POST INDUSTRIAL MEDIA- PORTFOLIO REFLECTIVE ESSAY

Post Industrial Media has been one course that I thoroughly enjoyed this semester. The course is designed to perfection. I believe that the kind of practice that we did throughout the course has instilled in us a number of seen and unseen capabilities.

From analysis to evaluation… and from creating to presenting… and later on reflecting in form of formal and informal reports, this course has offered me an opportunity to thoroughly ponder on my work, investigate, refer back to it and consistently improve from one studio to another throughout this semester. It gave us the confidence to believe in our ideas and shape them up in something professional and yet personal.

I never thought I’d get a space to project my love for abstract art and love for unsaid and untold stories that reflect through ambiguous words, images and in this course mobile videos. I never actually thought someone will appreciate this joy I take in creating content that needs no justification. I like leaving things ambiguous for the viewers to add their interpretation and perspective to my work and try to look into things from an angle that is not suggested but is their own. Make connections with the piece of work with this uninvited or asked for interaction.

How has my practice changed?

If I talk about change, my perspective and practice regarding mobile videography has been transformed from something that gave me joy to something that is close to a passion now. Considering how we started off with an affordance to keep us on a track in our sketches and formulating an idea of where our practice will lead to. It’s been a different experience for me all together as I didn’t come from the same media back ground as my class mates and I had a lot more to learn in comparison to their knowledge.

In other courses the concept of practice led research applied has not been this in-depth and with a vision that every step forward, one stage to the other things definitely do shape up into something promising and professional.

I wouldn’t have looked into mobile videography that seriously had it not been the course instructor’s persistent convincing power to attempt to get into MINA 2015, and with the direction of having to apply for a screening, things became serious and remained serious throughout the semester for me.

It’s also a matter of exposure. I think I found it very challenging in other courses to communicate what I want to say, as I have always felt conflicted with my idea of comedy and what it culturally is different in Australia and like wise. I felt challenged from the very beginning of my Master’s program to communicate something that comes from my heart and produce something which’s been so close.

Had it not been Seth’s advice to take on the project to a personal level, I still would have been struggling with gathering words or scripts that would express what I want to say or communicate through my production. But after a year long, I did end up in a course where I could be more natural, myself and yet produce work that gets appreciation rather than leaving the audience in state of a confusion.

What do i now do differently?

I believe that I have started looking at my surroundings as a source of constant opportunity. On a lighter side, I have started keeping my phone charged all the time, just so I don’t miss out on capturing any spontaneous moment that might be useful in terms of adding to my portfolio. I previously didn’t care much. It feels the smart phone has a job way more serious to be always prepared for than just lying drained, out of battery, somewhere in my bag.

I feel I am more alert, even when I am in a very personal space of my own, I have the creative juices flowing in me all the time, just waiting for something to happen. I have so much of raw data that might be useful for another experimentation for a personal project.

So, I believe the most important thing that this course has changed my practice with is, looking at life and each and every moment in a very profound and passionate way. I feel it’s a fresh start for me and my mobile phone to go on an ongoing adventure of filming and creating.

What could i develop further?

Future developments of this practice i have adopted through this course definitely will be more visible or understandable to me based on how things go with MINA 2015 participation, and whether I’d be able to end up getting my film screened in the upcoming MINA film festival.

If so, I believe I’d try as much as I can to work along the lines and guidance set by this course and the practice made through out the term to produce more work, touching different areas that I haven’t explored because, this is one area, where we don’t need very high budgets if filming on the same scale. I’ll continue with applying to various mobile film festivals and promote the culture of mobile videography one way or the other.

What are my strengths and weaknesses?

Apart from a number of strengths that I mentioned earlier, I believe one of the biggest that I am somewhat confident about by the end of the semester is, presenting a media work. In other courses things have been different, but the formal elements that have been intact with this course such as formal presentations has definitely had an impact on me. I loved presenting, speaking out my ideas which I always have been very hesitant about. I feel the courage and confidence that I gained through this course has been one major strength I gained.

