CMNS 6040 - Digital Video Blog

Another day, another dollar.

2011-01-05T09:29:00.015+11:00

An unlikely office team reflect on their rise to fame after posting videos of their workplace woes on an online video site.

3D Animation: Maria Tan
Voices: Steven McKenzie
Music: InternetFilm Record Studio™

More details on this project can be found here.

Please feel free to embed this video onto your own site or use it for your own purposes under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-ND.

If you would like to embed a better quality video hosted on Facebook, please copy the embed code from my Facebook Page.

Download video: Another day, another dollar.mp4 (4mb)

Attribution:
Another day, another dollar.
Copyright © Maria Tan | http://mariatan.net

New 3D animation in the works

2010-11-05T10:59:00.011+11:00

Another day, another dollar.
Genre: Comedy/Direct Cinema
Style: Creature comforts meets Direct Cinema in a 3D animated world
Runtime: 60-65secs

An unlikely office team reflect on their rise to fame after posting videos of their workplace woes on an online video site.

Details

This 3D animation will be created in C4D, AE and probably Premiere Pro CS5. I was originally thinking about doing this in FCP, but I really want to try the new Premiere out to see if it's improved since CS3-CS4 so this is what I'll be using to edit with.

My friend Steven McKenzie will be helping out with the VOs for the characters, which I'm looking forward to doing because I know it'll be an interesting day.

Motivations & Future plans

I'm hoping that I'll actually like this animation as opposed to my last one, and if it works out well then I will get sponsorship for it and chuck it on YouTube.

I'll try to use Kashi Kollective's stuff again, I feel kinda bad because the last animation wasn't very good. I didn't want to their music being associated with bad visuals so I didn't spread the word on those vids at all. Hopefully this next one will be great, so that Kashi's work can get the recognition it deserves.

District 9 - You are not welcome here.

2010-08-14T17:11:00.015+10:00

There's a reason why this movie was nominated for an Oscar this year: because it's bloody monumental. Peter Jackson from Lord of the Rings knew it, my friend Dan Moller told me about it and now I know it, and now here's your chance to get in on the action. I kid you not, District 9 happens to be one of the best movies I have ever seen.

When Dan told me it was sci-fi flick, I put off watching it. I thought this was gonna be yet another try-hard film trying to make money off of my nostalgia, like that time I boycotted the X-Men and Transformers movies because they massacred the cartoons (and their respective franchises) which I idolized when I was a kid. Of course, I couldn't have been more wrong, because District 9 is nothing like a conventional sci-fi movie. In fact, it's nothing like a typical movie at all, which it what makes it so damn good.

Without going into the details to spoil it all for you I can only gush about the director Neill Blomkamp, of Halo fame, who I'm totally crushin on right about now. He's taken the art of observational mockumentary to a whole new level.

This movie kept me hooked from start to finish, while it crammed a multitude of issues into 112 minutes of action packed, attention grabbing goodness. There is not a dull moment in this film, and that's exactly why I'm giving it 5 stars!

Excalibur (1981)

2010-07-08T16:30:00.005+10:00

Talk about a god awful movie! As a fan of Arthurian legend I was excited when Excalibur was recommended to me, only to find that the movie was overly dramatic and highly theatrical.

Even though this movie had a lot of recognisable faces (Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne and Patrick Stewart from Star Trek), I was just stumped as to why so many of the characters felt the need to shout their lines.

A lot of the costuming and weird use of green spotlights also failed to set the scene. What kind of self respecting knight would wear shiny tin armour with a mirror finish anyway? I bet it wouldn't even protect a knight from the blade of a kitchen knife let alone a sword.

Anyway I don't have very many positive things to say about this movie so I'll leave it at that.

I'm giving this rubbish movie half a star.

August Rush movie review (no spoilers)

2010-06-22T17:17:00.020+10:00

This movie was recommended by my UoN friend Karen Pouye of Animal Logic, creative genius extraodinaire. It's a great movie to watch with the family that has uplifting messages of hope, faith, and a bit of music appreciation thrown in the mix, wrapping up with a predictable (but nonetheless enjoyable) hollywood styled happy ending.

During most of the intro I spent my time trying to figure out whether the Irish rock band's lead singer, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays Louis Connelly in the movie, was actually DiNozzo or related to Michael Weatherly from NCIS in any way.

Once I had gotten that out of my system I was able to enjoy Keri Russell's brand of muted emotional delivery that we've all come to know and love from her Felicity days. Freddie Highmore, the kid (Evan Taylor) who the movie centres around, also has the same quiet confidence about him.

Louis Connelly's singing was a little distracting as I felt it left a lot to be desired, but once the intro was out of the way I was able to immerse myself in the story quite comfortably.

Robin Williams comes off well as the troubled Fagin in this modernized version of Oliver Twist, portraying a vulnerability and subtextual trauma that he is rarely seen displaying in the majority of his roles. I think this was channelling a lot of the creepiness his character Walter Finch had in the movie Insomnia, with a bit more added aggression.

