1. The water

2. Mouth: male and female

3. The story of a city

4. We are in the same sky

5. Smile

 6. A solo travelling

 7. Hands

 8. Memory of childhood

9. Waiting for a flower’s growing

10. Beautiful time

 1.The water

This idea came from a cooking. One day, I wanted to cook some noodles. I boiled the water and found the process for boiling water is actually beautiful. I thought about a Chinese traditional way to describe woman: woman made of water. It means woman is soft and beautiful and indispensable like water. My idea base on this thought. I decide to link water with a woman. I decide to use different shape water to display people’s emotion and show some special character for woman. Using water to express femininity, beauty, frailness and hidden brave of woman. I want to use less speaking and focus on image and people’s activates

2.  Mouth: male and female

    Camera will focus on the mouth of a male and female. For shooting mouth, it is easy to express different between man and woman. It is also a good way to explore their life style.

3.  The story of a city

Recording spectacles of a city. To find hidden beauty around us in our daily life. This idea will focus on shooting. It will be a high quality for these imagines.

4.  We are under the same sky

    This idea may be not easily to achieve because that the aim for this idea is to expressing peace and equality without any limited. It will be lovely if I can find enough different ethnologic people. It will be better if I can take imagines in different countries. With the way of shooting, I want to try a simple way: just shooting from the top to the bottom. I think it can make the product more easier and cleaner.

5.  Smile

    Smile is the gift for everyone. It makes people warm and happy. However, more and more people gradually lose this ability because of busy life. I want to create a story about a girl who forgets how to smile but finally seek it back. It will be a brave seeking and exploring story.

6. A solo travelling

A solo travelling is always having completely different taste for travelling with others. It has a bit of loneliness, brave and freedom. Recording a solo travelling and finding a special beauty.

7. Hands

We always hear a sentence about hands. Hand is the second face to woman. Though the shooting for people’s hands, displaying people’s fettle of life.

8. Memory of childhood

It will follow my past idea about my memory artifact. In this film, I’d like to try to achieve my dream to combine animation with reality. It will base on the list for my top10 memory.

9. Waiting for a flower’s growing

It is one of my favorite sentences. It stands for an expectant but equable feeling. To close a pretty girl just like seeing a beautiful flower’s growing.

10. Beautiful time

This idea comes from my favorite novel. I love a small story in this novel which is talking about an experienced woman who were always seeking her love and significant for living find her love at last.  I want to create a story like this one. I’d like to explore love and significant for living and express them in a simple way. To find the unordinary beauty under our ordinary life.

Some of you may have seen this film “No Country for Old Men”. It was made by the Coen Brothers for a 25 million dollar budget with Miramax. So a Hollywood financed movie but slightly outside of the normal range for Hollywood.

The story is sparse, very little dialogue, the dialogue that there is drifts from the everyday to the reflective and philosophical. There is a large reliance on visuals and atmosphere with deliberate cutting between characters that never actually meet in the film. What sources then does such a film draw upon? What is the screenplay based on? The Coen brothers are well known for being meticulous in their preparation of dialogue and storyboarding. The whole of their films are storyboarded before any shooting begins. The dialogue is set and precise. They say they do this in order to justify the budget they are asking for. They don’t run over budget or time.

One of the brothers studied film at NYU, Ethan went to Princeton to study Philosophy at undergrad. They both made films together on super 8 from the age of eight.

All of their films draw upon a wide range of sources: literary, poetic, paintings, mythology. In No Country for Old Men the literary references range from the 14th Century through to the contemporary American writer Cormac McCarthy. They reference films from Bergman to Sam Peckinpah.

The title of the film is taken from a line from a W B Yeats poem called Sailing to Byzantium.
The first stanza of which is :
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

If you read just the first stanza carefully you will pick up the theme and stress on the centrality of death even in life. “Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.”

If you want to read the poem more closely then look, for a starting point, at the wikipedia entry.
Also have a look at the entry for Cormac Macarthy whose novel they began with to base the screenplay on.

So we haven’t even got behind the title and there is already a diversity of sources that are being drawn upon. If we focus on the literary then two older stories crop up and can be tracked in various scenes in the film. The influences are not used as direct copies but, like Picasso said I don’t use other peoples work I steal it.

They steal and re cast the evocative elements of the stories that influence them. They intellectually engage with the ideas and themes of the story and re translate it through their own obsessions and concerns. The translation happens in the process of visualisation and cinematography that we all recognise as signatures of the Coen brothers work.

Two predominant stories crop up as important in the construction of the film and the motivation of characters: Chaucer’s Pardoners Tale:

A precise of which is:

The tale is based on a folk-tale of Oriental origin, although many variations exist. Three drunken and debauched men set out from a pub to find and kill Death, whom they blame for the death of their friend, and all other people that previously have died. An old man they brusquely query tells them they can find death at the foot of a tree. When the men arrive at the tree, they find a large amount of gold coins and forget about their quest to kill Death. The three men draw straws to see who among them should fetch wine and food while the other two wait under the tree. The youngest of the three men drew the shortest straw. The two men who stay behind secretly plot to kill the other one when he returns, while the one who leaves for the town poisons some of the wine with rat poison. When he returns with the food and drink, the other two kill him and drink the poisoned wine — also dying as a result. A short analysis of the Pardoners Tale

Lets re look at the clip that we first saw of No Country for Old Men:

The other important influence was a story from Leo Tolstoy called How Much Land Does a Man Need? A description of the story.

