Integrated Media Week 8

Questions developed in today’s tutorial from today’s lecture.

1. Is there any way to establish a hierarchy in k-films e.g. how many lives you give a clip?
There is no hierarchy in understanding something before we move onto something else. You can have particular SNU’s that have particular significance in the work so they appear more than other clips, so in that sense you can have a hierarchy. What Adrian spoke about in terms of hierarchy was that when we make associations with the SNU’s in labelling them there is no hierarchy.

2. Can you please elaborate on Adrian’s spiel about Identity and Unconsciousness. Example?
A lot of our behaviour is driven by unconscious desires and because we are not conscious of them we are not aware of them. We choose to see things the way we see them because of our experiences and identity in the world. When doing our constraint tasks we chose certain things to shoot and we all chose to shoot different things in different ways. We develop themes and patterns within our work, whether that is conscious or not.

3. Can you explain what Adrian means by approaching k-films in terms of style rather than genre?
Adrain spoke about k-films being made from stylistic choices rather than genre. The genre of movies usually are romance, comedy, thriller, drama etc whereas in k-films we focus on the style of the film rather than the genre of it. In k-films we focus on the way we want to shoot our shots rather than following a genre of film.

 

Film Tv-1 Lecture Week 8

When following the actor it is better for the camera to move a little faster and in front of the actor as they walk, rather than following them slightly behind.

Camera assistant to control the focus of the camera lens, whilst the camera man controls the direction of the camera + when using a dolly another assistant to control the movement of the dolly.

Do practice runs of the camera movement and the actor’s position within the camera before the day of shoot to organise and save time. This lecture outlined how time consuming creative decisions can be and how all decisions must be decided before the day of the shoot.

Lenny

188 0232 01 from Torika Taylor on Vimeo.

I learnt a lot from shooting the Lenny with my Film-TV1 group. I underestimated how time consuming setting up can be and that all creative decisions should be decided well and truly before setting up. We had an hour to shoot and we probably spent about 30-40 minutes of that hour setting up and moving the equipment around as well as calling the shots. We were limited with time so we couldn’t make the Lenny as well as we would have liked to but it shows that we ran out of time shooting only five lines.

I also discovered that framing and visual placement and representation are very important when it comes to shooting a film. I really like the opening scene for our Lenny which as Director I chose. Despite a nice opening,  you can see the public toilet sign and sign on the bin in the shot which is not good. We need to be more careful of this when we actually shoot our film. We couldn’t control who walked around in the background which came down to time, and we need to be careful that any persons appearance must be relevant.

188 0232 01 from Torika Taylor on Vimeo.

Film TV-1 LIGHTING

There were many points that I took from the lighting lecture as I know very little about lighting in film. The light from the sun is blue and the light from the Freznal lights are yellow. To ensure someones skin tone is the right colour you must correct it manually with the lights. When setting up exposure, the correct exposure for inside is around F4 and the correct exposure for outside is around F22.

Some other points about lighting that I took from the lecture was that of electricity and lighting. 240 Volts come out of any ordinary wall socket. Most household circuits are around 10 Amps. You can run 10 amps at 240 volts (2,400 watts) in total before blowing the circuit. You need to be very cautious you don’t blow the circuit when setting up your set for shooting and should work out how many watts you are using per circuit. Whenever you are shooting you should find the fuse box for the building and find out how many circuits are in the house. There will be two or three circuit breakers e.g. Lounge room 1 circuit, Kitchen 1 circuit. You can have 2,400 watts per circuit (Per part of the house) (Ensure you always have a torch on set) If you exeed this you must use a generator so you don’t blow the fuse.

To shoot someone inside with a window showing outside you want the subject inside to be around the same exposure as that of outside (F22). Put the blue sheet of plastic over the Freznel ARR light to correct the exposure range.

ARR (Freznal) light has 1000 watts. They have beam lens where you can change  the width of beam as well as use barnyard doors to narrow light.
Never connect extension lead to coiled light cable. Make sure it is unwrapped.
10 Amp circuit breaker power board (red head). It will turn off faster than a power board or circuit breaker if there is any surge or something goes wrong and shuts down making the shoot safer. Kino Light is a soft light the you would tend to use if you want the light to wrap around someones face .

 

Film Tv-1 Tutorial notes

We showed our rough cut Lenny’s in class today, basically just discussing what went well and what didn’t. For our Lenny we had good reviews, particularly with the opening establishing shot of the courtyard. The acting wasn’t very good which is something we had to work with but the experience of shooting our Lenny film was purely for the sake of figuring out how to work with our crew and establish our roles within the group. We practiced our ‘calling the shots’ which we struggled with at first but got the hang of it a lot quicker.  We only had an hour to shoot and ran out of time, as Paul told us we would.

