Insights from sharing

I'm quite overwhelmed by the response to posting the doco up on Vimeo. I'm receiving lots of very positive feedback from people I've only met once or twice or in most cases, never met. Many of these are people who used to live in the Brotherhood community. The comments are coming in email, on the Vimeo posting and through Facebook and all seem to have connected with the 'honesty' of the section in the doco about the Brotherhood. One comment even draws a comparison between my production and the ABC's Compass production, which wasn't received favourably by some ex-Brotherhood communards.

This feedback got me thinking about 'honesty' in documentary. A documentary can only be as honest as the perspective or framework that it is produced from/within. So, what I mean by that is the ABC is bound within a framework of the institution of broadcast media. They have so many layers of bureaucracy, they need to think about their audience etc etc. So that framework creates a whole different perspective through which their doco was produced compared to mine, which was produced within a research project. I didn't have the constraints or concerns that the ABC might have about the end product, so my perspective was able to, perhaps be more free and open ... which I guess looks like honesty?

sitting alongside the ABC

Just added a widget on the left there for my Vimeo videos and thought, isn't it incredible that my little production, Inside the Brotherhood Reel is able to sit right alongside the ABC's Compass doco on the Brotherhood. They both potentially have the same audience.

And just for the record, it wasn't me who uploaded the Compass doco to Vimeo, but I appreciate whoever did :o)

Export & Upload

The artefact of my PhD thesis Inside the Brotherhood Reel is now available on Vimeo!!

Watch it at your own peril: Inside the Brotherhood Reel

:o)

I'm glad it's still an issue ...

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/08/sleep-no-more/#more-37512

While reading a recent game review at Wired.com I was pleased to see that immersion into digital media (non-linear) narratives is still an issue being talked about. Haven't found the right spot to add it into the thesis so thought I'd record it here.

Jason Schreier reviews Sleep No More, a non-linear narrative play and highlights the fact that he doesn't really care what happens in the play, which right there misses the mark because the point of narrative is that it provides a vicarious experience and he doesn't feel a part of the story. 'The primary problem with this method of storytelling is that you're not really part of it.' .... exactly.

You're not part of it in these things, it's a finished, polished production that doesn't need the media-user to do anything but point and click - boring.

It's a bit like playing in a sandpit with pre-made castles. Nice to look at but wouldn't it be more engaging/immersive to use the raw sand to make your own?

Me thinks so ...

3 views from Slovenia

OK. I may have been distracted away from my blog this year but the world hasn't :o) This is my 'insights' page for this blog: 3 views from Slovenia! Awesome.

users vs creators?

So in the doco I say something along the lines of, 'we're so much more than users of interactive technologies, we're creators ...' ... what's the difference, what exactly did i mean by that?

Well I'm using these technologies right now. I can use digital media to communicate; access information, share information but creating stuff with digital media is a step beyond that. When you're being creative essentially you take pieces and combine them or transform them into something new. So with the UB project I've largely taken pieces of old, analogue, physical media (photos, slides, film, video) and firstly transformed it into digital media (scanning, capturing, telecine-ing) and then mixed those sources together to create my vision of the UB world - that's another level on simply 'using' is it now isn't it.

I think it is worth differentiating between the two anyway.

editing: the magic of pieces coming together

Above are two images that were taken around the same moment during the filming of the UB back in 1978; the first by a still camera, the other from 16mm, but since they were taken they've never been put together as they are here and as they are on the timeline of my doco.

I'm guessing that the magic of this reunion is probably lost on everyone but me, the editor, the creator of this sequence so I'd best explain myself. First there's the moment when you realise that these two pieces of the puzzle fit together. As I mentioned both come from different sources. I've only just received the first image but as soon as I saw it I recognised the frames of the 16mm that it related to - i guess that's the feeling that a researcher longs to have - pieces that fit together that have never been put together before.

Then you lay them next to each other on the timeline and hit play. I guess it's the old Kuleshov effect in play here. In a montage the second image takes most of its meaning from (is contextualised by) the shot preceding it. So prior to me accessing the behind the scenes still shot the piano hands were just anonymous hands playing piano but add that first image, which essentially is a new broader perspective (storyteller) and the story expands exponentially.

So suddenly two separate captured moments (images) that relate to the same historical moment are joined and something weird happens. A world, frozen in time for 30 years, is re-animated.

I think that is awesome and incredibly powerful ... Hmmm :o/ ... guess you had to be there.