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A5 pt2 Studio Review

Within my studios final exhibition website one of my favourite works to engage with was Any Given Tuesday by Otto McKinnon. The work explores the key idea addressed in our studio of durational listening in a thoughtful and successful manner. The film showcases the site of The Astor Theatre located in St Kilda through an audio-visual work. My favourite aspects of this work invite attunement to the space. This can be seen through Otto’s use of diegetic sounds, camera angles and colour. The film ends with an instruction to “walk around the space”. Within this the creaks and organic movements of the theatre expose its history and past. This invitation of active listening speaks to the ideas of listening presented in Donna Haraway’s Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Harraway speaks about taking time to observe and be within a site, noticing how your body may impact the space. The diegetic sounds of movement heard through the aging wood made me question how my steps and the weight they contain may press into the flooring and create an echoing impact. I found this technique to be really successful in exploring the concept of listening addressed in our studio and enjoyed engaging with the work with this in mind, I wish I could have attended the onsite exhibit.  

 

The work THOROUGHFARE (2022) By Caitlin Ramsey drew on the quote “Our sense of planet is not a cosmopolitan rush but rather the uncanny feeling that there are all kinds of places at all kinds of scale” (Timothy Morton, 2016). The ideas discussed within Moron’s work fed into our class discussion of refusal.  I absolutely love the use of the highway as a symbol for Morton’s loop, this is my favourite aspect of the work. The audio within the work was powerful in its communication, making use of recorded live radio stations. I found the purposeful placement of words heard in the sound to be successful in supporting the communication of the studio’s concepts. I liked the use of car dash boards to show how everyone on the highway is participating in a similar activity just in varied personal environments. I found this linking to the ideas of rhythm and repitition we discussed in class. I loved Caitlins’ work and through engaging with it in the exhibition, believe it communicates concepts of the studio in a beautiful manner.  

 

Within the week 13 exhibition I loved seeing works in person and enjoyed talking to the Eco-Video Studio students about their works. A key idea that the works produced by this studio communicate is that of “crafting ecological intimacy” and within this, further exploring our relationship to the environment. This idea was communicated in various ways throughout the studio’s final works, I particularly liked the exploration of this concept in the works Between worlds by Jess and Olivia as well as the work The Home of Jellyfish and Other Things by Elle, Ellis and Irene.  

 

Between worlds by Jess and Olivia is a multi-screen video work showcasing relationship to water and ocean and the power it holds. I believe this work communicated the concept of the studio well through the use of voiceovers to illustrate three individuals’ relationships with the ocean. I found the use of the multiscreen technique to be engaging and gave space to show explicit contrast and beauty. I would have liked to see moments where the ocean filled the entire screen as I believe this would communicate the oceans power in a more successful manner. However, the video work is beautiful and invited me to view my relationship with the ocean in a different light. I think the most successful technique used to communicate ecological intimacy was the use of the editing technique time manipulation. The slowed movement reminded me of the feeling of floating in the ocean.  

 

The Home of Jellyfish and Other Things by Elle, Ellis and Irene within the studio Eco-Video comments on the studio concept of ecological intimacy through different bodies of water and life forms.  I found the visual exploration of different bodies of water to align with my aesthetic understanding of the studio concept well, and successfully invited attunment. I liked the use of sound and voice over within the work but I would have liked to hear more isolated diegetic sounds of water. I believe this would invite moments of reflection for the viewer to think about their personal relationship with ecology.  

 

References

Timothy Morton. The First Thread. In: Dark Ecology : For a Logic of Future Coexistence . Columbia University Press; 2016:1-59. doi:10.7312/mort17752

Haraway D. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist studies. 1988;14(3):575-599. doi:10.2307/3178066

Prompt 3: Experiments in making and attuning

My first experiment in making is a potential direction of the sound scape within my work. I wanted to trial using the sounds of home videos to create a composition containing moments of quiet and moments with many layers of sound. I used sounds recorded on site accompanied by refined audio from archival footage in the form of home videos. I had the intention of creating a nostalgic aesthetic quality that also connected to the site.

First Experiment:

My second and third experiments are that of filming within the garden. I wanted to trial filming in a manner inspired by the kinetic nature of Daniel Crooks work An Embroidery of Voids. This second experiment had the intention of a walk through the garden in one take. The third experiment tries a different take in the form of still shots edited together to see the aesthetic differences these two effects possess.