While the movie doesn't incorporate any cutting edge techniques in cinematography, or mind blowing concepts in its narrative that stays with you long after the movie is over, it's still one of those feel good movies that's worth watching. I'm rating this 3.5 stars out of 5.

Next up on my movies list will be the 1981 movie Excalibur, recommended by my friend Faustin Molina. Stay tuned :)

Not happy Jan

2010-04-15T21:07:00.006+10:00

Last week I upgraded to a waterproof HD camera with a pistol grip. This was my first try at a proper HD vid:

Considering it was my first time with this camera I suppose I am being pretty hard on myself when critiquing it. However, I do truly hate this montage with a passion. The main reasons being:

The pistol grip cam won't mount properly - It wouldn't sit still for long on the tripod and kept coming loose every 5mins or so. I had a horrible time filming. The area I was taping was quite large and the action was fast so I didn't have time to keep adjusting it on the tripod mount. The damn thing has no hole for the tripod pin to stabilize it, only the screw. Actually, I'm still trying to figure out if I should drill one in.
Auto focus is awful when capturing scenes with fast action! You can clearly see that in this video. I still haven't tried playing with the shutter speed functions though, maybe that would've fixed the auto focus problems.

The joystick isn't ergonomic - The buttons are so fumbly that I would add to the camera shake by trying to man handle the controls to focus on the action quickly. Which added to my frustration on the day, because I had to follow high speed action over a large area with no second takes.

My PC is down to it's last 80gb of HDD space - Gasp :o I had Premiere (CS3) crash on me every time I worked on the vid, which is pretty uncommon. Surely that's just a CS4 trademark :) I actually had to start over again from scratch after the first project just shat itself and wouldn't render (it wouldn't even pre-render!). After that I saved multiple copies of the project as I went along under different names, and crashed maybe 5 times while exporting before I decided to clean up the project timeline a bit.

Could've done it with more style - Not only is the footage bad, but I went easy on the effects and got pissed off with the editing. If anything would've saved this project, it would've been VFX!!! I honestly just cracked it at the PC and gave up, my lack of HDD space crashing the old faithful just drove me bananas. Don't mind the new titles though, at least AE wasn't letting me down yesterday.

In my desperation I even tried using Total Media Extreme's Showbiz and Showbiz 2 to edit the footage, but that lead to more problems. Firstly, the first Showbiz is pretty damn crap, won't even let you lay down additional audio tracks (e.g. music) to go with the vision.

Secondly, Showbiz 2 won't do mp4 files. This cam saves onto SD cards in mp4 :\

I'm sick of my mediocrity right now. This vid = epic fail...

YouTube experimental encoding

2010-03-25T23:06:00.004+11:00

I've been producing some videos for the local paper's website of late, and I've been playing around with encoding settings again for YouTube in Premiere Pro.

For the sake of meeting the recommended player size of 1280 x 720, I've gone with packaging my .mov files with the H264 codec as we did back in the CMNS6040 days. Ah CMNS6040, what awesome fun that was. And I really don't like to use the word awesome unless I feel that it's necessary.

Looks bloody horrible of course, but meh...what can you do when YouTube decides to enlarge their players, except comply.

I haven't had much luck tweaking the settings using the H.264 codec itself, although I did find this nifty website called the Streaming Learning Center which explains YouTube's "New" HD Formats quite simply.

Not that I'll need to worry about all this after next week, as I've ordered some new HD equipment. But still, it would be nice for me to finally get the hang of tweaking the settings in Premiere Pro using the H.264 codec. At least down to a 480p size anyway, hate the false advertising using the 1280 x 720 setting. Just coz it's that big, it doesn't actually make it HD!

Hello Roto

2009-04-30T23:30:00.010+10:00

I am so close to joining some kind of 'Technology is driving me bonkers' support group. If only there were such a thing.

I have been unable to fine tune any of the vids, and I am uploading what was the last draft (prior to all these PC issues) onto Facebook. What I wanted to do last week was run some filters through the VOs and fine tune the outlines, but hopefully after a good reformat I will be able to revisit all of this and fix it up, just for the sake of good craftsmanship :)

But here is a pretty close idea of what the project should look like, shy of a bit of fine tuning. For slightly higher quality versions please visit my Facebook page as the fractal noise seems to work better on there for some reason. The videos also play faster on there.

If you're on Facebook and want to be friends (lol that sounds so weird), my profile is set on private so I don't show up in the search page, but I can add you if you let me know what your details are so feel free to shoot me an email.

Title Sequence

Sleep Sequence

Bush Sequence

Underwater Sequence

Wake Sequence

BSOD and other PC Issues

2009-04-24T12:32:00.004+10:00

I have been having PC issues this week, and what's more because I've networked my PCs, this new strain of Virtumonde has infected the 2 computers in this room through Java. It's a tricky one to remove, Norton doesn't really pick it up and the old Virtumonde fixes don't work, so it's been an uphill battle trying to clean it in Safe Mode.