Both of these stories have at their heart greed and the influence that money has on motivation. Both authors also play with the idea of chance and unpredictability of life in the world.

Carla Jean Moss: You don’t have to do this.
Anton Chigurh: [smiles] People always say the same thing.
Carla Jean Moss: What do they say?
Anton Chigurh: They say, “You don’t have to do this.”
Carla Jean Moss: You don’t.
Anton Chigurh: Okay.
[Chigurh flips a coin and covers it with his hand]
Anton Chigurh: This is the best I can do. Call it.
Carla Jean Moss: I knowed you was crazy when I saw you sitting there. I knowed exactly what was in store for me.
Anton Chigurh: Call it.

The figure of Chigurh is similar to figures like death in Bergmans The Seventh Seal or indeed some of the figures in Sam Peckinpah movies.

Research

Why am I dwelling on the importance of sources and influences. Any media producer that is worth their salt, has something to say or show beyond the mechanical cranking out of tawdry nonsense draws on multiple sources that don’t just exist within the limits of their own chosen art form.
Stuff that lasts engages with the things that have gone before be it from literature, poetry, painting, music, etc.

You need to show us that you are working in a similar way. Your blog should show us the range of sources and research that you have engaged with over the course of the first term. Your initial assessment will be based upon the work on your blogs and the three artefacts that you have made.

We want you to round off your work this term by reflecting on what you have done and thinking about what you are going to do in developing your ideas for your final project that is the culmination of your degree.

It is really important that before the end of the term, December 18th, you:

Look back over your three pieces and other stuff you have done during the course. Look at it altogether. What things do you notice?

Reflect on what you have done…………….how might you develop some of your interests, approaches for your final project.

Be ambitious but realistic. Don’t try and make a feature film……….don’t try and make a thirty minute soap. Don’t try a remake of Tarantino or your favourite Zombie movie. Look at stuff outside of your normal range of influences…………

Music, galleries, events, radio.

Use the image below as a guide for your refelections and what you are going to develop during the new year.

Reference

http://mcopenmediacoventry.org/rdyear3mp/2009/12/07/research-range-of-sources-and-influences/

Do something very different something that you haven’t tried before. This could be moving image, stills, audio, drawing, animation.

Also on your blog think of ten things that have been significant in your life. What makes these significant moments memorable?

Idea and progress: At first, I want to do a memory artifact combine with animation and real life. I want to create an artifact filled with warm memory and lovely characters. I hope everyone who looks this clip will have a smile on his or her face. It is really a big ambition and need more time to plan and achieve. I spent lots of time on doing this but I failed. My existing skills cannot afford me to complete my artifact in my imaginary pattern and I do not want to give up so I have to change my idea. My new artifact must be simple to shoot because I spent lots of time to do my imaginary artifact. I also want it have interested point and pretty imagine.

 One day, I went to a supermarket to buy something. I observed many Christmas gifts packaged so beautiful. Why not chose Christmas as new theme? To remember one first Christmas is also a very meaningful thing for me. I looked around and attracted by these Christmas slogans on the shop windows. They have different shapes and could be ready-made titles. I also choose some Christmas representations to make my scene more enrich and illustrative like a Christmas tree. All my scenes were shot in the night. These shining colorful lights bring a charming beauty of these Christmas representations. One of my classmate’s artifacts brings me the idea about moving feet. His camera faces to the ground all the time. It provides me a new visual angle to display people’s action especially for people’s moving. I adjust the speed of moving to match the music to create special rhythm sensation. I think it is more interested.

Feedback: Thanks for Steve’s feedback. It point out many pity for my products. I obsessed by these wonderful Christmas slogans and gifts but it also make me lose a key theory. The whole film just gives people a feeling about Christmas is everyone. Although I shoot many sweet things I do not tell people what’s my attitude to these things. What do I think about this memory? Do I feel happy or not? I just simple record them but do not deep them. Moving feet is really a pretty point but feet cannot show people’s emotion.

Steve told me all these things I chose about popular Christmas. He shared ideas about one of his Christmas artifact. He contrasted traditional Christmas with popular Christmas and suggested me to realize the true meaning of Christmas. I think it is a good way to deep the meaning for my artifact but I think I need to do a plan because I do not my artifact seems too long.

These slogans are beautiful but it also a tool used by the owner of shop for attracting customer to buy their Christmas products. It is a part of Christmas business. To remember Christmas I can have more choices, for example, Christmas songs or traditional Christmas food.

Of course, I think my artifact has some shinning points. The moving feet is very simple but I combine it with the music make it finger-popping. I use many effects to add artistic beauty and produce a gorgeous Christmas style.

Your reaction to these experimental pieces in a sense is not important whether you like them or loath them is not the main issue. What is important is the range of references that you draw upon, expose yourself to and reflect upon. If you love or hate the pieces interrogate yourself as to why you have a particular reaction. It is not enough in your research or your own practise to say well I just kinda like it or I just kinda hate it.

Often when you encounter an unusual piece it is useful to think about and step back from your immediate reaction and try and ask why? What are my expectations of a piece of media work? What are these expectations, why are these my starting points? Might I not begin from other expectations or might my expectations be fluid over time rather than static or fixed in a particular mode.

This is your last short piece on the theme memory. It is often useful to look at the work you are producing together either in one place or one viewing. When you see your work before you that has been produced over a concentrated period of time you often notice similarities, recurring themes, repeated techniques. Things about your own approach and starting points that unless your work is together can remain hidden even from your own view. Before beginning to think about the direction of your final project look at your work together and try to notice how you go about its construction. What things keep cropping up? Why? Are they constructive or limiting?

