I’m watching a lot of DVDs at the moment. I have neither television nor a fast connection, therefore, I take advantage to study the cinema. It’s a good way of spending time, of being transported into other timezones, towards other cities
I constantly find more information as the days’ progress
Only a few more days till my group’s multicamera and I’ll be busy every day until the end of the week. On the positive side, I haven’t been to the student bar to socialise. I have busied myself with work instead and my productivity has gone up.
I no longer see the appeal of going to a bar or nightclub where there are three or four people checking for trouble makers. Where alcohol is served to intellectuals great conversations ensue, where it is served to the less enlightened there is nothing but “ruine de l’ame.”
Last night I dropped by the library and explored the index pages, looking for information on documents. I found something about Arte and the films it selects. I found a few articles about Chinese cinemas and tributes to Jean Rouch. I photocopied them and have yet to read through them and digest the information that they provide.
I am getting closer and closer to the point at which I feel I can begin interviewing the relevant people as part of my research. That should be the best part of the work I’m doing at the moment.
I want to try making an observational documentary again, exploring new ideas, and getting an insider’s understanding of what I’ve been studying.
Today’s been a long day, beginning at 9 with lectures and finishing at 1800 with tape logging and transcribing. It passed through some studio work, laying the floor, and such.
Tomorrow we start at 9am and continue till night in order to get all our shots finished with. We’ll get a lunch break so have to factor that into any planning.
I should have an early night but it’s halls and there’s alcohol around so others are drinking the night away and forgetting to adjust their volume control.
For the past hour or more, I’ve been listening to music and working on my dissertation and I’ve just hit 9500 words on my dissertation (disso as it’s affectionately referred to) and it feels great. I’m so happy that I have two weeks in which to proofread, re-write, and improve what I’ve written.
It’s the first time in my life that I finish the writing part of my assignment two weeks earlier than the deadline. I’m not crying victory yet (french expression: mieux vaut ne pas crier victoire), after all, I’d expect myself to do at least another ten to fifteen hours of re-writing. I still have to format the references properly and look for video captures that can help illustrate my points so that the layout earns extra points.
Reading this post you’d be led to believe that I take this work seriously, and the truth is I do. I started it last summer when I came back to London looking for work. I applied to at least twenty jobs without luck and as I was growing demoralised I dropped by the library when no one else was there and borrowed as many books as I thought I could carry without a surtax on the plane. Over the summer I worked through over twenty chapters about film theory and created a documentary over 50 pages long and 25,000 words in depth. I also watched hundreds of hours of documentaries. Aside from the website, it’s the biggest project I’ve ever taken on.
Directing a Multicam is easy, after being a cameraman at many conferences. it’s a matter of knowing which shots you would like to have had with just one camera but couldn’t get. It’s easy, switching from one source to another and making sure the pacing is right and that there are not too many screw-ups.
Overall it went well and I enjoyed it. It was different today as I was a simple camera operator. I had to concentrate on getting the right shot and fight away the desire to sit down or do something else.
On both days the last speaker was the more entertaining of the day.
I urgently recommend that you challenge the election results in relation to Salima. She won by only 25 votes and there are a few people saying that they would have voted differently had they known what the fliers contained before they voted.
The fact that someone failed their first year, only to become SU president six years later is utterly unnaceptable. You’re students and you’re working hard in order to build up knowledge and prestige for the course you are studying. If yor SU president failed their first year then what right do they have to represent “students” ?
I’ve worked hard, Martin has worked hard, Phil has worked hard. They’re good people on the campus with the most activities, the student radio and more
If Martin missed out by 25 votes then this, in my eyes, is too close and a recount and re-vote should be requested.
It is not healthy that within certain circles there are allegations of corruption whilst the SU president never bothered to comment.
The SU president is an elected offical and as such is responsible to the student body. The fact that she never bothered to answer WNOL, Smoke or Sarah Lefley, a collegue, in relation to this topic is utterly unacceptable and an investigation should be carried out.
I can’t accept that a failue should be elected two years in a row to the highest rank of our SU by only 25 voices in such mitigated circumstances.
Last night I went to see Interdependence, an environmental film in eleven parts. It is a collection of short films that explore environmental themes around the topics of air, water, and earth.
When I watched one part it reminded me of , a french film from 1953. It looks at a dystopian vision of the future where people go to the zoo to see animals on screens and inflatable balloons serve as sea mammals. At one point everyone puts on a gas mask because of the pollution.
The theme of polluted air is in two other short films. Olmo, is about a grandfather who told his son about a tree he planted as a child. At the end of this segment, we see him go up to it. The notion of planting a tree as a child and going to see it as an adult is a good one.
Megha’s Divorce also explores the theme of air pollution but this time in Italy. A city is so polluted that a woman wants to divorce her husband, so that she may take her son to a city that is less polluted. In conclusion, the judge states that they have a six-month suspension of divorce, so that people may stop polluting as much, and see if things improve.
I often hear that we should replace the car with buses and public transport but this is a flawed solution. A better solution is for people to walk if it is within walking distance, or take a bike if it is not. Too often the conversation focuses on one machine being replaced by another. The conversation does not see the opportunity presented by our own legs, for walking and cycling.
Although it wasn’t the aim I liked The Hungry Seagull for the way shots were framed. I liked the shot where we are behind a seagull chick, looking out to sea. In Natural History documentaries by the BBC, the voice-over usually tells us this. For once we see it, feeling empathy for the seagull waiting to feed.
Qurut explores the notion that if we are not careful we will find that ingredients are missing for specific recipes. When I listened to this podcast episode it spoke about replacing animal meat with lab-grown meat and two themes came to mind. The first one is related to jobs. How many jobs, traditions, and species of cattle would be lost if we stopped the raising of cattle. How would the production of milk for cheese, milk and ice cream change? Simultaneously how would the rural landscape of so many nations change if we stopped eating specific animals?
When a species that was bred by man is no longer needed it dies out, as various breeds of cattle did, after either the First or Second World War as they shifted from using animals to do work to using machines.
At the end of the screening someone when people were speaking after the film someone asked “How can we get more people to see this film?” and my first thought was that it would be easy to share this on YouTube but another way to share these films would be as video podcasts. Each podcast could include a panel discussion to discuss the themes explored by each individual film. School children, University students and people with an interest in the topics could watch each episode and develop their understanding of each theme.
Imagine for example that Olmo is combined with a discussion about Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees, imagine that A Sunny day is used to discuss plastic pollution and extinction. Imagine that Qurut is used to discuss sustainability.
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