Firstly, for the Media industry day event, we had to organise appropriate guest speakers. As a member for the ‘Aural group’ I have suggested all the connections I had with radio people especially after the work attachment done in SBS Radio. It was actually a bit hard role because I wasn’t aware of many of the known speakers in media industries. But I have tried to actively involve myself in discussions about the guest speakers and the flow. Secondly as a curatorial group there were not much work to be done, what we were asked to do was to design some of the title to be used on the day. And today 8/Nov/07 the group met in Building 6 level 4 lab and we made the titles in using Final Cut Pro and Live Type. We’ve made around 4 movies to be used on the showcase-screening day. I suggested group members to use LiveType to add bit of animation. I was the one on the control on the computer and have came up with the idea but everyone had shared their ideas and thought in designing the titles. I think it works quite ok.

For the First event, Media industry day, it was a good chance for myself to get ideas around Australian media industry. I had a very weak knowledge around the people in the media, and actually I thought it wasn’t any important anyway because I was planning to go back to my country and work there. However, I have realized the media industries are quite interconnected and it can be related to any other media industries in other countries. They did have similar constructions and it was worth getting to know what kind of people are in the media industries and how they got involved and what their roles were. There was not much that I could contribute to the event because I obviously lacked knowledge of the Australian media industry. On the other hand, with the second event, the Showcase Screening, I could use my Final Cut Pro and LiveType skills.

I have tried to attend most of the meetings and to know what was going on within the group. But not been to many postproduction sessions.

I don’t think there were any specific roles relating to my future career, which is to be a presenter in Korea. However, I think it did in someway have made myself to look back at my current status within the media industry and I saw the weaknesses and strengths so that now I know what I can do better and what I need to improve. Even though it wasn’t specifically the presenting related role, I think the entire learning have took me one step closer to the media industry. It was also great to work and discuss with other student members and get to know them better and the connections that we have between students will be also helpful in the future.

Credit 65%

Everyone took their role seriously and have done their job very well I think.

Even though I was an editor, I could see what was required from the other roles and with all the cooperation a project was finely made.

It was first time for me to work on a documentary so there were unexpected problems and extra work.

We started now knowing so much about the documentary but i guess even though it took more time and effort we have learnt a real lesson that will be useful in next production project.

This project was very meaningful because of the main characters George and Lola. We’ve built up a good relationship with them and I guess that was our biggest motivation to make a project that’s valuable for us and for them.

Urban Vignettes: Russells Old Corner Shop

Feedback from Screening at Ryan’s House
-    Superimpose name and relationship that the people have (accepted)

-    Have cutaways of them doing things, people peering in etc(accepted)
-    Show more of the ambience of the place

Consultation with Daniel Rigos
-    Possible to find soundtrack or to go without music(accepted)
-    Have an establishing shot of the building
-    To start with George first and just the clock ticking, and end with Lola’s piano piece?
-    Cut out the conversational/bickering part where Lola and George talk about Lola Russell Productions

Consultation with Anne Carter
-    Have the logo in the beginning, establishing shot of building at the end (accepted)
-    Can have just the clock ticking, or have music in the background (below the clock ticking), or have voices/ambience/traffic(accepted)
-    Reduce the shot of George in the kitchen humming OR put Lola in between the shot of George in the kitchen(accepted)
o    Keep the sound of George’s humming going as Lola comes down the stairs; don’t keep Lola’s audio as audiences may feel like they’re missing something if they can’t hear her.(accepted)
o    Do this to introduce Lola, to show that there’s two of them living in the shophouse
-    Increase the volume when it comes to Lola talking about the photographs(accepted)
-    Lola’s intro to the café should be shortened up to the point where she says that it is a working class area → rest of it unnecessary(accepted)
-    Can start Shane’s voice with him and granny seated at the table (overlay)(accepted)
-    Have cutaways of the place while Shane talks(accepted)
-    Keep George’s audio of “goodbye joy” as shane and granny walk out(accepted)
-    Too abrupt going to George talking to Ian; fade to black with the goodbye, then come to George talking to Ian and go straight to “there’s a pile of stuff over here”(accepted)
o    Fade out sound towards the end of the shot before Ian’s individual shot so that the sound doesn’t overlap(accepted)
-    Super Ian’s name and relationship only when he talks individually(accepted)
-    End Ian’s shot at “very convenient”
-    Have a bit of time before the shot of Ian ironing if possible so that it is not so abrupt and sound doesn’t overlap(accepted)
-    Drop George’s shot at “I did a course in Russian” → start the shot at the computer with George talking (overlay); extend the vision earlier.(accepted)
-    To put George and Lola talking before Alan talks about his involvement with the play
o    Include cutaways of the posters while George & Lola are talking(accepted)
o    Keep the banter/bickering of George and Lola when they talk about Lola Russell Productions
-    Footage of Lola playing the piano and talking about history can come earlier
o    Maybe after she introduces the café?
o    Before/after George is at the computer?
-    Have photos of the store come up during the credits
-    Try using overlays!
These are the feedbacks and I have accepted most of them and applied to the rough cut.