Media producers, filmmakers, visual artists, animators, photographers, all develop from influences, interests, obsessions, particular starting points. They don’t produce in a vacuum but within particular contexts within a set of particular conditions. The best reflect, steal, remake, transform and revisit the work of others in their own and often oblique but associative fields.

This approach should be starting to become evident in your own research and your own work. As an example of the above and the importance of influences, a wide breadth of experience of your field of interest and past makers within it I want you to have a look at some of Tarkovsky’s work and how it has influenced the work of two contemporary experimental artists Jane and Louise Wilson.

Tarkovsky

In 1972, he completed Solaris, an adaptation of the novel Solaris by Stanisław Lem. He had worked on this together with screenwriter Fridrikh Gorenshtein, as early as 1968. The film was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury and the FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Palme d’Or. From 1973 to 1974, he shot the film The Mirror, a highly autobiographical film drawing on his childhood and incorporating some of his father’s poems. Tarkovsky had worked on the screenplay for this film since 1967, under the consecutive titles Confession, White day and A white, white day. From the beginning the film was not well received by Soviet authorities due to its content and its perceived elitist nature.

From the clip below you can immediately see that the film is not following an obvious narrative and it is also evident that the range of influences on Tarkovsky are both poetic and painterly. Pieter Breughel’s Winter painting and Dylan Thomas’s poem Fern Hill were both influences. In this way, as with many of the other experimental pieces we have seen the piece is not set out as a straightforward narrative but is much more something that evokes responses, strong feelings in the viewer. These responses and feelings felt are often at the edge of the viewers and the filmmakers own understanding.

When faced with a non obvious structure that doesn’t conform in telling a simple story the question what does it mean is often expressed as the first one that comes to mind. Perhaps this is the wrong starting point?

When we listen to music, itself a predominantly non narrative form, or poetry likewise, we would view it almost as a category mistake to ask what does this music mean? As is obvious with music it doesn’t mean any one thing, its a dumb question to ask of music. Why should it always be a good question to ask of visual material?

I would like you to dwell on this issue when responding to work that you are not familiar with. What do you think of this point in relation to experimental work? Use your blog to construct and share your own response.

Similarities in poetic and visual approach can also be seen between Tarkovsky and Kubrick. The similarity in obsession and visuals are referred to by both Jane and Louise Wilson in their own work. Particularly Stasi City and Space City and directly in the Aryan Papers.
Their work is shown as multi screen installations within galleries and is difficult to access online. Luckily they gave a lecture at The London Consortium recently and their talk about their work (just over an hour) contains some extended clips from their work which like Tarkovsky, Kubrick and themselves directly addresses memory and revisiting events and others work the second time. Their work often involves re visiting real spaces where significant events have happened and that have traces of the past marked in their structure or spatial organisation.

It is worth watching the whole thing if you do nothing else this week do this and then watch Solaris by Tarkovsky.

Louise and Jane Wilsons Lecture at the London Consortium and Architectural Association

An article on the Aryan Papers

A simple but very effective piece by Sam Fuller on Vimeo “Flying”

Reference

http://mcopenmediacoventry.org/rdyear3mp/2009/11/30/memory-2b-the-challenge-of-non-obvious-narrative/

The last theme for this module is memory. My seminar tutor Steve took the lecture and shared some experimental moving images and video with us.

Primeobjective.co.uk   

The Blog for Primeobjective

I love the intro for this blog with so many iridescent titles.They looks wonderful match with  deft music.It’s a big surprise when you move your mouse on the product. I want to know how to make a product like that. This blog is professional and splendid. These experimental videos gave me a special impress.A usual scene indicates unusual charm in his camera. It is worthy for me to learn how to do it.

Karen Bad on Vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/1206892

BBC Comedy Soup

BBC film Network

Flip Festival

Tank TV

we watched a few  films from the Tank TV website. Among them,I was impressed by a clip about dropping timber.There were some different shaped pieces of timber dropped onto the  floor.This  process was repeated many times with diferent speed so we could clearly see every radian that they was flying into the sky and listen every sounds of collides.They were common but sweetish. I think I can use this slow motion into my artifact. It’s a fantastic way to create spectacle and slow  rhythm.

My top 10 memory:

1. My grandma’s leaving

In my childhood, my parents are all very busy with their business. My grandma looked after me until my 12 years old. She is really one of the most important people for me. I call her grandma though we do not have kinship. She is the nursemaid invited by my parents when I was born. She is demure and kind. She helps me to realize world. When I was 10 years old, my grandma left me to back to her hometown to stay with her relatives. I still remember the day I sent her to the train satiation. I kissed her face and said goodbye to her. I watched her train’s leaving and I could not stop my tears. Suddenly, I could not control myself. I ran and try to catch the train. Of course, I failed at last. It also becomes my key point memory.

2. Cooking for my parents

The first time I cooked for my parents when I was 4 or 5 years old. I was so young and I might not know what was cooking’s meaning. I just want to make my parents feeling happy. I am so small so that I must to stand on a stool. My grandma stood behind me and told me how to do. I tried my best and completed two dishes: stir-fried vegetables and braised fish. I never forget my mother’s smile when she knew my products. My father gave me a hug with a delighted face. I am good at cooking now but I always think about my first cooking. I was so naïve at that time. However, I was wholehearted wish that others feel happy.