I've isolated most of it on one of the PCs (the server) which has CS4 installed on it, so that PC is still functional and online. I keep having issues (freezes and crashes mainly) with CS4 as I mentioned a few months back in the discussion forum. It's also painfully slow.

I am now working off my laptop and furiously trying to backup what I have on my other beloved computer (lol), my Quad Core pride and joy. It's also the main one I have been using for this project (CS3).

Hopefully it all works out and I can get the DVD sent off for marking, but I will have to fix this crashing somehow because the functional PC doesn't like to render for too long, and I don't know if it will stay on for long enough to compress the vids.

To be continued...

Aaww...freak out!

2009-04-19T18:27:00.002+10:00

Crunch time is drawing near. I have revised the look of my project over and over again, and now, once more.

Not being able to work out the sharpness problem I was having earlier, I have decided to just run with it by rotoscoping over what I already have, to at least give the pix some definition. It has actually saved me a lot of time because I got to shoot the footage instead of trying to create them all from scratch which I found very time consuming.

It also really helped with the sleep sequence, it gives off the filmed at night vibe, and I think it looks artistic yet believable. I'm still tinkering with the VOs and sound FX but I think I will still be able to make the deadline at this stage. I will start posting some video previews soon.

Assignment 3 - And so it begins!

2009-04-04T12:25:00.010+11:00

I've been working on the underwater sequence this week, and I've put together a few clips so far into a 2min narrative with audio but I still need to fine tune the colour correction.

After testing this sequence as a streaming video in HD, I found that it looks rather dull. The more realistic it looks, the more dull it is. I've exaggerated a few colours as well as the brightness and contrast in some clips, and that seems to do the trick. It also isn't as sharp as I would like it to be, but because it is meant to represent a surrealist painting it doesn't really work when it's sharp. I will fine tune this as well, I'm sure I'll be able to find a happy medium.

Altogether when the clips for this sequence are arranged into a narrative it totals about 2:13sec.

To save time when rendering I've been using two networked computers, and while one renders I work on the other.

I think I should be finished with this sequence by the end of the week. I will be starting work on the title and waking sequence over the weekend, but as I have other major assessments as well I will have to juggle. Working on this project is however, far more fun than typing pages and pages of code in notepad, so I have no trouble with getting stuck into it.

Assignment 3 - Progress Report: Score by Kashi Kollective

2009-04-02T22:56:00.003+11:00

Stephen Bellm has just granted permission for me to use music from Kashi Kollective for my project, which I am over the moon about!

I have decided to use a sample from Raga Raindrop for the title sequence so far. I'm so excited :)

For more info on Kashi Kollective visit:

The Kashi Kollective website
Kashi Kollective on MySpace
Stephen Bellm on Myspace

Title sequence comparison

2009-04-02T19:05:00.005+11:00

The Good the Bad and the Ugly and The Island of Dr. Moreau

The similarities between the title sequences of these films are evident in the creation of composites, and the synchronisation of footage, stills, text and animation to music. Both title sequences from these films create a composite by superimposing text and animation over footage or stills, but the methods they used would have varied considerably.

In The Good the Bad and the Ugly, I think Lardani used a rostrum camera to create a travelling matte over some of the Warhol inspired screen prints from frames in the movie. For example where he uses a paintbrush to paint over some glass from the outside in, except he splices the film in reverse order to make it appear as though the paintbrush is revealing what is underneath instead of painting on the glass. He does that twice, except the 2nd time Lardani is blowing/spraying the paint onto the glass, making it look more like dust particles/sand. Rotoscoping is pretty obvious throughout the title sequence in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, especially with the horse riding in the beginning and also with the cannon at the end.

The Island of Dr Moreau uses the same compositing principles except it’s computer generated and superimposes the animated text on (many more) scenes of footage rather than stills. It also uses transitions on both layers (footage and text animations) rather than just the top layer and doesn't use rotoscoping.

Assignment 3 - Major Practical Project

2009-03-30T14:14:00.007+11:00

More than meets the eye
The power of the mind’s eye journeys beyond the sense of sight.

I have gone with the imaginary world option with this project, which is going to be an animated surrealist fantasy. I'm going for a moving painting look to the whole video, and I've included a few snaps of what I've got so far in my storyboard.

I have rarely used AE in the past, as I grew up on Pinnacle Studio Pro, Hollywood FX and the Avid Liquid offspring. During those earlier days it was a mix and match affair, no suites like what Adobe has today so it's a tad bit different for me now. I am still surprised by how many features and integrated options there are within CS3 and CS4, especially what a godsend Mocha is.

I am happy to report that my practice runs have been successful so far. I will probably play with the ending a little.

For a smoother segue from dreamscape to waking hours, I was thinking of incorporating the distant sound of an alarm clock during the underwater scene which wakes the girl up. I will have to think it over this week and hopefully come up with some other ideas.

