In August, I received a phone call from a friend requesting I edit some footage into a four minute clip. Nothing unusual there. What was unusual was that the footage provided consisted of some of the most powerful documentary scenes I had ever seen. It was shot by the partner of a woman who knowingly had to deliver a premature stillborn child. After the birth the baby was taken home for three days : a facilitation for the initiation of the grieving process. The partner shot video throughout this period to provide a sense of closure for their loss. The child’s name was Nicholas Grady Drake. Both parents were practicing psychologists.
The footage is immediate and direct(verite), and yet could also be classified as observational and interactive.

That this documentary was made at all is attributable to the conflation of technical and social changes that have occurred: the acceptance of the lightweight, inexpensive videocamera as a commonplace, everyday tool of documentation and the recognition that healing is facilitated by facing life’s realities, not burying them in the subconscious.
Consider how, thirty years ago, men were not allowed into hospital wards to share in the birth of their children. Consider how, ten years ago, before the reality TV invasion of Survivor, Big Brother and Idol, Australians would generally shy away from a camera pointed in their direction. It was interesting when I travelled to the USA around 1995 as a photographer(video, stills), to recognise the extreme difference in reaction: in America, the media of the street was embraced: everyone had an opinion and a willingness to tell it to the camera. Here, it seemed, was the postmodernism of Baudrillard and Michel Foucaul at work. I tend to agree withMarie-Laure Ryan when, in her Journal of Cult Media she states that

…through this cross-medial narrative embedding, The Truman Show invites us to reflect upon the idiosyncrasies and differences in narrative potential of TV and cinema. Even though cinema and TV sometimes transmit the same material, the experience of a movie shown on a TV screen is significantly different from its experience in a theater. A movie theater envelopes us like a dark cave and creates the optimal conditions for an immersive experience.

However (and I think the Nic Drake clips stands as testament here), I cannot subscribe to her notion that

a movie shown on a TV screen is a far less immersive experience, visually speaking, because it competes with countless potential sources of distraction.

This may have been true prior to the TIVO and home cinema, but audiences now have far greater control over when, how and where they absorb their media.
The fascination we have with the characters of “Reality TV” is attributable to humanity’s inexhaustable search for meaning in a complex world.

We are only truly ourselves in the familiar circumstances of our daily life, and preferably behind closed doors, when we no longer play the game of social behavior. The “false,” controlled self of public life is thus opposed to the “true,” impulsive self of privacy, which the Reality show can only hope to capture when the participants forget the camera and let raw feelings speak out. Ryan

This, then, is the theatre that still fascinates. The extraordinary power of self-effacing action and thought in front of the camera is a potent scipt that I believe be the driver of documentary for some time to come.

Guanchi Mate was always going to be an ambitious project. Apart from the challenging nature of the content, the group dynamic was not clearly established from the beginning. Lindsay joined the project in Semester 2 and her account of this is worthy of consideration. Rather than ascribe blame- lets face it, we were all dysfunctional on some level- it seems more pertinent to consider what we have achieved.
Firstly, despite our episodic bouts of conflict, we survived. I consider the ideal team to be comprised of strong-willed individuals that are prepared to consider the opinion of the team, to strongly defend their own opinion but also be prepared to allow this opinion to be conflated so the goals of the project may be achieved.
To a certain extent, the more disparate the opinion, the greater the sounding board for ideas, and this ultimately presents the most defined outcomes.

As Sara’s blog entry so clearly illustrates, trust and respect are the principal tenets required in order to achieve a working relationship with the character’s of the documentary. The other key observation regarding documentary is the absolute passion for the material that the makers must possess. The documentary road is long and protracted. The only way to deliver outstanding content that is vibrant, dynamic and engaging is for the director and producer to also possess these attributes.
Working with artists has proven to be particularly difficult. A key obstruction has been our lack of form. It is the classic Catch 22: how can you demonstrate the ability to create great documentaries when you have not already produced great documentaries? A solution to this conundrum is to find an opening(in this case, our first artist, Ping Li Jiang), and focus upon achieving a pilot that demonstrates our style and format. This can then be presented to other prospective artists in support of our proposal. The proposal itself must reflect an approach built upon thorough research of the artist: we must exceed their expectation and then explode their sensibilities- they must be convinced of our capability and excited by the prospect of being involved in the project. They must be shown what is in it for them and that the outcome will enhance their reputation, not harm it.
In order to establish my format and generate some work-in-progress content to show prospective artists, I have commenced work on a secondary/ancilliary documentary concerning artists. It relates to the group show currently showing at the Counihan gallery: Anita-a group show. I personally know all the artists, and have been a principal organiser in the 2 year build up for this show. Having documented the opening and the Public Health forum and having built a rapport with industry professionals from the media, the mental health field and art critics, this presents as a very opportune story that will demonstrate capability and style. This documentary has the capacity to be exactly the resource required to convince the established artists to commit to Guan Chi Mate.

