Tag Archives: korsakow

the problem with no conclusion – week 11

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been jumping around a number of people’s blogs this week and a post bec made really caught my eye. she had some really good things to say about this whole non-linear, no-conclusion thing we’ve been dealing with all semester. because yes, we do need to start embracing the new types of online and social media dominating our world today. but, like bec says, that doesn’t mean that we have to completely disregard everything we’ve had up until now. they’ve been trying to get rid of print and books for years. but they’re still here. people have been telling linear, narrative stories since the beginning of time. obviously they’re doing something right if they’re still around today, and are the most popular form of entertainment out there. so why should we completely disregard this all because of some little non-linear stuff that is really big for a very small number of people? es, maybe that’s where main stream society is heading. but narratives and conclusions will still always stay with us, so it’s important not to completely write them off.

like bec said, we use narratives to escape our lives. they provide answers and conclusions where sometimes our lives don’t. Adrian does always say that korsakow and non-linear mirrors the way we think and how we experience the world, by association. but isn’t that why we have stories, to escape the real world and experience something different? bec has raised some good questions. she’s not saying to completely disregard what we’ve been learning, but just suggesting that we also don’t completely disregard everything we all ready know and have in society as well.

stormless skies – week 11

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hello. week 11 here. i’m here to make you freak out and have a melt down.

yes! the dreaded week 11 is here. the week where we all realise how much stuff we have to do and how little we’ve done to prepare ourselves for it. the major k-film is almost due and we need to start filming. i’ve done a couple for it already. and they were actually really fun. it’s like being a child again, getting to dress up in costumes and pretend to be a super hero. or be thinking up different types of superpowers that i can film. or trying to force my dog into a superman cape and make him run around the back yard (he wasn’t very happy with me for that). and the other members in my group got some good videos too. my only issue with our videos is that they’re not all cohesive. you can tell they were made by different people. they don’t all flow great. especially compared to some of the other groups videos that we saw.

i mean, our clips are good, and i think they really suit our film. they just don’t seem very…… professional. i’m not sure. the others are really fancy. but in a way, our slightly more disjointed kind of film style works. because our idea with the clips was to film them with iPhones. they weren’t meant to all be perfect but rather be kind of “on the spot” kind of footage, as if you were seeing a superhero saving someone or doing something incredible out on the street and you quickly pulled out your phone to film it. so in that sense, that is the kind of film we have. and that style does work. its just whether or not our films will look cohesive enough once we put them all together. but that’s what trial and error is for. this week we’ll each be taking more videos and start putting them together into the proper korsakow file. maybe if we work on them together rather than individually then it could work even better than what we have already. let’s hope so!

narratives and conclusions, part 2 – week 11

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the lecture this week again was consisting of discussions regarding conclusions, narrative and nonlinear in regards to korsakow. it seems people are pretty hung up on the fact that korsakow is different to what we’re used to. different doesn’t mean worse (it certainly doesn’t mean better), it just means different, it’s not what we’re used to. and this is still getting to some people. maybe they’re just xenophobic (although i never thought xena was that scary. sorry, that was a terrible joke).

people’s main issue appears to be that of a lack of conclusion with the k-film. that you can’t determine how or in what order someone will view it and so you can’t provide the conclusions that you want. this brought up the question, “should you have an end SNU?”. this was a yes and no kinda answer. obviously it depends on the kind of film you’re trying to make and the kind of experience you want your viewers to get. end SNU’s can be problematic because if they come up to early in the viewing of the film then the film will end prematurely without al the right stuff getting out. but an end SNU can also give clarity or information that might be needed ago end the film or deliver the final message of the theme. an end SNU is useful for a film with a strong temporal link or a literary timeline. again, the use for an end arises when we think mostly in linear narrative form. if we want our film to be a traditional narrative then we will want it to have a traditional conclusion and in that situation then yes, have an end SNU. but that’s not what korsakow is supposed to be a bout. it is decidedly different and allows you to be different. so why revert to the traditional when this is the way to do something new, non-linear is the way of the future (according to adrian). my favourite point from the lecture was again about conclusions. we are all hung up on them, on linear storytellings with narrative endings. but not every story has an ending, even ones told in linear fashion. and the example adrian gave was soap operas. soap operas are a story. they tell a narrative in linear fashion for half an hour five days a week. but they have no conclusion. ever. they just keep going. people can stop watching them if they want. and form their own conclusions about what that means or what might have happened. but in reality, thy have no conclusion. and that doesn’t seem to phase anyone. narratives and conclusions relate but they are no code pendant. you can have one without the other and we need to grasp that and understand it because by the look of things, that’s where we’re all headed in the future.

