Every now and then you come across a production that revitalises your understanding of what is possible when film-making meets New Media/…. Take a look at One Giant Leap‘s work
One Giant Leap
Posted in 1 on September 3, 2009 by screenmedia2009lateral thinking viral
Posted in 1 on August 17, 2009 by screenmedia2009how do you attract attention to your campaign in an visually oversaturated markplace?
A.: apply the attributes of new media:
• fresh =not seen before
• convergent = merges two or more concepts
• immediacy = of the now
samples
milliondollarhomepage
Carlton Draught Big ad
posts on creating viral campaigns
Viral marketing
chk chk boom- unwittingly viral
Made to Stick
also please cast your opinion on Dana, Sid & Andy’s poll on:
What you love about Frankston,
a poll on their project blog created with Poll Daddy
developing a campaign strategy
Posted in 1 on July 14, 2009 by screenmedia2009Clearly identifying your target audience is essential when developing a strategy to communicate effectively with them.
Begin by building a profile of your market segment according to:
• demographic: race, age, gender, income, education, employment, home ownership
• psychographic: , personality, values, attitides, interests, lifestyles
• geographic: cultural and physical location
• behavioral attributes: loyalty and usage
Read the following articles:
Develop a creative concept for marketing your product to your target audience(TA) and then interview a cross-section of the TA and document this to video, for your Stage 2 Presentation pitch. (see brief).
Also read:
into narrative structure
Posted in cross media 21 C on June 5, 2009 by screenmedia2009
we are shifting from documentary to cross-media narrative for next semester
We will be exploring the emerging collaboration between documented reality and narrative-driven fiction, and how webcast media has become the interlocuter, the intermediary of the two dominant screen forms of C20.
“Innovation is driven by practice, not process….only practice leads to innovation”
consider Johhny Depp’s emergence as a reluctant A-lister…and the importance of trusting your casting judgement….
learning to back your judgement is critical if you are to develop projects that present as fresh, of the now, and thus relevant to 21C audiences…
constructed reality
Posted in 1 on April 30, 2009 by screenmedia2009What documentary isn’t? Documentary….a perpetual negotiation between the real and the representation of the real…. How does YOUR current world view and interpretation of your doco’s content have the potential to inform or DE-form your audience’s “reality” after they view your film? Why do you choose to present a documentary outcome, i.e., what are your key messages and/or the key issues you wish to explore? Is it compelling enough to challenge and sustain the audience’s interest?
Is it just an assignment(get the job done/you don’t really connect to the content/ are detached emotionally), OR, are you passionate about the content, and thereby potentially biased toward the content?
Reflect on this in your developmental notes for your project.
Consider John Pilger’s reportage style in Stealing a Nation (about the plight of people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean).
How would you classify Pilger’s documentary style and mode,where Pilger’s narrative is interspersed between the clips?
What do you think of Wim Wenders documentary on Nicholas Ray? (see the link to Lightning Without Water under Performative in the Documentary Styles post).
Consider the documentary slate of Australian filmmaker David Bradbury, and in particular his first, Frontline. Does the absence of a narrative voiceover lessen the impact of the content, or interfere with the flow of story? How are the styles of Wenders, Pilger and Bradbury different?
Stealing a Nation (2004) 55 min
David Bradbury: Frontline Films
Frontline: Neil Davis talks about his newsgathering approach
New Documentary
Posted in documentary on April 29, 2009 by screenmedia2009Documentary has moved beyond Bill Nichols chain of documentary modes, and into hybrid forms which may be termed “New Documentary.”
Consider the films viewed in class this week of of John Smith and Gina Czarnecki and how they utilise convergence to create fresh modalities.
At what point does new media art feed back into the commercial realm of broadcast media? Is it possible for media to be independant and without influence from the left or the right? Doesn’t the commercial POV construct the wall from which the artistic POV initially rails?
On a commercial level, consider how producers have been embracing the convergence of two or more existing modes of documentary to create products that appeal to mass audiences’ insatiable desire for fresh and (apparently) dynamic content. A case-in-point might be Gordon Ramsay’s merging of a cooking show with realityTV-style drama, or perhaps the documentary-stylised /reality drama attributes of “Fiight of the Conchords?“ At what point does an audience reach the threshold of “new”, the critical mass of “fresh”, so that they find it passe, and then eagerly await their next installment of innovative documentary hybrid?
How does your documentary provide a point-of-difference in tems of convergent modal style?
