Poetic video taught us how to turn different kinds of lists into films that were experimental or new media works that possessed practical, explosive, gathering and infinite qualities. From our studio, one of the projects that stood out to me was SEEN by Maddy, Jasper and Kiera. They created an experimental film that worked to replicate Deja Vu through means of surreal familiarity. A key concern that this film communicated well was that of active audiences, by which I mean, the audience is always in a state of contemplation and reflection through the open-endedness of each scene. The group captured that eerie feeling well through the soundtrack and the repetition of clips, particularly through the repetition of the joker card. The group facilitated many moments of pause by using a black screen for a few seconds that allowed the audience to take a breather and consider the significance of the clips they’ve just watched. These moments of pause also appeal to the  nonlinearity of the narrative as this allows for the audience to consider multiple interpretations of the significance of each clip.  

Another film that stood out to me was Up Close by Bella, Ellis and Trevor. They created an experimental film that explores love and affection through different perspectives. The key concern of this studio that they have communicated well was how to capture the everyday and explore different realities in a poetic way. They did this guy exploring five different stories on how people express their love and affection and then created a nonlinear blend of shots to complement each story. I liked the repetition of hands throughout the film as I thought it allowed for a great balance of randomness and cohesiveness to portray love as a concept. This group utilised sound effects and the layering of sounds and voice overs to create a sense of intimacy for the audience – it feels like a warm cuddle as you watch each exploration of love language play out. The film is paced slowly which I think allows time for the audience to interpret the fragments and infer the significance of each in a way that feels calming and personal. 

In the studio, DECONSTRUCTING/RECONSTRUCTING GENRE they have made short films using specific techniques that are seen frequently in certain genres. In the film Who is the mask guy? by Donghao and Chloe, they have created a horror short film that follows two boys as they are attacked by a masked man for stealing his favourite toy. This film makes use of dark tones throughout each shot to create a sense of mystery, which is often seen in horror films. They have also utilised the soundtrack and sound effects to create suspense. The opening scene uses ominous slow music to let the audience feel unsure about what might happen and that danger might be lurking. When we are introduced to the antagonist,  the music changes slightly to let the audience know that he will be causing the conflict that we felt so uneasy about in the opening scenes. 

The short film Lachie and Me by Jacob, Simmy and Jack is a comedy film about a man working from home during lockdown who gets a ‘dog’ named Lachie to cope with isolation. This film makes use of bright and colourful shots which are often seen in comedy films. The opening montage introduces the main character in a light hearted way with fun music and different shots of the man getting ready, combing his hair and smiling at himself in the mirror – this tells the audience that he’s a bit of a goofball. To show the audience that he is negatively affected by lockdown, the shots become duller and less colourful. I really enjoyed the transition shots between day 1 and day 37 when they zoomed out to show that he still wore his suit jacket but had his pajama bottoms underneath. As the film progresses, we are given little hints about Lachie and the main character’s attachment to him which makes the audience feel attached to what we think is a little dog. The climax of the film comes when Lachie gets sick and the main character panics to get him help as he has clearly become very reliant on him for company. At the very end of the film, we see that Lachie was actually not a dog at all, but the main character’s phone which had run out of battery. This technique is often seen in comedy films to keep the audience engaged and then finish on a big surprise to maximise laughs.

This project can be found at:
http://projects.hannahbrasier.com/student-work/freedom-fragmented/

Research question

How can we subvert narrative to create a text that has multiple interpretations but ensure the listed items hold the same significance?

In the studio, Poetic Video, we explored different modes of listing and how to turn these lists into poetic media pieces that can gather, explode and delve into the infinite qualities of the everyday. For our final project, we created a poetic video that was both an infinite and gathering list. Freedom Fragmented is a Korsakov film that explores the concept of freedom through a collection of interviews that were fragmented to remove narrative structure and create a documentary/new-media poetic video. A gathering list can appear as a random set of items but attention can be drawn to allow the reader to infer what the relationship between the listed items are (Bogost 2012). In Freedom Fragmented, we used media fragmentation to allow for this fluidity in interpretation between the listed items. Fragmenting the pieces and scattering them across the Korsakov interface allowed us to break through pre-existing connections and enabled the viewers to make new associations between fragments (Frankham, 2013, p. 138). It also allowed us to subvert narrative from our film and create a multi-non-linear story that required an active audience. 

By using the Korsakov software, we were able to create an interface that allows the viewer to choose their own path throughout the film and creates a space for contemplation and reflection between listed items. Korsakov films use IN and OUT keywords that generate connections to reveal the intimacy of the worlds within the film (Wiehl 2016, pp.181). As the authors of the film, our group was able to choose a vast array of keywords to link our fragments together which provides the infinite qualities of our film. By using more rather than less keywords, we were able to create a collection of listed items that held that same significance (Manovich 2002) and allowed for infinite pathways for the viewer to take throughout the film.  This in turn would make for one of the most successful aspects of our finished project in regards to our research question along with our film’s ability to subvert narrative through the use of fragmentation. 

