This course is an introduction to the history and theory of participatory media production. Motivations toward greater participation in media arts have three core agendas: 1) empowerment of people traditionally seen more as "subjects" than active producers of culture; 2) challenging the idea of the artist as solitary genius working outside of society; and 3) the use of media art to build and sustain community.
Monday, September 22, 2008
'Pass the Camera,' Collaborative Production using In-Camera Edting
The opening is great: fun, energetic, descriptive, promising! But I can’t figure out what it has to do with the “performative” element of the video at all (the long scene of the man and his plants). It’s like there are 2 videos here and they are competing with each other, working against each other.
Also, the authorship question looms: who are the “people” you asked to shoot? When does the camera change hands? What did you specifically ask them to do? Who is the “main character” if the rest of the video elements (trees, empty mailbox, etc.) are made by different people? Is he supposed to stand in for the rest of the participants? Or is he just one of them?
Formally, it would seem that the emphasis is very much on these performative scenes (they take up most of the tape – at least 6 o the 8 minutes). I’m not sure what to make of this, given that the opening tells me the piece is about the POV’s of many different participants.
I’d like to hear you two talk about the process with this piece (how, why, who?). It occurs to me that the process questions will be very important to us this semester! What did you tell your participants specifically to do? How did you plan to give equal weight to each of their shots (or not)?
In other notes: much of this looks nice. You guys did a lot with the in-camera aspect of this (specifically, adding music). The music is confusing (is it sarcastic? or earnest?). You seem to have had few technical or aesthetic issues. Next time work on structure, clarity and purpose.
The opening was really energetic and fun. I couldn't wait to find out how the directions were going to work out. The performance pieces were confusing. Were those John's idea of what makes him happy and sad? And what about the remaining segments of the mailboxes, cemetery, rock bed and leaves? Were those other people's idea of what makes them happy or sad? The disproportional time spent on the performance piece made the rest seem insignificant and random. I'm not sure who were the "participants" I was lost to whether there intends to be come kind of connection between the performance piece and the rest.
The use of music was successful, though. It made the performance pieces very mysterious.
The opening was very exciting! Was it meant to purposefully contrast with the slower pace of the rest of the project?
I really liked the music! When I was thinking about doing the project with in-camera edits, all I could focus on were the limitations. However, you were able to create some pretty cool effects by thinking outside of the box!
I was a little confused about which scenes were happy and which scenes were sad. While this ambiguity probably had a purpose in the context of the film, but since everything was so abstract it might have been helpful to the audience to differentiate.
The opening scene seemed incongruent with the remainder of the work. Despite the inconsistency, I found the following scenes provocative and well-organized. The inclusion of music was original and well placed, I especially appreciated (unless I'm mistaken) the Shire music in the first scene following the intro. I thought the organization was superb, alternating shorter scenes around the longest scenes. I was very impressed with the whistling you were able to interject seamlessly despite using in-camera editing.
I am also as curious as Penny: Where does the participatory factor come into play? Was it only you and John that worked together to make this? Or did you involve other people?
I would agree that John's Performance Art Piece is strong enough that I think it could have easily made up the entire video.
A funny thing happened to Brad and me: we lost our original footage one night because somehow we ended up with two brand new tapes instead of one brand new and the other with our footage. It was nearing Monday's class and we had to shoot what we could. I went around shooting several people and was hoping Brad would cut one of my scenes and others as he saw fit to then film other people's interpretations of what makes them sad and happy. Sorry about our makeshift project.
The film begins with cards revealing to us the premise - getting various people to show what makes them happy and then sometimes sad.
I, like a lot of people it seems, am not clear about when those various people's stories begin and end. The general pace of the video seems consistent, but the content is disjointed and unclear for me sometimes.
However, I think the technical skill demonstrated in this piece is superb. Perhaps with less abstract content, those skills could be even more enhanced in the culmination of an ultimately more powerful video.
1/ Thanks for all the omments, will have to think about them some more...