Synopsis

Contrasting everyday life for the visually impaired with their dreams, this tribute to Helen Keller is an animated story of a young blind woman’s dreams which reveal her ability to see, as she journeys through a world of magic and mystical beings as guided by narration.

The dreamscape is a representation of escapism from the trappings of a visual impairment, by producing a sense of freedom that comes from the essence of imagination that Keller’s work portrays.

Motivations & Future plans

This project idea came together on a hot summer day while floating in the pool. It was inspired by my dog, Daria, who developed Diabetes mellitus last year (genetic not dietary). Since Daria became diabetic, her eyesight has waned considerably, and now she is almost blind.

My father is also deaf, and I thought it would be good for me to create a 2 versions of the video, one with captions and one without.

Then I thought, well what about the blind? So I've decided that I will write a short story on this video as a hobby, and distribute it to the visually impaired internet community by the end of the year.

Assignment 2 - A Primer on the Documentary

2009-03-20T02:37:00.008+11:00

By Maria Tan

Open, print or download this publication

Screen Australia's definition of ‘documentary’ follows that used by ACMA,
specifically ‘a program that is a creative treatment of actuality other than a
news, current affairs, sports coverage, magazine, infotainment or light
entertainment program, and corporate and/or training programs’ (Screen Australia 2009, p. 2).

The elusive definition of the documentary genre is imbued in discussions of the principles of truth and reality. For documentary academic, Bill Nichols (2001, p. 1), “every film is a documentary,” as “even the most whimsical of fictions gives evidence of the culture that produced it and reproduces the likenesses of the people who perform within it”. To serve as a functional way of analysing the genre, Nichols isolates the dualities of fact and fiction, to establish that the documentary deals primarily within non-fiction.

Coined in 1802 as a derivative of the word ‘document’ (L'Etang 2004, p. 33) it was ‘The Moviegoer” and New York Sun film critic, John Grierson, who originally applied the word ‘documentary’ to cinema in 1926 (Jack, 2007). As Grierson (1932) noted in The First Principles of Documentary:

“Documentary is a clumsy description, but let it stand”.

Within the genre there are six narrative styles which categorise a documentary’s ‘modes’ as: Expository, Participatory, Reflexive, Performative Observational, and Poetic (Nichols 2001, p. 99). However there is also another category, the ‘docu-drama’ or ‘docu-soap’, commonly utilized on television (TV), but not considered a valid form of documentary as it blends fact with fiction. Other forms which exploit the documentary style are the ‘docu-fiction’ or ‘mockumentary’ films which rely upon the devices of documentary to provide the appearance of authenticity to support an otherwise fictional story.

The most commonly used style is the ‘expository’ mode of documentary, where the narrative unfolds as dictated to the audience by the spoken word in terms of a commentary laid on a voice over track, referred to in the genre as ‘the voice of God’. As author Stella Bruzzi (2000) explains:

“The ostensible purpose of the ‘voice of God’ model is to absent personality and any notion of the internal monologue, to generalize, to offer an omniscient and detached judgement, to guide the spectator through events whilst remaining aloof of them.”

An example of this ‘voice of God’ commentary can be seen in many nature films such as The March of the Penguins (2005), with Morgan Freeman as the narrator, or in the BBC’s nature series collections starring Sir David Attenborough, such as the 2008 release of Life in Cold Blood. Although there is narration present within Attenborough’s nature documentaries, they are also participatory in nature. This is because Attenborough does not simply narrate the story, but appears within it by directly addressing the audience through brief interludes in ‘piece to cameras’ (PTC) on location.

For example, in his series, ‘The Private Life of Plants’ (1995), Attenborough makes a point of appearing on camera when discussing the carnivorous ‘Trumpet Pitcher Plant’ (Sarracenia flava), to point out to the audience how the plant attracts and traps it prey. “The reward itself is under here,” says Attenborough, as he runs his finger along the plant’s secretory structure and tastes it, describing the plant’s bait as “sweet nectar”.

This participatory mode of documentary is however not to be confused with the ‘performative’ and ‘reflexive’ modes, which Nichols revised from what was originally the ‘interactive’ and ‘self-reflexive’ modes during his first work in documentary classification (Nichols, 1988).

An illustration of how the participatory mode differs from the performative and reflexive modes can be seen in the role of the ‘documentarian’, and how they portray themselves in the documentary. In the participatory mode, the documentarian is seen as detached - engaging with the world only to describe it to the audience in the third person, and interacting within the documentary on behalf of the viewer in terms of interviews, or as seen in Attenborough’s case, with the environment.

In the reflexive and performative modes, the use of pronoun language is employed to address the audience as though in direct conversation, as the audience follows the documentarian on a ‘journey’. In both modes, the audience is made aware of the documentarian’s presence and the fact that they are embarking upon a process – a viewing of the documentarian’s journey.