the finale hurdle – week 11

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this is it!!! we’re almost there. 11 weeks down and just a k-film to go. or so i thought. then this reading got thrown at us. it’s our last one. we were all hoping it would be a nice simple one. something enjoyable, easy to read. but of course it couldn’t be like that. oh no. it had to be evil. and by evil, i mean pure evil. devil worthy. mark pellegrino singing stairway to heaven 50 times over kinda evil.

let me begin by telling you that this reading is “concerned with the social praxis of documentary  in the sea of ubiquitous data that is both consequence ad driver of online social mediation”. let me then continue by saying that i have no idea whatsoever what that means. the article discusses the benefits of web 2.0, HTML5, regular documentaries, i-docs (remember i-docs? like back from week 1!), popcorn maker, and pretty much anything else, online, nonlinear or korsakow-y. so, in a sense, yes it is kind of like a conclusion to the theory from the semester. it’s just a very long, very painful one to get through.

we hear about the “industrial revolution of data” that is coming our way. everything we know about online information is changing and we can only imagine what it will look like in a number of years from now because you can guarantee that it won’t be the same. a big part of this article was the difference between “on the web” and “of the web”, the latter being the direction this revolution is taking us and our data. Dovey and Rose discuss the new ways that video can be seen and uploaded online, integrated within the page and consisting of links inwards and outwards rather than being situated separately within their own player. everything is joining together and becoming one with each other, forming an all mighty ‘online’ that pretty much has everything. the program called popcorn maker is mentioned which, like our lovely korsakow, allows users and creators to view and make interactive documentaries where films link into and out of each other or even to anywhere else on the web that may be relevant. as i’m sure we are supposed to be believing, this is the future the internet but also just of media and communication itself. korsakow again here. everything is connected by associations. link make the world go round. linear narrative doesn’t.

narratives and conclusions – week 10 lecture

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more discussion about k-films in this week’s lecture, we discussed themes, emotions, narratives and conclusions. looks like everyone has the major k-films on their minds. the major point that i took from the whole lecture was about  the k-films not being a way to literally express any point but as a way to experience something for each individual. the point of the k-film is for everyone to interpret the content individually, they become a part of experiencing something without being told exactly what they are supposed to be experiencing.

how important are themes in a k-film? a theme gives us something to work around. like we discussed in one of the previously lectures, constraints are good. they allow for greater creativity. and a theme can do just that. limits that we work both within and around. even without a defining theme, as humans it’s within our nature to try and find any form of pattern or link between things, without pattern, all we see is chaos. our lives are associational because we link everything together so a them in a k-films allows them to feel more cohesive than they may be without one. however, the important part, like in the previous point, is to not always be too literal with the themes. infer a theme or idea without explicitly stating it. give the audience a means to enjoy and experience for themselves. its not so much the theme itself but how the content explores the theme. of course, this also depends on what the theme is, some can be far more obvious than others. for example the theme we have decided on for our k-film is superpowers and reality vs. fabrication. one of these is more obvious with the other and we are using this first theme as a means to explore the latter one. so while the superpowers themselves might seem obvious, the way that they are delivered and the ideas that they are being used for (reality vs. fabrication) will be more inferred than explicit.

does a lack of narrative or conclusion give an unsatisfying experience? the first answer to this was that we really need to move away from the ideas of linear narrative storytelling as a way of communication. that’s not what this course is about. of course, simply moving away from that isn’t that easy, it’s something that we have grown up with as part of society and is pretty much all we know. even though adrian says that non-linear is how we think, that’s how we think sub-consciouly, consciously we live in the world of linear narratives. what was a good point is that narratives and conclusions are separate. you can have one without the other. k-films can end. they can provide a specific ending clip. but even for the ones that are meant to go on forever, they must end. and that is when the viewer gets to decide the conclusion, which in a way makes that conclusion even more powerful because the viewer has decided upon it themselves (even if it’s just because they were bored with the film they were watching). and even without a set conclusion, we will always try to prove some sort of context or meaning to whatever we’re watching. even if the ending doesn’t make sense.  we don’t watch a film for the ending, we watch it for the experience. our k-filsm are the same. another really good point i liked was that the internet is kinda like a giant k-film. its comprised of links in and out, is uniquely experienced by each individual and has no end (except for those decided upon by the user). there is no meaning on the internet, we give meaning to what we see and contribute to it as well.

finally, we discussed the kuleshov effect, a topic that was brought up a couple of times last year too. the kuleshov effect reminds us that when we are making, not just our k-films but anything, that it’s not the shots themselves that meaning anything but rather each shot in its relation to those around it. meaning only comes from relations, the shots or clips themselves have no meaning.

i’m super, thanks for asking – week 9

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i really hope you know what movie that quote in the title is from. no? ok, i posted the link below just to help you out. but only this once. don’t let this happen again.

we’ve started work on our major k-film now and our theme is superpowers. well. we’ve got like 3 themes. kinda. so this is where i really wanna try and sort through them, sort them out and organise them.

