Tag Archives: lecture

Ooops. Delayed again..

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EDITING! Yes! My second most favorite thing when it comes to making movies.

I love the fact that I can make our movie into 10 different movies in the editing suites. I could simply change the order, and the story would be completely different. In this film we are sticking with the script, but there are still a lot of playing to be done. Here’s the notes from this weeks lecture. I’ve got a million excuses for being late, but none that will be considered valid.

 

Audio and colour correction is definitely going to improve your film.

My boss at the local tv station in Norway went to sound school (directly translated from Norwegian. I know it probably has another name, but you get the idea), and although he started working with TV, audio has always been closest to his heart. “Good sound can fix bad footage, good footage can’t save bad audio” is something I’ve heard him say numerous times. And oh what a pain it was. I had to be extremely picky with everything I made, and he would always find something that wasn’t right, and I would have to fix it.

Such a pain. But what a valuable lesson! Now I’m starting to realise the importance, and I’m not looking forward to making the soundscape in our film; it’s going to be a big job.

A useful trick! Just as it is helpful to look at how the visual edit works by turning the sound of and just looking, try listening to your edit with eyes closed. I bet 50 dollars that you’ll hear “bad” sounds that you didn’t notice before.

Important to look at the film as it is shown infront of an audience. You get technically nervous, hyperconscious of everything.
Screening is a preview. Then go to the edit suites, recut it after getting comments, then try to submit it to a festival.

Reflection is key to your work, informing and improving your work as a filmmaker. 
Yihaa. I guess that is what I’m supposed to do now. I’ll do it soon. After I finished this. I promise.

Sound editing
Choose a scene:
- whose listening
- whose talking
- analyse the rhythm
- the space
- the pauses
- the talking over (interrupting)
- the atmos
- sound fx
- the music

AHA! Here’s a free layout on HOW to do a reflection. Gah we’re so spoiled.

Look at other work an see how the audio is put together.

Here’s something I didn’t know: If you want to elongate on time – don’t cut in action. A wide shot would take less time than a lof of close ups.

Complex sound scape that you don’t notice. Atmos, foley, cars, fridge noises.
Audio needs to peak at -6 to -10.
Use Audio Mixer in Final Cut to change the different sounds separately

freemusicarchive.org

Look at all your shots, and make sure they match. Of course, light changes from different location, but unless it is the purpose of the film, you don’t want the light and the colours to change dramatically.

Second level is make the image more punchy, larger than life, filmic, less video.

Yes. Yep. Ja. Jepp. That’s exactly what our film has been missing. It is a cool story, well shot and well lit, but it is very.. normal. If we want the footage to match the dark, dramatic story, we have to do some changes.

Many ways to do this: blacken the blacks. Saturate the colours or de saturare. Make it cooler, warmer.

Do it in small bursts. Don’t spend too much time on it.
Set up a separate sequence.
Don’t apply to all till the end.
Paste attributes.

Use vignette to spot out actors? Contradicts the resistance of use of shallow depth of field
Eight Point Garbage Matte… Click on the points and drag them where you want them.

Copy clip that has the setttings you want. Then go into next sequence, mark the clips you want to ass the attributes to. Then go Edit, then Paste attributes, and choose the attributes you want.

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Lecture week 11

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OH MY GOD I can’t believe that it’s week eleven already!!
I’m slightly stressed and freaked out.. But I’ll be fine.

Alright! Todays lecture:

Sequences. 

Korsakow: duration and viewing.
When does it end? When have I viewed it long enough to get it?

Imagine all the different possibilities with these images! They have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but our brain works in a way that we will try to make a pattern no matter how random the images are.

The less a fragment narrates, the more possibilities of connection it has (think of Lego bricks). This is the model of the blog. We are applying the same logic to film making in a Korsakow film.

This is important to think about for our project. The different videos shouldn’t contain separate stories; they should constitute a whole.

Our videos shouldn’t have a predetermined shape. If you get a new lego brick, which resemble a face, you’re going to use it as a face. A old lego brick can become anything if you use your imagination.

A shot has always been a lego brick. You can join it to anything.

Oh my god I loved that metaphor! GO ADRIAN!

Grammar defines what logically should come next. This does not apply in sound and film.

In Korsakow users have more agency. To decide what to do, what it means, what particular connections and patterns might mean – even what patterns exist.

Users define how long your film is. Not you. (think about this when you make every individual clip! Make them entertaining or pleasing to watch so they don’t grow tired! Not too long. )

Hard media is when you use a computer to make something solid. Dvd, book etc. FIXED.

In the software, it is soft, unfixed.
Affordances that computers make available.

We have control in word: everything is possible, paper is unlimited, corrections, etc. We take it for granted. Also in editing; imagine editing using a Steinbeck. Actually cutting the film. You cant do dissolves, layer tracks, you can’t visualise what you’ve done. We have no idea of how easy we have it.