Looking into weaknesses, I believe I still have to work better on reflective writing, I am not very confident about my writing style, probably as it’s a second language and I am still not as pro as I really want to see my self, I feel I have so much to catch up with the standards of written communication of this country. I usually feel lost with words and find myself short of right words to explain what I have in my mind.

Sketching process and Studio Feedback

To be honest, I was scared of the word sketching before the semester had begun, I am not good with drawings and arts, and I took sketching in its very literal meaning. Luckily it wasn’t my worst nightmare and that moment on finding what sketching we are referring to changed my spirits towards the course completely. I was so excited. I knew I wanted to be in each and every class so badly, because I loved the sketching process, I loved peer reviews, the casual yet honest feedback from everyone and that atmosphere where everyone was wishing improvement for the other.

The PIM Journey- LINK TO PREZI PRESENTATION 

STAGE 1

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/pim-assessment-1-case-study-on-two-stories/

STAGE 2

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/post-industrial-media-project-two-sketch-one-color-dips/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/pim-video-sketch-2-spin-around-as-you-go/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/studio-reflection-spontaneity-in-our-feedback/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/why-spontaneity-my-perspective/

STAGE 3

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/post-industrial-media-a-journey-of-exploration/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/post-industrial-media-mashup-and-remixes-2/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/04/25/too-many-ideas-little-to-retain/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/sketch-1-baby-moves/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/project-3-video-sketch-windmill/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/project-3-video-sketch-windmill-2/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/project-3-video-sketch-mystic-dance/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/project-3-video-sketch-dancing-fountain/

STAGE 4

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/pim-drive-to-stage-4-one-step-closer/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/pim-iteration-1-continuity-of-experimentation/

https://reflectwithmaria.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/pim-iteration-2-dhanak-kay-rungg-colours-of-the-rainbow/

PROJECT 4 – FINAL VIDEO FOR POST INDUSTRIAL MEDIA

PROJECT 4 – FINAL VIDEO FOR POST INDUSTRIAL MEDIA

I’ve come a very long way with this project. I can’t believe I am near completion. It is scary that I can’t really make sense of my work any more, its probably that I’ve seen it over and over again for so many hours trying to fix the tiny issues that were resulting because of adobe premiere.

I am glad that the little steps started a couple of months back have finally reached to the end of its journey, but who knew its just the beginning of a gate full of opportunities. In the first Iteration presented two weeks back, I presented something I was working along the lines of, which didn’t get as much appreciation as my previous sketches did. I was very nervous, because the deadline for final project was so close, and my project wasn’t appealing to others.

My Professor , Seth Keen, asked me to take up the project as something personal and link it to my culture, show my cultural background through my work. Initially I was so confused, I practically kept thinking for days and days of how to link my project to the place I belong from. I was upset to the extend that I spontaneously ended up meeting Seth on Bowen Street at RMIT and I was kind of ashamed of the fact that he felt that I was not very happy with the feedback.

I had a moment with Seth where he told me to incorporate my language and share the narration in the video in my mother tongue, the idea clicked me, and I had a sigh of relief, that night I sat to work on the narration, the one I previously had in mind, but to my own surprise, I ended up writing a poem. It totally fit with my theme, ideology and the way I wanted to stick to abstractism.

The second iteration was where I presented a draft of my final project and I was back on the track with a focus and direction, as the feedback was encouraging as well, Dr. Keen was happy with the choice of narrative style that was a prose and a poem by means of which I personalized the project and represented a piece of art that is a blend of who I am, what’s my life been life and the joy I take with color, as its rooted in me through my culture.

This is the final video, i edited the footage in adobe premiere pro, and is a mixture of spontaneous elements, such as slo-mo in the beginning, then time lapse later on. some natural shots and some remixes.It set well with the narration. I think I am ready for criticism to refine my work as much as I can for MINA 2015.

Please click on LINK to get directed to a detailed report on the process led research carried in this course.

But for now, take a look at- “DHANAK KAY RUNGG”- COLORS OF RAINBOW!

POST INDUSTRIAL MEDIA- PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION!

