FilmTV – IT’S THE FINAL REFLECTION

The screening was incredible, there were so many fantastic films. I had no idea about most of them, so it was more or less all a surprise. A definite few favorites, such as : About a Dog, Crumpets, The Other Half, Where’s Pierre, Confessions and the Loot one (currently blanking on the name). I found that these were all filmed spectacularly, especially Where’d Pierre and the Loot film, to me, just looked the absolute best. They were very well lit and designed, and looked so sharp and clear that for a moment I thought they cheated and used a better camera, but no, they just played spectacular care to detail with their entire film

For our own film, the lighting continuity errors were still very apparent to me, we really shouldn’t have moved the lights so much and should have stuck to shooting chronologically. Still super impressed with Mia’s performance, sold a little bit less with Guy, but I feel he still made his character fairly solid. I really want to get rid of the cut in between them kissing, where it is the closeup of his hands on her back. It feels slightly jarring and doesn’t quite fit in. Oh, and we need to go over the credits, I forgot to put myself in as production design, and forgot to thank our old media teacher for letting us come in and have free reign, really couldn’t have done it without him, or the school.

Overall, the experience of creating a short film was great, and learning about different principles and equipment was immensely valuable. But the thing, I think, that was the most important part I started to understand was the relations and communications needed between crew. It needs to be solid and clear, with everyone in the loop about decisions for there to be a successful outcome.

I don’t know what to review, I’m terrible at writing reviews.
I guess Where’s Pierre was probably the film that suck out the most of the screenings, but entirely for good reasons. It was well paced, and unbelievably well filmed. The performance of the leading lady was marvelous, she had suck an interestingly laid-back but also slightly snarky attitude, which was awesome. Noticed a few continuity things when she was filling out the crossword, as words kind of disappeared, or she was writing words we had already seen beforehand, but thats really such a minor thing. The use of suggestive music was a great touch and definitely an awesome emphasis on the mislead of the contents of the box, great misdirection there I felt. So yeah, as a whole, definitely an incredible and enjoyable film. A+, would see again.

Oh man, how could I not mention Hilarious Transplant?! Fantastically insane, and with great acting and visual effects. The graphics were brilliantly chosen/created and really helped push the bizarre nature of the game show. The plot itself was just crazy, and I think it was pulled off really well. I also really enjoyed the filming style, as it was somewhat different to the other films shown (with probably the exception of What’s for tea, Trev?). Camera was active and invasive, perfect for a game show about stressful tasks and humiliation. Just amazing really.

The screening night was great, loved seeing all the different ideas that people had, how they executed them was all awesome. I missed the first one shown, hopefully I can see it soon. Oh and shout out to Ronja Moss for her sound design in “Confessions”, it was just so fitting and detailed and amazingly done!

IM – Assessment 3 – Genre Study

Link to K-Film : HERE

Link to Essay (This will download the essay document to your computer) : HERE

BY: Conor Woods, Neha Badiger & Robert Fantozzi

Online text version of Essay:

INTEGRATED MEDIA – ESSAY
“Thematic resonances” (Shields 334) and “melody as rhythm” (Shields 335). What is thematic rhythm in a Korsakow film and how have you made some?

Within an interactive Korsakow film, the viewer or audience creates their own path from the videos and material provided by the creator. The creator develops keywords that link each clip to another, and these keywords offer some insight into the patterns that the creator thinks are present. These keywords allow for repetition and, simultaneously, discovery. Each clip links to another, and though you may experience repeated clips, the linked clips may not always be the same. This is how there in discovery within the K-Film, and this is how we begin to perceive the idea of “thematic resonances” (Shields 334) and rhythms within each film.

As an engaged viewer, we are powered by the urge to create patterns and find logical reasons as to why clips may be linked to each other. Subconsciously we create these links, which may or may not reflect the links that the author has embedded, although it is likely that we would be thinking in a similar fashion. We may notice similar colours, movements or subject matter within the selection of the clips and thus see that there are themes embedded within the film. There may be a multitude of themes within one K-Film and these may interweave and intertwine, the boundaries of them blurred and wavering. An experience of a K-film can result in this rhythmic change of themes, as themes move and blur from one to another and back again, it forms a rhythm that works to define the idea of that K-Film. It allows for a deeper reading of the film, and allows the viewer to both understand the concepts that the creator is trying to make, as well as creating their own interpretation of the film due to their unique experience of it.