Digital affordances, so we want to preserve the soft after we publish them? Korsakow can’t be turned into a movie to show on tv. It isn’t a Korsakow film if it is linear.
Wikipedia is another example of soft media. Everything is open to re-editing.

Quick time. Soft video environment. Instead of showing a jpeg 25 frames per second, it is just one whole frame. Small size. Frame rate.
Important thing: each one is an object, always stays an object.

This is soft video – video is made up of tracks that stay separate

Bergen clouds: video that can only work on a computer. Ambient. Not telling a story. No beginning, middle or end. What type of movie is it when the user can change the frame rate and load other things? (Really liked this one. Got a bit homesick from seeing the snow)

Objects stay objects after publication.

Separate movies to the film? Like a webpage. The files live somewhere else, and they are loaded into the project.

Danish snow! Yay!

Propositions. Work makes claims. Video without frame rate. Still a video.
It is a collage between the relations of how you put things together. Is Danish Snow a text? It allows the user to play.

What proposition (one is ample) do you think your own korsakow film project is making? How do you describe this?

Hm. Is this a trick question? I guess we’re trying to propose a city made up of light. However, this might not be what the reader interprets it as.. Perhaps they just see it as a bunch of different lights, missing the fact that we are trying to describe the city..

The two biggest things to take from IM1 are:

To have a sense and some understanding about what it means and feels like to make and be inside of multilinear media.

You need to be in the environment to understand the work. You need to have an answer. Those who work successfully in these environments have immersed themselves in it.

Threshold meanings/concept. You deeply and fundamentally understand something better. When students get that, they’re a filmmaker. Important concepts, you’re lucky if you have one in each subject.

Understand that when you make something, how you make it, the body is a proposition. Not what you think it is about; its about what the work says about itself. 

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Delayed Lecture notes

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This weeks lecture was really good, but contained a lot of difficult information. I’ll try to put together my notes into a coherent blog post, but I’m not promising anything

Author: A “real” meaning external to the text
Text: a “real” meaning internal to the text – a variety of “real” meanings internal to the text, but from the outside. (but the text is subject to conditions found in itself).
Reader: The text is a thing that readers realise.

It has a logic that is internal to itself. Great work is aware of this. We don’t need to study the author to understand the work.

We analyse a film in terms of how it works in film logic. Internal visual metahors in Citizen Kane. Internal logic. Another mode, where we recognize. Interpret a present in what we’re studying, but frames of reference comes from the outside.

This refers to the fact that we are all raised within a culture that will effect the way we interpret a work. Lets say that a film, song, or story is sexist. It might not think so, but apply a framework from outside, we can prove how it is sexist. To one person it might be just a casual song, for others it can be highly offensive.

The text says something inside, but we have to analyse what it says about itself from the outside. Psycoanalysis: search the inside, it might not be evident?

In a really good work it knows how to listen to how the thing is doing in itself. Another body: reader response theory. A lot of the role of interpretation has changed from trying to define the object, to define the reader.

Debate within each body. Reader constructing the work and what the work gives back.

Fun example in how this works:
p.43
Jacobs-Rosenbaum
Levin
Thorne
Hayes
Ohman

The list above was the reading list for one class. The lecturer left it on, and the second class, who were studying religious poetry, came in. The lecturer gave them a piece of a text, and they interpreted it as a religious poem.
We will always find relevance. ALWAYS. You just have to say it is a poem, and we will understand it like that.

Relates to a korsakow film. We don’t have to tell them. “A religious poem”, the reader will do the rest. How can we do this with our film? (should we perhaps refer to the city and to light so the reader understand the context?)

No gambling if we were not patternmaking animals.

In all of these TEXT is stable.

Question: What happens when what we are reading become unstable? Which is a Korsakow film. It can’t be fixed.
Korsakow falls between midway through the text and the reader, and it is crucially dependent on the reader.

Korsakow requires people to read it, like a guitar. You can’t just place it infront of them, and wait for something to happen. It is not just dependent on a reader to interpret, but that the reader actually participates. Engine to produce things. A film, a novel, a machine is not. Once it is made, it is fixed. A Korsakow film is always open.

GAPS. Some works want to erase the gap. Barthes enlarges the gap, invites you to fill it in. (Much like Scott McCloud, who we learned about last year.) What must I change in my understanding to understand this? Refer to the movie, embrace change, don’t deny it.

In an age of lots of media where everything can be shared: what are the things we should be making and why.

Shields extract on collage.(Try to find time to look further into this)
Push, interest in different in non fiction. We are making non fiction works. Lyrical, observational, poetic.

The law of mosaics: how to deal with parts in the absence of wholes.

I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors-and-paste man.

Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason, and I want to say, No, it doesn’t.

I’m not interested in collage as a refuge of the compositionally disabled. I’m interested in collage as (to be honest) an evolution beyond narrative. (Documentary, look it up when you start working on it)

Narrative has had its day, now collage is coming.

Meaning exist in the relation between the shots. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data.

For collage, the parts have to be parts, you have to see where they come from. Many becoming one.
Parts has history, so they never unify to a single unified thing. Always pulling.

