|
||||||
|
|
Day 4 of my 47 day South East Asian trip, and I am still up at 2am blogging away… It’s been age since I’ve posted here, due to a myriad of reasons which I will not pretend are worthy of mention. So just let me fill you in on a few things. I have settled on some stories for my project, both drama and documentary. I have shot and begun cutting 2 of those, one being a web comedy, the other being a doco on Asian youth car culture in Melbourne. I have also been cutting teasers to a vampire film I shot earlier this year. As I mentioned above I am on my 1 and a half month trip across South East Asia, which I will also be documenting as part of my project. I have set up two new blogs as an extension of the project as well as for future career prospects. One is http://mypetkiwi.blogspot.com, which is a blog site for a company my friend I have decided to set up for the coming year. We have called ourselves MPK Studios, where MPK = My Pet Kiwi. We intend to go into corporate and wedding videos, so spread the word if you could be so kind! =D The other blog is a more personal one – http://mbarc88.blogspot.com/. I decided to set this one up to document my travels, but it will also continue to serve as a compliment to the MPK blog and my Honours project. I feel that this blog is constrained a bit in it’s academic nature. I can see AND hear Adrian shaking his head at this comment, but it’s just the way I feel towards this space – much like how people react and adjust their behaviors to actual physical spaces, I believe that people do the same online. This space reeks of university and schooling, compounded by the fact that the url itself contains the letters RMIT – this blog lives on a university server! Anyway, that’s all I really wanted to say – that I’m overseas, and have set up two new spaces on this every expanding vortex of piracy, instant messaging and sex. I can now join in on the fun in more spaces, and with more AVATARS – shit i hope I dont’ miss that movie. The above is something I made with some of my fellow media graduates. It’s for a new sleepwear line called “Sleep Couture”. Credits: So, I reckon i have an idea now. For the story. “About time…” I hear my other self say, “…it’s taken you long enough.” Anyway, the seeds have been germinating over the last few months, to complete and utter failure – hence the “spluttering flames” from my last post. Quite appropriately, it was winter, and I can poetically blame the cold morning frosts for the deaths of my ethereal crops. But now, now is the winter of my discontent, made glorious summer by… by my epiphany? of sorts? However, if there was a need to put a name to my ’son of York’, it would have to be Nam Le. As incoherent as the alst few lines may be… I feel like I am on to something… hopefully. “A spark, a flash, the hint of a light, It flutters, and splutters I just spent 15 minutes trying to write that… why? I wanted to express the status of my creativity in a creative way. It’s an attempt at trying to start something within me so i can actually start to write out the ideas i have that are swimming lazily in my mind with what is left of my brain cells. Hopefully, this will work in time before I again, fall into the dark pit of blankness, and succumb to becoming my own personal creative vacuum. An article my friend posted up on FB, and thought it would be useful to mention.
The key to this is abstract representation – the further something is from your current train of thoughts, the more abstract it is when you attempt to recall it. There are methods to induce this psychological distancing effect, like looking at problems from someone else’s perspective, etc. This ties in to any idea that was discussed back in 2nd year of my degree – the notion of the subconcious, whereby problems seem to work themselves out when they are not at the forefront of your mind… when it floats in an ethereal space that is both in and out of your mind… images of Scooby Doo and Shaggy are flashing into my mind at the moment… Sitting in the studio waiting for class to start, found a small thick blocky book sitting at the computer entitled “The Writer Block”. Nice play on the book’s ‘block’ design. Anyway, sifted through it and found a section on Orson Scott Card and Science Fiction writing. Haven’t heard of him before but will definitely look him up now. He is quoted as saying – Also deserving a mention is the section entitled ‘Extreme Imitation‘. It tells of an Ethan Canin who discovered the short stories of John Cheever whilst at Stanford. What he did was he would re-type out Cheever’s stories just to feel what it was like to have “written” them. He says you learn many interesting things by doing this. Book details: Pre-production software – management software for the film world, or rather media world. There’s one I’ve had on my computer for a while called Celtx. The website describes it as “the world’s first all-in-one media pre-production software. It has everything you need to take your story from concept to production. Celtx replaces ‘paper, pen & binder’ pre-production with a digital approach