Within our K-Film, we have embraced the ideas of genres, and saw them as categories that can have blurred boundaries and shared elements and qualities. This is why there are repeated elements throughout our genres, such as repeated music and sound effects that appear through genres that share borders. Especially in modern ages, where most of the films we are exposed to rarely adhere to just one genre, but instead have qualities that are reminiscent of others. There are romantic-comedies, western-horrors, sci-fi dramas and more that display that we are experimenting with genre through film. We have chosen to mimic this in our K-Film, and as a result we have formed our own thematic rhythms of genre. These are rhythms of the genres themselves, and also of the actions that we display them in. We have structured our interface to support this, as each clip links to a clip of the same genre, as well as linking to two other clips of the same action. This allows for there to be two streams of thematic rhythm, yet through the order of the clips played by a viewer, they may see that these two rhythms have actually combined via genre and action, as well as symbolic elements that they may see repeated throughout the entirety of our K-Film.

Within the separate elements of: Horror, Sci-Fi, Western, Film-Noir, Fantasy and Soap Opera/ Drama , we believe we have created clear thematic rhythms through our exploration of what elements help define them. These are elements such as tone of voice, dialogue usage, colour schemes, pacing, sound, music and physical movement. To each genre we have largely stuck to conventions that are associated with them, but also created a form of parody with them. Whilst not explicitly appearing to be self-aware we have exaggerated these key concepts of each genre, such as; emphasised head turns to camera in Drama and gritty, boisterous dialogue in the Western clips. We have used a selection of clichés found in each genre, as we believed they would allow for readers to firmly grasp the idea of the genre they were experiencing. If a viewer decided to view all the actions of a particular genre, they would notice similarities in style and construction, and make associations that allowed them to identify the clip as belonging to a particular genre. This also forms a thematic rhythm, this continuation and slight permutation of elements within a genre helps create a melody of symbolic relationships. We have attempted within each genre to only include what we believed was essential for the understanding of that particular genre, to replicate and use the most used and well known tropes. We believed that this would further emphasise the genre as well as the elements within them, and this is how we believe we have created a relationship between the symbolic elements.

There are thematic threads of each trope or convention of each genre, and as we have noticed that genres are not resolute, nuances of these tropes have breeched the clips belonging to other genres. We hear music most relatable to the western genre, or sounds that are associated with Sci-Fi, which appears in other genres. This further expands the melody of our K-Film, as it is not limited to each action or genre stream.

The thread of the actions themselves, whilst they don’t form a particular narrative, we believed that viewers would strive to create one nonetheless, as it is in our nature and behaviour to order information into a pattern that we can understand and identify with. They are noticing that these actions have the potential to be related in some abstract way, and this can be likened to extract of noticing from John Mason. For the audience to create a less abstract narrative of these actions, they need to reflect upon the action clips themselves and how they could fit together. This need to create a narrative relies upon the viewer to notice similarities that join the clips together, and this further requires for the viewer to be actively engaged. This is why we have chosen mundane activities to experiment with, they are basic actions of greeting a friend or foe, entering a place or comforting another person. They are identifiable actions, ones that we believed viewers would be at ease with, and actions so basic at heart. This meant that even through the changes related to genre, they are still recognisable to the viewer. Though we feel that the rhythm and melody created by the genre strand, the action strands create their own melody of a disjointed narrative.

Consequently, when watching our K-Film, the thematic link between the clips becomes apparent between actions or even genres. When viewing each clip of a specific genre for instance, perfectly mundane actions are modified to mimic a certain style of cinema. We attempted to illustrate the individual and artful heightening of reality that each genre would impose on a mundane activity in order to allow it to exist in the specific world of the genre.

For instance, a genre that is experimented with is that of science fiction. Some examples of a mundane action are knocking on a door, or picking up a file of information. In the context of making it science fiction, the conception of camera angles, pacing, editing and music need to be attended to in order to allow for anyone to just watch the clip and know it is science fiction without having to be told. As such, this is achieved by use of dutch tilts, giving a sense of unease and mysteriousness that is present in sci-fi. A blue colour graded filter over the top of the image also gives a sense of somewhat heightened futurism, which is apparent. But most importantly, is the staging of the action itself. The door-knocking sci-fi scene serves as an exhibition for these considerations.