The other groups had really good camera work as well. The camera cut between dialogue focusing on the different actors when it was their turn to speak. A few things that annoyed me with our Lenny was when the character Shannon spoke her hair was covering her mouth. We didn’t have much time to fix this on the day as we only had one hour but it made me think of the little things that need to be right for the audience to follow the story without being distracted by the little things. I wanted to get more camera angles of the dialogue between the two however, we simply didn’t have the time to get all the shots. I also wish we showed more cuts of Sharron walking towards Lenny. It makes me think of all the shots we are going to have to take for our actual film and how it will take a lot more time than we think to get everything right. It’ll be really good working with actors that actually want to be there.

We were also pretty lucky to shoot our Lenny on an overcast day as it made it easier to set up the white balance. My group and I are filming inside for most of our shoot so we will be manually setting up most of the lighting. I really enjoyed watching the other groups Lenny’s as it is a good way of seeing where other groups are at in terms of their creative choices and way of showing the same thing in all these different ways.

Some notes from Paul:
Something to take note of is that of people’s reactions. People tend to cut when the person has finished talking, however people want to see the reactions of the characters before we cut to the next person that is talking. I really like it when the camera shows someone’s face while the other person is talking to them. We like to see how someone takes in what people say.
Another thing to take note of is that of continuity of characters walking in and out of frame.

Here is the link to our video from the Lenny shoot

 

Lily

 

Lily2

This is a photo shoot that I did of my roommate Lily.

I was experimenting with emotion and facial expression. I was really happy with the result of this photo shoot as it is simple/minimal and yet effective. I like the colour and contrast/lighting of this shoot. I would definitely like to explore this style for the Film Tv1 short film that my group and I are making.

Untitled-2

Soar Korskow 06 reading Class Discussion + Generating Questions

Korsakow films rely on the maker to download the korsakow software from the web and then create film from the makers hard drive. The maker cannot embed online media into their film  and must rely on video from their own hard drive. This is a big weakness for korsakow as a lot of videos made for the web use video they themselves have not created.  If one want to share their korsakow film they need to do so through technology that is interactive such as a laptop. Thus posing the question: Is there any point to choosing korsakow as a way of creating film if it can only be viewed through limited interactive technology, which limits audience participation?

This brings me to the question, isn’t film made for viewing? We create film to portray something in a certain way for audience to see. Korsakow is interactive and forces the audience to choose the direction of the story. Thus limiting the type of technology that an audience can view it on. Someone cannot watch a korsakow film on a TV screen or an iPad, thus limiting audience interaction.

Another question we have created was that of Soar arguing that we should choose keywords based on meaning rather than visual appearance. Does this contradict the way that we’ve been using korsakow? When we create our korsakow we create pattern through the visual imagery in the video footage that we have such as ‘day’, ‘night’, ‘exterior’, ‘interior’. How do we create pattern within the footage without following what we see?

Technology is constantly changing around us. New and better ways of viewing media take over the last and korsakow is definitely not exempt from change. What is the point of having a technology that might soon become obsolete? Is there any way authors of korsakow films can preserve their works without fear that they may not function? (e.g. if adobe ceases to exist). Korsakow needs to develop a way to keep up with the ever changing media programs. Korsakow is already limited in the ways that we view it, so is there any reason to learn korsakow and use it to portray your ideas and expressions, if there is the possibility of it becoming obsolete?

Another question that the class came up with was that of korsakow’s use. Is korsakow a place purely for artistic expression, or is there any potential for it to be used commercially?  If korsakow wants to remain as a platform for making work, then it needs to consider the possibility for commercial use. At the moment korsakow is purely a platform that people use for artistic expression. Will it become more important if it takes a commercial turn? If korsakow wants to make money, I feel commercial business use would be a positive way to turn, however, if it wants to remain as a way of solely expressing artisitc meaning, then they should just keep going the way they have been.

Korsakow

Greetings fellow commuters,

Here is the Korsakow film made by yours truly:

http://www.themediastudents.net/im1/2014/torika.taylor

http://www.themediastudents.net/im1/2014/torika.taylor/Torika.Taylor.html

 

Korsakow seems to have issues with safari so I uploaded it on Firefox. Blast! I haven’t used Firefox for God knows how long! Anyhoo, enjoy!

korsakow-small-k-front-only_design

Unlecture discussions-Integrated media

  1. What is the point in redefining narrative as anything more than ‘cause and effect’?
    Something can still be cause and effect without being narrative. As Adrian explained, most of the things that exist in this world rely on cause and effect. We as humans have become accustomed to stories being narrative and told to us.  Because we have ways of telling stories, such as cinema, we assume we must ‘tell’ a story. Narrative in film is the depiction in the medium of film, of a series of events in the cause and effect relationship. Narrative media uses a story as its main motivation. When you begin to play with the ‘story’ and meaning behind the film you slowly begin to lose the narrative meaning.
    We can portray something in an abstract form in cinema that still uses cause and effect, however, make the meaning more ambiguous. When the story line isn’t clearly narrated we are forced to contrive meaning ourselves, putting together moments to create meaning.

