1. In what ways do you hope your screenings/exhibited/screened work (whether individual or group produced) engaged its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio?
I hope that our final exhibited work Say Grace engaged with the audience on an emotional level, through our soundtrack and close-up shots of characters’ faces that we employed with the aim of conveying their emotional inner workings. A key concern of this studio was the concept gleaned from Wes Anderson’s work- to show instead of telling, in other words- to communicate the narrative visually. We hope that the visual storytelling techniques employed in this piece were successful in communicating our plot points in particular, such as the death of Grace’s sister, Ella. We didn’t want to use too much dialogue to communicate that the character of Ella was dead and instead used colour theory to draw attention to this part of the plot using both blue colour grading in post-production and further enhancing this visual technique during production, choosing to back-light Ella using blue gels during production for certain shots.
2. Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it into a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why?
If I were to continue developing this piece for submission to a film festival, for example, I would re-edit the opening bathtub scene to be more ominous which would foreshadow the guilt that Ella is experiencing over her sister Grace’s drowning. There was a lot more footage we took for this scene that wasn’t used to keep to the time constraints of the 7-minute format. Additionally to this, I would have included the ‘b-plot’, in which we took shots of letters and of the mother in which the camera hung on her face for an unsettling amount of time. This ‘b-plot’ would have caused the audience to be suspicious of the mother and could have added a more nuanced detail to the overall plot of the film.
3. From your studio, reflect on an aspect of two other students/group’s media work on the website in terms of specific insights they produced about a key idea addressed by the studio? Visual Blueprint Studio Website: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/2024-visual-blueprintLinks to an external site.
–Amnesia by Oscar Li & Mia Taufa was very aesthetically pleasing in terms of the colour grading that gave a subtle blue tinge to the footage. This look also reminded me in a very positive way of late 90s to early 2000s film clips and movies. The tableau shots by this group were beautiful, I particularly liked the extreme wide shot of the rolling hills and the symmetry used in this film was very clean (I could tell tripods had been carefully set up during production) which gave a professional presentation of the film. I also really enjoyed the soundtrack and felt the audio had been edited very well to accompany it, I did not notice any points in which the audio pulled me out of being immersed in this piece.
–Comitium by Joel Bernoth, Fida Chowdhury, Gabby Li was also aesthetically very pleasing. I was really impressed by the moving shots that kept the bike-riding protagonist in frame and symmetrical. The footage of the outdoor landscape is beautiful and the subtle colour grading enhances this while giving a slightly ominous feel. This subtly worked particularly well as it allowed the ominous feeling to build in such a way that you could get lost in the feeling without waiting for the scare that a horror would bring. It was here that I was successfully jump-scared, which speaks to the immersion I was able to find myself in due to the skilful editing of this group. The audio’s slow build to the beats of this production was done successfully to create this moment as they chose to hold a tabelau shot of the hooded figures for an extended period of time.
4. For the other studio website you engaged with, describe a key idea that you think the finished media/studio work communicated with reference to a specific example (i.e. a particular individual/group work) Please note the name of the studio and the name of the work.
The Scene in Cinema, Cherry Pomegranate by Hamish Bruce.
The blocking and camera work is very smooth in its transitions between dialogue, looks, and action as it uses whips and pans to keep important elements of the narrative in frame. This type of coverage that Hamish has used in his project is an interesting approach to a simple plot, all contained in one location, keeping the audience engaged, for example, the use of interesting shots using the mirror helps a simple phone conversation visually engaging. The engagement in the story is also driven by the camera work, using careful blocking to focus on each reaction of the characters, giving the viewer a close insight into each characters inner thoughts and emotions during the exchanges of dialogue over the shoulder, helping to keep the audience immersed in the plot, able to put themselves in the awkward situation of arriving to a party too early or being a host trapped with a rude guest. This production exemplifies the kind of work that can be produced when careful attention is paid to planning shots and blocking.