Our most problematic aspect would lie in the film’s minimal possible interpretations. We allow for the audience to infer interpretation between items however it is obvious that the entire collection of fragments are related to freedom which reduces the film’s ability to allow for multiple interpretations. In the editing process, we acknowledged this and attempted to rectify it by re-shooting some visuals to appear more poetic and abstract which did allow for a degree of association beyond freedom, however, if I were to continue working on this piece, I would re-shoot or edit if possible, the audio pieces so that the word ‘freedom’ or ‘free’ was never mentioned. We had initially decided to do this but after we had interviewed a few participants each, we noticed that almost everyone said it instinctively and then agreed that it doesn’t take away from the film’s purpose entirely by having it mentioned. I think to avoid this issue, we could rephrase the question/s so that the word freedom doesn’t feel like the benchmark that they have to hit and adding two to three more questions would give us more flexibility in the content we choose. For example, describe a time when you felt truly alive; what does independence mean to you; what does a world with no responsibilities look like to you. I think this would allow for a more complex, cohesive and random piece of work. I would also have developed our visual pieces more to create more cohesiveness between our three works. We had all agreed to allow the audio pieces to inform the visuals and to use extreme close-up shots to create a sense of intimacy, however, if we had more time to expand on this project, it would have been interesting to see how we could have balanced the randomness and coherency to ensure more developed poeticism. 

Going into this studio, I had a very structured and practical way of thinking in terms of media making. I also never considered lists to be something other than practical and functional. Exploring lists in terms of their personability, poeticism and ability to gather and explode has allowed me to see things in a more abstract and conceptual way. Removing narrative was my biggest hurdle but when creating this new-media project I was able to see how removing structure can allow for more critical engagement and allows the unseen to be seen. It has challenged my media practice and provided me with ways to think beyond the story and has opened up my exposure to media works beyond my normal scope of engagement.

References

Bogost, I, 2012, ‘Ontography’ in Alien Phenomenology. Or What It’s Like to be a Thing. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. pp. 35-59.

Frankham, B.L., 2013, Complexity, flux and webs of connection,’ in: A Poetic Approach to Documentary: Discomfort of Form, Rhetorical Strategies and Aesthetic Experience. University of Technology Sydney, Sydney. pp. 137-176.

Manovich, L, 2002, ‘The Database’ in The language of new media, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 218-243.

Wiehl,  A, 2016, ‘Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries’, NECSUS, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 177–197.

We had a pretty polished project for our rough cut so we didn’t receive much peer feedback but it was nice to hear that people understood the project and what were were trying to achieve with our form of poetic listing. The main comments we got were in regards to our thought process around why we choose certain visuals to go with the audio pieces which was the major adjustment that we had made after the creative testing stage. We wanted to open the space for more interpretation and allow for the audience to contemplate the relationships between items so hearing from peers that the associations between visual and audio wasn’t immediately obvious was a good sign. They also mentioned that by making this change with our visuals has allowed for associations beyond freedom which is something we were really hoping to portray through the work as allowing for multiple interpretations was part of our initial research question. To complete this project, we need to add a title video and finalise all of the IN and OUT keywords to ensure both coherency and randomness throughout the piece.

One interesting thing to reflect on as we near the end of this project is the actual list we were able to gather. Initially, we started off with the idea of COVID freedom as our concept but ultimately decided that given the current times, we wouldn’t need to mention COVID as it would probably pop up in a lot of participants interviews regardless. Steph had also mentioned in the presentation feedback that there was a very strong chance that this project could get very political. Listening to all of our collated material now though, we only had one participant reflect on COVID as their source of freedom which is interesting to consider in terms of how worried we were about the message of freedom being too obvious or cliche. After creating this project, it’s clear to see that allowing for open ended concepts to manifest will naturally create multiple interpretations.

Our creative tests allowed us to see how our audio and visuals were going to interact with each other as well as see the cohesiveness of each others work when put together. We found that we weren’t really allowing for “spaces for interpretation” (Brasier, 2018, p. 54) as our video’s were too obviously related to the audio which meant we weren’t creating a piece that was open-ended and allowing for multiple interpretations.  As a group we agreed to re-shoot all of our footage using extreme close-ups which allow for audiences to pause and contemplate between the items (Brasier, 2018, p. 54). The filmed footage would still be informed by the responses we got from our participants but would take a most poetic approach in creating meaning.

We also spoke about how the responses we had gotten where quite varied in length. We had set a time constraint of 1 minute for each question: describe a time when you felt free and what does freedom mean to you. I found that I could get a good minute for the first question but participants would often only offer a quick sentence for the follow up question, however, Rhonda found that her participants were able to provide the full two minutes of content. We decided that would be ok to have short and long pieces as it would create more texture to the film. We also decided that if the second clip was very short, that it might be better to leave it attached to the first clip but we could make the decision once we doing the final edits.