When the protagonist knocks on the door, he knocks with caution, as he is unaware of what could be on the other side. As the door opens and he bathed in a white light, presumably created by aliens; a supernatural phenomenon which is common to sci-fi. This common link is apparent throughout our exploration of sci-fi, as the clip of ‘retrieving information’ also ends with his being beamed by aliens after touching the file, after being warned “ that everyone who has touched it has disappeared”. This and other elements such as techno 1980s music serve as links for certain videos to be commonly connected in sci-fi. However, the action itself links to opposing genres. For instance, the clip of retrieving a file of information is sci-fi with these modifications, and is the same action shown in other genres. However, this same action follows a different genre, and so features different tropes commonly associated with that genre. For instance, the film noir version of the same action-clip is an information trade with the deadly femme fatale. The horror genre is represented by the protagonist having retrieved the information and having read some of it before learning the paramount information that leads to him then being kidnapped by a psycho into darkness.

In terms of the narrative detail explored in the genres, the narratives are different with no apparent link once you cross genre, but upon further inspection, the thematic link is principal and present.

Put simply, this plot-point can be summarised thusly:
“The protagonist retrieves a file which is of paramount importance and sets the plot in motion”.
While each genre explores the narrative elements around the plot-point, or beat, the core of the issue remains the same. This idea is the backbone for each of the actions we have portrayed.

Despite being a different plot and different twist to the act, the point of the genre study in this case is to explore how genres display similar plot-points, and yet explore them in radically different ways. This cements the idea of the genre study, that it is possible to take any universally understood act or story, and be able to transform it no questions asked to co-exist in any genre.
This exploration of plot-variation has allowed us to drench the genres in indicators of their style, and strengthen the thematic rhythms of each genre.

Thematically, universal story telling is not genre specific, and can be told in anyway. The story being told does not have to be dictated by what genre you operate in. And consequently, genre does not dictate what story you will tell, as it can be told in opposite genres. Universal story telling and the transmutation across genre being an essential to thematic rhythm, as it links the opposing genres of the same action through the universal understanding of the plotted actions narrative, and that in terms of universal understanding, is the same act. However, due to the fact that there is no actual narrative in the K-Film, it gives the opportunity for this kind of analysis in the piece. As said is the Shields reading “The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things.” All that changes is the detailing.

Additionally, it is in that detailing where the genres themselves can become apparent to one another and differentiate themselves enough for viewers to comprehend what style is what. Thusly, each genre has a rhythm amongst themselves; rhythm itself being an element in the genres. As said in the Barthes reading “A work, conceived, perceived and received in its integrally symbolic nature.” The symbolic elements of a genre are partly what define it, and as such we can rely upon ‘reception’ and ‘perception’ to factor into audience understanding and enjoyment.

The detailing can be seen most apparently in camera angles, colour grading, acting style, and dialogue. The detailing is most noticeable due to the fact that every single action across the genres was filmed in the same location per action. You have the same location, but just tweak the details of the production, filming, and editing style of the clip, and you have it in a different genre. With each clip in a specific genre being tweaked to have the same detailing in order to make it feel at home in its genre. For instance, the genre of soap opera is the most interesting and noticeable example of genre detailing. In the initially filmed soap opera video, the approach of poor direction, and overtly campy and theatrical acting style was taken, in order to create the image of extremely artificial and manipulated drama that is apparent in soap operas. Further, upon review, it became apparent that continuity errors in staging and editing were a noticeable detailing element in soap opera. In one shot we would see the actor wearing a jacket, and in the next shot, he would have the jacket slung over his shoulder. Then he would run away, but cut to the next shot and he is casually walking. Having poor direction, over acting, and continuity errors all apparent across a range of videos despite the different actions, will link these videos as being in the same heavily dramatized genre of soap opera, as those are elements that are common and thus act as links between the videos.

