Category Archives: Opinion

Watching In Bruges (for the eighth time)

I went and watched this film again the other day and my god do I still love it. The humour is as dark as you’ll find and dry to boot. It must have been the 8th time I’ve seen it now but every time I get something new out of it.

I found this particular scene very amusing after having studied Cinema further in another subject over the course of this year. Unfortunately I could not find a video of the scene on YouTube (use your imagination) but the beginning of the scene we, very briefly, see that Ken (Brendan Gleeson) is watching Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil and in particular the famous car bomb scene: a long take that displays night life before the climactic explosion.

We see only a few seconds however before the camera tracks up to Ken, who answers the ringing phone, proceeding to have a rather mundane conversation about Bruges.

The phone call consists of purely mundane chatter about Bruges and how pretty it is, how it’s a lovely place to holiday, which directly mimics the frivolous shots of the night life in Orson Welles’ original shot. Then the finale for the several minute take in Touch of Evil is the car bomb going off, directly compared to the request that Ken kill his accomplice.

It’s a very small detail but I love the film so much and seeing this very clever adaptation of film history in this modern film made me a little giddy, and deepen my respect for In Bruges’ cinematography.

A New Education Paradigm; how?

Certainly another fantastic video outlining examples of how and where the education system is lagging behind modern technology. The ideas Michael Wesch discusses are reasonable and the examples are very real, showing that a different kind of learning and problem solving can take place in the world.

I began writing this blog by asking, “How does this sort of change come about though? Who enacts it? Who maintains it? How do we convince the traditions of generations that their form of education is lacking?”. I stopped myself though, and immediately I thought back again to Sir Ken Robinson’s statement about how people are being taught to never be wrong; the stigmatised mistake.

Change happens now, and through experimentation. Yet again why I am much for Adrian’s approach to the Networked Media lecture; experimentation is key to progress in the field of education. I have met a fair share of frustration in others with these sort of methods though, and it’s made clear that a subsection of people still clutch to the traditional values of education; of authority and the information drip. Continue reading →

Gone Home – A Movie Length Story Experience

I have limited time this week, but I can’t get this off my mind so I’ll put this here as a placeholder for now with some preliminary thoughts. The game Gone Home is a wonderful piece of media.

Developed by The Fullbright Company, Gone Home is a coming of age story explored through the medium of a adventure exploration game. You – the player – have basic controls such as walking, picking up, and inspecting objects, and the story expresses itself through this interaction. Some claim it would have worked just as well if not better as a film, or a novel. But there’s something special about the video game experience that few other mediums can claim to do. Continue reading →

Train Tweeting; Another Form of Blogging

Quick note slash reflection on blogging

So far I am absolutely adoring the blogging platform – particularly as one for education – and I’m definitely enjoying the course so far as well. What I’m quickly finding though is that I still have trouble identifying what I want to write about, if anything at all.

Not because I don’t know anything mind you, I’m still in the habit of not writing things down. As somebody who thinks a whoooooooole lot at an incredibly fast pace (I have trouble keeping up with my own mind sometimes!) it’s a challenge in itself to go, “Oh that’s a good idea, I’ll write about that!”.

At that though I have managed to write posts I am quite proud of and already I feel I’m better at curating and articulating singular ideas within the constraints of a primarily text format.

For some future blog posts I’d love to experiment with more creative pieces – perhals short stories – as I’m far too comfortable writing on the fly and I’ve scarcely ever composed anything, rather creating and publishing it in real time.

On a final note I firmly believe in this whole blogging thing in the course. So far it’s bred a more contextual way of thinking which is far more brilliant than simply remembering and regurgitating information for the sake of criteria.

Wi-Fi Off

Such a quaint compromise during the symposium, but despite all my brilliance I hadn’t thought of this! If I want to focus, why not just turn off that niggling little voice of a network connection? Something I’ll definitely start doing during study sessions

I did find something out about my own attention during this wi-fi-less symposium though: I have a surprising amount of trouble focusing. Every 30 seconds or so my mind procures some oddity to think about, perhaps along the lines of, “Man, what’s up with that ceiling? I wonder how old that is? How old is this building even?” or maybe, “That dude in front of me has a really nice pen. Gold and silver, I wonder where it came from? There’s that pretty neat pen shop up Elizabeth Street, maybe I should check it out…” you get the idea. Hardly ADHD – I notice the trains of thought pretty quickly and snap myself back into focus – but it happens a lot more than I’d like.