This presentation is a walk along journey from the start to the end of the course.

https://prezi.com/embed/kjqgxbu0pevm/?bgcolor=ffffff&lock_to_path=0&autoplay=0&autohide_ctrls=0&PARENT_REQUEST_ID=e0dc3bd3a9878722#

Collaborative Media Project – Portfolio

Collaborative media project has been one course that offered so much space to explore our interests and our hidden talents. It gave us the room to play with projects that demanded persistent, hard work and dedication. Every collaboration required ownership, may it be self driven or may it has a project leader, to make things work at the end of the day, motivation and persistence is the key to get things done.

As an open opportunity to work in as many projects as we can managed, I initiated a project and took part in the ones driven by others  includes:

MY COLLABORATIVE MEDIA PROJECT PORTFOLIO 

(Click the link to start presentation):

1. HUMBLEBEINGS

Humblebeings is a story sharing global platform, If someone has any inspirational story for humanity it could be shared with Humblebeings. The aim of the project is to drive the social media platform users to engage in the process of contributing towards this bank of stories that helps in giving a positive aspect to life and a perspective that motivates people to contribute towards humanitarian cause.

I took hold of two projects that i led, one being “Beyond Borders”, The team consisted of

• Alex Dick – Director of photography
• Angela Lowe – Director of photography
• Courtney Coulter – Producer
• Nicole Kitto – Camera person
• Lucille Schnierer & Sofii McKenzie – Assistant Editors

The other one was compilation of memorable journey of collaboration that reflects upon what happens when we collaborate. This project was self-initiated and executed, as the idea came to me in the end of the last week, but it self this is linked to the footage I had from the shoot of 3 different projects. The video title is “When we collaborate”.

2. A KNOTTY AFFAIR

Love can do wonders! It can mould us and our mind sets! It can broaden our vision and increases our ability of accepting the odds for the best of everyone’s interest! Love shapes up the Human inside us and promotes harmony and togetherness!

A beautiful story of a couple’s wedding told by their family, sharing their struggle in accepting the change but loving it for the sake of humanity!

A Christian Hindu girl weds a South Indian Tamilian boy.. and their families blend their cultures within the wedding events to accommodate for everyone’s interests!

“A Knotty Affair” is an illustration of modern-day weddings in the regions of the world which are religiously connected to their cultures and traditions…

“A knotty affair” is a short documentary shot in India by the producer and director of the film Angela Lowe. 

Angela and I decided to promote the video through the platform of Humblebeings, as the story serves the needs of one of our relevant themes.

3. INSCRIPTION

Inscription is a short fiction film and the brainchild of Alex Dick, one of the highly talented, pro and professional collaborators. His project was a short comedy film, where a man dedicated to his job attempts to propose a lady. The flow of the project was very smooth, it was very well planned, organised and executed. One of the projects that wrapped up very quickly.

I was appointed the task of social media for the film, as it is important to maintain an online profile of the film, we managed to gear audience and put the name online by sharing bloopers, behind the scene pictures and live updates from the day of the shoot.

At this very stage we used Facebook page to take this venture online. The official Inscription page has about 61 likes at the moment and is growing eventually.

4. JUST IN CASE

Yuri Ardana is a highly talented all-rounder, under his production and direction, “Just in case” was planned, produced and published. It is a short comedy film which comes as a package of action and humor. I did the social media for the project and extended it to shooting for bloopers, photography for the profiles and editing the contents for the Facebook page.

This opportunity gave me a chance to experiment with camera and enhance my skills technically. I thoroughly enjoyed this project and the team was well thought of and organized throughout the production process.

5. Foreign Aid in a Climate of Change – Short Documentary

A short documentary* by Lucille Schnierer talks about the Foreign aid being distributed by Australia to different parts of the world to facilitate the calamity stricken countries cope up with the disaster and stand back on their feet. A well thought out and organized project with a strong vision that translated well in the outcome.

I was a part of project as Editing Assistant, in this collaboration I was required to give a constructive feedback on the edit of the project, help troubleshoot the issues arising with the software and incompatibility of video source files. We managed to look through the rough draft multiple times and discussed the possible ways of adding overlays and color grading for the footage to look consistent and interesting.