These two modes differ in how that ‘journey’ is presented to the audience. The performative makes use of subjective information and personal perspective to creatively represent ‘reality’ in a process that requires the documentarian’s direct first person involvement, while the reflexive does not personally indulge in the abstract to communicate its message but instead follows a strategic agenda of self exploration to examine and present information, remaining as the presenter.
One such reflexive mode of documentary is the Root of all Evil? (2006), written and presented by secular scientist Richard Dawkins, which originally aired on UK TV station Channel 4. Within the first two minutes, Dawkins makes his position clear to the audience in a PTC:

“As a scientist I’m increasingly worried about how faith is undermining science. It’s something that we must resist because irrational faith is feeding murderous intolerance throughout the world. In this program, I want to examine two further problems with religion. I believe it can lead to a warped and inflexible morality, and I’m very concerned about the religious indoctrination of children.”

Anthropology Professor, Jay Ruby, notes the nature of reflexivity when posed in film (Ruby, 1980):

“…being reflexive means that the producer deliberately, intentionally reveals to his audience the underlying epistemological assumptions which caused him to formulate a set of questions in a particular way, to seek answers to those questions in a particular way, and finally to present his findings in a particular way.”

To differentiate between the reflexive and performative modes, consider Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (2004) documentary in contrast. When Spurlock embarks upon his own journey to exploit fast food chains, he places himself (and his health) as the central subject of the documentary by embarking on a 30 day ‘McDonald’s only’ diet and conditioned lifestyle. Prior to beginning his self experimentation, Spurlock introduces the audience to this notion:

“What would happen if I ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days straight? Would I suddenly be on the fast track to become an obese American? Would it be unreasonably dangerous? Let’s find out.”

As similar as the style of the two introductions might be for both Dawkins and Spurlock, the reflexive Root of all Evil? presenter continues to present the documentary, arguing his case along the way, yet Dawkins does not become religious in the process. Spurlock on the other hand, is immersed in the process, as the subject of an experiment. To further illustrate the contrast, in the Muslims and America (2005) episode of Spurlock’s reality TV series 30 Days, Spurlock immerses himself in religion as he experiments with life as a Muslim-American citizen.

The performative mode of documentary is a relatively new addition to Nichol’s documentary classification, in which he has strictly kept separate from Reality TV and instead directs others towards Paget’s (1998) work in “the specific case of docudrama as a form or genre” (Nichols 2001, p. 182). In docudrama, the lines are blurred between fiction and non-fiction, as seen in the re-enactment of the Peter Falconio murder mystery in Joanne Lees: Murder in the Outback (2007), based on a real life investigation fraught with controversy, many inconsistencies and much speculation. Newcomb (2004, p. 738) further clarifies the docudrama’s stance in blending documentary with dramatic performance:

“The docudrama should be distinguished from fictional dramas that make use of reality as historical context but do not claim that the primary plotline is representing events that have actually occurred.”

In this sense, dramatic representation is juxtaposed with actuality, differing from the observational style of documentaries which survey events, and, as seen in the previous modes, also seek to interact within them to represent actuality, as opposed to creating events entirely from fiction.

The observational mode is present even in the early origins of cinema, such as in the first films of the Lumière Brothers and the travelogues of Burton Holmes in the late 19th Century. However, in Robert Flaherty’s work Nanook of the North (1922), what was hailed during that time as the first film to ever illustrate “better than anyone the first principles of documentary,” Grierson (1932), was actually a re-enactment due to the original footage being destroyed by fire (Flaherty, 1922).

From these beginnings the observational mode of documentary developed into ‘Direct Cinema’, which is distinct from the participatory mode of ‘Cinema Verité’, arising from the late 1950’s through the development of lighter and more portable recording equipment (Ellis & McLane, 2005). Often referred to as the “fly on the wall” approach, the observational mode does not seek direct involvement within the documentary, but steadfastly remains a method of surveillance, with the resulting footage cropped to speed up the portrayal of the narrative.

An example of the observational mode can be seen in any of Fred Wiseman’s films, and the differences between Direct Cinema and Cinema Verité become apparent when Wiseman’s films are compared to the participatory mode of the War Room (1993), a documentary on Bill Clinton’s presidential election campaign, which, although observational in many respects, becomes participatory through interviews engaging the subjects being filmed.
While the observational mode strictly adheres to presenting footage filmed in actuality, and the docu-drama administers forms of creative licence in its narrative, it is the poetic mode of documentary that bridges the gap by presenting footage in its actuality, yet editing in such a way that creative licence is achieved through the displacement of the narrative by removing the linear form of the three act paradigm.

The poetic mode is demonstrated in the films Baraka (1992) and the Quatsi trilogy of films by Godfrey Reggio (1982, 1988, 2002), where scenes of actuality in nature and the built environment are spliced together in a visual montage to the rhythms of a musical score. As Corner (2005) notes on the typology of documentary aesthetics, “It is the interplay of artefactual design and subjectivity that generates the aesthetic experience”.

Observational in its filming, absent of explanatory commentary, and literally instrumental in the assembly of an artistic visual soundtrack, the essence of the poetic mode of documentary is captured by Baraka’s premise, branding the DVD as: “A world beyond words”.

