Studio Reflection_Grace_s3574544_Assignment #5

Based on our studio description, I quote and gather our objectives as follows:

• “to communicate Melbourne to those who have never been here”
• “[as outsiders,] to construct versions of Gerona that allow new perspectives on the city”
• “to create films which encapsulate the ebbs and flows of city life formed through the perspectives of those who live there”

I think each group has taken creative liberties to meet the above-mentioned objectives. The screening showed a diversity of different travel essays or travel documentaries. By participating in the screening, we were able to observe how a group of viewers might react to our videos as the film makers intended to. Viewers can be regarded as a test audience and help predict how the general public might receive our work and how we can proceed to make any changes.

There were a couple of moments in the beginning of the video that I hoped would be comical. The first moment is the juxtaposition of two shots. Each shot shows a wall of graffiti. The first is from Melbourne and the other, Girona. The Melbourne graffiti depicts the profile of a white male, with downturned lips, accompanied with his speech bubble that asks, “who’s gonna make the gravy?” I thought it funny that the following shot is a graffiti of a smiling woman shot at a high angle. It was as though the shot of the lady is an answer to the man’s question. This composition of two shots together, set up as a joke, also brings up a degree of sexism. Nobody laughed.

Positioned as part of a travel documentary about Melbourne and Girona, it associates the existence of sexism in both cities. Since I am uninformed about the extent of this social issue present in both locations, if at all, it might have been in bad taste to include such a commentary.

I am happy people laughed at the comic timing of how on-screen text “well” was held out long enough for “let’s continue the conversation” to act as a punch line. This is the second moment.

Watching everybody’s work together also allow us to observe any patterns in the use and manipulation of our shared Girona footage. Some shots appear in at least two videos. The shot of the ferris wheel may have been favoured due to the clarity of the image and stability of the pan. Some videos document similar locations. Shots of a corridor in Girona is matched with shots of a corridor in Melbourne of H&M on Bourke St. Such patterns highlight how people think in similar ways about making sense of a city and connecting their knowledge of two cities.

I take away some learning points through watching our peers’ video. “Arterial” by Magnus Muir and Tal Sardone is a poetic documentary that coherently relates the body’s circulatory systems with traffic in both cities. The shots are cut to the music. There is also a wide number and variety of shots. I am inspired to think about choosing accompanying music during pre-production and imagine how it could lead the editing early on. I also want to collect more footage from around Melbourne and other cities.

Obtaining voice recording of residents about their lived experience of a city and using speech to lead the visual edit is also an interesting way of managing the production process. I imagine Mitch Reid, Wade Su and Susie Su took on that approach for their “Merona”.

To continue with editing my video, I would actually redo the whole thing and experiment with different approaches. The only factor that remains would be the purpose of “Relational Space”, to observe similar conventions within different cities.