Invent a rule and follow it. A rule for the parts! We have to do this for our project. How you think you make. Postindustrial requires that you plan everything in advance.

Momentum derives not from narrative, but from the subtle, progressive buildup of thematic resonances

I look at melody as rhythm

The main question collage artist face: you’ve found some interesting material – how do you go about arranging it.

Collage is pieces of other things. Their edges don’t meet.

The question isn’t What do you look at? But what do you see? I (KORSAKOW)

Make rules. The city is light. Make another proposition to make it more clear? Collage always form of editing.

Cultural context, we find ourselves within. I don’t invent my language.

Continuity is to hide the gaps, to hide that it is a movie. Don’t they know it’s a film?! The problem of scale is interesting. How long will the reader stay engaged? I don’t mean stay dutifully, but stay charmed, seduced, and beguiled. PLAY. Make it interesting! Make it charming, something that is pleasant to watch.

How can the viewer identify with your work?

Pleasure in finding stuff and composing with it in korsakow.

Some things to take from this: things always have context. Context of the moment of reading. It cant be erased. It is context from the moment of reading. Mood, tools, anything. Context provided by the work itself. Give it a decent title., it does a lot of work for you. Context that always, necessarily and inevitably attach themselves to things.

(Whats a “thing” here? Any communication action)

Part of Shields criticism is that fiction, storytelling, wants to claim that these context aren’t present. For Shields this is somply being both untruthful (so it is an ethical position) as well as part its use by date (aesthetically dull)

McCloud, gaps.

Cinema keeps escalating. Adds all these things to make it better, which doesn’t have much to do with cinema.

He writes a series of what Korsakow would be called SNU’s. Fragments. Pieces, Importantlu each piece has to retain some of its context – that context

In collage choosing the parts so that they are alwys still parts matters. Then, arranging them.

In korsakow ‘arrangments’ is emergent, or should be- (HOW?)

And as in Sheilds it proposes an ethics of making. (HOW?)

Essay completely out of stuff cited from other sources. A lot of reading, and arrange them together. Learn more by doing this.

How you think you can make and conduct yourself in the world. My job is to look and listen. If I can do this, I can make things that are worth making. Ethics in it.

Contained is the simply proposition that there are things to discover inside youself, inside the world, it is already there, you just have to learn how to look for it. 

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YIHAW, I actually made a decent post of my lecture notes!

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Hah! For once I arrive 30 minutes before the lecture starts, but STILL manages to come late! I sat outside waiting for Adrian to enter, blissfully ignoring the possibility that he was already in there.. Oh well.

When we came in he was reading from an article, which built up under the theory of that the education system havent changed in 400 years. A philosophy teacher from 1650 could walk into the lecture today and still know what to do. Nothing has changed in 400 years, in terms of the delivery of knowledge.

Filmmakers say: if things were more accessible, imagine how many good movies I could make!

Bullshit, sucker. If you want to blame the equipment you should try another field of study, get a job, earn money, and THEN buy the equipment you think is absolutely necessary to make a decent film. What’s important to realise (for me as well; I feel like I need all this equipment in order to make good work) is that you can make great films with what you have access to. MAKE DO!
But hooow, I say, nervously biting my nails.
Adrian didn’t actually give me an answer to this, but I’m just gonna assume that you’ll make good films by trying and failing, experimenting, and failing and failing until you get it. This makes perfect sense, and motivates me even more to go through with my plans of moving to a cave in Scotland.

WHAT IS THE POINT?!
So for some reason Adrian has suddenly become self conscious of Integrated Media, but he indicates that this happens every year, so I think he will be fine and there will be minimal drama.
He is worried that Integrated Media has become a rabbit hole of his own making, a vanity subject.

Is it no longer really integrated media, but just “lets make some poetic multilinear small works?”

 

Hah. I’m probably going to fail this course if Adrian reads this, but I’m super tired and am actually enjoying this relaxed and slightly sarcastic tone that urged it way out of my fingertips today.

I had, and have no real comprehension of what Integrated Media is about. I do, however, find it very interesting, and it has opened my eyes for alternative ways to write, film, and yeah that is pretty much the two things I can apply it to.

But back to the lecture. This course has a very open model.

Major project:

  1. Project planning
  2. Collaboration

Both of these are obvious. When you know what you like doing, you’ll be doing that onyour project and it will be great.
I like watching movies and eating chocolate, but I can’t really see that getting me anywhere. I’ll be a fatty with quite expanded knowledge on films.. Nah I’m just being a douche. Did I mention that I’m really tired? I have to get my sarcasm out here on the blog, or I’ll be in danger of loosing all my friends because of my shitty comments.

This is what I look like when I yawn. And no, it is not because I’m bored with the content, I have been giving sleep the finger lately and am now facing the consequences.

 Visualisation, and structure. Skills are transferable. (I don’t know where I was going with this)

Most interesting part: post it notes. Great, thats the part I missed..
Brainstorm first. Structure emerges from the process. If there was a structure there then how could it be there when none was used to produce the content. Structure is either naturally present or not.