Subsequently, the dialogue spoken in each of these videos of the soap genre also share a similar narrative pattern, as the plot detailing of film which does come from genre detailing can act as a link between videos. In the case of soap opera the dialogue consists of family double crosses, family secrets, affairs, family controversy and so on, such as “sleeping with evil twin brother”, “stealing life savings” and lovers “unable to be together”. These specific ‘twists’ were made in the interest of creating the extreme dramatization of daily life. An example of this detailing being specific to soap opera is apparent in the action of putting on an article of clothing. In the Horror version of putting on an article of clothing, we see the psycho very threateningly putting on his gloves, probably about to murder or torture the poor victim. Yet in the soap opera version, his buttoning up his shirt is accompanied by lustful and suggestive dialogue of “this was fun… but we can never do this again. If anyone finds out I was sleeping with my evil twin brother, it’ll all be over.”

This change in detailing comes from the notion that if you were to view a soap opera, narratively the only time he would be putting on an article of clothing would be after a controversial act of sex. Back to horror, the only time you would see an article of clothing being put on would be in building up to an act of extreme violence. Where the links between the same actions, is apparent in the similar story telling beats, the links between the same genre clips in different actions becomes apparent through the use of detailing. In the end, it is assumed that you would not confuse a horror clip with a noir clip or a fantasy clip with a sci-fi clip. The cinematic detailing is what gives the genres their individuality and is also what categories them, allowing them to share a “thematic resonance” (Shields 334) with one another.

The focus on certain detailing changes from genre to genre. For instance, in soap opera, it was made clear that over acting and dialogue are the key details in creating links between the soap opera videos. However, there is not as much importance placed on the camera work. Within the genre of western, the detailing has nothing to do with the acting or the dialogue, as it has the same possibility of being overdramatic, akin to the soap-opera. For the western clip, the detailing of camera work and music is what was intensely looked over. As such, to create a western video, the cinematography is purely cutting between extreme long shots and extreme close ups, with focus pulls in between with all shots being framed with absolute symmetry.

Furthermore, the camera is either steady as a rock, or moving with little to no speed, in order to give the slow pace, which the genre is known for. What is most fascinating about this aspect of genre creation is the notion that each of the western clips were shot with no hats, horses, taverns, deserts or gun fights what so ever. They are not even attempting to be truthful in the historical depiction of western cowboys, yet each of the clips true to that of a western style. This continues to show how specific detailing can create a thematic rhythm between each clip to specify genre.

Using nothing but a camera, 3 actors and editing rooms, a host of videos where created that each exist comfortably in the genre thanks to specific direction and detailing, creating Western clips that didn’t need horses, or sci-fi clips that didn’t need expensive CGI aliens. We have inadvertently shown that specific props or costumes are not always necessary in creating a multitude of genres.

Quite simply, the clips are linked with each genre linking to one clip of the same genre and 2 clips of the same action and so on and so on, watching this K-Film should give monumental insight into the in-depth study of genre transmutation we have pursued. The actions link different genres together, creating the effect that genre does not dictate the kind of story you tell. Consequently, the genre clips themselves link to clips of the same genre through detailing which demonstrates the categorisation of each genre, and the means to which the cinematic reality is heightened to the genres specific needs. The videos collectively link to thematically demonstrate that genre can be created through mood and direction, and is not in need of the monetary benefits, which are used to create upscale genres. Thus this K-Film displaces layered thematic link between the clips via many different pathways, as well as being a study of genre.

Robert Fantozzi s3381069
Neha Badiger – s3382869
Conor Woods – s3381539

FilmTV – I know its late, leave me alone

Thoughts on the actual day of shooting.
Went a lot smoother than I thought it would be. After hearing a few scare stories from groups who had filmed earlier, I was apprehensive and assumed that there would be many a hiccup.
There was a small lighting issue (then a big one, which I will explain later) at the 2min mark of actual shooting, but after that, everything was pretty darn smooth. Everyone was co-operating and alert, and everything was going well.
Getting the actors to do the most intense scene in the film at the end of the day was a bit problematic, but understandable, it was a long day, and people were tired. Trying to constantly bring up these powerful emotions and vocal inflections would have been more tiring and that’s perfectly fine, makes sense. If we had filmed that part at the start, we could have avoided that, but the takes we did have were pretty useful.