it’s gonna get better and better ~~

1. Contributor at SBS radio Korean program, which was broadcasted every sunday 3pm-4pm at AM1224.

2. Reporter at Melbourne Journal – (the largest Korean community based weekly magazine)

Both of these were run by Stella Kim whom I got to know through a friend who worked at the Melbourne journal as a designer.
I worked 3~4 hours every Sunday for the radio show and spent equivalent to 10 hours for the magazine each week. Since the attachment I’m still working at both places.

1. SBS Radio

I was already familiar with many of the sound editing programs and since I have voluntarily worked in SYN fm as the presenter/engineer for a year so I had at least basic knowledge about radio stations. Having the experience at two different radio stations taught me many things.
SBS used a program called netia to edit and record the voices to use in the show. It wasn’t hard to learn the program because it was similar to pro-tools, which I have learnt to use in the first year of uni.

SBS Korean program was mostly filled with pre-recorded contents so it minimizes the chance of making mistakes on air. Since there was many more contributors who have just began without any experiences on radio, pre-recorded system have slowly taught everyone how to become professionals of radio presenting.

For the first two weeks I printed out the scripts for the day and watched what everyone was doing and see how the show’s flowing each week. In the third week I have managed to write up a proposal for my own segment for the show, which was called “Guerrilla interview” the plan was to meet people on the street and interview them with the set of questions I had. Stella like the idea and I could be on air from week 3. What I had to do was each week go out to the street interview people and on Sunday come back with the recorded voice and use netia to edit it so it fits into the time frame that’s given to my segment. To fill in 5 minutes segment I had to plan the questions/go out meet people/edit it/prepare intro and ending script. It was a good chance to learn both sound editing program skills and interviewing skills.
The hardest thing was approaching people on the street. Because some people didn’t like to be interviewed and even acted rude.
After about three months of Guerrilla interview segment I felt that it needs some kind of change, because it started follow a similar pattern each week. Because it was also too time consuming for me I thought of changing it.
Then I started a new segment called “Hot music time” which was to introduce Korea’s newest songs including the hidden stories of the artists. It required me to research about the singer and also I had to source all of my friends to get the brand new songs. It was much easier in terms of preparation so I’m quite satisfied.

There are certain rules for SBS Korean program unlike SYN radio where there were only few rules. SBS radio had to start with the recent news and there were things have to be delivered each week. To be honest when I heard this radio show for the first time I thought it was too boring. Obviously because it had to cover all different age groups with various genres in one hour. In fact this is the only nationwide Korean radio program so it must be a pressure for the show to be representing the country Korea. Non-Korean listeners would relate the show with the country so the role of the show doesn’t solely remain to “entertain Korean people”. The show has all different segments including news. Sports news, children’s segment story telling, introducing Melbourne’s culture and events, hot music time with brand new Korean music and so on. It only plays little amount of music but it’s very informative.

2. Melbourne journal.

It’s been about 4 months since I have worked in Melbourne journal.

Each week I had to interview someone or some event to be the cover of the magazine called “Cover story”. The job also involved photo taking, which I enjoyed very much.

Each week I had to look for someone who’s done something significant for the Korean community or for themselves. It was not an easy thing to find someone special every week since the size of the Korean community was very small.

Sources came from the people i knew and mostly from Stella, If there was a special events such as thanks giving day event, Korean soccer league, Korean community parties I went and wrote the event sketch.