Upon realising this I began to ponder upon the idea very often supposed that Generation Y is an attention deficit generation that has lost a real sense of focus. This, in itself, was a departure from my original thought about myself not being able to focus and the irony right there and then was palpable. 

This will be one of my main focuses for improvement to my learning from here on in. I guess all I can try do first is will my way into focus. Whether this will work or not is beyond me, but we’ll see.

“Content is not king”

I’m not religious but the point touched on in this week’s symposium was nothing short of epiphanic for me. I’m dead set on one of two scenarios when I graduate in 2015, both however involve producing online media. These are to either start my own business, or to work in a small tightly knit team of like-minded people to work toward the same goal (I have trouble working to full potential with most people, only a few seem to follow the same eccentric trains of thought I engage with). My dilemma was, “Precisely what do I want to make, and what will make it unique? Continue reading →

Dig this tune, yo.

I’ve been on a bit – and by a bit I mean a lot – of an EDM/DnB binge lately. I have my phases; acoustic folk, indie rock, glitch/IDM, dubstep, yet I always return to those 2 most electrifying genres. Most (broad generalisation here) of those who are passionate about these styles of music generally enjoy it in it’s most pure form; the rave. I don’t mind the odd mosh myself (yeah bet you didn’t guess, I can party hardy any day of the week) but for the most part this sort of music is an intensely mental experience for me.

That right there is a mix by Jon Gooch under his alias Feed Me, with a few other artists mixed in to spice it up. It’s very heavy on the bass and primed for dancing to; the four to the floor beat is easy enough to engage with – one, two, three, four, a simple count to maintain. These are the foundations, and I find the better an artist builds on these foundations the more fun the song becomes. Feed Me as a particular example is very creative. His taste in sounds is eclectic, to say the least, unlike a lot of popular dance music that relies on extremely repetitive rhythms and sounds. Listen closely to a Feed Me track and you’ll find bits and pieces you missed the first – or twentieth – listen. The soundscapes are harsh, sure, but in a masochistic way – there’s no other way to put it. Continue reading →

Contentedness; Confronting Self

During one of the many deep thinking train trips I make 8 times a week, I realised something about myself and noted a rather large flaw I’ve been honing in on for a long while now. If it wasn’t already apparent – something I’ve noticed with my writing already – a lot of my thoughts are pretty narcissistic. On a side note I’m noticing a strong self of Self in most of my actions. I have no issue with this in particular (at least not right now…).

The saying goes ‘jack of all trades’; good at everything, master of nothing, and it wasn’t until today’s train ride did I notice that I had embraced this far too much. I have always been quick to learn a new skill or piece of information, but rarely would I delve deeper than knowing what rather than knowing how. The flaw that became apparent was contentedness. A lesson my VCE Literature teacher imparted with the class was to never be content, and Steve Jobs himself once advised young ambitious minds to always be greedy.

I had accepted the ‘jack of all trades role’ and hence I became lazy. Even last semester I was unconsciously content with just knowing the top level of information required to complete each assessment task and activity. This is something I want to change immediately, though I don’t think it’s an instantaneously possible goal. 

Knowing this now, I want to focus on doing one simple thing. I will deny myself the luxury of only learning the minimum amount of information to ‘pass’ or to get along. While I have the innate ability to learn quickly and more thoroughly than most, this is not to my liking. When the situation demands it, I will go beyond the basic level of understanding by committing more time to the task. The aim for this will be to expand on both the technical skills required of the task – whatever they may be – as well as the context of the task; why am I doing this? Is there a history to this? Are there any recent discoveries about it? Do I know any people or resources that might be able to teach me about the task better?

Publishing this post via mobile, seeing if the app is worth having.

Dear Esther: A Brief Look

This is a brief analysis of the game Dear Esther I wrote a little while back but forgot to publish, originally meant for a website I contribute to novede.com. I wanted to have a go at breaking down it’s elements and how the game works to motivate the player to try and give it a little more credit as a ‘game’.

Dear Esther is an experimental game/visual novel by UK development team The Chinese Room. It’s solemn and poetic, but somewhat controversial amongst players as to whether it should be called a game or not due to it’s stark lack of ‘features’. This isn’t rhetoric meant to persuade you but I’d like to break down the few techniques and mise-en-scene as it were that act within it. Continue reading →