An RMIT media student reflecting and blogging on her experiences at uni, on making and learning.

The first thing that Adrian spoke about in the lecture was this notion of tacit knowledge – learning by doing, things that can’t be taught. That is what we are doing with Korsakow, or at least, what it feels like we’re doing. We learn how to work the software by creating works with it. I know for certain I’m a lot more confident with using it now than I was a few weeks ago, just as I am now more confident with Final Cut Pro than I was a year ago when I was first introduced to it. And tacit learning is not just confined to uni and our academic life – it’s in our jobs and careers, in our hobbies. I had to learn to play tennis by actually playing it – it wasn’t as if I was just shown how to hold and swing the racquet then ‘Congratulations, you are now a pro tennis player’ (I’m not pro, I’m actually quite average, but it is fun, and I’m much better than when I began!) It was the same with piano – when I first get a piece I can barely play it at all (or can only play a little by sight reading, which is something else I have learnt to do) and after practising it over and over, through repetition, starting slow and increasing the speed, I can play it in a way that, hopefully, is pleasant to hear! It’s not just a case of learning the fingering and the timing – you need a feel for the piece and the instrument. It is only through this qualitative change in our understanding that we will eventually grasp and learn things.

Moving on to patterns – pleasantly surprised to find that I could follow what Adrian was saying yesterday. My life is a pattern – uni, homework, spare time, sleep. Repeat. Okay, that might be oversimplifying things, but it is true (or I do agree) that humans like to create this sense of order in our world with patterns. Sometimes art is created that likes to challenge this concept, but for the most part it is there.

I’m also now considering reading something of Jacques Derrida and this idea of ‘inside’ or internalised ideologies versus the outside and how the outside is necessary to the inside.

These are the exact notes that I took in the lecture:
“Eg. Justice – social institutions arise that deem murder wrong. Deconstructive moment – killing becomes a prohibition. Police and public judge this and consequences of this act. Sense of WRONG. Derrida says to make that rule requires an act of force. Framing this notion of justice, force needs to be put on an individual – which is a violent act in itself. Inside the logic of the system, the terms that define it are already inside….
Derrida- first in itself, the authority of such, resides in the fact there is a second. “
I honestly don’t think I can explain it any clearer than that (if I can, this will be the first place I blog about it!)

Okay, now a post or two ago, I lamented about the fact that the settings on my ‘Me’ video does not have the same settings as the other – it has a weird letter box thing going on. I have examined and compared its settings to the other videos, as did Adrian, and I am at a lost. It shouldn’t look like that but it does. As Kathryn put it, one of ‘life’s little mysteries…’

How to ‘Insert Text’ into Korsakow. Holy Shit guys!! (Please excuse the language all, I’m half asleep and this is a big moment for me!)
I did read the manual…and it helped me not. All it said was I needed the ‘Insert Text’ widget, and I thought ‘Well, I know that – but how do I put text in the insert text widget for a specific film?’. So opened the SNUifyer. And there is the insert text option. Typed something random to try it out, put the insert text widget in the design interface, exported it to see – and I found TEXT! On the correct film I might add! Now, I’m pretty sure it’s the text we wanted for this, not the subtitles, which looks a little more complicated. And I didn’t play around with the font and size and colour – just wanted to see words there. I haven’t uploaded to the web, but here is a screenshot to prove I did it!

See, look look look look! Text!

No words and no images of me (although there is a brief shot of my sister). This was difficult. I don’t know if I made it work or what you would glean about me from this….this is why I titled it ‘A random glance’, because that’s what it is – I can’t do a video simply representing ‘me’ in thirty seconds. I’m not sure I could do it in a feature film. Maybe you’ll glean something though…
And looking at this, I think this is formatted wrong. I don’t know why this happened, I’m pretty sure I did it right when I exported it, unless it happened to the individual clips when I first converted them to the right format for FCP. Will fix A.S.A.P, but for now you can all look at this.

A random glance… from Ruth Richards on Vimeo.

Enjoy.

