Un-Profane Profanity
A topic with potential but I feel that it lacked any actual meaning. Approaching it from the general angle that profanity has a place in society is rather contrived, because it feels like a very watered down argument of arts versus censorship and a contrived experiment that is held without any real research presented, using the same subjects, without identifying control situations, etc. The documentary should have picked a fixed angle, for starters, rather than jumping around the various uses of profanity. The doco should have opened up with something to establish the place of profanity in society, not unexplained jargon and then slews of profanity. Experiments that are conducted to try and prove a point should be backed up by research, taking one line of an interviewee and running with it does not establish the validity of an experiment.
EDDIE
The subject was very interesting and had a decent flow. I’m not entirely sure if there was an actual goal of the film, but it was an interesting look at a unique subject. My only beef is with the consistently shifting aspct ratios due to the use of photos. I was rather uncomfortable for me. Aside from that, I thought it was quite alright.
four-images
It’s only fitting that I assess each film individually first before looking at how they work with each other.
The first film has a lot of pretty visuals, made pointless by the fact that it’s supposed to be about a blind lady. Worse still, we only realize she’s blind at the very end of the short doco and before we have time to absorb it or think about how it relates to the rest of the film, we are whisked off into the next one.
The next film isn’t a particularly new concept, made worse that it makes a statement and then stylistically repeats that statement. Honestly if you were going to make a doco on typography, be very careful about your choice of font. It honestly felt like there was no serious consideration into the fonts used and their social allusions and expressive values.
The third doco was probably my favorite. It held no pretenses of trying to be anything other than the narration of a poem. Unfortunately, after the first two docos, I was largely numbed to the importance of visuals in the doco.
AWAY
Tram 55
After the Fall
Beneath the Lyrics
Campaign Auslan
Anywhere But Here
Black Magic
Cubbies
Kraffiti
A Comedy Sale
Spliced
An Actor Named Jack
Listen
Insomnia
For the participatory project, I felt I contributed a lot to my group and thus deserve a HD. Primarily I was someone who stepped up to lead once we realized the challenges.
When the project started out, we had rather ambitious ideas provided by Sebastian and reinforced by Abdullah, but due to time constraints and lack of awareness of a variety of platforms. We did look into social platforms such as blogs and socialmedia aids that used metrics from Twitter or Facebook to be collated for other use. Due to lack of experience, we went for something safe.
Throughout the period of the project, I was usually the person who checked up on everyone to see how everyone was doing regarding their part and often took charge in terms of identifying what direction to take our project and how the workload was divided. Despite looking bad early on, I think I directed the project to being a success.
In regards to my blog, I think I kept it very objective regarding the production process and my intentions toward it, without mundane posts merely stating what was happening.
Nothing gets my nerves humming like the thought of an upcoming presentation. We’ve collated the information we feel is relevant and have prepared our points. We aim to be critical and are following the online outline for presentation requirements. It’s quite nerve-wracking, because we only have 5 minutes to present all our information and yet we still need to find a way to present that maintains the audience’s attention. Personally, I have taken on the roles of presenting the more technical (AKA boring) bits purely because of my naturally dull personality.
Yay…
A Producer is the janitor of the production. I know that’s not a particularly flattering description, but that’s how I see myself as a Producer.
You clean and neaten things during the mess of preproduction and than clean up the mess after production.
Now that my team has entered post-production, my duty is to facilitate the team to be able to produce the final product. However, I also have to look beyond the product, something that not even the director can concern herself with due to her commitments. I have to make sure that when this is all over, we’re ready to wrap up loose ends. Footage must be provided, credit must be given, equipment returned, paperwork collated, costs divided, etcetera un etcetera.
The importance of doing this is to ensure a good will between members of the production and those outside the production who have contributed, and promotes networking for future productions.
We have begun to collate the data and we’re trying to figure out an angle to present it in.
What we have (from what I see)
- Images
- Lots of likes
- Some comments
- Quite a bit of user submitted content (though not all of the user submitted content was reshared onto the page)
- A less active Twitter account
- Two cafes that responded with interest
We’ll just have to see what we can get out of it
I should preface that this post applies to both fiction and documentary film.