On the Mac platform, these two programs have become the foundation of broadcast production. The power and speed of Final Cut is widely recognised throughout the industry as is the rapidity of its acceptance and evolution.
Both are extremely powerful tools and, resultantly, are difficult to master. I have been using Final Cut Pro since its inception, and have seen it grow in synch with the rapid evolution of digital video. In its latest incarnation it would seem to have overhauled Avid through its abilty to render on-the-fly and with it’s animated text generator Livetype. Genius DV at Stetson University(seriously? a university named after a hat?) provides an unbiased comparison of FCP HD and Avid Pro HD.
The choice obviously comes down to which platform is used, as FCP is a Mac-only application.

Resources for FCP Studio HD
Ken Stone’s FCP site provides a good series of tutorials and resources

atomiclearning.com/finalcutpro provides some good introductory video tutorials on FCP settings, preferences and basic functions

users.design.ucla.edu provides a comprehensive course in FCP, if a little out of date. Still, most of the notes are directly applicable to current version 5.0.

www.creativecow.net provides tutorials on travel mattes, compositing and capture cards/codecs.

digitalvideoediting.com is an excellent site providing over 100 detailed techniques. Current and up to date with version 5.

vtc.com provides training videos on Introduction to Digital Production, New in Version 5, System Configuration and Video Capture.

dvcreators.net

lafcpug.org

kenstone.net

www.animationsforvideo.com

www.digitalmedi0atraining.com

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/resources.html

Click here for video. [ QuickTime ]

After much persistence, last week I was able to upload the first of the mLearning clips to the raws server remotely(ie from home). Unfortunately, this server is unreliable, and I have not been able to connect over the past few days. I was able to source the code required to prevent the clip auto-playing upon connecting to the blog, but the insertion of this code radically impacted upon the page formatting of the blog, and so had to be removed. Technical issues such as this act as impedence to this project’s progress, and if this project was to be implemented as a production, I would need to establish a more stable server-client connection or at least have a Technical/IT Services operator working on my team.

The clip.
The use of elliptical editing works well as a construct for shortening the length of the clip, and the insertion of title slides prevents the jarring caused by jump cuts. After realising that a thirty second clip reduced to 150Kb led to extreme distortion of the moving image, we determined it was preferrable to shorten the clip to 15-18 seconds and maintain a reasonable image quality.

Trial settings for the first video:
compression:H.264 codec, Size: 128 x 96
Sound: mpg-4 audio, 32 khz, 16 bit, mono

I’ve also discovered that googleoffer free video uploads…

given the constraint of getting the movie under 150KB forces the content developer of the clip to make a difficult decision:
at what point does the visual narrative become less important than the aural. Given mobile phones are traditionally aural is not an adequate argument for truncating the visual beyond recognition.

An alternative is to split our 300Kb clip into 2 parts, maintaining the visual continuity. An alternative discussed with Jenny is that the video could be represented as stills. This may be effective but only in terms of the ability to set the frame rate to 1(down from 15 or 24).
The counterpoint to this argument is that many mobile distribution models are already capable of transmitting content above 300Kb (which seems to be the magical figure for distributing good visual content for 30 sec clips). As Rupert has said, there exists a parallax betweeen the scenario of early jpg content to web( say 1995) and the current limitations for mobile GP3 distribution: in 12 months this argument will become irrelevant…

Briefs, of course, are about constraints, and Rupert and I have decided to not sacrifice a reasonable level of image quality in order to meet the 150Kb constraint. Rather, we need to make 10 to 15 sec clips that work effectively. The ad industry has always embraced the 15 sec TVC for its economic(friendly to client) advantage. Sure, it is supported by the heavy saturation campaign of its 30 sec adjunct, but it is still capable of conveying its message within fifteen seconds.

disclaimer: I rarely consider advertising to present anything other than economic, as opposed to moral, advantage… in general terms it is the malaise of our generation…
unaccountable, sans pro bono, cynical and destructive. It is a virus.
The axiom presents: in order to change it, one must work within it. Surely there must be another way…
but compared to the empyre debate it almost seems empirical…

Shoni has changed blog spaces recently, as have I, and has raised a few issues regarding spamming of her blogsome site. I haven’t had this issue apart from some weird trackbacking from some unknown source… It does raise the issue of trackback compatibility between different blog providers Apart from this, I don’t think it matters which blog provider is used as long as it functions reasonably reliably. I’ve had no problems with Word Press and Blogsome, but that’s not to say I won’t. The market is fickle–people will rapidly divert to other providers in droves if the perception is that the service is faulty-it is the one factor that affords a sense that providers will be motivated to make their service work efficiently.
I back up my blog entries anyway…and use multiple blogs for specific outcomes…

For those of you still using Wordpress, I’ve come across a great resource:
http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/, which has a bunch of useful stuff for improving the look, feel and functionality of your blogs.