I’m still not entirely sure why, but although we had set out to film chronologically, there was a quick change to the schedule and we decided to film via camera and lighting positions. That makes sense, means we don’t have to reset equipment for every new shot, but it also meant that there were lighting continuity errors. As we switched from one perspective to another, the lights had to be changed, and it felt that they were different every time, and this really worried me, because they looked to drastically different to each other, it just looked wrong. However, this is being fixed currently with incredibly rigorous and tedious colour grading, and I’m starting to see that it is not a big a problem that I had made it out to be. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of ‘fixing it in post’ but that has happened regardless. But its looking good for now, and hopefully will continue to get better with a few more editing sessions.

Also catering was amazing. We had too much food, but damn it was good. Dan, best producer award is yours!

IM – Gone soft?

Seeing as my shoulders are limiting my arm movement severely, I’m trying out the voice to text feature on my phone. Its pretty neat, little bit inaccurate and I have to go back to put in most punctuation. I had planned to write a point on how that related to last weeks lecture, but in the process of using the app, I seen to have forgotten it. Apparently repeating words and sentences a few times makes me forget other things, which really isn’t that surprising.

So, the opportunities around editing soft video are seemingly limitless, but that’s not the most important point. Knowing and understanding the process of editing is where its at, rather than knowing all the keyboard shortcuts for whatever editing program. Makes sense really, editing programs are constantly being updated or outdated, so affixing yourself to one program just means that eventually you will be outdated as well. This is something I constantly need to tell myself, as I have a fair bit of experience with Premiere pro rather than final cut. I generally complain about final cut, but does it matter? They can both achieve similar things, just un different layouts and ways, so it comes down to how you edit, not what you edit on.

I love editing, I can set myself down to do some editing of video and not resurface to the world for hours. Unless you count taking breaks whilst something is rendering, but still, editing almost becomes like meditation to me, except when I get frustrated in wanting to achieve a certain thing, but can’t figure out a way. Generally though, the editing process is something I can do for hours. I can’t really do that with any other sort of media, with the exception of a super good book.

I get distracted or bored so easily with everything else. The worst offender is trying to read research online. I just can’t. Nothing sinks in and I always give into temptation to check Facebook and my emails every 10 minutes, so I half forget what I was reading and none of it sticks.

But if I have a hard copy of text, I can work with it,so much easier, I can wrote and mark it and it sinks in better than reading it online. To echo Jess’s words, “I need a finite copy” of text for me to be able to edit it and understand it better.

This was meant to be more about hypertextual things, but digressing is a way of life for me. Regardless though I should update how I work in regards to text, in light of things becoming more electronically published, I’m becoming outdated. I have time to adjust, but knowing how easy procrastination sets in, I should start working on it soon.

Using this app took about as long as I expected, not having used it before, it had to get used to my weird accent and I had to repeat things a few times, plus go back to edit punctuation and putting in a link. Definitely helps when your arms are kind of useless, but I could have typed this out a lot faster. Talking out loud was neat though, if I didn’t have to repeat myself it would be a lot smoother and most likely more like a stream of consciousness. I do so like to ramble and digress and forget everything i intended on mentioning.

FilmTV – Rehearsals

Were interesting. Having both our actors as well as our entire group was good to have, as you can see the dynamics between each person. Ange, our screenwriter and DOP had the most control over the actors when coaching them in their delivery and performance, and they looked to her as their man source of information. Which is good in a way I guess, as she does have the most innate information about the characters than the rest of us do. Moses, our director was unfortunately sick that day, but showed up anyway, which was awesome. I think because of that, that Moses was a bit quieter at rehearsals, that the actors may start to go to Ange more than him in terms of their acting direction, but seeing as we are all in constant contact, that can get sorted out beforehand. Ideally, Moses being the director means that he should kind of have the greatest relationship with the actors, but I think it should work out fine if their is a balance in the relationship between Ange and the actors, Moses and the actors, and between Moses and Ange. Not to say that they dont see eye-to-eye, I think it is just something to be wary of, that the actors may possibly listen more to Ange than Moses.