A little background is necessary, I’m taking Media Ethics as a course on the side, and one of the topics we discussed was on Baudrillard’s writing on Simulation and Seduction; which goes into detail about how the image and the meaning are not directly linked in regards to communication. Meaning is derived from a simulation model that is placed onto the image by the society and thus, members of that society interpret meaning based on their simulation models. This has ties to Nietzsche’s views on Perspectivism. The arguments of these two philosophers are usually brought up in the discourse related to the practice of ethics.
The best analogy to explain this to the layman would be this;
A man is stranded in a desert, and he sees a coyote waiting for him to die so it can eat him.
He curses Gods, and luck, and fate for his position, and instead of seeing a mere coyote (image) he sees a power beyond mortal comprehension (simulation).
There’s been a pleasant increase in traffic on the Facebook page. It’s actually starting to look a little messy.
My main concern is that I’m not sure where we’re bringing this social space to. The 2PlyCry movement, the only other group I see in class, seems to have a goal, and yet ours is rather free form, for lack of a better term.
The way I see it, we can take this in a commercial direction or take it in a community direction.
For a commercial direction, I’d need to revisit the idea of approaching cafes. For the community direction, we’d need to consider how we can expand outward to our audience.
So after our rough cut screening for the class, we received valuable feedback that lead us to realize we could improve on our product by filming specific footage that would aid in the conveyance of our meaning. I don’t particularly think going into details on that is worth mentioning because I don’t see the point of a blog as a product development tracker. Instead, I’d use it as a personal development tracker.
Now, it’s not a particularly new concept, but there is an ideology that we are never satisfied with our work. Having been so closely involved with each process of its construction, we tend to be very critical of flaws in the product. However, as much as we’d like to make the ‘perfect’ product, I write to remind my peers, and myself, should I ever read this in the future, that the industry doesn’t wait, for you. The industry has an audience to please and companies within compete with each other for spotlight in the social eye. As content producers we need to prioritize certain aspects of production before others. This is subjective depending on the topic we are discussing.
There’s really not enough activity. We’re currently discussing the use of a seeded audience. Such a thing isn’t a completely foreign idea in the industry. Audience seeding usually takes place when a social media developer collaborates with existing social groups, organizations, etc to use a social space that would benefit said group. Examples include ABCPool and RMIT’s IM2 course =P
So the hell week is over… I figure I’m due for a blog post.
So I’ll begin with an update for my film projects.
The fashion film for Kara Liu has been filmed. We’re in the process of looking for music, and returning the furniture we used. Not much to say there, my editor will let the director and I know if he needs anything.
As for the documentary, we have finished filming the main brunt of our footage. I’ll give a quick recap. From Monday till Wednesday we did practice runthroughs, scheduling, briefing, confirmation calls and equipment withdrawal and checks. On Thursday, we filmed our talent’s reenactment sequences, based on previous meetings with our main subject. It went ahead of schedule and looked pretty good. On Friday, we interviewed our main subject, and unfortunately, the interviews did not go as planned. We had trouble directing the flow of the interview, and our subject deviated from the responses she’d discussed with us, causing us much difficulty in regards to using the reenactments we had shot previously.
On Saturday we filmed more reenactments with our talent whilst discussing possible changes to the story flow. On Sunday, we scheduled another interview with the subject on the pretext of some flaws in sound.
Today most of us are taking a well deserved break.
So the point of this post will be to talk about balance; and this applies to both FIlmTV2 and IM2. Obviously, it’s been though to maintain balance between all my projects. I think it’s actually near impossible to ever truly attain balance when handling multiple tasks. However, the next best option involves prioritization of tasks. I personally believe that one must be able to prioritize their obligations. I can’t give a guideline that will work for everyone but here’s how I prioritize things.
Necessity: Of course, anything that I consider to be necessary actions are prioritized higher. This would include major assignments, major events that could affect my professional reputation, or major events that could bolster my professional reputation.
Time: Some targets just can’t be hit. Understanding that when assessing the situation allows for me to react by temporarily lowering it’s priority whilst seeking solutions to the timeframe issue.
My team: I like to be able to handle things alone, it’s not a strength, it’s just a characteristic. However, even I know when to accept a helping hand, and I know how to tell who I can depend on. When the situation calls for it, you if you know you can depend on others, prioritize other things.