1. superpowers

2. heroes vs. villains

3. real vs. fabrication (with a little bit of magic thrown in there too)

so, here’s our main idea/prompt: Is there a definitive line between authentic reality and fabricated reality?

but so much else comes under that that we want to explore. the main way that we are exploring this prompt/idea is through the use of superpowers and then within that, heroes and villains. so it’s kinda like a 3-fold idea, using two of those as methods to communicate our overarching theme. we want to use varying levels of “superpowers” but show them in ways that will make the audience question whether it is real or we have used effects. primarily we are asking what is real? how can you tell what is real from what is fabricated? some things will be obviously real and some obviously fake but the point  is that the line in the middle will become lost, especially once we bring magic into the mix which is a true blend of reality and fabrication that exists in our world today.

the whole point of our film is to take the viewers through a journey using the unique nature of the k-film where they can explore the different sides of the superpowers and try to decide for themselves what is real and what isn’t. having them put into the korsakow style means that the viewer will create their own story from the clips too, they can interpret it how they want, if they just want to see heroes fighting villains then they will but they can also explore what is behind each clip, how it has been made. because k-films force viewers to think about how the film has been constructed in such a certain manner so this plays on that by asking not only how is the film constructed to give meaning but also how are each of the individual clips constructed.

some ideas of clips that we have:

First person super hero actions (edited in post)

Elements and remnants of powers (a fire, arrow in tree, spiderweb)

Shakycam footage of stuff in crowds (add screams and stuff in post)

Night scenes of criminals or criminal looking areas

Street performers, magicians.

using special effects on videos, after editing

someone watching a superhero film

cape blowing in the wind

reverse shots, like somebody jumping off a high ledge. but reverse so it looks like they’re jumping up

 

return to norm – week 9 lecture

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things are finally getting back into the swing of things. that break kinda threw everybody but it’s starting to seem back to normal. at least for now anyways. who knows what it’ll be like in a week.

this weeks lecture was all about the k-films as people start preparing themselves for the major project. to start with, adrian had a lot to say about cinema being visual, not language based. which makes sense. you think about the first films, they were silent. these could be viewed, understood and enjoyed worldwide because images can be received by everyone. yes, we have sound now, but language was never our first port of call for communication. long before there were ever words and language, their were drawings. even in our k-films, we use the still thumbnails as a port of communication to tell what is coming next. people look and see before they read and hear. another example adrian gave was the idea of grammar. in language, a sentence cannot be out of order. the wrong grammar means it won’t make sense. but you can take any series of film clips and put them in any order and they will still make sense. maybe not the same sense that the creator intended but they can still be understood. again this is where korsakow thrives, because it can exist beyond the realm of linear storytelling.

one topic that has been of a lot of discussion has been lists. and an interesting point in the lecture was whether lists can create infinite possibilities. there were some different answers to this question, about it depending on what kind of list or who is listing. but when you think about it, i guess any list can be infinite. it’s like being given a constraint, like what was discussed last week, the constraint allows you to think not just of what you would normally think of but of what else there is out there. and what else can be infinite. there was also the idea that when a list only presents a sample of what is available, then whatever is left can have infinite possibilities. but the part i thought was most important wasn’t about what is or isn’t on the list being infinite or finite but the relationships between things on or off the list being important. because anyone can write a list. but the relationships take thought and time and can have infinite possibilities depending on the individual who is making it. similar to films and especially with k-films, it’s the relationships between clips that’s important, not the clips themselves.

a collage about collages – week 9

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this week’s reading was interesting and for once, understandable!!! (maybe i’m a little to sceptical about all these readings.  but they’re just so tiresome and continuous.) shields provides us with a series of i guess i’ll call them dot points. all about collage and fiction and stuff. like adrian said on the subject blog, this “Could have been written for this subject”. and if it wasn’t, then i reckon this entire subject might have been written around this reading.

the reading itself, as i mentioned above, is comprised of various dot point like sentences (and sometimes paragraphs), making it thankfully very easy to read. it’s generally about collage vs the normal conventional fiction narrative. and you can tell Shields is a major collage supporter. he loves the idea of the many fractured parts coming together to form one whole. as he says, “collage is the many becoming one”, it “connect bits that don’t seem to belong together” and creates something new with them. remind you of anything? here we go again, korsakow!!! yay!!! i guess if this article didn’t relate in some way to korsakow then it wouldn’t really be here, considering korsakow is this entire subject.