What does Adrian mean by structure?

Patters, ordering, rhythm, repetition, framework, support, shape, form, connected, understandable. And some more keywords, but these are the most important ones.

And now, to something I actually DO understand! REPETITION!

A work becomes distinguished as unique or at least coherent if there is a pattern going through that makes sense of all the bits.

How does it (I can’t remember what it was) arise without a pre given structure?
It emerges of the repetition of a simple rule, a procedure.

One may be very arbitrary and more or less about structure and rules itself, the other may rely on what we already bring and rely on that structure. (Most things do a combination of both).
Repetition of a simple rule creates a structure. Humans are pattern makers. Think about this when we make videos, and when we link them! If there is one ongoing thing in each video, the viewer will be able to make the connection/pattern, and can then enjoy the project instead of trying to figure out what it is about.

If we don’t find a pattern we think of it as disorganised (negative terms).
Art can be seen as a form of pattern making for its own sake.
Privilege the order. Simple procedure, patterns
Post it notes (screw the post it notes, I have no input on this). This works as a proposition, a forward looking statement.

This is the painting “Enclosed Field with Rising Sun” by Vincent van Gogh.

There are to reasons why his paintings are famous.
1. What does it mean for paint to be physical?
2. Theres a romantic notion to how he suffered in life.

He is a great painter because his paintings make important propositions about what paiting is. The same goes for “Blue Poles”. It isn’t because it is so complex and difficult to make, but because it challenges the normal notions of what a painting should be.
(Study of colours, complimentary colours. Blue shadow. Complimentary contrast. Formal essays in the chemistry of colour.)

Mark Rothko

Can I get depth in a colour? That is the proposition.

Rear Window
 How can I make movies inside movies? Proposition.

Hero can’t move: proposition.

Rope, 1948

Proposition: how do I make a film with no edits?
How do I make a thriller when we know from the start who did the murder and who was murdered?

The Searches, 1956

Opens with door, closes with door

Taxi Driver, 1976

Urban Wilderness. Taxi driver is a remake of Searches.

Changed the Locks, 2005

Same idea, different approaches. Simple proposition: going to change things to keep person away; what other things can I change? REPETITION. Make it literal. Notion of proposition: don’t treat it as something vague, make it concrete and treat it literally.

Make the idea and concept concrete. We start with a proposition.

Post it notes is a response from and to this proposition.

Structure emerges out of this process.

Whatever you want to make can be seen as responses to a proposition.

We think we’re making a movie about something, but we need a proposition. Think about what you make reflects around that. You have a reason for why this should happen next, etc.

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KAMEHAMEHA

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Just minutes before (about 30 of them) I’ll try to sum up last weeks lecture (which I didn’t attend), and I’ll do this by STEALING notes from Zoe. Try to stop me, I dare yah! No really, I’ll pay you back with grapes and wine lovely lady. xx

ALRIGHT. This is literally the notes she wrote down, so I’ll just copy paste and perhaaaps add some things to elaborate. From what I can make out, it is a breakdown defining what the different qualities of work and text is.

WORK//

  • Meta/Method – EG) Essay ‘Rules’ which produce works, TV production. You can only ever respond to the things you have already mapped.
  • Co-creation, exploration, initiation, always a plurality of meanings. There is no magic bullet answer or embedded answer.
  • Bush wild
  • Playful – happens in the space between self and other and you begin to play with the clarity of the distinction. Art can happen in this space. Play with the notion of identity where the bountry between myself and world becomes problematic, you no longer consume it, it does something to you.
  • Mobile, multiple, poetic, disruptive – fluid, unfixed.
  • Knowing, eventfulness of knowing
  • Open – deliberately opens itself out and continues generating new questions
  • Maternal – material nature on the sign, the physicality of our signs matters, reason rules the roost. This is so easy to disrupt via our making.
  • ‘body’
TEXT//
  • Method as ‘given or fixed’
  • Interpretation (a true, hidden, real meaning)
  • Parks as structured and deliberately framed from notions of the sublime, its utterly an essay.
  • Serious, authoritative (trusts, relies on, wants, believes in its authority)
  • Fixed, ordered, logical, rational
  • About what is known (‘reportage’) – it always reports on what you know.
  • Closed and closure – knowing what it means by tying off the ends.
  • ‘paternal’
  • ‘mind’

WAIT A MINUTE. I thought the Work was the fixed, ordered, logical and rational one! What have I missed? Damn. I’ll leave this on ,my blog so I can come back and check after I’ve seen the lecture online. Super confused now!!

 

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Notes from lecture, and some passive agressive commands.

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Todays lecture was with Alister Grierson, who directed the movies Kokoda and Sanctum. I found it quite interesting to hear how his experience with actors and preproduction could be applied to our work.

I’m having a difficult week with the whole ABB trial, so I’ll do a more thorough post on this lecture later.

Here are my notes from today, with additional to-do points in bold.