Second Experiment:

Third Experiment:

My fourth experiment is trialling creating a silhouette of a body. My intention within this experiment was to see how a silhouette communicates meaning and the aesthetic qualities this possess. I tried using a white Perspex sheet back lit to obtain this effect.  

Fourth Experiment:

References

An Embroidery of Voids. 2013. by D. Crooks. 19.23 min <https://vimeo.com/119904435>

Prompt 1: Literature review

LaBelle, Brandon. (2010) ‘Introduction: Your Sound is My Sound is Your Sound’. Acoustic Territories : Sound Culture and Everyday Life, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, New York: xv-xxvi  

I am intrigued with the link between memory and sound. Within LaBelle’s piece they explain how the sound we hear moves ‘from its source and toward a listener, without forgetting all the surfaces, bodies, and other sounds it brushes against, is a story imparting a great deal of information’ (2010, p. xvi). The concept that the history of a person, or myself can be heard or found within a sound holds immense power. A sound that may be so familiar, intimate and meaningful to me may sound so foreign to a listener but the story within it still exists. This is relevant to my project though my desire to use home videos within the audio aspect of my final. LaBelle’s explanation of the link between sound and story directly relates to my wish for the stories of memories to be told in an implicit manner. I want to encourage the viewer to experience a slippery memory through the stories sound hold.  

Ellingson, L. L. (2012). Embodied knowledge. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (p. 245).  

 Ellingson writes ‘knowledge grounded in bodily experience encompasses uncertainty, ambiguity, and messiness in everyday life, eschewing sanitized detached measurement of discrete variables’ (2008, p.2). This idea of embodied knowledge is whole and exists in a manner where it is okay to be unsure and messy about specific meaning of seemingly unexplainable things is comforting. I have been struggling to pinpoint the language to describe the aesthetic qualities and feelings I wish to express within my work. Aiming to produce a more embodied experience within my work will assist in communicating my ideas of listening to the body and about the connections to my site. I contextualised Ellingson’s writing to the idea that one can be in their bedroom in the pitch black and know where they are or how to move around the space. This relates to my work through the feeling I want to capture within how a body moves within the site of my childhood garden. I know every blade of grass off by heart and can locate my way in the pitch black to each section. This connection to site and body is one I aim to capture within my work.  

References

LaBelle, Brandon. (2010) ‘Introduction: Your Sound is My Sound is Your Sound’. Acoustic Territories : Sound Culture and Everyday Life, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, New York: xv-xxvi  

Ellingson, L. L. (2012). Embodied knowledge. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (p. 245).  

A4: A Palette Full of Emotion Reflection

 

A work by Bailey Eyears, Isabella Paturzo-Polson, Tully Rigoni and Julia Adams

A Palette Full of Emotion is a short-form educational video that explores the affordances of colour and its influence on audience emotions. Colour has an unconscious physical effect on viewers of film and TV. Inherently, it possesses the ability to create and communicate emotion to the audience.  

Studio Reflection 

Being a part of the studio Screen Lab has been a rewarding experience in which I have learnt valuable knowledge of industry and about my own interests within media. A key concern of the studio surrounded educating and engaging through cinematic experiences. I believe our final work A Palette Full of Emotion communicates this concern and engages its audience though our aim of it being easily digested. This allows the work to be understood by ACMI’s diverse audience. Therefore, for the educational components to be understood and actually learnt instead of being over packed with academic tone resulting in the viewer ultimately not understanding the content and not leaning. This can be seen through a high standard of visual storytelling. The work is fast paced to invite a snappy engaging way of communicating educational content surrounding colour in film and TV. The focus on emotion allows for depth to be brought to a specific topic rather than skimming the surface of a breadth. This invites more room for the inclusion of educational content while maintaining the entertainment value. We thoroughly planned a clear sound design and narration. Having one voice as narrator and a careful choice of words through a revised script enhances quality which also enhances engagement. As a team, we thoroughly researched academic findings on the relationship between colour and emotion and how this relates to film and TV. The basis of the work is therefore educational. The work mentions specific academic findings and directly relates them visually to films. With a fast paced visual reel of recognisable and recently released and topical film and TV the viewer has a higher chance of being engaged for longer. Therefore, I hope our final work engages and educates its audience through cinematic experiences by being of high quality, fast paced, well researched to include academia and easily digestible.

