In the first week of Recording Place class, we explored the concept of the class itself, such as what the course is about and what tasks that we’re going to get through.
On Tuesday, 3 January 2017, Rohan showed us his recent film called Winter at Westbeth that was released in 2015. The film was fundamentally our reference for our group assignment, which is the short documentary. Moreover, he also gave us our first assignment, which is the observational exercise. Even though this task was not marked, it helped us to develop our observational skill of our surroundings. To complete this task, we were told to visit Queen Victoria Market and we need to be aware of what we see, what we smell and what we hear. Obviously, it needed to be specific and detail. For instance, it is better to mention the gender of a person that we saw as well as what the person wears, instead of just to mention the person’s gender.
On Thursday, 5 January 2017, Rohan showed us the Aesthetic Standards of Video slides. It included information of White Balance, Focus, Shutter Speed and more. In fact, the slides were very useful as it mentioned how to us white balance, how to set focus, and more importantly, it is crucial not to use auto focus. Next, he introduced us to the equipment that we’re going to use for our next assignment, specifically, the camera. Indeed, the camera was bigger that what I used to use in the previous semester and also different, so I wasn’t familiar with it. After exploring the camera and teaching us how to use it, Rohan divided us into several groups and told us to take at least 10 establishing shots around Queen Victoria Market.
While my group mates and I were about to take some shots, we had a trouble in setting the focus, so we had to go back to building 9 where we usually lend the camera to ask what exactly the problem was. After knowing what we should do, we went back to take some shots. Particularly, we took some shots of the Queen Victoria Market sign, the tram, people crossing the road, drinking coffee, and more. Finally, we went back to the class afterwards and discussed about the first task.