Reference:

Brasier, H 2018, List, in Attunings: Multilinear Ways of Thinking About, Making With and Sensing the World. RMIT University, Melbourne, pp. 52–67.

Our presentation today went really well. Rhonda, Alice and I had collaborated to create slides to go with out pitch presentation and we had met up prior to class to organise the sections and time it. We got some great feedback from the guest panel and from Hannah as well that allowed us to make some informed decisions regarding how our final project was going to look. We had said a few times in previous consults that we were trying to not mention the word freedom within the project and to allow for the viewers to make that connection themselves, however, Hannah noted that it wouldn’t be so bad if it was mentioned as the different fragments will construct freedom in multiple ways regardless which will allow for varied interpretations. This was somewhat of a relief as we are going to be conducting interviews and to put to many limits on what they can say, i.e, only speak for a minute and don’t mention the word freedom at all, felt as though we were putting to many constraints on our participants which could lead to less fluidity.

Steph made a good a point that there is potential for this project to get very political which will be interesting to assess once the project is complete and she also gave us the great idea to expand our interview from one question to 2+ which would allow for more space to move around on Korsakow. As a group we have agreed that this is a good idea that will allow for the project to become more emotive and for us as the authors to create a more emergent process through the software. We’ve agreed to use two questions: describe a time you felt free, which will then inform the follow up question of how would you describe freedom. Allowing for the second question to be informed by the first should help us avoid the answer being to cliche.

 

 

Reading

Juhasz et al. (2018) speaks to creating documentaries that are infinitely open-ended, expansive and explosive by bypassing storytelling and removing frameworks or structures. They argue that by doing this, a documentary can move beyond the storied structure of characters and their actions and deliver a more creative and non-linear film which seeks the meanings lost between the lines. This reading speaks well to our groups project as we want to allow to very open and fluid interpretations between peoples definitions or experiences of freedom and can only do this by subverting narrative.

Individual academic article

We have decided to use the Korsakow software to create our poetic video. Wiehl (2016) argues that what a Korsakow documentary does well is it gives the author/s the ability to remove structure and frees them from the obligation to think of all the different narrative branches. She also gives an in-depth explanation on how the transitions from SNU to SNU work and the pluri-direcitonal abilities of the IN and OUT keywords and the importance of creating connections between clips that will, “allow the user to appreciate the intimacy and the slowness of the small worlds within the documentary” (Wiehl 2016 , pp.181).

Creative work

The experimental film Rare Earth by Robert McDougall is a list like approach in examining the different metals that are mined and juxtaposes it against the degradation of earth. Although our project will be a Korsakow film, Rare Earth uses some techniques that we are interested in using, such a singular long slow shots with voice overs from a variety of people. In our initial ideas for our project we thought that a single word from participants would be enough to create a poetic video with but after our last meeting we agreed that we would need at least a sentence, if not more. After watching, Rare Earth and seeing how effective the voice overs are in listing the consequence of each metal, I think it could be an interesting way for us to approach our project as well.

References

Juhasz, A & Lebow, A 2018, ‘Beyond Story: an online, community-based manifesto’, World Records, vol. 2, article 3, viewed 28 November 2021, <https://vols.worldrecordsjournal.org/02/03>.

McDougall, R, Rare Earth 2021, video, 19 May, Prototype, viewed 28 November 2021, <https://youaretheprototype.art/rare-earth/>.

Wiehl, A 2016, ‘Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries’, NECSUS, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 177–197.

From the task we were set to pose a question about what we were still curious about in terms of poetic listing, Alice, Rhonda and I all had similar ideas. I was interested in how to ensure all listed items within a list held the same significance which was informed by the Manovic (2002) reading. Alice’s was interested in how to subvert narrative structure within a media artefact and was also informed by the Manovich (2002) reading which tied in well with Rhonda’s question which focused on how texts can allow space for multiple meanings from the Weidle (2016) reading. We were all interested in creating an experiential and/or documentary style poetic video.

After some discussion as a group, we toyed around with different ideas around the new COVID normal of the world. Such as the emptiness of trains these days or the vaccine protests and how we could turn that into a list. We then decided to centre the list around a single word or thought and agreed on ‘freedom’ and thought that asking for different people from across Australia to give us a one-worded answer to what ‘freedom’ means to them could create an interesting artefact. To allow to open interpretations between the listed items however, we agreed not to mention COVID as a prompt and to allow to the participants to give whatever answer rang true for them and then we could look for the patterns between them to create more of a gathering list. To see if this idea could work, we are going to reach out to people we know and gather some one-worded answers before Thursday and then assess our options.

Reading:

Manovich L, 2002, ‘The Database’ in The language of new media, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 218-243.

Weidle, F., 2016. Korsakow Perspective(s): Rethinking Documentary Knowledge in Digital Multilinear Environments. VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 5, 110–123.