Make reference to this “need” when presenting the supportive rationale for your documentary project, and contextualise this in terms of your Target Audience.
clips & links
John Smith:
Girl Chewing Gum
Girl Chewing Gum (1976) clip
Lost Sound (2001)
Gina Czarnecki
Contagion (2008)
Mike Stubbs: Donut (2000)
Pre Production processes
Posted in pre-production on March 25, 2009 by screenmedia2009Tushar has sourced some great pre-production planning notes:
Also, please download Celtx and install it on your PC, and use this for your production.
Download at: http://www.celtx.com/download.html
Mediating the Documentary
Posted in documentary on March 22, 2009 by screenmedia2009Mediation in New Media
“…thinkers try to look at how a given medium reconciles the various forces of history, culture, economics or the material world, and how social actors use that medium to navigate these various meanings and values. The central problem for any media theorist, similar to the problem of a Marxist theorist, is to attempt to analyze what is possible and what is limited by a given medium. Or, in other words, how does the structure of the medium limit how that medium can be used and how do social actors work both within and against that structure?”
For documentary makers the question is, how do we intend to interpret or present our story?
To what extent does our opinion inform the portrayal of truth and reality?
To what extent is it important that, as a matter of course, documentary is an aquisitive process, and that, as documentary makers, we will often know more about the content AFTER the publication and release of our doco?
Documentary styles
Posted in documentary on March 4, 2009 by screenmedia2009www.realityfilm.com
A site that grapples with this most difficult of questions: what is documentary?
Many approaches have been made by documentary theorists on how to classify the documentary form by genre. One of the better has been by Michael Rabiger, who references Bill Nichols‘ in Introduction to Documentary, who divided documentary into six categories:
Poetic (1920′s)- lacks specificity and too abstract
eg Joris Ivan’s Rain, 1926
clips
Rain part 1
Expository (1920′s on): the classic “voice of God” commentary; suffers from being too didactic
(i.e. a preachy style), and could be propaganda: see Frank Capra & Anatole Litvak’s Why We Fight (US War Department, 1942-1945) or Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935)
clips
Why We Fight: imdb link
Why We Fight-War Comes to America, Information Film #7
Three Little Pigs(1942): American animation as propoganda
Popeye Bombs France(194?): German animation as propoganda
The Thrills music video (2008) using Why We Fight- War Comes to America
Reifenstahl: scene from Triumph of the Will
Triumph of the Will: first ten minutes
Observational (1960′s) Observes things as they happen, without imposing commentary or re-enactment. Inclined to lack content and historical background. see Fred Wiseman’s Titicut Follies (USA, 1967)
clips
Model (1980): Wiseman doco pt 1
Model (1980) pt 2
Participatory (1960′s) Interviews or interacts with its participants and uses archival film to retrieve history. This genre has deficiencies of intrusiveness, excessive faith in witnesses, and a tendency for a naive view of history.
eg Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer (France, 1960) which deals with the issue of racism seen through the eyes of young black and white students.
articles
Senses of Cinema
clips
Reflexive (1980′s) Questions doco form and conventions- how it represents things, not just what it represents – as an important part of its purview.* Reflexive documentary makes VERY clear to the audience the fact that all media is constructed . It makes the viewer aware that it is only a representation and a construction of reality. RD can be inclined to become abstract and lose sight of the actual issue. e.g. Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil. * purview = horizon: the range of interest or activity that can be anticipated
clips
review of San Soleil
Sans Soleil (Sunless) (1982)
Rememberance of Things to Come
On Chris Marker
Chris Marker’s back-catalogue
clip from A Grin Without a Cat (1977)
Errol Morris: The Thin Blue Line (Reflexive)
Plot Outline: explores how Randall Adams was wrongfully convicted for murdering a policeman in Dallas, Texas, 1976. It shows that the circumstantial evidence collected by police was very weak.
Errol Morris On The Thin Blue Line
Performative (1980′s) Describes human issues, not in the abstract way of Western philosophic tradition, but gives them weight in presenting them subjectively, based on specifics of personal experience, in the tradition of poetry, literature and rhetoric. May be sidelined as avante-garde. eg Marlon Rigg’s Tongues Untied (USA, 1989)
clips
Tongues Untied Trailer
Wim Wenders: Lightning Over Water :
About the last days of director Nicholas Ray (Rebel without a Cause , 1955)
Wim Wenders: Buena Vista Social Club , (1998)
instructional video/doco
Posted in notes on March 2, 2009 by screenmedia2009With your co-director, develop a concept and outline for your doco project for hosting on TubeMogul and pitch to the class on Monday March 9.