6. A MINUTE OF SCIENCE

The project led by Sofii McKenzie is a short infotainment clip that aims at covering a science topic within a minute.
I helped with the lightening for the project on the set as well as took pictures for behind the scenes for the project.
This was the second time I got a chance to work with a green screen background production. The videos will be published on Youtube and shared on Facebook page. 

We plan on sharing different latest science researches and short films that cover the same area of interest.

COLLABORATION IS FUN:

Collaboration is an interesting process of creating unique and intriguing content. The process of collaboration helps you think and process information in a very different way. You have so much room for experimentation and execution based on multiple ideas that even facilitate in troubleshooting the issues that come in way of project execution.

Cashing an opportunity of my little sister’s 11th birthday, I decided to make a surprise birthday video* for her. I requested my friends overseas to help me in executing this idea, by sending me their birthday wish clip. The process of sharing data began through a facebook group where we all posted pictures with the girl. While video sharing happened through Whatsapp messenger, Facebook inbox and emails.

I compiled the data and made a birthday surprise for her in minutes. Because I was overseas and missed her birthday twice in the row, who said I couldn’t celebrate the moment. Collaboration facilitates us in a thousand ways. Its a wonderful way on learning, unlearning and relearning through a series of practical work.

CONCLUSION:

Collaborative processes do not necessarily have to be successful, but it allows us to learn working in multiple settings, with people who’re different to us, and blend in with others to collectively make the project successful. So the idea of collaboration shouldn’t be restricted to success of the project, but how much you can extract out of it for personal and professional growth.

(* Please note, the videos with asterisk sign are password protected and sent to tutor through form submission and the highlighted blue words are linked to different parts of the portfolio)

PIM- Iteration 2- Dhanak kay rungg (Colours of the Rainbow)

Last week, while presenting the Iteration 1 for PIM project, I received some interesting feedback  that led me to take a more deeper perspective towards my project. My Professor, Seth Keen suggested to link my initial concept of colors & spontaneity with certain cultural elements that will make it a more personalized project.

Initially it didn’t really click me in terms of executing the recommended shift, because I was working along the lines that were fairly abstractism. But then last night, I had a spontaneous moment of  writing an unplanned piece of poem, It turned out to be exactly what I wanted to say in Narrative, but is in form of a prose / poem.

I believe that the feedback helped me a lot to launch a new strategy for the project that is more promising than what I previously had in mind.

I am still in the process of including a number of relevant sketches, but for now to determine the feel….

here it goes:

This fairly raw at the moment, It has a lot more additions lined up for the final product!

PIM – ITERATION 1 – Continuity of experimentation

Proceeding with the ideas and affordances that resulted through previous projects, I am not in a phase of my mobile videography project where ideas and sketches need to shape up into drafts for final projects.

As Mystic Dance was a successful project and the feedback was encouraging enough for me to proceed with the idea, I continue experimenting within those lines where all the pictures and videos I made through my mobile phone spontaneously for the project are going into the phase of mash up, further remixes using the mobile app REPIX.

I wanted to break down the video bits into frames and play with them on the app, where as, to do that, I initially began with taking screenshots of the images while I played them on my phone, which kind of didn’t give me the desired out put. Other ways to get frames out of your video include screen grab and tools that are available in Adobe premiere pro and VLC, but that would’ve taken me forever as well.

So in order to hunt down an app or tool to expedite the process, I did some reading online and found out a software that converts VIDEO INTO JPEG. In the article written by Mike Williams, the process of how the software works and a link to download is available. However, that didn’t work so I went back to Google search with similar keywords and came across a website that looked more genuine for safe downloading.

This is an amazing software, it has great features to facilitate the frame grabbing process, it takes just a couple of minutes to convert number of videos into complete frames. So, I decided to go about it two ways, initially attempted to see how many frames come out of my videos, so selected the complete video frames option and it went up to thousands of frames per video. Managing that much data would have been complicated because I have to edit each of those frames to create what I had in mind.

So I opted for the other option that gave me variable frames per video. Using each of those frames, I got remixed images using REPIX. (See previous article for the application details).

I looped the remixed images in the order sequence of how the video goes about, and used the looped sequence in different points of the video. This is just a draft version, I intentionally didn’t add the background score, but had it playing while working with the frames, and it looked pretty convincing to me how it blends with the sound and tells a story.

