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.

Yes. But why would we want to create?

Just finished reading Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus. I was hoping to find more. I was hoping to find out why we would want to create media, create our own digital documentaries. Instead I found a lot of other useful information concentrated on our desire as social creatures to share and communicate with others.

I suppose creating something is communicating but I'm not sure the desire to share what I've created is the total reason why I would want to create a digital documentary. That's a good end result, the fact that I can share it with the world but what about the process of actually doing it? Flow is all about process, being in the moment of doing something. Do we go see a movie for the sole purpose of talking about it with others later? I don't, perhaps others do?

I guess sharing on facebook is about being in the moment, sharing on facebook is the process, the flow experience of facebook is in the sharing, whereas  documentary is all about story (and doco can't exist without story no matter what the delivery platform) and it is the story journey that is the process. In traditional doco the only way to get into the flow of the story is to watch whereas the flow of digital documentary can be to watch but also in the creating ... and the experience can be extended again through sharing.

Chapter 3 'Motive' began to examine why but still it was brought it back to 'The motivation to share is the driver; technology is just the enabler' (2010, p.79). I think I need to go back to the literature on creativity to fill in these gaps on what it is about creating that creates a flow experience for us.

Edit. Day One.

While I wait the 22 minutes for my poor little macbook pro to render I thought I'd catch up here. It's been about 6 weeks since my last entry.

In that time I've been writing, re-writing, and re-re-writing the script for the doco. This has been a 6 month process. 6 months! Worth the time though because now I feel like I've done the hard work, laid the path and it's just a matter of assembling it. Just like a piece of IKEA furniture; well designed, looks good but underneath is particle board timber. So hand me my allen key ...

So I recorded a draft of the voiceover on the weekend. I've never included a voiceover in any of my productions before. I've always used text in its place but as a viewer, text is laborious, exhausting to read. This doco is looking like it is going to be around 30 mins long, too long to be constantly reading!!

And I've certainly never recorded a voiceover before. As I was doing it I found myself wondering how it should sound. There's the traditional 'voice of god' style which I couldn't do if I tried. I also don't like the stiffness of the traditional journalistic approach, it's too cold and detached. Then there's the more contemporary style that sounds is more relaxed, monotone and conversational. That's more how I talk anyway so I think this voiceover probably fits into that category. I'll probably have to end up doing most of it again but it is acting as a good track to guide the doco as I begin editing.

I'm right on schedule in beginning the edit today. I wanted the script done by end of July. The next milestone is to have the documentary, or a complete draft of it, done by end of September.

So first thing was to lay down the voiceover which has filled the timeline up to 32 minutes! Man, that's a seriously long production. I'm a bit concerned that it's too long. As I go I'm going to be looking for parts of the VO that I can replace with more succinct visuals to shorten things a bit.

The beginning of the doco contains lots of little bits from all over the place so I've been sourcing them and putting them on the timeline. Sound effects of tones, projectors, wind whistling. All very easy to source on the www. I visited youtube to source the old film and kodak ads ....

... wait ... rendering is done so back to the editing.

Pursuit of happiness?

Is this what this documentary project is all about? The pursuit of happiness?

Strange but I've had this song going round and round in my head for the last few days ... Nuno Bettencourt's 'Pursuit of happiness' ...

I've just been revisiting Csikszentmihalyi's TED talk. He reminded me that Flow is all about the pursuit of happiness. Flow is the state we feel when we're doing something that creates happiness. Perhaps talking about 'happiness' is going to be more easily digestible in the doco, a better way to talk about it, more genuine, than 'flow theory' which sounds dry, complicated and academic?

We're creatures in pursuit of happiness really aren't we? The dominant aspirations we hold: health, wealth, success, security. What do they all have as their underlying feeling for us when we get them? What promise do they seemingly hold? Happiness.

Happiness is transient, something that is continually moving, if you hold on to it for too long it disappears. Once you achieve your health, wealth, success, security, whatever, you only remain happy for a moment or two before you new aspirations take hold that take you to experience a different level of happiness.

Happiness calls us forward.

The entertainment industry is a channel of easily accessible happiness. Easily digestible flow experiences ... take one pill twice a day, if symptoms persist see your psychologist.

Interactive digital video is a bigger pill to swallow ... not so prescriptive, the user has more control over their experience and flow becomes even more precarious. The rules of digital documentary, at this stage of our digital media evolution anyway, need to be more guiding for the user, designed to guide the user into the flow experience.

The young seekers who travelled to Balingup during the 1970s were in pursuit of happiness. Mainstream life wasn't doing it but the promise of building a utopia (happiness) drew them in.

The artefacts that still remain of these pursuits of happiness are the archives that I'm now accessing: photos, super 8, letters, music.

One seeker in particular, Deacon Chapin, was drawn from the other side of the world to capture this pursuit of happiness (a personal pursuit of happiness for him) in a film. The result of that pursuit is the 16mm film.

Leaving one more pursuit of happiness to mention. Mine.

Sweet. :o) ... I think I'm on to something here ... hmm???!

the autotelic self ... thinking aloud/allowed

Spent some time re-reading a couple of the 'Flow' chapters this morning. I'm thinking about why digital documentary doesn't flow and how it can flow.

According to Csikszentmihalyi (pp205 - 212) flow requires unity with the environment, attention has to be immersed in the environment. The solutions to creating this immersion are put forward as -

1. focus attention on the obstacle (to flow) and then move them out of the way

     OR

1. create alternative goals for the user

Experiencing traditional documentary on a computer is disruptive to flow. There is a keyboard and mouse between the viewer and the screen which is totally different to the cinema screen and/or tv. So the computer environment is an expansion of the cinema screen. You can't apply the same rules to both systems. The challenges and opportunities for action that call to the user are different. The keyboard and mouse add this thing called interactivity, a new dimension, that breaks the flow of traditional documentary which relies totally on immersion in the storyworld.

Somehow the storyworld of the documentary needs to expand to include the keyboard and mouse into the environment. At the moment the digital documentary ignores the peripheral devices, pretends they're not there because in the native cinema and tv formats they're not, there is no external distraction to the screen. But perhaps digital documentary needs to find a way to consciously include these in the environment. Somehow in the story ...

Csikszentmihalyi suggests that flow requires the user to be autotelic, 'a self that has self-contained goals' (p209). These are the types of people who experience flow easily in situations. The autotelic personality is able to set their own goals from any given environment, they are required to operate with unselfconscious assurance, they easily feel a part of an environment, they can become immersed in the activity and are interested and involved in the experience easily.  

So, am I not getting into digital documentary thing because I am not this kind of person? I do often rely on other people to set goals for me. I'm not so great at unselfconscious assurance,  in fact I'm terrible. Am I too self conscious in any environment lose myself and to become easily immersed in the interactive environment. 

Perhaps the non-autotelic person will only ever be able to get into story in the cinema/tv situation - darkened room where there is no environment to be self conscious in. Perhaps flow in the digital documentary can only happen for those who find it easy to become immersed in an environment.

The question is then, how can digital documentary make people like me (overly self conscious) feel comfortable and immersed in this environment? If I can answer that then flow: the optimal experience of digital documentary should follow ...