Casting for a process, a method. Direction is telling someone where to stand, DO NOT try to teach the actors how to act. Provide them the best resources to understand the character, and they will do the preparation.

Filmmaking is all about preparation. It is free. What can we achieve in a day? NOT MUCH.

Competing interest of story and beautiful shots on showreel. Will this be a problem for us? How can we work around it? It is all about preparation. Decide before the shoot where the camera goes, where the lighting goes, where the actor moves.

Filmmaking is all an illusion.

Actors: HIRE THE RIGHT PERSON. You will know immediately if they have prepared. ( This is perfect, our actor for the character “the assassin”, Jon Bryden, even brought an outfit he thought suitable for the part on the audition. Very prepared!)

The goal of presentation is spontaneous life. The goal of filmmaking is spontaneous life: we are creating an illusion. Trust the actors to do the preparation, trust them to do the work necessary to “become” the character.

Preparation should get you to the point where the scene begin, but also to the scene that existed before that. What happened right before “The Mark” turns on the record player? Did he just get out of bed? Did he just have breakfast? The actor needs to know that!!

Different objectives. Map out this journey completely, the scene will fall flat. You never know where a scene is going to go.

How do you create spontaneous life on set where 100 people need directions to achieve a small action? Preparation. Mechanics doesn’t get in the way of action if everything is planned out.

Lighting, shots, PLAN IT.

Script breakdown. Scene numbers. Where is it, whats the location, where is it going to be shot, and breakdown of the action. Comment space. Thoughts, ideas, and feeling.
MAKE ONE TODAY.

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Lecture nr. 6

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This lecture was very interesting, but it was a lot of information to take in at once. Luckily Adrian is good at making examples relevant to us, if not I’m pretty sure we’d all still be pondering the Too Big To Know reading.

Tacit knowledge
Just to get Wikipedia’s interpretation on it, here’s a

“Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. For example, stating to someone that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge that can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient. However, the ability to speak a language, use algebra or design and use complex equipment requires all sorts of knowledge that is not always known explicitly, even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult to explicitly transfer to users.While tacit knowledge appears to be simple, it has far reaching consequences and is not widely understood.”

 

Explicit knowledge is fact based. It is knowing all the states in USA, or knowing the name of every part of a car engine. Tacit knowledge would be to actually know how to fix the car.

Tacit is embodied through the act of doing, demonstration of doing.

You can’t read to achieve tacit knowledge. It seems to be based on experience, trying and failing. This is pretty interesting in terms of education. I’ve been complaining to my parents about how annoying it is that we’re only reading about other filmmakers, reading about different ways to use lighting, reading about different movie genres. I want to DO it, as I am one of those who learn something faster and more thorough if I’m actually doing it.

Adrian said that this is relevant to Integrated Media because we want to look at the tension between tacit and explicit knowledge. What is the relationship? Try to think of what it means to bring explicit knowledge into making, and take making into theory.

Qualitative VS quantitative 

Well, we all kind of know how this works, but unfortunately we have McDonalds and other big companies that just spews out as many products as they possibly can and still wins.

But they won’t turn me over to the dark side, I know better!

The way to measure quantitative knowledge is to see how much you know. You sit an exam on a topic and answer the questions, and if you have enough quantitative knowledge on the subject you’ll get an HD. This doesn’t mean you’ll be successful in life (or even in the field where the quantitative knowledge is required). You have to know how to use it.

This is where qualitative knowledge comes in. I’ve read about snowboarding and seen several movies, but it didn’t help me one bit when I had the board strapped to my legs. I still ended up with bruises all over. That’s my knee right there.

My point is, I couldn’t master it just from studying it, I had to DO IT. Make do.

Qualitative knowledge, making do.

I guess the point of this is that knowing facts doesn’t make you knowledgable. Maybe this is the answer to the Weinberger reading; What is wisdom? Perhaps it is being knowledgable and being able to transfer the knowledge into doing.

 

 

Qualitative knowledge is making do. It’s knowing how to use the knowledge you have (Not knowing all the shortcuts in final cut, but knowing how to use the ones you need to achieve the result you want)

Quality is an emotion (you love your children, you can’t measure their quality)

How do you know that your work is good?

How can we make a quantitative and qualitative understanding of our own work?

Shift from thinking about how much I know, to how can I use this in a way of making.

This is very interesting in terms of participation: Should I make quantitative goals or qualitatively? Does it matter that I write 20 blog posts a week if don’t have a purpose of writing them? If I’m actually writing posts that I have an emotional relationship to (quality) it won’t be a waste, I might be able to transfer it into tacit knowledge.

Don’t make stories for others. Learn how to mix qualitative and quantitative, and you learn what you want to say. That’s how you build an audience. Create quality of what YOU like, not something you think will please others. 

What does it say about your mode of making? What do you want to “say”?

Epicycle around a problem which is an idea, an experience, a way of working & doing.