As varied as the modes of the documentary genre may be, through applying Nichol’s (2001) method of separating fiction from non-fiction, a functional analysis can be achieved. Further reductionism of categorising aspects of the documentary genre into modes also assists in the critical analysis of distinguishing the aspects which typify the vast amount of documentaries that have been produced since the early origins of cinema.

However this is not to say that all documentaries follow a specific format, or fall into a specific category. With documentary, as in all genres of cinema, there are overlapping genres, which Hawkins (2000, p. 27) refers to as “slippage”, as “not only is there slippage between genres, but there is slippage between evaluative classifications, as well”.
In the documentary genre this ‘slippage’ can be seen in many films, such as the Endless Summer series by Director Bruce Brown (1966 & 1994), the films of Michael Moore, and even in the earliest of works by pioneers such as Dziga Vertov and Robert Flaherty, “who quite clearly mix documentary and fictional elements” (Langford 2005, p.261).

Therein lies the debate between the documentary as fact over fiction, the depiction of truth, and the neutrality of documentaries as windows to reality. Filmmaker Jill Godmilow avoids this issue by substituting the term ‘films of edification,’ “because I think the best way to describe this group of films is by their stance. All non-fiction films claim to edify. (Whether they do or not is another matter.)” (Godmilow as cited in Horne & Kahana 1998, p. 2).

Therefore in this light, the nature of documentaries, their purpose and their classification, whether a blend of genres falling into mixed-modes, or specifically crafted to mould itself into a category, still remains ever elusive, as “every documentary is different because it is individually crafted” (Chapman 2007, p. 3).

A full list of references are available here

Module 4 - Activity 2: Media websites for review

2009-03-13T23:35:00.008+11:00

In an effort to recapture market share from the web, broadcast (and print) media have tried their hand at competing with the likes of social networking sites that have streaming video capabilities such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and the numerous CJ websites now proliferating the internet.

Media organisations have traditionally relied on advertising to function, and the perceived quantitative audience numbers (i.e. ratings or distribution) to draw in advertisers. As Hartley (1992, p.105) argues:

"...audiences are not just constructs, they are invisible fictions that are produced institutionally in order for the various institutions to take charge of the mechanisms of their own survival."

The amount of interactivity afforded to users of the internet opens the public sphere for civic discourse. Civility and participation are key elements of a democratic society, and they are also terms with political connotations within a sociological context. It also generates a new awareness for the Fourth Estate to be ever mindful of their work. However, there is certainly a difference between 'freedom of speech' and 'journalism'.

As Journalism Professor and CJ supporter Jay Rosen notes in his blog post entitled, 'The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism':

"...editors of such local citizen-journalism sites need to guide community members into making quality submissions -- to educate them about what's worth sharing with their fellow citizens".

There are very few CJ success stories in comparison to the quantity of non-newsworthy, un-journalistic content and practices on these CJ (and sometimes PR driven) websites.

References:

Hartley, J 1992, The Politics of Pictures: The Creation of the Public in the Age of Popular Media, Routledge, London & New York, DOI:240 pp.

Citizen Journalism

View more presentations from Seth Lewis.

Module 4 - Activity 1: Media Storm & Current TV

2009-03-13T19:43:00.006+11:00

Media Storm

Welcoming submissions from contributors, providing paid internships, as well as the opportunity to join projects and other competitions on their blog, Media Storm offer many avenues for budding and talented producers to participate.

The Emmy Award winning company and its team have a strong background. Media Storm's work has been picked up by other media outlets such as PBS, Reuters and MSNBC among others, which would be an opportunity to not only work with a renowned organisation sponsored by the Washington Post, but to network and make your own contacts as well.

From a distribution context their website alone allows access to previews and feedback of their work in many spaces by citizens and organisations, through the provision of interactive elements such as backlinks, comment postings, social networking functions, podcasting, a YouTube channel, and good SEO tactics. Merchandising through their online store is also provided while the 'preview' aspect of the flash videos and YouTube clips further encourage the audience towards consumerism as opposed to piracy.

Current TV

In a much more open and transparent public sphere for contribution and participation, Current TV has taken the user generated, 'you decide' approach for appealing to the budding shorts VJ/film-maker. The site provides opportunities for soft news, ads and docos to be broadcast on the air in the US, UK, Ireland and Italian cable channels through their Make TV initiative, with the added incentive of cash prizes (anywhere from US$1000 to £25,000) for VC2 and VCAM Leaderboard winners. There are also other ways to gain exposure on the website such as being featured on the site's index page (e.g. Editor's Picks, Current video, Current stories and other categories).

As with Media Storm, Current TV makes full use of social networking capabilities, with the added features of rating videos, news articles and posting links as well as a fully fledged online community where access is granted upon registration.