Hmm…difficult. How do I show you ‘me’? It seems kind of like giving you my iPod, putting it on shuffle and telling you to judge who I am from the first five songs that pop up. I just did that then and I got Dawn of the Dead (Does It Offend You, Yeah?), Space They Cannot Touch (Kate Miller-Heidke), All I Want Is You (Barry Louis Polisar), Murder City (Greenday) and The Last Day On Earth (KMH again). Seriously, what does that tell you about me?
I’m generally a happy person – but that doesn’t mean I don’t have bad days. I generally like people, but that doesn’t mean I don’t dislike people. Indecisive at times. Shy. How do I show this?
Maybe sentimentality is the way to go…..objects/things that mean a lot to me? Abstract? I feel like I want to edit something in time to music this time…I have a nice little waltz that I could play. And as I’m writing this, I feel like light – nothing dark or shadowy….somehow optimistic? We’ll see how it plays out….

So yesterday after some more helpful coloured hats critiques in class, we had another glance (well, more than a glance really) at Korsakow. We had a little Q and A session with Adrian about problems we encountered, and as I updated in my previous post, I found out the reason why my Korsakow project wouldn’t work when I uploaded it to Cyberduck. The data folder had to be uploaded as well, or it doesn’t work. It’s there now, and even though it’s a bit rough, I just proved to myself that I can use this technology. I’d like to try and do one with a continuous musical theme playing over the top of the all the clips, but I’ll try and do that another time. This week we are focusing on working out how to get text attached to the video files. I plan to start doing that later today after my Film-TV tutorial.

Another thing Adrian noted – don’t just export/save Korsakow files to the desktop, because then we’ll end up with a heap of ‘Data’ folders and we’ll get confused, and we won’t upload the right one and the whole project won’t work, etc. etc. Felt a little sheepish when he said that, because I’d just done the very thing. Won’t be doing it again any time soon though. I will be taking Adrian’s advice, and making separate folders for each individual project.
In other news, Peter, Kathryn and I are pretty on top of sharing our video files – we all use Vimeo and we can download each others work really easily. By next week all five video projects will be completed and we can each get to working on our individual K-film projects. I have a feeling they’ll probably end up looking rather similar, as we are all sharing the same fifteen files, but seeing as it’s more about how well we use Korsakow rather than video quality it doesn’t particularly matter. I’m going to have to pay special attention to the In and Out words used. In the quick one I did just up there, I gave each video two lives (they can only be played twice) but I noticed that it would take a while for some videos to appear – it was like I kept seeing the same ones over and over again and I didn’t want to. I’m going to have to be creative to make sure the project doesn’t come to a dead end too soon.

Just a quick post, thought I’d expose my idiocy to the rest of my fellow students for a second. Had a bit of a panic moment when I couldn’t put on out word in while I was SNUifying. After a couple of minutes I got it (by myself I might add!), but still rather annoyed at myself. We just got shown how to do this Monday for goodness sakes! Well, moving on from my embarrassing gaffe, I thought I’d check out the Korsakow site to see what was there to help me if any other *ahem* technical difficulties arose. And there is a manual. I like manuals – I know that playing around with the software is encouraged – and I did, and I worked it out – but it’s comforting to see that there and know I can refer to it if needed!

Hrrrmmm….I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I made a quick K-film thingy-ma-bob using some of the raw footage I shot over the past couple of weeks and a couple of the free vids I downloaded. Because Cyberduck and I don’t really get along, I have a feeling it’s something to do with that, but the K-film exported okay. I uploaded it via Cyberduck, and went to open the url – I can see the black screen and the little Korsakow logo in the bottom corner, but nothing else loads. Here, take a look-see. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ll come back in a few minutes and it will have fixed itself. If not, at least I have Integrated Media tomorrow and I can ask Peter or Kathryn or Cassie or Adrian or anyone else!

I have to go and do other homework right now, so I’m going to leave it for a bit. Maybe my brain will clear! Then I’ll check….the MANUAL!

**Update – asked Adrian in the lab today – I forgot to upload the data folder as well, which is essential. The link works now, you can see my quick and easy K-film!