Korsakow

DAM DAM DAAAAAA. The secret it out. We finally know the purpose of all the sketch videos, and honestly, I’m not sure if I find all those videos suited for representing me in this mini auto biography/documentary. But, since all the tasks we were given are interpreted by me, made by me, edited by me, I guess they do say something about Sunniva Sollied Møller.

Patterns

We have to find patterns in things. As people we are pattern making and identifying organism machines. We identify patterns to make order. Wether they are or not. MONTAGE.

Semiotics teaches/show us that meaning is not in things (not in the words) but is in the relations between them.

Meaning is defined in negation. You don’t use any other word to describe it. The sounds that are in there as well. It only makes sense because of the web of relationship between things it isn’t. There is nothing inherent in the word man. It only has sense in relations. Acoustic things. Bloke not smoke. There are sounds that you cant even hear in a different language. As a baby you can hear every sound in every language (until age 2-3).

In some asian languages: L and R has no difference when pronounced.

The Kuleshov experiment. Everyone who has done Cinema Studies should be familiar with this.

Exactly the same actor, but the meanin of the shot is not in the shot. The meaning is in the relation of that shot to other shots. Art of relations.

Korsakow is only about the relations between the movies. It isn’t fixed, it can go in different directions. Instead of having it linear and fixed, it’s open. Promiscuous medium, anything can be added into the same moment. Imagine if you could build a system which can break those rules. Shot A now relates to shot B C D GYT, not just B. 

This is hard to imagine in terms of, lets say, a feature film. What would happen if people suddenly could choose how the film should evolve?

We need patterns. Patterns can derive/are derived from structure can a structure (as a structure is simply a large pattern).
One simple pattern is the way oppositions are used to create structure, meaning and value.

The world comes as a mess. It is, like Adrian described it, a big soup. But we make patterns, we make oppositions. It is no structure, but we impose structure. This is how our society is built up.

Rich/Poor, Inside/Outside, Good/Bad, Law/Disorder.

Contempary western still use the same opposition, but the roles might be very different. One part of that oppositon gets celebrated more than the other. Historically man are on one side and women on the other. The opposition is still there, but it is seen from different point of view.

We used the male terms to define women work. Oppositional thing. It should be easy, vs the other side. Oppositional grid to structure the understanding. It is the wrong thing to do, but it’s how we have always lived. The trick is to recognise that there is difference, but one of them doesn’t have to be better than the other.

Inside is where we find sameness. Things close enough to what we know o that we remain, basically, untoubled the inside gets treated as legitimate,

Outside is all that is not inside. We demonise it. Inside gets comfortable enough that outside is the different, where different becomes a negative.

Shooting on a bad camera. It is outside the comfort sone. How do I think about the outside? Be aware of this, and go out and create/invent something new.

Deconstruction on the other hand is about how one term. Which thinks it excluded the outside actually requires the excluded as an almost secret “heart” – justice.

At some point we decided that taking a human life is an injustice. The moment we declare what is justice, there is an authority connected to it. Inaugurated that someone must have the authority to transgress on someone’s right.

Aaaaand this is where my computer ran out of power. I think I got the most important bits though. 

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Certeau, I finally think I get you, brah!

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I found the lecture really good, I understood so much more when it was applied to life today. Adrian also made a point out of this; don’t try to interpret the reading for how it would have been understood when it was written, you have to understand why it is relevant TODAY.

Even though I went over much the same in the post for the tutorial, I want to keep this here if I ever need to revisit the subject.

Up until when the reading was written, Certeau claimed that work and liesure had been divided, two distinctions: use in the workplace, and use in leisure

The distinction between private and public is gone. So is the distinction between work and leisure. Where is the border now? Where is my private? How much media goes out of my private home? I have more than 700 friends on facebook (yup, I’m one of those), and although I’m not the most active “facebooker” they can still see pictures from my life, pictures of my family and friends, what i “like”, etc. On top of that there is this blog. Although it is mainly revolved around school, it still contains personal information.

PLACE doesn’t work anymore. Modalities of actions (what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter where you’re doing it). The statistics on consumerism only looks at what is used and how much, but not at HOW they are used.

Reference to high school uniform. You follow the rules, but find small tricks (which are not described in the rules), introduce your own agency. Think about subcultures. They become styles of action. Obeys other rules. You wear the tie, but since it isn’t specified HOW to wear it you make do.

Mass media: Studies today only pays attention to how many people who watch it. If its on, you’re watching it. There is no consideration given to the fact that a lot of people just leave the tv on, even if no one is watching it.

It doesn’t account for what you are doing with the information. What they have to realise is that it is not the transmition of the message, it’s about the reception.

 

Consumption is a form of making. It is an active mode of making, producing. Whenever you “consume” something, you are also making something new with it, since your way of usage are different from others.

Fashion victim? No, choose the clothes, positive engagement with possibilities, we’re MAKING our identity.

Act of speech. There is a formal institution that defines and controls which words are allowed to be let into the French language. How bizarre is that? You can’t control which words that are accepted or not, this is proved by swear words.

