what happens on vine – week 10

been checking out some other people’s blog this week and came across Kevins very funny vine post called “what happens to an asian on vine”. not the most academic video but it is very enjoyable. however, the video does have some kind of relevance to the course, specifically the kuleshov effect that was discussed in last weeks reading and the lecture earlier in the week. the kuleshov effect describes the theory that individual clips have no meaning by themselves, but rather that meaning is drawn from the connections between clips. kevins vine is comprised of 4 separate clips that, if you were to only watch one by itself, would be confusing and mean nothing, but when placed together in this certain order, have a meaning. the video shows kuleshov in its basic format. putting clips that alone mean nothing but together create an experience that could not be had if the clips were separate. good stuff kev.

beach day – week 8

i like to try and keep up with what my fellow media makers are up to. this week i checked out ella’s blog which had a really awesome video that she made. this video was to follow the constraint “places that define you” and i think this really works. ella lives in st kilda so filming acland street couldn’t possibly have suited her more. acland street is a very big part of my life so i know how much a strong part it holds in the heart of anyone who lives in st kilda. and i feel ella’s clips really do capture the heart of st kilda, from the terrifying teeth and eyes of the luna park mouth to those goddamn seagulls on the beach to the cars and graffiti, this film is st kilda.

i’m not sure why but my fave clip was the one of the traffic lights. it’s one of the few that show movement but it also has light and an interesting shot composition, it worked that the lights weren’t smack bang in the centre of frame. it makes it different and that’s what makes st kilda so special. it’s different.

good stuff ella 😀

can a plant feel? – week 5

the constraints this week were interesting ones. we had to describe objects and elements form the perspective of plants and animals in our homes. for one, what if we don’t have any animals in our homes. i mean yes, there is my brother. by i don’t think that’s really what adrian was going for. luckily i have my beautiful (if not incredibly stupid) dog so i wasn’t completely lost on what things look like to dogs. the plant on the other hand…. how do they have a point of view.

but when i started to think about it, this was a really interesting constraint task. because it got me to start thinking not only about these living things in new ways but about the objects themselves in new ways. what do these items mean, not just to my dog but in relation to me and the world? his food bowl. yes, it’s just a silver metal thing that sits on the floor. but to him its a meal. its random delicious chicken on a friday night as a treat. it 6pm every night. it’s a reason to get off his bed. it’s his gateway to the family dining room. and thats just a metal bowl.

the elemental constraint, light, water or earth from the perspective of a plant got even deeper :O. because to us, these things are a given. we walk on the ground. it’s just there. the sun comes up, gives us light and warmth (well, just sometimes in here in Melbourne), water is everywhere. these are the things we come to expect in our life. we can just have them. but to a plant, these things are everything. light is energy, water is life, earth is food and a home. what if we were to take these things away from them. put a plant inside. remove it from water. pull it out of the ground. these things are important to the plants so they would look upon these elements with a lot more interest and importance compared to how we would look at them. at the involves filming them in a different way to how i normally would if i were just to film them regularly. lets hope i can actually capture these elements

what defines me? – week 4

the constraints of this weeks task are more convoluted than ever. and i thought timing something round was hard… now i have to not only work out what defines me, but i have to film it? i’m at that stage where i still don’t know, we are all still learning who we are, that’s why we’re at uni.  and i don’t want to go with the obvious, i like to try and think out of the box, but it’s not always so easy.

i don’t want to just film my parents feet because i can’t show their faces (and also, i hate feet). when asked to film objects  (well, actually, parts of objects) that define me, what kind of things can i film that don’t blend into the 3rd constraint of places that define me. i mean, my first thought of something that defines me is my bed. i spend the majority of my life there and i love it. it’s the centre piece of my room and i hold it very dear to me. but is my bed an object or a place? same with my car. i love my car, i use it all the time, but it kinda feels like a place. i guess a place is something i would define as something you could go inside right, like a house or a building. but you can go inside a bed and you can definitely go inside a car. and then an object is something you can use or do something with, like a ball or a pen. so a house doesn’t fit into that but a car does, you use it to get place, or you sleep in a bed (or use it to put things on). so which is which? maybe i just shouldn’t use my car or my bed. but they are really important to me that i can’t really think of a film that describes me without having them in it.

the next point is how to film them. we can only film parts of the objects, no whole. first off… why no wholes? is that too obvious? do they want us to be more abstract? will it become to narrative-like if we just show things that are special to us plain and simply? this task really brings the abstract ideals to this, because i need to consider whether, when i’m filming only parts of objects, do i want them to be understandable? can you tell what these parts are? or do i want them to be mysterious, as in we know that they are important to me but from the way they have been filmed, you can’t really tell what they are. do i only film one thing for each constraint or a range of objects and places that can be put together to form a bigger picture. am i trying to create a narrative or do i want to be as abstract as possible?

so many questions. i guess we’ll find out soon enough considering i need to actually start filming these videos

 

how fast is slow? – week 3

more video tasks this week. i don’t want to say that it was difficult, but it wasn’t easy. somehow, no matter how simple these tasks seem at first glance, they really aren’t. so many different things and layers to think about, just to make a six send video. what do I include? what don’t i include? what angle? do i cut between shots? if so, for how long and how many cuts? do i show the whole thing or just a part? should there be good lighting?

