems evident that it will remain that way for some time.
A man is positioned in the lone seat by the front of the train carriage. He had boarded the train 30 minutes earlier in journey with a hot dog in hand that he had finished eating not much later than he had boarded. By his feet lies a paper bag containing the discarded rubbish of his earlier meal. He reaches into this bag and retrieves from it the cardboard box that had earlier housed his prized hot dog. He opens it, and with his finger he drags from top to bottom of the box, scraping the minuscule remnants of sauce that were left over. He embraces this finger in his mouth. Satisfied, the man smiles, slings his backpack over his shoulder, collects the rest of his rubbish, and stands, ready to depart from the train.
The train has stopped at the station. The doors to the carriage have opened and a man is boarding alone. He has taken a seat in a spot immediately by the carriage door. He is hunched over in his seat and is buried into his phone. From head-to-toe, the man’s outfit is completely uniform. His hat, his jacket, his shirt, his pants, and his shoes all sport the same multi-coloured pattern. It would be safe to assume that hidden beneath his outfit are a pair of underwear and socks that also share this pattern.
A man and a woman are reclined in two similar oval-shaped chairs under the hot sun by a river’s edge. Their chairs are facing one another, and each has propped their legs up and onto the other’s chair so that they may lie down. His head is slumped along the side of the chair, it appears as though he may be in a deep and comfortable sleep. She is evidently awake, sitting upright and facing forward, presumably appreciating the picturesque view surrounding them.
The tank in the restaurant window is ten sizes too small for that ginormous crab living inside it. It doesn’t appear to be able to move much more than an inch at a time, and its claws are bent unnaturally upwards. The tank hasn’t been cleaned in much time either. It is lined with a thick, green layer of algae. The crab is not well-cared for.
Reflective Writing
On Class Exercise Two: Although I was not present at the time that class exercise two was completed, reviewing the accomplishments of my class members provided valuable insights into the expectations of what we were to accomplish in our first individual exercise. There were two group’s outcomes that were especially poignant to me. The first, which captures pedestrians moving through a sidewalk enclosed by domineering construction walls, was an unflinching and confrontational examination of people moving through a space. It is apparent that the pedestrians moving through this space have no choice but to filter through the space regardless of how the looming presence of the camera makes them feel. Furthermore, the camera is directly in the centre of the end of the construction space, forcing people to have to move around it, and thereby, forcing them to acknowledge it filming. Surprisingly, there is only one person in the shot that outwardly reacts to the camera, covering their face with their hands as they pass by. It would seem then, that people are much more likely to simply accept that they are being captured and would rather not be confrontational. Their first shot is complemented nicely by their second shot which is framed so that the focus of the shot is one people’s legs and feet as they move through the space, exaggerating the investigation the first shot proposed. The second outcome that interested me captured an alleyway between two buildings, shot from a second or third-story balcony, the shot is framed such that the alleyway is positioned just right of centre and that the two buildings encompassing it loom largely overhead. The framing creates a sense of unease and injects a tension into the shot that would otherwise be missing. This is complemented nicely by the action that unfolds, as one large group moves through the alleyway, before leaving it empty, after which two more people come to walk through, appearing tiny and vulnerable alone in a large confronting space. For me, the framing of the shot creates a compelling narrative, so when one member of the group stated that they’d have preferred to align the alleyway in the centre of the frame were they to do it again, I simply must disagree. Analysing these two groups’ efforts provided me with valuable fuel-for-thought when it came time to capture my own individual exercise. How would my presence affect what was unfolding in-front of me, and how would I use the camera to tell a particular version of events?