A critical analysis of The Protean Journalist

2009-03-13T18:45:00.003+11:00

The Protean Journalist mini-documentary produced entirely by Maria Tan in February, 2009 provides a fresh angle to a popular ‘Chicken Little’ subject currently plaguing the media industry.

While the topic itself is not new, there are still yet to be any Australian videos on this theme reporting on the changing role of journalists from the ‘new breed’s’ perspective apart from the occasional spot on SBS’ Dateline. However, this video is also found lacking in many aspects relating to structure and form.

Understandably, Maria Tan’s journalism background had a major influence in this piece which feels more like a soft news story than a ‘documentary’ which was her original intention.

Although the narrative holds together, the story fails to captivate as a true documentary would, because it lacks style. While the montage is relatively well shot with a few stylistic camera and ‘match on action’ editing techniques thrown in for good measure, there is nothing terribly creative about the video apart from the overstretched ‘picture in picture’ opening/title sequence which does not set the ‘documentary’ up with a dynamic, new sort of feel. The absence of music and some space for the information to sink in was also another ‘journo’ blunder, as it doesn’t do the video any justice or provide the added impact that a piece like this should warrant.

Verdict: Good for a first try but could be better. I give it 3 stars.

Snowed under!

2009-03-11T17:23:00.018+11:00

I am starting to really feel the pressure right about now so I'm posting up a bit of a schedule on what is due and when to get my head around it all:

Overdue Blog Entries
Module 3: Run Lola Run, Man with movie camera <--mandatory?
~~Critical Analysis of 'The Protean Journalist'~~
~~Module 4: Activity 1, Activity 2~~

March 12
~~Concept Brief and Storyboard for Assignment 3 (Major Practical Project)~~

March 16
~~eCulture and Audiences LJA5~~

March 18
~~eCulture and Audiences Discussion Form Activity~~

March 19
~~Assignment 2 - Digital Video Genres essay~~

March 20
~~Internet Communications Assignment 1~~

Cathie's Settings: Assignment 1

2009-03-04T18:36:00.008+11:00

I created a version with a new bitrate of 1150kbps which has improved the picture quality (e.g. 0:12-0:16 in this version has better clarity than the last version). However the filesize increased from ~30mb to ~378mb without PAL to Streaming so I continued to play around with the settings until I had something smaller to output.

I re-edited the audio by increasing the gain on NATSOT for some clips, fixed up some volume problems and tried to de-esser Shannon a little bit manually as the filter in Premiere Pro and Soundbooth was degrading the overall sound quality of her grabs.

This version worked best in 1024 but instead of square pixels I used DV 1.067 as the square pixels kept adding black bars to the picture.

Final video, tweaking Cathie's Settings:

PAL to Streaming 1024 preset

File Path: E:\DV assignment 1\CathiesSettingsv5.mov
Type: QuickTime Movie
File Size: 30.5 MB
Image Size: 720 x 576
Pixel Depth: 720
Frame Rate: 25.00
Source Audio Format: 32000 Hz - 16 bit - Stereo
Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - Stereo
Total Duration: 00:01:57:24
Average Data Rate: 264 KB / second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.067

QuickTime Details:
Movie contains 1 video track(s), 1 audio track(s) and 0 timecode track(s).

Video:
There are 2949 frames with a duration of 1/25th.

Video track 1:
Duration is 0:01:57:24
Average frame rate is 25.00 fps

Video track 1 contains 1 type(s) of video data:

Video data block #1:
Frame Size = 720 x 576
Compressor = H.264
Quality = Most (5.00)
Temporal = Most (5.00)

Audio:
Audio track 1 contains 1 type(s) of audio data:

Audio data block #1:
Format = 16 bit - Stereo
Rate = 32,000.0000 Hz
Compressor = 16-bit Big Endian (uncompressed)

Re-encoded Assignment 1

2009-03-04T15:12:00.002+11:00

Removed some black areas from original broadcast footage (but left timecode in place)
Fixed aspect ratio to 4:3
Used higher compression (PAL to Streaming 512kbps), hence reducing quality

Assignment 1

2009-02-28T15:04:00.015+11:00

My mini doco DV was filmed over 3 days on approximately 45mins worth of tape. I have been chronicling it somewhat on Facebook so I thought I'd share a preview:

Maria is glad that Day 3 of filming is over! 5:59pm - Comment - Like

Maria Tan at 6:31pm February 26

Today was a bloody nightmare.

I was carrying around a lot of equipment
I had to queue up at Central Station for 20mins to use the ladies
My backpack broke while in the ladies
I got on location an the lifts were broken
I walked up 5 flights of stairs
I talked too much s@*% during the interview
My backpack decided to work momentarily and gushed open after I was out in the street
I bought an $80 replacement backpack

Maria Tan at 7:43pm February 26

Hmm today just keeps getting better and better.

I thought there was a mouse in the oven, I could hear clawing on metal. Turns it out was a bird. In the exhaust fan!

Carmen Li at 11:28am February 27

@_@... good luck today!