Aside from that, which isn’t really that big of an issue anyway, because we were limited with time, our shot-by-shot rehearsal turned into more of a equipment skills and checkup session, which I think was more beneficial. We could get everything set up relatively fast with just three of us (as Moses and Ange talked separately to the actors), and the footage was drastically better than our Lenny 3 exercise, which was so grainy it could have passed as oatmeal. This was remarkably clearer, because we remembered to check and adjust grain levels, pay attention to the lighting and aperture, and to adjust the white balance, things that we had forgotten to do during the Lenny shoot. Audio was sounding rather nice too, despite the fact that the room we were in had that annoying background hum, but it was not too noticeable, and the mic was close to the actors so their lines were very clear.

Also, pulling focus during a close up of someone staring intensely at someone looks goddamn terrifying. And good, looked really good, but I don’t think its a shot we will use anyway. We noticed a slight moire sort of thing happening, so hopefully we can figure a way to minimise that as much as possible. As tempting as it sounds, and plus the fact that we are shooting so late, we shouldn’t fall into the mindset of ‘fixing it’ in post. That is just going to take up time we don’t really have.

FilmTV – Camera movements and such

Definitely made me aware of how cumbersome a dolly can be. Results in some seriously smooth and lovely panning, but the time needed to set up the tracks, make sure they’re level and in the right direction and angle and not to mention it is another set of gear that we need to move. That being said, with our film, we have quite a large space to work with, and given that we have permission to move the tables around as we see fit, and that we have a car to move all out equipment, working with one could be okay. The biggest factor would be the time needed to set it up, test it, make adjustments, and pack it all away. We could have time for that, but it would be a gamble.

Reminds me of the section of the film, Predestination, that I got to watch. Not actually sure as to how much I am able to write about the experience, but the section used a dolly, and the result looked amazing. But it was for a shot that went for less that 10 seconds, and took about 15-20 mins to set up, even with about 6 or 7 people working to set everything up. They actually put two cameras on the dolly, and with different takes, the two cameras started in different positions. For some reason I didn’t really think of what it would look like if you used a dolly to pan, but at the same time panning the actual camera as well. It looked very rounded? Can’t remember entirely if the cameras were tracking in at the same time too, but the effect made it look almost like a swooping crane shot, albeit at an angle more parallel to the ground. Semi-circular, that is the word I’m looking for, and it was something I didn’t realise you could create with a dolly. I don’t believe that we are having any shot that is semi-circular in nature, but if we are going quicker than our schedule for some reason, I think trying one out could be pretty fun. Although I’ll be needing a fair bit of assistance in attempting it, in terms of focus pulling and someone guiding me on the dolly. Regardless of whether that actually happens in the shoot or not, it would be kind of cool to try.

IM – The world is a soup

This weeks lecture was pretty neat, I’d say, and kind of centered around the idea of blogs and gave us a few explanations as to why we are using them, and why they are seen as ‘disruptive’.

Blogs dont have to follow a specific layout, we can customise its appearance, its content, and who it gets shared with, which is usually the general public. It can be written informally and be meandering, have no significant purpose or consistency.

You can’t really do this with formal pieces of writing, such as an essay. If you do, it is seen as incorrect and is perhaps not taken as seriously. Essays have a fairly rigid structure, and in an academical sense, if you stray from this structure, the essay is worth less automatically, regardless of the quality of the content. If you don’t define your arguments, provide a counter argument, have acceptable resources that are noted in a specific manner, or have an opening or concluding argument, the essay is again worth less than one that meets all these requirements. My reasoning behind why we wrote essays in high school, was because essays allowed us to develop arguments and opinions, and how to proof those arguments with references to those who share the same viewpoint. But if we have been doing them for 6 years, surely the ability to create and strengthen arguments would be be something that is not easily forgotten? There are other ways to state an opinion or argument, so why were we not exposed as thoroughly to those?

Yet, as Adrian said in the lecture, it is the blog posts that we question, not the essay, which struck a bit of a chord with me. I guess because, from the early days of high school to the very end, we are expected to churn out essays one after the other, and so its something that we believe we are expected to do in an academic world. And so we expect to be given them in university, even if we are heading for a career that will ensure that we never see or be forced to write an essay ever again. But the blog post, something that can be personal and professional, something that can be an open forum to discussion, is the one that we question. Its more media based than an essay, and we are, after all in a media course, and so whilst we may have a minimal or non-existent exposure to essays, if we go into a media based profession, we will be faced and expected to have knowledge with a vast amount of media forms, so it all makes sense really.

