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Journal Prompt #3

Video Editing

Annotate a piece of video. It can be a piece of video art, a segment of a film or television show, an advert, something online  - any piece of moving image with cuts in it.

Take note of the following:

- the number and frequency of the cuts

- the duration between the cuts

- what purpose each cut serves

- are transitions used or are they hard cuts?

- how is time and space established via the cuts?

- what are the relationship between shots - graphical, compositional, aesthetic

etc

how does sound work with or against the cuts?

Chantal Akerman - Je Tu Il Elle

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Journal Prompt #1

Shoot Something. Beg/Borrow/Hire/Loan a video camera (not your phone!) and shoot something, anything. I want to know what you are interested in visually, conceptually, politically, socially, aesthetically, and the point of this journal prompt is to get you to start committing some of your ideas to video. This does not have to be a finished work, it doesn't have to be edited or post-produced in any way. I want 1 minute maximum of a video sketch of something you are interested in. Once you have your footage, upload to Vimeo or Youtube and send me the link (and password if it is private). I will compile all the links and distribute to the group, so we can have a look at everyone's footage before discussing on Monday in class (23rd July – next Monday).

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Journal Prompt #2

Television: the video medium is the child of television and cinema. If cinema is a montage medium, a series of still images cut together to create the illusion of continuous space and movement, television is the medium of flow- a constant stream of interconnected images, with no beginning or end. For this video journal prompt, I'd like you to watch some TV and try to observe and note some of the formal conventions at work- instead of being a passive receiver, I want you to think about how TV is constructed:

Eg what is the news? How is a story constructed? What are the timings, how do they change over a program? How do the images and words interrelate? Are there invisible conventions that you take for granted, that you may not have noticed before? What are the shot sizes and how do they differ in different programs? Ads, reality TV, drama, soap, sport- anything.

The invention of TV is pretty extraordinary in the way its changed news and how we receive it. Before it there was only news in the morning and then you would have to wait for the evening newspaper, and that was only local news, if you wanted to hear about something from overseas it could take weeks to get to you. Now there is news 24/7 with whole channels dedicated to it. Watching the news and actually thinking about it visually, its pretty overwhelming.

There are the actual images, which might involve several different videos at once, followed by accompanying text, as well as subtitles to give more information. On top of that is news headlines flashing along the bottom of the screen, accompanied by the weather and time of day. For me this is how I would view the news on average and I can take everything it, but when I force myself to stop and view from another perspective, its a bit much. It really does remind me of that argument that in todays day and age we can never be doing one thing at a time, and must always multitask.

It’s also pretty interesting to view TV as a continuous flow, instead of stopping and starting between shows and ad breaks. Tv delivers everything it means to, talking about overcrowded news shows there is no mistaking the intention of what is being conveyed.

In this sense its difficult for me to talk about TV in terms of art, there are definitely ‘artistic’ and interesting shows, but put in comparison that TV is never stopping what do those shows mean? Nothing because something mindless will come after it at some point anyway, TV is just a huge group exhibition but no one has consulted each other on the work.

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Journal Prompt #3

Video Editing

Annotate a piece of video. It can be a piece of video art, a segment of a film or television show, an advert, something online  - any piece of moving image with cuts in it.

Take note of the following:

- the number and frequency of the cuts

- the duration between the cuts

- what purpose each cut serves

- are transitions used or are they hard cuts?

- how is time and space established via the cuts?

- what are the relationship between shots - graphical, compositional, aesthetic

etc

how does sound work with or against the cuts?

A scene from Chantal Akerman’s “Je Tu Il Elle” 1974

The cuts are all fairly regular, either cutting to black or to the next image. The duration is not on some particular schedule, with either long breaks between shots or short. The cuts serve as a passing of time, every time there is a cut it is the next day, or the same day but the furniture has been moved. Time is established by the cuts so as not to ‘waste time’, which is funny considering that the shots are generally silent and there is no movement, but this means we do not have to see the character moving every bit of the room.

There is a mixture of cut times, mainly hard cuts but there is also a transition to black.

The shots are all from the same room, again with furniture moved, occasionally we are show this movement so we understand who is doing it.

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Journal Prompt #4

The Dulux Gallery, Ground Floor Melbourne School of Design Building

Eugenia Lim –

The Ambassador Series In this three-part project, Eugenia takes on a Mao-like persona who sits halfway between truth and fantasy –  dressed in a gold lamé suit and matching bowl haircut. Throughout each of her works, the Ambassador takes on new roles in uncovering the Australian-Asian narrative – drilling down into racial politics, the social costs of manufacturing and the role of architecture in shaping society.