Enunciation is the act of speaking. Only looked at the making and what the text say. Think about what the people do when the message arrive. What does the people make out of it? Enunciating matters, as it will be recepted by the readers according to how it is delivered.

Things are only real in the act of making it/doing it. If you have an idea inside your head, it doesn’t really exist until it’s written down. If you’re thinking about making a movie, it isn’t real until you start making it. Sketch videos are made in the moment. That’s why we’re making them.

Appropriate the language, turn it to our own usage. MAKE DO. Daily speaking, take something from the classroom, government, and we do something with it. “I take a hoodie cause I’m a teenager” You can do it and appropriate something.

Approtriate the retail space to a hang out space. Take something that exists and make it into your own.

In class we learned that there are no original ideas anymore, and that there are only really 7 different stories, which all the others are based on. All these other stories as appropriated the original story to something of their own, with similar elements, but still their own.

 

When it comes to interpret this essay we have to interpret it from our point of view, from our perspective. Why pretend to be in “that time” to interpret it? Why roll back when we cant do anything about it? We have to understand and interpret it in a way to make it relevant for us today.

Traverse, moving around. Example: You don’t sit still on a formal language style. You create another path which moves slightly different from the original, intended one. You are moving across different language groups. The architect of a shopping mall had an agenda about traffic flow, marketing, making a place a 100% retail production. When 15 hooded guys sit there without spending, they are is doing something that falls outside the logic of that space. They are traversing the space. 

Another example: There is a roundabout in carlton. In middle, just grass. Dirt path in the middle of the roundabout, it’s a route. It’s designed to use the footpath, but the dirtpath is a traverse that goes outside the system.

OUTSIDE OF THE RULES OF THAT SYSTEM.

Surface of cleanless, but hetrogenous underneath.

Tactics and strategies.
This classroom is a strategic place. If we’re on facebook, we’re using tactics. We’re making do. Writing on the wall is potentially a strategy, its interfering with the rules of the university. Wearing ties not completely the right way is a tactic. There isn’t a rule against how to wear it.

Strategies is about power. Power is. It is everywhere.

Think about life. It just is. Every creature have a drive, power, will in life to live. Separate from every living thing. It flows through it all, but different. Academic power, social power, it comes in different shapes. Frame the power in the frame of the institution.

All expressions of power. It defines a place where this power can happen. Uni gets to define what the rules of a university is. Hospital defines rules in a hospital. Watch tv, this is how you ought to consume it. Adrian mentioned in an earlier lecture that journalists are the ones who decide what good journalism is. That is a display of power.

Triumph of place over time. Strategy is to slow it down and build a place around it. Surveilance. You must three comments per semester, if you don’t, the university can see it. Surveilance system dressed up like other things.

Strategy can say: we’re going to define uni this way, and make all the distinctions.

It produces itself in and through the knowledge. What is knowledge, legitimate practice. We have tactics to respond to this: hand in work late. We don’t refuse to participate. Not picking it up afterwards. Tactical response on your behalve, you don’t care. It is irrelevant.

Tactic is deliberate thing you do, but it doesnt have a proper place. Play on the place imposed on it. You are not going to the supermaket to hang out to break down the consumerism system, you just take advantage of the space without any plan behind it.

Make do in the space of determined places. It’s an art.

Tactic determined by the absence of power. A student has NO power, at all. BUT we can use tactics to turn things to our advantage.

Strategier define places and what is proper in that place. Totalising discourse: There is no room to negotiate on these rules.

Tactics about time. Realised through doing.

Tactics is a clever utilisation of time. Play is on the foundation of power. If you engage to CHANGE something about a power situation, you’re being strategic.

Consumption is a mode of mode of making, its tactical.
Producers are strategic. They make things that they want people to consume. But sometime there is an appropriation of an ad towards other practices.

The strategic has been successful. Everything is within a strategic system. Rules everywhere. Its become so successful that it has swallowed up everything. Brownian movement might arise. In the scene of random tactical movement. BLOGGING. No strategy to blogging. Strategic, but blogging as a practice is tactical. Social media is tactical.

Define you as a consumer, and only that. They try and define you strategically.

Think about this in relation to integrated: Internet is strategic, but a tactical space. Knowing how to make do. It always changes, constant making do. Just about the moment.

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Film-TV1 Lecture week 4

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Have movie parties! Show each others your favorite scene, break it down and analyse it.

Handbrake – DOWNLOAD your favourite scenes and deconstruct it.

The script is analysed for

  1. Color
  2. Frame
  3. Angle
  4. Viewpoint
    i. Objective viewpoint
    ii. Subjective
    iii. POV (Point of View)
  5. Movement
  6. Focal length
  7. Depth of field

Moviemaking techniques

180 degree rule. Million different ways to break it without it mattering.

Show the camera move. You orient the viewer. Stay on the side you’ve decided on. Your camera is the viewer.

Matching eyelines. Angles in the vertical and horizontal planes, how they work. Mimic the angle on the other side. You cant to different degrees when you’re cutting back and forth.