3. Sick

I always get sick when I was a little girl. The nurse and doctor in the hospital which located near my home knew me and some of them made friends with me. Sick become one of key part in my childhood but I still remember a very strange sick. I caught a cold at that time and my temperature reached 39.8 centigrade when I was sleeping in the night. My mother and grandma sent me to the hospital as soon as possible. Doctors used salt to help me bring down my fever but I felt more and more heat after 30 minutes. The nurse helped me to re-measure my temperature and she was so surprised to find my temperature reached 41.5 centigrade. The doctor changed the drug immediately then my temperature bought down successful. It was really scared my parents and me. The special feeling which like a burning leave in my memory forever.

4. A birthday with my best friend

It’s a forgettable birthday. My best friend called panda. She’s birthday is in the January. In accordance with common sense, January is the season of snow. However, my hometown located in the warm south of china. People in my hometown have few chances to see snow in every winter.  Panda held her birthday in the KFC. It’s very fashionable and enviable to hold a birthday party in the KFC among children at that time. Panda and I played very well with her parents and other children in the KFC. We sang songs, played games and got some wonderful gifts and wishes from the staff from KFC. Everything made us feel happy. Suddenly, I found something outside the window. It was snow! We shouted loudly and reached out to get snowflake. The central heating in the KFC made us so warm. We shared an ice cream and watched beautiful snowflake. The sense was so cool!

5. A horror movie

I love film very much but I really hate horror film. The dislike from the fist horror movie I see in my life. It happened when I was only 4or5 years old. In an evening, I watched TV with my father. He changed the channel and finally choice the movie channel. It was a horror movie about vampire. Everything in that film was charnel and bloodcurdling. I was scared and nearly forgot how to breathe. I could not move and speak. The only thing I could do was watching the film. My father bought me to sleep after the first part of the film. He estimated that I did not understand but in fact I was cleverer than he thought. I opened my eyes whole night and successful hide it to my parents. I do not like others worry about me from my childhood to now. I could fall in sleeping until afternoon in the next day. From that time, I really do not like to watch any horror movies.

6. Picking up money

When I was in the elementary school, my tutor used a red star which made of paper as a gift and prove for encouraging children. I was a good student and got too many red stars but one of them has special meaning for me. There was a wonderful morning; I left home to buy breakfast for my parents and grandma. There were so many people waiting in the queue to buy delicious breakfast. An aunt stood before me, she was familiar with the master and kept talking and laugh with him. She got her breakfast and left quickly. After I bought my breakfast, I found there was something hiding under the corner of the cash register. I picked it up and found it was money. I looked around but none displayed losing money. I decided to wait for the owner of lost property. The aunt I saw before in the 10 minutes later. She looked carefully for everywhere especially for these corners. I returned the money to her and she looked so happy. She praised me and asked my name. I did not know why but I told her. I forgot this thing quickly and never told to others. Three days later, my father asked me if I ever picked someone’s money and returned to her. I felt surprise and said yes to him. He laughed and gave me a newspaper. I f shook when I found my name and story on the newspaper. In order to praise me, the kind aunt told the story to newspaper and then the newspaper published it! How surprise and happy I was! My teacher told the news to my classmate and praised me with a big red star. I put it into my gift box with the newspaper until now.

7. Learning swimming

I learnt swimming by myself when I was12 years old. I had three days to live with my aunt and her sister’s family in that summer vacation. There was a popular swimming poor near their home and all of them were good at swimming. The daughter of aunt’s sister named Lily even told me she could be my best drillmaster. I spent two nights in the swimming poor but my swimming skills were not enhanced. In the last night, I tried my best but also failed. The swimming closing time was coming and I began to feel a bit disappointment. The adult comforted me and gave me a swim ring to play water with myself. I swam with the swim ring and looked at others’ beautiful swimming gestures. Nobody found I swam from wading pool to deep poor included myself. I suddenly treaded out the bottom floor then drowning. Fortunately, Lily’s father discovered me and saved me immediately. The funny thing was that since then I suddenly learned how to swim. I wear goggles and swam very well in the wading pool. I closed to the water and got freedom from it. All people who know me felt surprise. The only thing that was not good enough was I do not know how to gasp for air

 8. My essay collected by a book

After one month I became a senior school, I got a call from my friend from junior school. She told me one of my essays collected by a book concern and would be published with other people’s essays.  I stood in amazement and repeatedly asked my friend. She let me to ask my teacher who recommended my essay but her phone switched off. I waited and waited with a nervous mood but nothing happened. I felt disappointed and recognized it as a joke. I received a letter from a book concern one month later. There was a formal notification that my essay was collected with a bonus. The book concern encouraged me to write more fantastic essays and hope me to wait for the final book. It was my first wage. Furthermore, it also brought me confidence to be a person who works for art and literature.  

9. My cousin’s wedding cocktail party

My cousin named jenny is a pretty girl. She got married three years ago. I attended her wedding and as one of major distinguished guests stay with her. She was really beautiful in her wedding veil like a fairy in the fairy tale. Her husband looked smart and handsome. Their wedding cocktail party is very special like a sitcom. Firstly, they used PPT and clip to show their love progress and told each other their innermost thoughts and feelings. Secondly, they acted as prince and princess. Finally, people proposed toasts and gave the new couple their best wishes. The sweet atmosphere really impressed me a lot. They looked wonderful together and everyone could see how deeply they were in love. I hope my cousin could keep their blessedness forever.