that’s more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share.” Anyway, it’s not Celtx that I wish I was aware of, but this web series that has been produced in conjunction with the software that has caught my attention. It’s called Motion Sketches, “an online video series that explores contemporary approaches to media production development.” It discusses media prouduction from a holistic perspective, and how production is changing in the light of new technologies and new media formats. It discusses writing, roles of producers, and production flows – all in an interesting and concise package. I could go as far as to call it the last 3 years of the production aspect of the media course at rmit summed up into 7 web episodes – no offence to RMIT. But it also goes further and discusses concepts that move beyond what we were taught. New Media felt like something tacked on to the core curriculum rather than something firectly intergrated into the course. The way we were approaching production was still linear, and not as intuitive as that discussed in Motion Sketches. I seriously encourage media students of any kind to take a look at this series to get kick started into the new methods of production. As for me, i shall be looking more into this area ofr my own practices, and will definately be looking at using celtx much more often to test out these ideas. Here at uni in the Labsome studio at 7:30am.. don’t ask me why. It’s basically about being Malaysian-Chinese in Australia, which is exactly what I am! Had never expected to really come across something like that, but yeh those 5 minutes were… interesting and filled me with a new shot of inspiration. Thus the levels/layers of this project continues to grow, and the bit that makes me feel overwhelmed is that to figure it out I have to look at my own identity and analyse the layers, and its just… can get quite difficult. I have asked myself these sorts of questions before, but never on the level I’m being forced to now. And this is where “Banana Split” comes in. It deals with the potentially complex ideas in a light hearted simple manner. It references being Asian in Australia, and being Malaysian in Australia, and being Chinese in Australia, and being Malaysian Chinese, and being Malaysian in the context of being Asian, and being… well you get the picture. And this is where audience comes in – the level of complexity depends on who you think will be watching, or who you want to watch it. Being Malaysian-Chinese-Australian, I probably understand more layers of the piece, or rather relate more to it, than other Asian Australians. But there’s moments in there for other Asian Australians to identify with as well. And on the wider scale, anyone who’s ever been displaced, even temporarily through travel, can get a sense of finding/defining your own identity in a ‘foreign’ place. The part that I really related to was the question “so where do you come from?”. That simple question has become increasingly complicated for me since I started studying the Asian Media and Culture major. A bit better now as I’ve managed to process most of the ideas discussed in the course, but still I don’t have an answer I can easily use. I say Malaysia usually. But when I speak with international students, they consider me Australian because I’ve been here since I was 6 months old. But I still hold a Malaysian passport. And when I go back to Malaysia, sometimes I’ll say I’m from Australia… And speaking of accents – I have no idea what mine is. Some say it’s ‘neutral’.. whatever that means. Some of my friends say I have an ‘asian’ accent… whateverthat means. I’ve had a few say it’s Hongky… but I’m not from Hong Kong… maybe it’s from my cantonese? I’ve had some back in High School say I sound American… I’ve never been there and I don’t consume large amounts of American cultural products… In Singapore some friends said I had an Aussie accent.. that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that one… When I was in China, they said I had no accent at all… is that even possible?? And then there’s Malaysian one I somehow picked up to use occasionally. My favourite one is from a close friend, who says there IS an accent, but he can’t place it. I have no idea why, but the Numa Numa song has returned. Last year in April, I wrote a post on the song in reference to modern pop-cross-culture. I compiled a list of the many different languages/cultures that have appropriated the song, and I’m just here to add to the list. Just impulsively remembered the damn catchy song, and decided to see if anything was new. Here’s the updated list. Here’s the original ROMANIAN version, entitled Dragostea din tei Then I found a INDONESIAN version Now I’ve found another MANDARIN version, Here’s a Basshunter radio mix version by Alina Puscau. It’s in English, but she’s from Romania – the latest version goes back to it’s roots! You can watch this youtube video that has compiled 20 version together into the one song.
nvm, it’s all solved. |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2012 Look… - All Rights Reserved |
||||||