but this week, the most difficult question for me was…. what constitutes fast and what constitutes slow? i mean, i know a car travelling at 100 km/h is fast and a snail is slow. but i wasn’t really in the mood to go stand on a bridge above the freeway, nor go find a snail that was actually moving. and even if said snail was moving, he probably wouldn’t move far enough in the 6 seconds for it to even seem like he (or she. do snails have a gender?) was moving at all. so, i conclude, i have to go somewhere in between a speeding car and a lazy snail. where does that leave me? it felt that no matter what i was filming, if i was going for a slow movement, it looked fast. but if i thought the object was fast moving, it seemed really slow.

for me this whole task was just about finding new objects and testing speeds and cutting and angles. it made it an interesting task to complete because i had to think about the stuff around me in new ways to how i’d looked at or used them before. although, anyone who follows me on vine probably thinks i’m insane. but that’s another story. i am however, excited to not only see how these all fit together with my others once i turn them into a sketch film, but also to see what the others in my class do, because last week everyones different videos were so very different and it will give me an all new perspective and new ideas on how to use speed in future filming.

i’ll wear the red hat

yellow was never really my colour anyway. last week in class we put on some imaginary coloured hats and critiqued each other’s videos. well, those who chose to volunteer their’s to be critiqued (i manage to muster up the courage to show mine by the end of class, who knew i had it in me?). and it was interesting. maybe not so much that hat part because there isn’t really much you can say thats too intellectual about 6 second videos about round things. but it was interesting to compare the kinds of videos other people in the class made in contrast to what i made. it just showed how everyone has such different opinions and ideas. and things they can view.

but it was also interesting to see people reactions to them. there was one video (i’m sorry, i don’t remember who’s it was) about shadow that had the silhouette of someone in their bedroom holding what appeared to be a belt. and this was a harmless video. someone was prob in their room, found good light for a shadow and grabbed something to hold against the wall. but everyone’s mind immediately jumped to a very dirty conclusion s we all collectively gasped and squirmed (not really sure how else to describe the reaction). but it was crazy how our minds immediately try to make connections about these sorts of things. so it will be interesting to see, when these all come together to form a connecting video, what kinds of links we will make and what narratives we will form.

the closer you get to the light, the greater your shadow becomes

another week, another set video task. and i know they shouldn’t be too hard but this one got me even more confused than last time. i guess it’s good i have the ole’ blog here to help me try and think these things out.

so, we had to take one 6 second video about “light”, one 6 second video about “not light” and one 6 second video about “shadow”. Simple!!! we use those things every day, it’s how we see and how why we don’t. and yet again, somehow, i’m just unsure. and i’ve taken u number of different videos and each one makes me more unsure of whether i’m filming “light”, “not light” or “shadow”. and again, one of my main issues as well is not really knowing how i’m going to be using these videos, how they’re meant to look or how they’re gonna fit together. we lost our class last week due to labor day so we have not yet had the chance to go through the tasks or what we are meant to do with the videos.

my problem with the videos I’ve taken so far was that to take a video that showcased some light, it had to be dark enough so that the light was obvious (we haven’t had much nice natural light lately coz of all the random rain) and thus the light created shadows and also consisted of dark. so no matter how much i tried to make it about “light”, it always seemed to also be about “not light” and “shadow”. for example, the video i’ve posted below:

Light 1 from lauren on Vimeo.

this is one of my experimental videos trying to work out what i’m doing. i feel like it is mostly about “light”, but it is also featuring “not light”. gah it’s all so confusing. maybe i’ll take some more videos later trying just to do “shadow” or “not light” rather than light and i’ll get a difference.

stay tuned

circles and squares – week 2

our task this week was a simple one, take 3 six second videos of square objects and 3 six second videos of round things. sorry, i should say deceptively simple. i don’t even know why but this task stumped me. and it shouldn’t have. i mean, come on, 36 seconds worth of video… how can that be hard?

but for me i think it was the implications of these videos. what would they be used for? what if i don’t do them right? what if they don’t look good? there was the struggle of trying to decide what to film (should i literal?

Unknown

metaphorical? rhetorical? sarcastic?). Next came wondering whether i’m supposed to just film something straight for 6 seconds, like a 6 second photo or if that particular something should be moving or doing something or if the camera should be moving? what if the 6 seconds get boring? thank god they didn’t ask us to film a triangle shaped thing too!! coz i don’t think i have anything in my house that would fit those requirements and i would have stubbled even more! although, it is the Jewish festival or Purim coming up this weekend and we do eat these weird triangle cookies called Unknown-1hamentashens (don’t ask what they are or why). on the downside, my sister is on camp and she’s the baker of the family so we don’t actually have any around even if i did want to randomly film some.

but, despite my issues with the shapes, my overall struggle, as i’ve mentioned in a previous post, is that i still don’t fully understand the interactive documentary or the korsakow films. how are they structured? how do we make them? what do they look like and how do we view them? i understand that we took these videos to make our first film but i like to see a whole picture and know how it’s all going to fit together up front rather than start a task blindly, not sure how it’s gonna look at the end. I guess this is kinda what adrian mentioned in that first lecture, being able to put all the small pieces together to see the big picture at the end. i’m just not quite there yet. and i guess thats why i didn’t really know how to make these videos because i don’t know how they are going to look and work together when they are put together.