  2. Ryan notes ‘we can never be sure that sender and receiver have the same story in mind.’ Korsakow films allow for greater freedom of interpretation. Do you see this as a positive or negative? How can the filmmaker control interpretations?
    We can never be sure sender and receiver have the same story in mind, however, the sender can provide all relevant information to aid the receiver to understand fully what the message they are trying to send means. Korsakow is a medium that we use for the purpose of allowing interpretation by the viewers.
    Korsakow is about giving viewers the ability to interpret what is presented to them in the way that they feel. In the lecture, Adrian said interpretation is like flirting. Funnily enough that made me fully understand what this question is about. Jasmine stated is Korsakow the only way of presenting a story to someone and allowing them the freedom to create their own interpretation. Korsakow has different portals to its story.
    There may be five different interface’s to click on, not every person is going to follow through the same imagery, thus, they will not generate an identical meaning. This is a positive for Korsakow because the whole purpose of Korsakow is ambiguity and emotion. We can feel like we understand the piece without understanding the cause and effect.

 

 

 

Film TV-1 Lecture

  • DEPTH OF FIELD is the area of acceptable focus that extends both in front and behind main point of focus
  • The shorter the Focal Length, the greater the DEPTH OF FIELD
  • Different FOCAL LENGTHS offer different FIELD OF VIEW, DEPTH OF FIELD, PERSPECTIVE (Viewers perception of their proximity to the subject) (The viewers perception of the spatial relationship between objects in depth)

fov

  • SHORT focal length lenses appear to exaggerate the spatial relationship between objects in depth
  • LONG Focal length lenses appear to compress the spatial relationship between objects in depth.

docker-500 depthoffield_africans

 

 

 

 

Korsakow Film Bright Splinters- essay

Korsakow Film- Bright Splinters

Upon first clicking into the Korsakow film, Bright Splinters,  an ambient and relaxing sound plays over the clips.

The film consists of eight rectangular shaped interfaces. One interface is displayed on a larger scale and is the main focus to watch. The clips are displayed with the large interface down to the left of the screen with three smaller interfaces running horizontally above it and four interfaces running vertically to the right of it. All interfaces have a rectangular shape.

The large and main thumbnail moves and is in colour. It is the main focus to watch, whilst the other seven thumbnails are black and white and still. If you hold your cursor over the still and smaller thumbnails the image moves, and you get a short preview of the video and sound. If you click on the image this visual will become displayed on the large interface frame, and the videos connected to this will be displayed in the smaller interfaces around it.

The overall feeling is that of tranquility and calm. All clips have a consistent theme of light (Bright Splinters). There is pattern in this korsakow in terms of what clips are displayed at the same time. Upon entering the film, I was presented with a close up shot of a girl smiling with light hitting her face. This clip was presented in the biggest thumbnail which served as a link to the surrounding clips. The seven thumbnails around the large one were clips of everyday city life, for example, a train approaching a station, an old  woman on a tram, the city high rises, the fountain at the National Gallery of Victoria etc. These clips have the pattern of being in the city.

I then clicked on the thumbnail of the train approaching the station. That interface then moved to the main frame and the theme/pattern of ‘public transport’ replaced that of the previous ‘city’ theme. The clips of the woman on the tram remained as that matched both patterns of ‘city’ and ‘transport’. I decided to look for more patterns within the interfaces so I clicked on a link from the pattern of ‘transport’ which consisted of people on a tram. This then became the main interface. I then found myself in new patterns which revolved around ‘people’, ‘water’ ‘movement of light’ etc . As well as finding links and connections, I also found that some of the links and connections to certain clips, were confusing and I couldn’t form an obvious pattern as it was varied.

There is something very beautiful about all of these clips. The clips captures light in the every day world. Moments that happen every day suddenly seem very important and meaningful as the ambient and slightly sad music plays over the clips.

Another pattern I noticed was that of ‘lives’ running out on the main interface. The main interface only has one life so you can only see the clip once. This forces you to move on and click into another interface.

I couldn’t find much that I didn’t like with these clips, I felt that they chose the right amount of thumbnails to choose from and I really liked the added aesthetic quality of the added sound track. I felt they had a good variety of the types of clips to choose from.

 

In particular my favourite is that of the un-suspecting old woman being filmed on an old tram. The light pours around her as the tram moves. Another clip that I like, is that of what I suspect is two people in love at the cinema. You can see the light from the ceiling on their heads and the wide cinema screen in front of them. The camera then pans out to the illuminated crowd in the rows around the person filming.

I think overall the film was made well. It is about every day life and parts of every day life such as people, the city, water etc.

 

http://vogmae.net.au/classworks/media/2012/kfilms/brightsplinters/#/?snu=503