What did you think about Matt’s idea that the storyboards are actually the B list, and that the DOP should seek out the frame/angle on the set- that this is the A shot list?

I have been a subscriber to the empyre discussion, or should I say a causal observer, for the high rhetoric and level of conversation proves too daunting to engage. Still, the argument is always fascinating when I can understand it, and annoying as hell when it gets lost in diatribe. Either way it elicits a strong response and has a dynamic flow fused from globally disparate sources. The theme for October is Digital Writing, and I received a mail today that made a significant point about the nature of blogs:

On the ‘conformism that dominates blog behaviour’: this will be very old ideas to many, so sorry if i’m stating the obvious here, but anyway: i think it’s rather the coding work behind the blog publishing apps that’s dominating the behaviour, and perhaps even the content and style of blog writing. It’s probably just a very temporary thing, just like early ‘html writing’ was restricted to the writers knowledge or access to html writing, nowadays most bloggers are extremely dependent on what a blog pub app allows them to do easily, and of course most blog systems are commercial copies of systems that are most succesfull, which doesn’t make them necessarily the best, to say the least.

An strict factual analysis of what a blog system actually does, stripping the publishing(?) process of its metaphorical language like ‘posting’,'archiving’, ‘permanent link’, ‘feed’ etc. would show that while having aseemingly rich potential for ‘customisation’- changing your colour schemes and all - , most blogs are in fact one trick ponies actually forcing people
to write bloggishly and style their blogs according to fashion and the rules of what was once called ‘usability’. Blogs thus promote categorical writing/thinking and labeling with a rather obsessive addiction to what’srecent, that’s not good or bad, its a fact, and what Friedrich labels commercial interest in another code addition to these files, is the inescapable process responsible for this outcome, not the people using it (only in so far as they are co-responsible for that process). As much as we would like to believe in the ‘freedom’ of the internet, code and digital writing is essentially (also) a power game, a recursive process of Power encoding itself, in a similar fashion as Derrida has analysed the justice system as a system of power writing.

Dirk Vekemans
dv@Neue Kathedrale des erotischen Elends
www.vilt.net/nkdee

and the response from Adrian Miles:

from my (blogging and hypertext) perspective this belies a
misunderstanding about what a blog is.

I write a blog. It supports trackback. You write in your blog and
link to my post. This connection is recorded by my blog as a
trackback. Where does my blog begin and end? Yours? I stopped writing
12 months ago. Trackbacks still accrue. is my blog ‘ended’? If links
are the economy here (and they are) then it seems specious to think
that my blog is ‘finished’ or has an ‘end’.

All works have a literal beginning and end. This was done to death in
naive criticism of hypertext circa 1996. They are not nonlinear. They
are multilinear. Where does my blog begin? the first post? why? Since
that is now at the *end* of the temporal fragments (if you wanted to
read in the usual reverse temporal order). Perhaps it begins with the
first link in to my blog? To the blog or to an individual post? Does
that matter? All of these are beginnings, all legitimate. So yes,
there is a beginning, but it isn’t *the* beginning. And that is a
difference.

Blogs are emergent ecologies that rely on links. Links are the
fundamental transaction. (See Weinberger, Walker, Tosca, and myself
for stuff on this.) They are an excess (in Bataille’s sense of a
general economy) that blogs celebrate, even when business is busy
trying to appropriate them (but as an excess this will always only be
partial). They are porous to the network in ways that most other
writing to the web, certainly everyday popular writing, never
achieved. Every current system of authority in blogging (as far as I
know), relies on links in to determine authority. I cannot write
links in. I am subject to the network for that.

This is exciting and novel. It is emergent, it has strange attractors
and threshold states. And yes, there are bad blogs. There are bad
novels too, and bad films (music, dance, plays). But the worst blogs
are those that mistake network ecologies for diary writing.

cheers
Adrian Miles

http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vlog

Taking a branch from the Lars von Trier tree of film philosophy, the process of creating a clip for mLearning/mobile distribution is simplified by establishing obstructions. For the sake of this exercise, the constraints are:
• 300 KB clip maximum
• extremely expedient construction of message
• creating a story structure that can be serialised

In order to come under the very low ceiling of transmissable bandwidth, we took the approach that we could maximise video quality by applying our knowledge of jpg and mpg compression. First, we could dramatically reduce file size by shooting against a keyed background, in this case white. Secondly, we could make further reductions by dumping the RGB content to mono and then grade for a single colour, in this case, blue.

The concept to shoot a vox pops allowed a lean Q&A format to be adopted, with static title slides for each question further reducing image content. The interviews, thus heavily truncated, could then be separated by character and sent episodically.