I used Adobe Premier for the compilation of my frames and video clip.

I’ll be looking into the feedback that i’ll get in the coming session and evaluate the viewers opinion and further change what needs to be accordingly, but for now, we have GREEN BRIGADE – Mystic Dance continues! 🙂

PIM DRIVE TO STAGE 4! – ONE STEP CLOSER !

So far so good. The project 3 presentation went pretty great, with some really encouraging feedback to step ahead and take our sketches to stage 4- that is producing video for final project and MINA submission.

Out of all the sketches I worked on for the project 3 submission, Mystic dance (my favorite) is what is going ahead in terms of themes I’d be looking into and working with. This is actually exciting, because I wanted to really work on this line. I hope the abstractism idea I want to work with is well projected for the final video works.

The narration in my mind is strong and I am even more convinced with the idea I have in mind based on the review, and peer feedback during the presentations. Everyone suggested that I stick to colors and follow my spontaneous instincts as it is helping me get something out of this entire project.

I have to however, work on the lines of sequence or order of my final video, which has to blend with the narration and fit well.  It gets challenging with these sort of personal projects with so much self perspective involved to it, I hope it goes well with the MINA requirements or expectations of the shortlisting committee.

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PROJECT 3- VIDEO SKETCH 1- DANCING FOUNTAIN!

I was visiting Dubai for the first time after 18 years. I was so excited, that I really couldn’t make sense of what I was doing. I was with friends on this trip, and it happened to be a very abrupt plan to visit the country. It was a 2 day trip, and I had nothing planned, no research done on where to go, what to do.

So it turned out to be a very spontaneous on the go kind of the trip. We went to the very famous Dubai Mall, and I had not heard of the Dancing fountain there. I was told there’s a surprise for me, So i was very excited and just looked around, waited for something to happen, and out of the blue, I see the dancing fountain in action with one of my favorite songs in the background.

I couldn’t even reach to my Camera bag to grab my DSLR, but thanks to my phone, I was able to get hold of the moment and shot the dance. I simply loved how the chemistry of dancing fountain and music was created with the sort of effects that literally made me feel as if real people where dancing to the song.

I didn’t have a clue that in my excitement mode, I missed out on recording the video in the right direction. But then, It’s a plain mobile shot video, without any effects. And I couldn’t ask more out of the outcome and final look of the recording. I actually find this interesting the way it came out.

PROJECT 3- VIDEO SKETCH 5- MYSTIC DANCE!

Colors and abstract art, is what is more or less my focus in this term’s Post Industrial Media Project. We have to create a video that we need to submit in the MINA competition. Its been an interesting discovery to how Mobile Videography can be a means of creating a media project or a film that is different from the conventional film making techniques, but it offers us to give a perspective of our own in the work we produce.

In order to carry out the project led research, I along with my group members, picked up SPONTANEITY as an affordance. The affordance of this device to be spontaneous and up beat about experimentation lets us be creative in our individual capacity and enables to stand out in terms of our creations.

In this video sketch. I used TWO different pictures I shot randomly at Swanston Street. One is of a building and the other one is an abstract painting. I then used the app REPIX on my phone to modify these images. Repix is available at App store and Google Play. This app allows you to add different  effects to your selected image. You can ‘Remix’ the images with filters and further add effects such as FLARES, RAIN DRIPS, DRIPS, GEOME, DOTTER and a lot more.  Majority of the features this app offers are free and the ones that are not  free can’t be used without purchase. The app doesn’t generate a watermark on the final image, so it’s safe to use for professional projects as well.

You get a lot of room to play with this app.. In my sketch I tried the technique of editing the images through Repix and then placed and original picture next to the edited one in a timeline manner. I accidentally ended up using one of the two images I shot of the building that was reflecting colored lights. I some how liked the effect it was giving with the slight jerk to the video. I then reduced the time per frame to 0.05 seconds per frame and repeated the edited sequence on the timeline thrice.

It was on purpose that I didn’t actually show the transition of images but to give it a high speed motion as the look and feel of the sketch became something that I want to further explore in my individual project.