I don’t really have an ending to this, or a way to acutely summarise what I’ve written, but then again, I don’t have to.

So deal with that.

IM – Class feedback

In essential, our idea for the big K film is the exploration of genre. We decided that to do this, we could have 1 story, that splits into 10 or so segments, and then have 6 different versions of the story, each tailored to a specific genre.

The class discussion was pretty helpful in terms of clearing up what we wanted to achieve and how we could do it using Korsakow. Jasmine asked us questions about what sort of links we were making, why those links and relationships were there, and how we could avoid the ‘choose your own adventure’ type thing. She explained that, whilst it was possible to make a K film like that, it was more a of a departure of what the software is about, that it is generative and that the user chooses options based on the relationships they see.

From that, we made the suggestion that if our story was simple enough, it could depart from a more narrative structure, and it would jsut be clips linked by genre, that have a possible connection to each other, making it a bit more abstract, and making the focus more on the exploration of genre, rather than story.

I ended up recording the section where Jasmine and the rest of the class discussed our idea, and having it on record is helpful, and we can just refer back to it, because a few other students offered suggestions and ways to clarify our idea.

It still needs tailoring and more thought, but I really like this idea, and I think it could work with Korsakow well, but we just need to figure out relationships and the story we could use or make, and how its all going to fit together.

FilmTV – Guest lecture

I found this weeks lecture incredibly insightful, because I could relate it to my own short film group and how we are going to treat and work with the actors. I know the lecture was mainly directed towards the director, writer and DOP, but I still found that what was said was useful to me, and probably useful to everyone.

The female lead that we have cast is possibly one of the nicest and eager people I have met, and our entire crew loves her. She performed the role very well, was friendly to all members of the cast, took direction from Moses very well and was open to suggestion and just suited the role very well. With her, it was the most obvious choice that we should choose her, and her personality gave us the impression that she would be very easy and friendly to work with, which is great, no extra stress there.

Our male lead, which we are still indecisive about, is a whole nother kettle of fish. The one we are considering has a ridiculous amount of acting skill, suits the physical look and demeanor of the character and out female lead felt that they had a very good connection. He would be perfect if it wasn’t for the fact that he comes of as very arrogant and forward, and seemed to challenge Moses’ idea of direction. Whilst auditioning with the script in front of him, he decided to take liberty with the lines and changed them, which sort of changed the character’s personality. Whilst he is an incredible actor, I just have the feeling that on set and in rehearsal, he will want to change the script and the character, things he has already mentioned to us about changing, which brings in another problem that was addressed in the lecture.

If someone else starts giving direction, and they aren’t the director, everything will kind of fall into a mess, where there are mixed signals coming from different places. I noticed this myself on a shoot recently, where the director was a first time director working with a fairly experienced crew, and whilst their suggestions were intended for her benefit, she seemed to get very flustered and confused as to what she wanted to achieve. I just have a bad feeling that this will kind of happen between our male lead and our crew. The relationships that Sandra was talking about may get a bit tense and messy, and there is the possibility that our film may suffer as a result.

However, our scriptwriter Ange, is set on him, and made the suggestion that we have a solid discussion with him, so that they can communicate with each other about how the male character should act and behave and what his personality is like. Which is great, because hopefully it means that he gets a better idea of what we want from him, and whilst we are open to suggestions, he can perhaps understand that we have already decided on the path of our male character. I’m still apprehensive, but he really is a great actor, but his actual personality is just a bit off-putting. But hopefully it all works out, I think our crew can handle him.

IM – Assessment 1 – K Film

Neha Badiger – S3382869
Integrated Media – Assessment 1 – Korsakow Film

Within my interactive Korsakow film, I wanted to stay away from the clear patterns that connected the sketches, as these patterns were simply the description of the constrained task that they had to abide by. I found it difficult to identify a theme by watching the videos individually, so instead I set up a display where all 26 sketch films were playing simultaneously. This allowed me to realise that there were patterns of colour, being at home and a feeling of being alone, but not being lonely. Together, these patterns actually combine into elements that describe me as a person, which is my penultimate thread.