shields describes the collage as representing the mind which he describes as “chaotic and opaque rather than unified and transparent” but likens this also to the journey and experience of life itself, saying that “fiction teaches that life is coherent, can be neatly tied up. but life flies at us in bright splinters”, in other words, a mosaic. “story says everything happens for a reason.” but it does not, and collages and k-films mirror this. and with a lack of reason there can sometimes tend to be a lack of plot. but Shields doesn’t say that that is a bad thing, rather that the “absence of plot leaver the reader room to think about other things”. although, i thought he may have gone a bit overboard when he said “plots are for dead people”. like… what does that even mean? calm down Shields. lets not get too over the top here.

moving on we see where Adrian got his favourite ideals, that of “collage as an evolution beyond narrative”. how many lectures has adrian been telling us that we need to get over narrative? the k-films and nonlinear is the way of the future. Shields knows where its at.

a really good point that i liked from the reading was bringing up the kuleshov effect, which we talked about quite a bit last year too. shields says that” meaning and emotion were created not by the content of the individual images but by the relationship of the images to one another” which is again what adrian tells us. in our k-films, it doesn’t matter what the clips themselves are, meaning only comes from how they are linked into and out from the other clips in the film. “meaning is a matter of adjacent data. everything is collage”. the most relevant point Shields made IMO to korsakow is – “you’ve found some interesting material, how do you go about arranging it?”. because that’s what korsakow is, arranging footage to create different meanings, unique meanings, that could never be achieved using simple linear narrative storytelling.

the only issue with all of this, which is something a lot of us have been asking ourselves have only been newly introduced to this new form of communication and story telling, is “how long will the reader stay engaged?”. because collage and korsakow is not for everyone, and a lot of people may not understand it. but as shield says “art exists to make one feel things” so as long as we can let our audience experience something, give them some form of emotion, then isn’t that all we can really ask for?

 

no constraints, just one big ‘ole film – week 8

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we’re well into the course now and the baby k-films are out of the way. however, this means no more constraints and that was one of my contract thing’s. so instead, i’m going to use this contract spot to discuss our plans and ideas for the major k-film project.

we’ve got a big task coming up. and we have to face it in little groups of three. k-films upon k-films and it’s all interconnecting. 60 clips is a big task. especially if we want them all to look good and mean something. i guess it’ a good thing we had all those previous constraints to prepare us. luckily with this task, we have one overarching idea that we will know from the start, rather than random constraints each week to follow so that should making working on it a whole lot easier and actually allow me (and our group) to properly map out what clips we want, what we want them to mean and most importantly, how we want them to connect. if we don’t plan out our film well, it’ll just be a big mess and all the stuff we’ve done leading up to it, including the mini k-films will have been pointless. i want to create something that will be enjoyable, interesting, but also just a great k-film. i want it to utilise the non-linear fashion of korsakow to provide a unique experience for every viewer.

lets hope this turns out well!

back from the break – week 8 lecture

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this week’s lecture was all about interpretation and being creative when it comes to K-films.

my favourite point that Adrian made was that without constraint, you can’t have creativity. this was really interesting to consider because normally when we are given task with which to work around, we can find (and often complain that) it is limiting our creative ability to create what we want. but this was a different take on things. being given a constraint gives us something to work around and towards. it allows us to think outside the box of what it could simply be and to create something much more interesting. without a constraint to guide us, we are limited to simply what we can think of. but if we are given a limit, suddenly we have to think about what we couldn’t just think of, something new. the constraints allow for interpretation and that’s what makes them so creatively accessible, everyone can interpret them differently.

that brings us to the next major part of the symposium lecture, whether interpretation can transfer onto a k-film when making an essay. while any type of text allows for a huge amount of individual interpretation from any viewer, k-films allow a far greater level of subjectivity than a normal film or essay by allowing the viewer to decide what they will experience and when. interpretation can never be controlled by the creator so k-films and k-film essays use this to their advantage to create for a more in depth of exploring ideas on a multi linear plane. there is so much more effort required to make a liner essay, in a true essay, all thoughts should be connected. this is why multi linear works, it allows all the different ideas to be connected to anything the relate to, not just the next point.

one final great point from the lecture was that multi linear k-films and essays mirror the way we as humans experience, understand and interpret the world. our world is made by association and that is how korsakow functions. as adrian said, “it makes thinking out loud visible”