If we were going to continue work on our piece of media there would be core things I would want to improve. I would allow the work to be longer to provide room for more detail and depth to be explored. I believe that with an extended time frame we would be able to educate the audience to a fuller extent. If given the right opportunities I believe an interview with a psychologist would add an extensive amount of value to the work. It would also bring an explanation to why we associate certain colours with emotion or why these colours communicate feelings. This is an area I believe we skimmed over.  An expert would further confirm the existing educational aspects as well as create trust in the viewer. Having cutaways to an engaging interview that then directly related to the film examples would also encourage engagement as there would be more visual diversity. Having all visual components being clips from films can have an unauthentic and amature appearance. I would also consider improving the sound design. I think that the result of the narration does work well. However, in some parts we had to make the music slightly louder to cover up microphone cracks. I would also spend more time curating the music. I think it is too cinematic and epic in style and I would have prefered a lower intensity to accompany the work.

Pre-production and production 

Our process began with picking the topic of how colours communicate emotions in film and TV. We really wanted a narrow topic in order to maintain depth over breadth in our final work. Once this was confirmed we created group roles and our research and brainstorming began. We also needed to take into consideration the studio prompt and the ACMI guidelines. We found key academic resources and decided to keep it simple by referring to three main ones. This worked well throughout the process by allowing us to stay inside the 2:30 min time limit. After our primary research we began work on the script. This had many revisions and developed along with the curated list of films we included in the final. We carefully aligned the two to maintain a visual and audio connection so the work met the original goal of being easily digested and understood.  This was achieved through a shared word doc located on our Microsoft Teams alongside a shared Miro in which we met and added images and ideas to create a storyboard. Miro was a tool which invited us to be messy and was a great option for online collaboration. We also brainstormed and refined the title here through the use of sticky notes and commented and expanded on each other’s ideas with ease.

Miro

Script

With the pre-production finalised we began the production. Bailey was our primary editor so we all supported and had group calls when any issues or obstacles presented themselves. Our clear and detailed pre-production resulted in this working well. As a team we sourced and narrowed down many movies. We selected specific timecodes to extract and download so Bailey could place them in the Premier timeline following our storyboard and script.

Our first rough cut was around one minute long and we submitted it to Cat and Field for feedback. This was an extremely beneficial process with the primary issue in our work being our adaptation of the AMCI style guide being incorrect. We worked as a team to alter our credits and use font Fakt Pro for the lower thirds title when crediting the films and PX Grotesk for directors names and the main title. We really wanted to have good quality audio. To achieve this Tully sat and recorded in a closet with a good microphone to record the voice over for the script. Overall, I believe our preproduction and production process worked well. We took advantage of each other’s strengths and ultimately achieved our beginning goal.

Link to rough cuts 

Collaboration

As a team, we adapted to working in an online environment through having regular communication and clear roles. This was a learning experience in which we all were able to develop new skills and take advantage of each other’s strengths. I have never previously worked in a group this large before. I was a bit nervous about how the dynamic would play out. I was really keen to be in a collaborative environment though as you have the capacity to learn so much from others and combine ideas to create a better overall work. For most of the process the group worked well together. We had some members who were quite strong about their desires for the project and how they saw the production process timeline. This was a bit of a worry for me but it all worked out and people still listened to one another. As week elleven approached our scheduled meeting times were forgotten by some and this created a bit of tension within the group. However, with everyone having varying schedules it is understandable and we worked as a team to overcome these obstacles. From the beginning we made a Microsoft Teams in which we set up a clear collaboration outline and folders to help us stay organised and to keep everyone on the same page and connected. This was a great tool and I will now use this for future projects. Overall I really enjoyed collaborating with my team and am proud of how we all used our strengths to create our final work.

Peer presentation reflection 

In the week nine pitch presentations, Alicia’s pitch on the topic of project mapping stood out to me. The slides created a visual understanding of where the final work may be headed which excited me as the use of colour was visually engaging and made it easy to digest. The content within the pitch was well researched with academic backing allowing for the educational aspects to be clear and I instantly trusted the work and the content being presented. I previously had no idea the history of projection mapping extended to 1969. My primary experience with it has been through events such as White Night. The collision of fine art and media technology is powerful and should be more known. When Alicia explicitly outlined the relevance to AMCI was the moment  the work came to life for me. The work aims to actually explain the process of projection mapping and how a work goes from the beginning conceptual stages through programs and then displayed. I believe this is a niche focus. However, simultaneously it appeals to many as shown through the interest in events such as White night. I believe this will be a massive strength of the work as it will allow for depth to be achieved in a specific area of focus while maintaining interest form ACMI’s broad audience. One thing I would suggest for the work would be to include footage of famous works as well as after effects animation. I believe this would improve the work and be a good conclusion to the explanation of the process. I am really looking forward to seeing if Alica creates her own projection mapping during the production of the work and I hope she includes this in the work as well. Even though the time limit on the work is limited I believe from Alicia’s pitch that she will create an engaging, educational and entertaining work and I look forward to seeing it come to life. I think it will inspire many, including myself, to become involved in the project mapping world.