So, they day we got this as our fourth video task, it hit me that I would be driving home that night, around tenish. It would be dark, I’d be going over the Westgate, the Princes freeway etc. So I messaged my Dad (he picked me up in the city and I drove home – still on my L’s, bleh) and asked him to bring the camera I’d be using. At certain points along the way I asked him to turn it on and film a bit. I also used the camera on the train in the mornings. I found it a bit uncomfortable, a few people gave me odd looks! But I shot mostly out the window anyway. Still, after I looked at all the footage this weekend, the first bunch of clips that had been shot were still my favourites, and the morning footage didn’t really fit. This is how I’ve been doing these video works really – filming it on the go and deciding what to do with the footage afterwards. I guess it’s the informal nature of these works. Overplanning can’t really do anything to help, so why do it?
Nocturne in E flat, Op 9 No 2, Chopin. I was tossing up whether to go with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, but this seemed to fit better. The piece has a name this time to – Nocturne, just after the piece. “A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative, or night.”

Nocturne from Ruth Richards on Vimeo.

So because we missed out on class last week, yesterday we had two videos to critiques – My Living Things and Round Things. We just did it in table groups, otherwise it takes far too long. I’m glad that I had some positive feedback on mine, but I’m even more interested in suggestions for improvement. Peter for example, noted that some of my shots were quite shaky compared to some smooth ones and maybe I can even that out. Adrian suggested adding several different shots of the one object (this was in relation to ‘Round Things’), because I’d only shoot on object from one perspective. That could be an interesting point, and I’m trying to think of how I could maybe incorporate that into ‘My Journey’, which is our travels to and from uni mostly. I take the train in every morning, sometimes taking the bus to the station, but usually getting a lift. Last night however, I drove home (I’m on my L plates still, my Dad was the supervising driver) and I messaged him to bring the little camera I’ve been filming with. I got him to film parts of the freeway and stuff on the way home from the city. It was night, and I think that it could look really good visually (sorry, lack of coffee, that wasn’t the best description). Anyway, I’m still going to film a bit of my journey in each morning this week, and see how it all plays out.

I got a bit sidetracked there talking about the next video when I was meant to be talking about the critiques on the second and third. Silly me (is this something Barthes would do? haha). Anyway another thing Adrian said to us was adding titles to our work, and not just calling them ‘Round Things’ or ‘Living Things’ (which is what I’ve been doing *headdesk*). It can create a context for our work (I think those were his words). Next one, I will do it, I swear!

Okay, now on to Korsakow. Now, last week I decided I’d have a little play around with it. I opened it, looked for a few seconds, then decided my time would be better spent doing my cinema reading log (which was due the next day anyway, so I kind did need to do that). That’s my problem though. New software, new technology, kind of wipes my mind the minutes I look at it sometimes. Not all the time, but with Korsakow it did. However, Adrian took us through it and showed us how it works, and having seen the basics, I breathed a massive sigh of relief (internally – would have gotten odd looks in class if I did). I overreacted again, it is much easier than I realised. I have downloaded the video library and hopefully maybe today or tomorrow (damm you work) I will make something really quickly with it, and have a proper look at the settings and such. I was the same way with Final Cut Pro when I started, and I can use it now…sort of….

Just a final note here: I haven’t been posting as much under the Integrated Media category as I have under the Film-TV category. It’s not that I don’t like blogging – I actually enjoy it muchly, and I have a blog that I use outside of my uni course (check it out, I like followers and comments). I’m having a bit of difficulty though getting back into a routine this year for uni, and then I have Film-TV to blog for, which is serving as our reflective journal. And I don’t like neglecting the other blog either. Right at this moment, I’m thinking I need to wrap up and go and do some posts about sound design!

P.S – Delicious. You can see my tags over to the right there. It’s not that I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I am barely using it. I need to go back to it more if it’s going to become an automatic thing, but most of the sites I really use are bookmarked on my browser anyway. At least you can see what I’m bookmarking as well I guess.

When creating this video, I tried be as broad as I could when it came to thinking about ’round things’. Circles, yes. Doorknobs I felt would be a common theme, and maybe the objects I’ve chosen are too. When I was looking for things around the house, I was thinking of spheres and movement as well. The music is just something I recorded briefly on the piano (with the camera – I just separated the audio track. I don’t have proper recording equipment and I didn’t think it necessary to rent some). I filmed all the round things I could find, but edited it down and selected items I felt blended together or felt similar – visually.

Round Things from Ruth Richards on Vimeo.

My Living Things from Ruth Richards on Vimeo.