Maria Tan at 3:14pm February 27

Hehe thanks, after the bird fiasco I thought I should go to bed early in case anything else decided to surprise me :)

There were a few minor problems, and one day of filming was cancelled due to the talent backing out. This changed my opening sequence to a building site which incorporated less shots, so I decided to get a bit clever with the intro by using PIP.

In the end I had it all done in time which I'm stoked about.

Post Production

After some early hiccups with Premiere Pro CS4, I decided not to risk missing deadline by trying to use it and instead used my other PC with Premiere Pro CS3 loaded onto it. It took about 1hr to capture footage, ~1hr to 1.5hrs to cut pix and lay the VO which I recorded using Sonic Foundry Acid Pro.

The fine tuning took me around 1.5hrs or so to correct the image and audio levels, apply transitions, effects, and supers etc. I encoded almost 10 different versions and uploaded them onto Facebook to test stream quality which took up the longest time, maybe 4hrs or so altogether.

Lessons Learned

Power supply interrupts mic input quality, no matter how good the mic is (lesson re-learned)
Cherish functional backpack zips
Remember to raise tripod to eye level (on MCU/CU of talent)

Trigger Street

2009-02-18T17:11:00.002+11:00

As a digital video producer it would be helpful to join the Trigger Street community for the exposure. The judging panel consists of Hollywood celebrities and other industry big wigs which is not common in small film festivals. Entering is simple because you can upload your video online, and being part of a community with like minded people is also a bonus.

As a writer however, I would not use this website. There is not enough legal protection out there for Intellectual Property rights and I don't believe this scattergun approach is the best way to attract interested and genuine financial sponsors for writing projects.

The Blair Witch Project

2009-02-18T16:23:00.003+11:00

I still remember the first time I watched this film with a group of friends as a high school kid at my friend Steph's house on VCD.

I hadn't seen anything like it before and by the end of the movie we were unsure as to what had happened and whether or not it was a movie or a real life event. Having to walk home in the dark was also quite scary because I was living in a semi rural area at the time.

Although the movie and website is made to seem roughly cut and "real" it is actually quite complex in its use of story devices. The 'realism' created is the underlying theme of the whole production and it is this verisimilitude that makes the Blair Witch Project film and website stand out from other films.

For example, the website itself does not state whether the events are true or false but offers further evidence in The Aftermath section on the website through falsified documents (i.e. missing persons flyer, fake police photos), mock interviews and news report audio and video which continues to draw on the strengths of verisimilitude as the basis for mythology and legends. In a sense, authenticity is the ultimate Red Herring for the Blair Witch Project.

The story devices within the film itself (e.g. asides by the students, foreshadowing in the interviews etc.) and the multitude of subtle editing techniques (e.g. dissolves at a fraction of a second that would not be picked up by the untrained eye) are complex and varied and the cliffhanger ending coupled with the website and ongoing franchises take the story's 3 act paradigm further than what the film accomplishes on its own.

Truly the work of genius!

Widget link problems solved

2009-02-12T18:20:00.001+11:00

My previously unedited Blogger HTML template was opening horrible links in the current window, morphing the look of each site opened.

All fixed now :D

Characteristics of Digital Video

2009-02-12T13:26:00.008+11:00

My understanding of digital video has been in the literal sense, a digitized video. I have been thinking of “digital video” as a process itself, of uploading video onto the computer to digitize it for example, and separate from the editing and post production process. To me it was just a computerized form of video.

I guess I hadn’t thought about it beyond that until today, but now I can see that there is so much more to the term.

After some thought I would have to say my new understanding of digital video is a collaboration of sound and images in motion from many different sources that have been made compatible with computer technology in order to reassemble them together into one cohesive output for presentation.

Digital media has played a major role in transforming cinema, especially in terms of special effects and animation. For example, digital media can now be used to create an entire animated movie, such as Shrek, or a character such as Gollum in Lord of The Rings. I believe the concept of cinema originally was to reproduce images and sound, now they can be created without having physically existed.

My favourite digital video would have to be the Dove Evolution commercial because it highlights how digital media is changing our perception, in this case, of beauty.

First Impressions of Early Cinema

2009-02-11T15:49:00.005+11:00

The Lumiere Brothers

Although there is no sound to these pictures and the picture quality is not very good I am intrigued by what I am seeing. I feel like I have opened a window to the past.

I was immediately fascinated with the clothes people in the films were wearing, the different technologies like the horse and buggy, the steam train, funny hose etc. and also the differences in furniture and even crockery.

When the labourers were demolishing that house with pickaxes I thought, "Gee, that must've been tough going" and wondered about what life was like during that period.

So even though there was no narrative in these films I thought it was still quite interesting, and if I had been sitting in the audience during 1895 I would've been amazed.

George Melier

What a clever bloke! I am assuming that his interest in magic played a hand in his film making. He really went all out with illustrating the narrative by planning sets, costuming and arranging the actors to depict scenes. I can see how present day cinema has evolved from this film pioneer's work.