10.   A 12hours trip by fight

The longest trip I had by fight was this time I left home to England. I did not fall asleep during 12 hours. I could not give the reason for this. After I made decision to go aboard, I was so busy every day. I should prepare for too many things even I do not have enough time to think about my feeling for leaving, purpose for future and how to achieve these aims. When I was really going for this trip, I got the time to think about everything I mentioned before. Most of other people were sleeping so the atmosphere was silent. I looked these strange faces and had funs to guess their career and purpose. I watched three films though the small TV on the lazyback and had a cup of tea. It was an important time for me to think, relax and realize myself better.

 Memory 2  23-Nov-09

Experimental non-narrative film is really a new film style for me. It was a bit difficult for me to understand.Luckly ,tutor provide us some key points to us so we for our primary research.

You cannot simply rely on your existing knowledge when approaching work in Media Studies. Although you will have some understanding of the area being explored, it is not enough to enable you to examine the area in depth.

In my opinion, researching memory is the way that your re-discover to the world.

Making the effort ot encounter the world is worth it, you will find more out and it will challenge and refigure your own prejudices. Research should tell you new things, unexpected things, things that test your own views.(Middleton 2009)

Nobody can make sure their memories are correct and accurate even people that you share these memories with remember them in different ways. There is a small game can be displayed  aforementioned character of personal memory.

This clip is talking about a game  for remembering dance. You can see there are really a big difference between the original dance and finally dance. Memory may cheat people so that it will be more interested to research memory to find hidden fact.

I always have the view that history is a kind of memory transmission. People consummate history though collecting and analysising differnt memories.

References

Middleton, N. (2009) Memory 2 [online] available from <http://mcopenmediacoventry.org/rdyear3mp/> [Accessed: December 2009]

A great site from an artist using moving image:

Primeobjective.co.uk

The Blog for Primeobjective

Karen Bad on Vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/1206892

BBC Comedy Soup

BBC film Network

Flip Festival

Tank TV

Memory:

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us. (Oscar Wilde)

Every man’s memory is his private literature. Aldous Huxely

But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.

Micheal Landy Breakdown

An important set of information about research approaches and content on experimental film is here to download.
Research and experimental film pdf BFI

It has been produced by the BFI (British Film Institute) and says some useful things about approaches that you might make in relation to thinking about media artifacts. The writing is skewed to talk about media texts but what is said completely holds for the creation of media artifacts themselves.

It reiterates the difference between primary and secondary research and how important primary research is. In brief it is much richer for you to go out and encounter the real world yourself and find out something on the ground that relying on secondhand pre digested material.

Primary: This is first-hand research. In other words, it relies on you constructing and conducting surveys, setting up interviews with key people in the media industry or keeping a diary or log of data on things such as, for example, what activities women are shown doing in advertisements over one week of television viewing. Unless you are equipped to conduct extensive research, have access to relevant people in the media industry or are thor- ough in the up-keep of your diary or log, this type of research can be demanding, complex and sometimes difficult to use. Having said that, if you are preparing for an extended essay, then it is exactly this type of research which, if well used, will make your work distinctive and impressive.

They use a good analogy:

You cannot simply rely on your existing knowledge when approaching work in Media Studies. Although you will have some understanding of the area being explored, it is not enough to enable you to examine the area in depth. If you were asked to produce a piece about the people in your street in de- tail, you might have some existing information about names, faces, relationships, issues and ac- tivities but this knowledge would not offer you details such as every single one of their names, who knows who, who gets on with whom, how people earn a living, what has happened to them in the past and so on. This extra information could change your opinions quite dramatically. With- out it, therefore, your written profile would end up being quite shallow and possibly incorrect. The same is true of your understanding of media texts, artifacts, issues and institutions.

Making the effort ot encounter the world is worth it, you will find more out and it will challenge and refigure your own prejudices. Research should tell you new things, unexpected things, things that test your own views.

In relation to memory this can be very interesting……..
We asked you to think about significant personal memories……… are memories correct, do they get re remembered… are they accurate? Do people that you share these memories with remember them in different ways?

This re remembering can become solidified into recorded history. Just look at the things around you that offer a story or commemorate a particular time, event, happening.

In Coventry as in other cities this is all around you, there is a Blitz Industry.

The dead. The body count. We don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault cos so many of our people died. And all the mourning’s veiled the truth. It’s not “lest we forget”, it’s “lest we remember”. That’s what all this is about – the memorials, the Cenotaph, the two minutes’ silence. Because there is no better way if forgetting something than by commemorating it. From the History Boys

Is there another history and story to the bombing of Coventry that hasn’t been explored, yet is still a part of some peoples living memory?

If you don’t get out and talk to primary sources…people who were there then you can never know.

A recent piece of work did indeed challenge the Blitz industries regular story to reveal an aspect of ordinary peoples experience that has been hidden or not recorded.

In our current hyper celebrity obsessed culture the cynicism or undermining of everyday peoples experience has become even more disregarded, devalued. Just outside here there are experiences, memories that are explosive and rich.

On a recent MA mass observation of a village in Northamptonshire a postmen was followed on his round and then talked to about the strike……he said things about his working conditions and how they have changed in recent memory that was a devastating critique of much of the guff reported even in the broadsheets. It was first hand, solid, based on grinding knowledge not secondhand regurgitated press release material. No body is talking to people to find out.

Pasolini a controversial filmmaker in Italy who was imprisoned for his work in the 1950’s 60’s and who was killed in the 70’s based his work on a connection to the people living in Italy, without influence and without power.