Blog Posts: 

Week seven: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/juliaadams/2021/10/15/screen-lab-week-seven-reflection/ 

Week eight: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/juliaadams/2021/10/15/screen-lab-week-eight-reflection/ 

Week nine: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/juliaadams/2021/10/15/screen-lab-week-nine-reflection/ 

Week ten: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/juliaadams/2021/10/15/screen-lab-week-ten-reflection/ 

Week eleven: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/juliaadams/2021/10/15/screen-lab-week-eleven-reflection/ 

 

Screen Lab: Week Eleven Reflection

Week eleven was a busy one behind the scenes. With the rough cuts due our team worked together to get all our pre-production work mostly finished, and put together a minute long rough cut for Field to look at. Field gave really useful and informative feedback on our rough cut: “​​Looking good, nice choice of films to convey ideas and script seems good. Andrew Kennedy will need some introduction or explanation as to who he is.  Not sure what’s going where the red frames are, currently quite intense!” As a class we discussed where to improve and how to take advantage of the feedback. It was also useful seeing and hearing others feedback as a lot of it could be adapted to improve our work further too. As a group we had many calls and discussions on how to improve the work and further tuned the script and fixed editing issues. We added in more clips to replace the red placeholders and found music to run under the work. 

Screen Lab: Week Ten Reflection

This week in class we had class consults and prepared for the rough cut presentations due in week eleven. We looked carefully at the ACMI style guide and layed out the formatting and downloaded the fonts for our final. As a class we looked at past examples and noted the things that made some better than others. One point that stood out to me was how important good quality sound and graphics are. Taking this into consideration, I started on our script which as a group we fine tuned to be concise but informative. We also created a Miro to work alongside our Microsoft Teams set up in order to have visual brainstorming and created our story board there too. It was effective, and we worked well as a team with scheduled meetings to see how everyone was going with their work. 

 

Screen Lab: Week Nine Reflection

This week we had our pitches to Cat and Field Carr, a videographer from ACMI. As a group we presented our Canva slides and prepared speeches. As a group we worked well together in preparation and came up with the topic of how colour within film communicates and creates emotion. We did academic research as well as found the beginnings of our example films that we will include in our work. We created a mood board and began the pre-production process. 

Field and Cat had great feedback for us. The main takeaway being to stay focused on emotion and don’t be too broad as the time limit is short. We want a work that shows depth and less breadth. It was also really useful to view my peers pitch presentations and hear their feedback. I am looking forward to seeing everyones final products.

 

Screen Lab: Week Eight Reflection

Week eight was predominantly preparation for the week nine pitch presentations to Field. We continued with the showcase of assignment two and I really enjoy this process. Everyone made unique works that all fit into the guideline in different ways. In the current online environment I am inspired by how others navigate this obstacle. 

In regards to pre-production for the upcoming assignment four my group built a Microsoft Teams in which we have an active discussion board for bouncing off ideas to one another as well as formal files set up. We completed a collaboration contract and outlined our roles for the creation of the work. We also split up the script so we all have specific talking points for week nine’s pitch. My focus is on how our film aims to address the AMCI brief by being entertaining, educational and engaging. We are planning to have a high standard of visual storytelling that is fast paced similar in style to a film trailer to invite a snappy engaging way of communicating educational content surrounding colour in film and TV. We also plan to have clear sound design and narration through having the single voice of Tully narrating throughout who will use an external microphone and a script.

 

Screen Lab: Week Seven Reflection

This week we discussed the upcoming assignment and started choosing topics for the final assignment. I am in a group with Tully, Bella and Bailey and we are doing the topic Colour in film. I am really looking forward to being in a group and using all our skills to create a work.  We had a showcase of our assignment #2 and I really liked Bella’s interview with Buzzfeed creator. I learnt a lot from it as it is a field that I am interested in. I find it difficult to have others watch my work but I am finding this exercise helpful and each time gets easier. The weekly focus was on immersion Art, VR/AR and Industry. Within this a discussion that I enjoyed surrounded VR in ART. In particular, the look at the COLLISIONS exhibition within ACMI. I found this really interesting as it is something that combines all my passions into one place.