Part 3:

The Australian Ugliness

Eugenia’s latest project surveys the role of architecture in marking a society and shaping national identity. The work has been titled after the bestselling book by Robin Boyd, arguably one of Australia’s most prominent architects and Modernists. Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness denounces the conservative, kitsch and decorative tastes of post-war 1950s Australia, warning against parochialism and insularity. Lim will build upon these ideas, transporting them into 21st century Australia.

(Info taken from:

https://mgnsw.org.au/sector/exhibitions/coming-

soon/eugenia-lim-ambassador/)

Questions to consider:

How does Lim’s work grapple with the role of Australian architecture and those who fit in its space? Do you think this was done successfully? How does the character of The Ambassador function within this piece? In your opinion, how do the three screens work alongside each other? Were they necessary? How do they work with / against one another? What do you think of the installation set up? Was it successful?

It’s very interesting because this work excluded me but managed to bring me in as well. Seeing buildings that I am familiar with, and people who look like me and I can recognise as typical Australian’s made me think that it was just that, a typical Australian place.  The use of three screens also drew me in this way, as they wrapped around me and took me to that space. It was the actions of the Ambassador that made me feel excluded, which is strange because they are action I see all the time. Posing, taking photos, even wearing a golden lamé suit is not unbearably crazy to me, but something in it pushed me away, like it was a news segment being filmed for another country. I can see it and I’m there but I don’t speak the language so I move on.

The Ambassador to me honestly just felt like a tour guide or something along those lines, it was all just a showcase of the space.

The set up I felt was successful, it was quite a strange space, but again I could view it as if it were another country. Traditions and buildings I don’t understand. Its very strange to look at buildings I know from an outside perspective, or as someone viewing it from another place and time.

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Journal Prompt 5

Find a piece of video with an interesting soundtrack – describe it carefully and think about how it works with the images. Is it naturalistic? Is it an abstract relationship? Is it emotional or unemotional? Pace, tempo, volume, musicality, naturalistic, artificial, diagetic, non-diagetic etc What effect does the sound track produce with the images? Watch the same footage without sound and compare the effect.

Final scene from ‘La Cugina” 1974 

(Skip to 47 mins but it is a bit 18+ I won’t lie)

Honestly this scene KILLS ME. It’s definitely funny, but I guess artistic as well.

The soundtrack sounds very similar to the one from ‘Fantastic Planet’, which seems so absurd in my head to be played over a 70’s Italian sex scene. That being said I can most definitely hear the typical 70s porno  bass.The slow motion and echoing of voices is so funny. I think its supposed to convey tension and heightened emotions, but it just seems silly. Particularly the topic of conversation. Personally, I think ‘Nini’ and his horse is the savior of this scene.

I guess you could call it an abstract relationship, although I personally think the music suits. It just seems so funny in a conventional film, it wasn’t wildly popular but it wasn’t a small arthouse film either.

When talking about tempo, volume, etc, it really does portray a kind of intimacy, but still in thinking that its so hard for me to see past the hilarity and absurdity of it.  

Without sound I can definitely take it more seriously, but the cuts to Nini still make me laugh. Removing that though, it just becomes a regular old sex scene from a movie, uncomfortable, I can imagine some low sensuous music over the top. It loses its magic and just becomes bland. I think the sound is so important to this scene, its what first caught my attention and stopped me from turning off the film to avoid watching something embarrassing.

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Journal Prompt #6

Find a video art piece that you really like, either online or from the library. Write up your impressions of the show/screening/online presentation in your video journal with reference to how the work was framed by the way it is presented, how you are positioned as a viewer, how sound and light is dealt with, where the artist and their work sits in context to other video art practice local and international.

You can find examples of work at numerous places. Here are some:

http://ubu.com/film

http://scanlines.net

http://www.videoartchive.org.au/

You can also do a general search on Youtube / Vimeo

You can choose a piece that was shown in class. Look at each week’s rundown for links to the materials.

Chris Mann - Maybe if you hit it hard (2008)

I think looking at the initial set up its easy for me to think “Another typical art video”. An old man wearing glasses and a black turtleneck, a spot light and black curtain’, I’ve seen it.

Hearing it, well thats very different. I couldn’t make any sense of what was going on and I couldn’t work out what relationship the words had to one another. I had to skip forward to see if anything more exciting happened. It was only when I clicked the link to Chris Mann’s website that I found out this work was a poem.

This was so amazing to me, I’m not sure why. I suppose it’s a fairly simple idea but it really stuck with me. I hate poetry being read out loud, it can never sound anything but pretentious. This video really made me feel differently, it was more like watching a story.

Poetry being used for video art is not something extraordinary, but generally its uses that are what makes it so. Whether its sung, transcribed, painted, there are a lot of uses for it. It kind of made me feel like I was watching an old man who couldn’t remember how to speak, or like a speech had been edited so the larger sections had been edited out.