We have asked for you to do something different something that you haven’t done before. Primary research is one way. Other ways are embracing techniques that you haven’t yet used.

The cut up technique is a way of re making your experience of the world around you of taking bits of it and reordering them to produce chance and unusual juxtapositions.

Derek Jarman an experimental British filmmaker combined the use of super 8 with 35mm to produce both personal movies about his own memories or reactions to the world around him and movies that combined the look of the school play with little known actors to comment on the recent events of the past.

His film Jubilee was a commentary on the Britain of the early 80’s

What some of the experimetal works have in common is a relation to evocation, the poetic rather than the dominant narrative tradition particularly in British film.

Blue

Reference

Idea and progress:

My original idea linked 9.11 with Iraq war. Iraq war is the typical example of power for the American government. Iraq war destroys too many families and countless people of deaths. 9.11 show terrorist atrocity’s power. This power is informal but destructive. Then I found it was too simple and lack of specialty if I just choose some resources about Iraq war and 9.11.

At that time, I saw a cankered apple in my basket. One side of the apple looks wonderful and fresh but other side was gradually rotted. This apple showed us the essence of war. Leaders use different beautiful excuses for a war but they could not estimate cruelty of war. People’s lives become the most luxurious sacrificial lamb for leader’s power. As an apple, it cannot command its life. Fruit’s final fate is ate by people or threw away because of spoiling. I use fruit in my basket to created following senses: destroying a guava, tearing at banana’s peel and cutting lemon into pieces by a fruit knife. A guava’s essence hides in its firm peel. I forcible destroyed its peel resulted in fruitage rolled out. I chose banana because I thought to tear something was a more destructive action. For cutting lemon with a knife, knife can be considered as a kind of weapon. A war filled with weapons. If you cut lemon into pieces, you can see lemon juice effuse as tears of lemon. I chose some resources to show different part for Iraq war especially for Bush’s attitude and Iraqi real feeling and life.

The music I used in this artifact is a very popular and famous song named “Heal the world” from Michael Jackson. It is easy to find the theme and lyric from this song are opposite to the frame and think it maybe not suitable to this product. However, there are no more appropriate songs for my artifact. These warm lyric include peaceful and hopeful faith. It cannot be controlled to make people feeling ironical and absurd when you are listening to the song “Heal the world” and watching frames at the same time. Though a segment from Bush’s speech before Iraq war, you can see his determination to bring peace to the world. Starting Iraq war maybe a good way to “heal the world” in Bush’s opinion.

Feedback:

I shared my artifact with Steve and his suggest really let me to think more. The idea is excellent especial for the cankered apple. He thought other fruit were all unnecessary. There are too many objects in my film. It would be better if I just use apple to produce more changes, for example, to shoot an apple ate by a person and link it to Bush. I consider it’s a nice notion. To shoot a red apple into cankered apple is also a wonderful idea. Though this communication, I learn a useful way for thinking in making artifact and ordinary life. Thinking more simpler but more deeper.

The beginning of the book describes the execution in a public place in Paris of Damiens who had been accused and found guilty of regicide. The punishment and execution were worked out precisely to work as a spectacle for the watching crowds as evidence of the power of the King over one of his subjects bodies

When we read this it is shocking to us in a similar way that the spectacle of the bull running may have shocked some of you from the previous lecture. We are not accoustomed to these spectacles, although the spectacles captured of inmates undergoing torture or humiliation by troops in Iraq perhaps harks back to these more openly brutal images of power over others and their bodies.

Foucault contrasts this spectacle above with the quite abrupt change in mechanisms of punishment that appeared only a few decades later in terms of penal regimes.

Foucault states:

“Among so many changes, I shall consider one: the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle. Today we are rather inclined to ignore it; perhaps, in its time, it gave rise to too much inflated rhetoric; perhaps it has been attributed too readily and too emphatically to a process of “humanization”, thus dispensing with the need for further analysis. And, in any case, how important is such a change, when compared with the great institutional transformations, the formulation of explicit, general codes and unified rules of procedure; with the almost universal adoption of the jury system, the definition of the essentially corrective character of the penalty and the tendency, which has become increasingly marked since the nineteenth century, to adapt punishment to the individual offender? Punishment of a less immediately physical kind, a certain discretion in the art of inflicting pain, a combination of more subtle, more subdued sufferings, deprived of their visible display, should not all this be treated as a special case, an incidental effect of deeper changes? And yet the fact remains that a few decades saw the disappearance of the tortured, dismembered, amputated body, symbolically branded on face or shoulder, exposed alive or dead to public view. The body as the major target of penal repression disappeared.”

So only 80 years later the spectacle of the tortured body stopped and new regimes took their place which we would recognise now from a range of institutions that we have all participated in.

“Art. 17. The prisoners’ day will begin at six in the morning in winter and at five in summer. They will work for nine hours a day throughout the year. Two hours a day will be devoted to instruction. Work and the day will end at nine o’clock in winter and at eight in summer.

Art. 18. Rising. At the first drum-roll, the prisoners must rise and dress in silence, as the supervisor opens the cell doors. At the second drum-roll, they must be dressed and make their beds. At the third, they must line up and proceed to the chapel for morning prayer. There is a five-minute interval between each drum-roll.

Art. 19. The prayers are conducted by the chaplain and followed by a moral or religious reading. This exercise must not last more than half an hour.