On Expectations of this Class and What I Hope to Accomplish: Translating Observation had intrigued me from the moment I read the class description. The notion that we would be experimenting with and developing film content that “sits somewhere between documentary and fiction” was fascinating to me. How is it that we would be accomplishing this? What would the outcomes look like? Thus far, we have been engaging extensively in practices intended to make us mindful and keen observers of the world around us, and by practicing our capacity to translate these observations into written form, it is hoped that by doing so we may create blueprints for film content not explicitly concerned with its filmic qualities, but rather a blurred vision of documentary meets fiction. Observational writing as a practice, concerned with the objective qualities of the observation and not the subjective interpretations of the observation is a style of writing that is new and unique to me. I hope that by adhering to a consistent work ethic, forcing myself to engage with the world around me, making observations, and carefully transcribing them in this manner, will cultivate an interesting and refined form of storytelling I had not been previously privy to. How it is that these objective observations will be translated into film content intrigues me, as the observations themselves, written without subjective interpretation, provide space for each reader to perceive these abstractions in wholly unique ways, such that each individual may have a radically different perception of how the observation should be portrayed by or translated into film content, despite being an impersonal and rigid depiction of an objective thing. Currently, through the few observations I have committed to writing, I have found myself exploring and engaging with stimulus that I may have not noticed and would have otherwise gone completely unnoticed were I not practicing this mindfulness. It would be a shame to allow these fascinating moments to be forgotten and not provided the opportunity for a unique expression not typically found in media and film content. It seems apparent to me, through this class, we may find that creativity does not simply manifest itself from nothing, but rather is found all around us, in everyday moments we aren’t typically searching for.
On Friday Class and Camera Settings: Friday’s class (the 15th March), we covered a myriad of valuable information pertaining to operating the Sony EX3 cameras, some of it a welcome refresher and reminder of previously covered topics, and the rest of it was greatly helpful knowledge that will be necessary for ensuring the optimal outcome when using the cameras. It’s always important to have a proper understanding of how to capture proper exposure, and if not the best exposure, it’s far more preferable to underexpose than to overexpose. I had not previously been aware of the viewfinder’s customisable brightness, contrast, and peaking settings, and how these would not automatically represent what the camera was being pointed at, regardless of white balance, focal length, or aperture. Furthermore, it was excellent to discover that the colour bars can be used to fine-tune the brightness and contrast of the viewfinder. Ensuring that the black or white value to the far left or right reaches the value where it will no longer become lighter or darker were it decreased any further. The philosophy of the mindset of a camera operator was especially poignant. I couldn’t agree more the importance of being actively engaged in the process of filming with the cameras. Ensuring that you are, as the camera operator: being mindful of how the tripod is oriented to be most comfortable for you potentially standing by it for long periods of time; orienting the tripod handle so that it is easiest for you to precisely move rotate the camera and is most comfortable to use; using the viewfinder at all times when you are capturing an image with the camera, or framing a shot, and extending the viewfinder away from the camera so that you can properly sink into it; and it’s better to be using the viewfinder and engaging with the camera than lifelessly viewing from a screen.
Individual Exercise One
The limitations of the individual exercise were an exciting and challenging experimentation in filmic techniques, which provided great room for creativity to flourish. Being limited to capturing only fifty seconds of footage required that great deliberation and planning went into both shots. In order to achieve the optimal shot, it was necessary, before the camera was even considered, to be actively observing and engaging with the environment around you, so that you could carefully extract the best understanding of what you would be capturing and when to begin capturing it. I took the opportunity of this exercise to explore a local park, rich with beautiful scenery and action, at which I discovered many interesting events, but was ultimately enraptured by an older gentleman fishing at the bank of the river. Before setting up the camera, I took a few minutes to quietly observe the man: watching his movements, where he would stand while he fished, where he kept his backpack, when he would move from his fishing poles to his backpack to retrieve new bait or a snack. All these things were vital in informing where it was that I should set-up the camera, and how I should frame the shot. Surprisingly, the man was uninterested in and unbothered by my presence with a large tripod-mounted camera pointed at him, barely a few meters away, in an environment where I was especially unnatural. Between my first and my second shots, I had decided that the second shot should be positioned closer to the man, with a tighter frame, more interested in the man and his movements than the beautiful river around us. I had hoped that I would this time capture the man as he was reeling in one of his lines, and I spent some time waiting, until finally he begun to reel each of his three lines in one at a time. He would reel in a line, place it back down, move to his backpack where he would retrieve new bait, and then he would cast his line back out. I intended to capture the man as he cast his third and final line, but unfortunately, I began filming when he was bringing in his line, assuming that fifty seconds would be enough time to watch him perform all the actions mentioned above, he spent significantly more time at his backpack and by the time he returned to cast his line, my fifty seconds were up.