2/ Mostly refer to John (above), but the sequence of rocks near the end was what made a friend sad (the colors, he said). Also, the structure was semi-incidental, I thought I'd add short sequences at the end to close the video back out, and also because we were over on time already..
9 comments:
The opening is great: fun, energetic, descriptive, promising! But I can’t figure out what it has to do with the “performative” element of the video at all (the long scene of the man and his plants). It’s like there are 2 videos here and they are competing with each other, working against each other.
Also, the authorship question looms: who are the “people” you asked to shoot? When does the camera change hands? What did you specifically ask them to do? Who is the “main character” if the rest of the video elements (trees, empty mailbox, etc.) are made by different people? Is he supposed to stand in for the rest of the participants? Or is he just one of them?
Formally, it would seem that the emphasis is very much on these performative scenes (they take up most of the tape – at least 6 o the 8 minutes). I’m not sure what to make of this, given that the opening tells me the piece is about the POV’s of many different participants.
I’d like to hear you two talk about the process with this piece (how, why, who?). It occurs to me that the process questions will be very important to us this semester! What did you tell your participants specifically to do? How did you plan to give equal weight to each of their shots (or not)?
In other notes: much of this looks nice. You guys did a lot with the in-camera aspect of this (specifically, adding music). The music is confusing (is it sarcastic? or earnest?). You seem to have had few technical or aesthetic issues. Next time work on structure, clarity and purpose.
Also, John & Bradley: please break down your collaborative process for us. Thanks.
The opening was really energetic and fun. I couldn't wait to find out how the directions were going to work out.
The performance pieces were confusing. Were those John's idea of what makes him happy and sad? And what about the remaining segments of the mailboxes, cemetery, rock bed and leaves? Were those other people's idea of what makes them happy or sad? The disproportional time spent on the performance piece made the rest seem insignificant and random. I'm not sure who were the "participants" I was lost to whether there intends to be come kind of connection between the performance piece and the rest.
The use of music was successful, though. It made the performance pieces very mysterious.
The opening was very exciting! Was it meant to purposefully contrast with the slower pace of the rest of the project?
I really liked the music! When I was thinking about doing the project with in-camera edits, all I could focus on were the limitations. However, you were able to create some pretty cool effects by thinking outside of the box!
I was a little confused about which scenes were happy and which scenes were sad. While this ambiguity probably had a purpose in the context of the film, but since everything was so abstract it might have been helpful to the audience to differentiate.
The opening scene seemed incongruent with the remainder of the work. Despite the inconsistency, I found the following scenes provocative and well-organized. The inclusion of music was original and well placed, I especially appreciated (unless I'm mistaken) the Shire music in the first scene following the intro. I thought the organization was superb, alternating shorter scenes around the longest scenes. I was very impressed with the whistling you were able to interject seamlessly despite using in-camera editing.
I am also as curious as Penny: Where does the participatory factor come into play? Was it only you and John that worked together to make this? Or did you involve other people?
I would agree that John's Performance Art Piece is strong enough that I think it could have easily made up the entire video.
A funny thing happened to Brad and me: we lost our original footage one night because somehow we ended up with two brand new tapes instead of one brand new and the other with our footage. It was nearing Monday's class and we had to shoot what we could. I went around shooting several people and was hoping Brad would cut one of my scenes and others as he saw fit to then film other people's interpretations of what makes them sad and happy. Sorry about our makeshift project.
The film begins with cards revealing to us the premise - getting various people to show what makes them happy and then sometimes sad.
I, like a lot of people it seems, am not clear about when those various people's stories begin and end. The general pace of the video seems consistent, but the content is disjointed and unclear for me sometimes.
However, I think the technical skill demonstrated in this piece is superb. Perhaps with less abstract content, those skills could be even more enhanced in the culmination of an ultimately more powerful video.
1/ Thanks for all the omments, will have to think about them some more...
2/ Mostly refer to John (above), but the sequence of rocks near the end was what made a friend sad (the colors, he said). Also, the structure was semi-incidental, I thought I'd add short sequences at the end to close the video back out, and also because we were over on time already..
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