Disconcerting?
Keep the “heads” the same when you cut back and forth. Right angle (looking up or down at).

Draw everything from above, where the camera and the people are going. Figure out where to put the lights, map it all out on paper.

THEN draw storyboard. (or before?)

Continuity is about coverage. See if you have coverage of the whole script, write down which shots that will be used.

-       Script

-       Storyboard

-       Floorplan

-       Scene Breakdown

-       Shot List

-       Shot Schedule

Look at everything that is involved in that scene.

Shot list, list of shots in order of the script.

Shot schedule: the order you’ll shoot in.

Master shots and or important shots first
The other shots
Then tricky shots
Ect/int – ext first (in case it rains)
Actor availability (child actors take preference)
Location availability

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Notes from Integrated Media Lecture week 2

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Where does the Integrated Media fit in the media degree?

Bricks are used to build a house. People look at a degree the same way; you collect different bricks that fits together, as your degree progresses you get more bricks, and at the end you’ll have a house. This does not necessarily apply to integrated media.

guuuurl you don't fit the Death Star, stay in the kitchen!

Adrian says he will try to create noise in this course, to not use the “normal” method of providing brick by brick to build our degree. Since this course revolves largely around the internet (which always changes), so will the course. We can’t possibly learn everything about it.

Expertise, you don’t come here for it. Then why do we come here?
You need not come to university to get expertise. Search youtube! Google!
(Stanford free? Write blogpost on this? At least check it out!)

Second: take skills from first year, use the different things and combine it in sophisticated ways

We are trying to learn a mode of theoretical practice. Understand how you can use the internet as a publication distribution media. This is why we’re doing Integrated.

You can’t know everything about anything.

Internet is still new. It is new because it is still changing. We’re still trying to figure out what it is. Not only a just a publication medium anymore.
From slides (about the course):
- Begin with what we might know from last year.
- Hypertext like stuff, parts, wholes, relations between them
- New economies, ecologies, practices and how we might think about them.
- What this means for making stories in time based media
- What this means for reading stories in time based media online
- What this means for being a story in time based media online

 

Media is like people. It is thinking stuff by itself. My job is figuring out what it wants to say to me, not what the maker is doing. What does your medium say to you?

You’re not in charge, it’s a conversation between you and your medium.

Story: If we treat it as the place the practice happens, the story I want to be is different.
Stories are only partly about YOU.

Noise.

Shannon and Weaver 1940, developed a mathematical theory for communication.
Noise was anything that interfered with the “correct” transmission of information

Technical. Cultural. Interpretative. Subject. Personal. Counter reading. Against the grain.

Accent can be noise. Noise on the tv. Someone talking in the background. Something you don’t understand, difficult words?

A magic bullet model of communication, that never fails to get the communication through. One that many of us still have, even where our behaviour shows us otherwise.

Adds. Does the message come out clearly? You can counter read it, try to figure out bad/unclear things about it. Reading against the grain, Barthes, READ.

Teaching. We want Adrian to provide the magic bullet, so it makes sense to us. We read things agains the grain, we interpret it differently and get another meaning than the sender intended.

BUT. Noise is good, not a problem.

Evolutionary change and DNA

Genetic change is stochastic. A stochastic process is one whose behaviour is non-determenistic, in that a system susbsequent state is determined both by the process predictable actions by a rrandom element.

Its random. If we think of DNA as information, and genetic change as random, the it is noise. Noise introduces risk, but much more importantly, novelty. The opportunity for the new, the not yet.

Noise can be good, or bad. It creates a unpredictable outcome.
Noise introduces risk. This one might be dangerous, this one might not even matter. It introduces novelty, change, the new. It doesn’t have a direction.

Introduces randomness into structure.
Adrian will introduce noise into this course

Poem can be noise, its hard to understand sometimes. It might have elements that stops any form for communication coming through. Compare it to a typical Hollywood feature film. First scene and last scene are always linked. Last scene answers the beginning.

Poetry, what is it? I don’t get it! It is noise.

 Our reaction, we back away. It’s to hard, it’s wrong. It’s not anything wrong with me, it was something wrong about the book/film/game.

From slides:
Digital media is haunted by noise. It is its ghost just under the surface.

Early hypertext and anxieties of navigations. I don’t know where I’m going, where I am.

The early web and being “lost” – in the web itself, and within the site. Then Google came along.

Prohibitions on what you should, and should not do for navigation, which was an information architect’s way of saying comprehension.

Complaints about all the “rubbish out there”

Difficulty in finding things of value

Anxieties about lack of gatekeeping

A moral panic whether you are from education or heritage media.

 

Noise is nearly always thought to be a problem in relation to our previous institutions of knowledge and control. The desire to see always trumphs the other standards, doesn’t matter if its noise.

They see the world as the problems they have to solve. Newspapers, university.

Loss of authority? Loss of power? Things that don’t make sense whitin socialised context of knowing and professional performance. (I am a journalism that means I…) etc

 

 

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