Art. 20. Work. At a quarter to six in the summer, a quarter to seven in winter, the prisoners go down into the courtyard where they must wash their hands and faces, and receive their first ration of bread. Immediately afterwards, they form into work-teams and go off to work, which must begin at six in summer and seven in winter.

Art. 21. Meal. At ten o’clock the prisoners leave their work and go to the refectory; they wash their hands in their courtyards and assemble in divisions. After the dinner, there is recreation until twenty minutes to eleven.

Art. 22. School. At twenty minutes to eleven, at the drum-roll, the prisoners form into ranks, and proceed in divisions to the school. The class lasts two hours and consists alternately of reading, writing, drawing and arithmetic.

It was a time when, in Europe and in the United States, the entire economy of punishment was redistributed. It was a time of great “scandals” for traditional justice, a time of innumerable projects for reform. It saw a new theory of law and crime, a new moral or political justification of the right to punish; old laws were abolished, old customs died out. “Modern” codes were planned or drawn up: Russia, 1769; Prussia, 1780; Pennsylvania and Tuscany, 1786; Austria, 1788; France, 1791, Year IV, 1808 and 1810. It was a new age for penal justice.

The Panoptican (pan-all) (optic-seeing)

Foucault explores the transition from what he terms a “culture of spectacle” to a “carceral culture.” Whereas in the former punishment was effected on the body in public displays of torture, dismemberment, and obliteration, in the latter punishment and discipline become internalized and directed to the constitution and, when necessary, rehabilitation of social subjects.

Jeremy Bentham’s nineteenth-century prison reforms provide Foucault with a representative model for what happens to society in the nineteenth century. Bentham argued in The “Panopticon” that the perfect prison would be structured in a such a way that cells would be open to a central tower. In the model, individuals in the cells do not interact with each other and are constantly confronted by the panoptic tower (pan=all; optic=seeing). They cannot, however, see when there is a person in the tower; they must believe that they could be watched at any moment: “the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so” (Foucault, Discipline 201).

Bentham saw this prison reform as a model for how society should function. To maintain order in a democratic and capitalist society, the populace needs to believe that any person could be surveilled at any time. In time, such a structure would ensure that the people would soon internalize the panoptic tower and police themselves: “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” (Foucault, Discipline 202-203).

Reference

http://mcopenmediacoventry.org/rdyear3mp/2009/11/01/power-the-gaze-and-technologies-of-power/

As  our  second theme, power is really a broad topic. If you like you can link nearly everything with power. Tutor shared a diagram of possible things that could be explored in the development with aspects of power. It made me a sense of my own thoughts and research for power. The overall diagram divided power into five aspects: personal power,media Power,technology,economic and protest.

personal power

Perhaps this is incredible,but I never carefully think about my personal power until this lecture. This is also the first time I know that there are so many kinds of personal power.I have no idea about student debt,voting and protested.I never try anyone of them.personal power is really a big topic for me. I think  I need to collect more information for personal power then do a carefully research.

Media Power

Broadcast Media: Televison Networks, Newspaper Ownership, Radio Ownership, Internet Companies.

Media power is a hot topic for modern society.Media power pervasive filter into people’s daily life.Media production is also one of the largest most lucrative industrial sectors in the global economy.Media power even make some changes for socity common view and traitional culture.

The clip I showed above is  a sence from a chinese famous TV singer programe called “Supergirl” which  like American idol. The girl who is singing in the clip is the champion for “Supergirl” in 2005. Her litmusless face and voice aroused a huge controversy at that time. With rising of audience rating for “Supergirl”,she brought a litmusless style became the most fashionable style and accepted gradually by members of different social stratas. Her appearance successful changed chinese traditional aesthetics and socity view.Of course, her success  is inseparable from television’s packaging and effective  marketing.

technology and science:

With the develpoment of technology, tools and speed of media’s spreading are changing quickly.More and more new media appearances enrich people’s daily life and dwindle distance for whole world.

e.g. blog,facebook,twitter

Protest

With the development  of economy and technology, more and more people can afford simple and high technological device. They are easy to take and use,for example,most of our mobile phone has camera so we can take photos and  clips every time we want. Thereby, people who are protesting carry devices that can easily get evidences  for reporting events that infringe peoples rights.

I wanted to go through the process with you of thinking about how to deal with researching about power as it is such a broad topic, you will notice that if you go to a definition of power in the dictionary it will be a large entry covering many aspects.

I gave myself two hours to think and explore the topic and create a diagram of possible things that could be explored in the development of an artefact related to an aspect of power. My Map is not definitive or the only answer but it might give you a starting point for your own thoughts and research questions.

The obstruction related to the power artefact is to come.

I began exploring Power first by looking at a simple general definition as seen above. I then went through the process of thinking of keywords that I thought related to the definition. The keywords I thought of were generated through my own knowledge and experience. The process of research is then to test your knowledge and experience: Does it hold up? Is it well founded? Is it based on sound knowledge and analysis or is it prejudice?

A thumbnail of my Map is below and I used a free tool to do this called Freemind which works on Mac or PC. Download Here.

Lets Take a closer look at the Map and explore its elements as we go. I will take you through the map first and then visit each of the nodes in order.

1. Personal Power
2. Media Power
3. Technology
4. Economic
5. Protest

Personal Power

How much power do you feel that you have over your own circumstances? Think about power from your own experience. Ask questions about your own circumstance. Why are things as they are for you at the moment? Are they similar for the people around you? Are issues shared amongst your group of friends? Find out.

Questions that you might ask yourself about your own abilities to act, to do or to accomplish.