These threads are how I chose to structure my interactive film, linking sketches via these patterns to create a stronger overall pattern of myself. Using keywords that related to these three threads, including both specific and general terms, I wanted create an association between the sketches and what they would link to. I made sure that some of these sketches, that I felt were strongly connected to the patterns had repeated keywords, so that they would appear more often. I also made sure that within the definitions of the OUT keywords, that the amount of links that each keyword had was limited. This was to ensure that there was no hierarchical dominance of a keyword just because it was listed first. This further allowed for three linked sketches that would change sometimes if a certain sketch was clicked on again. There was a sort of random generation if a keyword had 2 links but only 1 thumbnail space, then the linked sketch would be a possibly different one. This was an aspect I discovered by accident, but chose to utilise as it allowed for a bit of diversity in the linked sketches. I wanted to keep the theme relatively simple, because in a few Korsakow films that we could look at, the ones that used large graphics and bold colours seemed to distract from the film itself, something that I wanted to avoid. Thus I created a very simple background that uses a filmstrip as a border; we are after all, watching a series of films.

The texts that I chose to insert with all of the sketches are simple phrases that the sketches make me think of personally. These are sketches about my life, my home and my family, and so to insert text that is abstract would be too jarring and distracting. These texts are not particularly poetic, as they do relate to the sketch in some way, but not all are concrete descriptions. They describe the sketch but do not define it, they are simply thoughts that the sketches provoke within me. The idea behind this was that it should be personal to me, but also accessible to others, something many people could relate to when reading them. I did, however, actually include a quotation from the series Game of Thrones; “The night is dark and full of terrors”, because I found that it was a nice balance of poetic and literal, in the description of the sketch of a person running at night.

I feel as though the colours in my sketch films are very pronounced, with the sketches tending to have an overall colour scheme that is warm or cool, depending on the object or location, wherein some sketches have bursts of colour that create visual interest. I wanted to structure the Korsakow film in a way that not only linked colours, but colour tones as well as links to the other keywords. This was so that there was a clear link between colour in my sketches, which I think I achieved well. Colour is personal for me, as it allows for incredible expression and has such specific connotations of moods and feelings that I believe my sketches portray, especially with the text I have added to each one.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of these sketches were filmed in my own home. This is not just because it is accessible to me, but also because I find that my house frames beautifully with the macro lens that I primarily used. I take my house for granted, using it every day but never really noticing or appreciating its value as a home. I have lived in this house since I was a child, and I have witnessed its many changes, yet I never stopped to look at the aspects of it that make it a home to me. I think this is due to the fact that when I am not home alone, the house is often filled with a cacophony of noises and people, which make it easy to overlook the details of the house and just retreat into a closed state of being. Yet when I filmed, I was often home alone and so was provided an opportunity of soft background noises that really allowed me to capture the visual nuances of my house freely.

The last one was the one that surprised me the most, as in the majority of my sketch tasks, there are no people in the frame. You can hear the voices of them, or hear their movements, but the frames are usually focused on a location or object, highlighting some part of their physical attribute. After a bit of introspection, I found that I am happier in quiet environments like this, I am a very individual person and I like to do things alone, but the soft presence of others is always comforting. The sketches don’t feel empty or static though, It feels as though they are given life by their colour and soft background noise, which I think helps create a stronger sense of a broader theme that joins my sketch films together; a sense of me and my life portrayed or documented via film. The sketch where there are the most people present, the comedy festival sketch, is where I used text to imply that we may have the intention to go somewhere individually, but often find ourselves in the company of other strangers.

I believe that my work is fairly successful, especially in the threads of colour and location. These are the visual patterns that we see in the sketches, and so by seeing them, and seeing what they link to, we can determine that they follow in those themes. I think that, in order for the three themes to come together into one, I could have adjusted the keywords better, and perhaps made an interface that clearly stated my personal theme, so instead of a theme of me that may not be obvious, is a bit more concrete. This whole exercise has taught me, or given me, a sense of connecting seemingly random pieces of information, to combine them into a product that is somewhat cohesive. It has also, more obviously, taught me how to use Korsakow as a tool to author an interactive project, but I see the idea of making or finding connections to be more important, as I can see it being applicable in more situations.

K FILM LINK : HERE