Is my own ability to act constrained by myself or is it a wider constraint imposed upon me?

• Student Debt is it fair? Why are there student loans? What has happened to the grant? Will a debt constrain my ability to chose what I do later in life? How might it make me live?
• Do I vote? Do I think it is worth it? Do I think I can change things through political choices I make?
• How might current circumstances impact on my future? (Credit Crunch, Election, European Community, Climate Change)
• Have I ever protested? What do I think of people that do? Has anybody I know protested? Are they proud or embarrassed about it?
• What do I think about some current issues…..The Mail Strike, Nick Griffin, Afghanistan ? Are my views based on knowledge or prejudice?

The importance of testing our own views. Research is about testing your own views and perhaps suprising yourself and even changing your mind in the light of the things that you find out. Lets have a look at two examples that we can check the facts on.

Child Mortality

Below are several pairs of countries which countries in each pair has the higher child mortality? One of the countries in each pair have at least double the child mortality of the other paired country.

• Sri Lanka or Turkey
• Poland or South Korea
• Malaysia or Russia
• Pakistan or Vietnam
• Thailand or South Africa

The answers may suprise you and point out that often the views we have are mistaken. We can only have an accurate view if we check find out the actual data and then form a view in the light of the available data.

Have a look at the video explaining this by Hans Rosling

Inequality In Countries (ECONOMIC)

Where might Britain come in terms of measures of inequality with other European countries? Better than some? Better than most? How about comparison to the United States or lesser know countries like Slovakia?

A link to some data about inequality.

Further data about income inequality between richest and poorest.

How do you think we do? How is this measured?

The Gini Co efficient:

This concern with the difference between rich and poor is not new during the last great depression in the 1930’s many in the USA were protesting about this inequality and acting to change things. A little remembered Governor in Louisiana called Huey P Long was very popular and had huge support for some of his polices that went under the title of share our wealth and challenged Roosevelt and the timidity of the new deal. He was assassinated in 1935.

Media Power

Broadcast Media: Televison Networks, Newspaper Ownership, Radio Ownership, Internet Companies.

If we look at old media first, TV it is still very powerful and can command large audiences. Popular mainstream programmes of the recent past like Big Brother had huge audiences recent programmes like the X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing also command millions of viewers. Even political programmes, Question time with Nick Griffin had eight million viewers last Thursday.

What are the popular formats based upon and how do they rely on old forms?

If you think about the popular formats how might they be characterised? What elements do they have in common?

• Panels of experts
• Judging
• Voting
• Popular choice

All of these elements are ancient and draw on the power of Ancient Myths like the Beauty Contest. The Greek myth The Judgement of Paris was the first Beauty Contest, not in the sense of simple beauty but in the sense of a judgment being passed on the the elect and the not chosen.

Peter Berger talks about the power of the Beauty contest in our culture.

These forms have been challenged at points see the clip below from the UK leg of Miss World compared by Bob Hope

These similar forms are still at work in TV, although they have a twist. Much more audience involvement.

Susan Boyle Episode

Clive James commented on the phenomena:

The facts, alas, say that in every opera house in the world the chorus contains at least half a dozen people with voices as good as Susan’s, and most of them won’t become stars, so all the hoo-hah about Susan’s sudden stardom was at least partly illusory, based on the dangerous notion that overnight prominence on television will always change reality permanently.

In the opera house, music ought to matter more than anything but it remains true that one of the reasons people flock to hear Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca singing together is that they look the part almost as well as they sing it.

Things shouldn’t be that way, but strangely enough they have become more and more that way in the last forty years, during the very period when feminism as a train of thought has done so much to educate us about the restrictive nature of expectations based on pulchritude.

When I first started attending Covent Garden in the early 1960s it was still quite common for the soprano to be an unlikely stimulus for the tenor’s cries of passion. Today, most of the sopranos look like film stars. It could be said that the more our primitive male prejudices are broken down, the more we all become free. But one of the consequences of freedom is that ticket buyers are free to choose, and it is likely to remain a fact that ticket buyers of both sexes will choose to see the imported dreamboat.

Susan might very well, after this, get a job in the chorus and even sell a lot of records, but if the press expects more than that it could be adding yet another chapter to a long story in which discoveries have been shoved onto the boards to fulfil a role in a fairy story which is fated not to turn out well.

And it didn’t, but it also unveils the forms that TV draws upon like the fairy tale …..in this case the ugly duckling turning into…………

Technology

Satire can often unmask and play with these forms by methods of exaggeration. The way the news is constructed and the cult of the presenter has been deconstructed by Chris Morris.

Brass Eye Cake Episode

The banned programme on paedophiles.

Protest

Technology is being used by people who are actively protesting about issues. The G20 was a good example.

People now carry devices that can easily capture still and moving images that make it hard to deny evidence of reported events that infringe peoples rights.

Similarly The Freedom of Information act has enshrined in law the ability for citizens or groups to request information held by public bodies. The recent example of this has been Parliamentary expenses. This campaign was first set in motion by a Journalist called Heather Brooke. She used technology, blog and Twitter to make the responses to her FOI requests more widely known. She has also produced a book on how to use the FOI act.

Just in the last ten days twitter has been used to make known a gagging order on Newspapers reporting the Trafigura case.

And the Daily Mail article by Jan Moir accused of homophobia

Finally the coverage of the Royal Mail Strike

Reference

http://mcopenmediacoventry.org/rdyear3mp/2009/10/26/power-1/