I have learnt a lot on interviewing skills and also how to write a magazine article. I have made millions of mistakes when I first wrote the article even though I was aware of some of the taboos or do-nots. The habit of writing took me a long time to change. but Stella as the editor of the magazine she has corrected my article and edited into the form which is publishable level which I think I was lucky to be able to work when the standard of the work was yet met.

People I have met starts from the president of the Korean community to the first Korean woman magician, little boy who went to Eton college from Australia and so on. It was precious moments getting to know people that i wouldn’t have known if I had not been a interviewer. Some has even prepared presents and wanted to keep in touch.

I sometimes disliked the fact that I had to write as “if the interviewee was the most wonderful person in the world”. It wasnot always writing and telling what I saw and what I wanted to write, it was to write what readers would want. I learnt it was importnat to follow the editor’s direction because it’s her publication and I work for her. I guess it always need some kind of compromises from both sides to write for the public.

For each interview i had to write about 4 pages in font 12 which took me many hours. every week the article was due by tuesday midnight. Meeting deadlines each week was a hard one because you never know when your interview is going to be held. straight after one article and interview done I had to find another interviewee and write another article it was obviously very hard but I enjoyed meeting new people and that’s what kept me doing this job.

when I first started I wrote the article by viewing what I heard from the person. but soon after I was asking the questions to fill my article form that I already had in mind. The basic structure of the article came up on my head after knowing about the topic so it took me less and less time to write. it was good practice.

Since I have not had many chances to write things in Korean language, I lacked on expressing differently so I tried to read articles from other people so I could learn how others are using the language to express things.

Through out the time I spent with the SBS radio and Melbourne journal it taught me how my potential work place could be. I learnt more about how to get along with people at the work especially with the boss rather than the skills. The most significant thing that I’ve learnt would be interviewing skills and interpreting that into an article. And It was a good experience because I could learnt to interview, write article, and present it. I’m still working at these two places and I hope it will lead me to the future job opportunity.

people who have viewed our documentary are mostly satisfied with the second version of the rough cut. We’re still at discussion for what shots to be taken away or what shots to be added. There are some different opinions on couple of issues but we’ll figure out the best solution soon with help of comments from many people specially Daniel and Anne (the professional editor that we met on Tuesday).

Next steps are to add the logo of the shop in the beginning of the film and adding the credits with some of the still that Lydia had taken. I’m thinking that it will look great we’ll see. I have adjusted sound levels and some of the pictures for brightness and colours. so it’s looking much better now with better edits. Many more cutaways are added and also the super for the people’s name. I guess the film is improving a little by little. it’s good that we have enough time to improve it.

It’s amazing how the project is coming along and everyone has their parts to contribute.

I’m very much looking forward to see the website “russellsoldcornershop.com” wonder to what level this project could expand to.

It still needs lot more adjustments with the picture/ colours/brightness and so on.

This secound rough cut version will be handed on to Lydia which she’ll bring to Russell’s and view with them.

meanwhile I’m waiting for new feedbacks to come@.@   

I have made myself some notes to fix. things like the level of the sound or the edit between the shots.

The music seemed to be bit off track as we heard so it will be out and I’ll try two different ways to connect the opening sequence with the next scene either to continue with the clock ticking or another type of music.

and when we get the supers to explain the relationship between the people and Lola and George, there seems to be no problems with the flow of the documentary.

next things are to put in the main image (Russell’s old corner shop) , supers (will be made by lydia by tonight) and the credits at the end.

Difference from last week are.

• we have shot all the footages

• have a brief schedule for editing

• have started on logging all the footage onto a piece of paper so we can do paper edit

At this stage everyone are watching the clips to analise and make it easy to view what we have and what we’re going to use for the actual project.

While we are logging the clips and the transcripts, an an editor I’m also reading and searching for what others have done for their documentaries. what skills or the systems they have used that could help me.

Even if we could create a good documentary this time, I think that could have happen because of the time we spent on it. in other words I don’t think that we had much knowledge about making documentary rather learnt it as we went through. but I think it’s still very valuable because this won’t be forgettable when we met another project similar to this.

by this tuesday the transcripting will be done so I’m aimming to have the rough edit done in that week.

Online stuff is working out with Deti and Gloria and if we can view the rough cut to Deti it will help her in inderstanding the project and so the design of the website.

Lynn will be helping out in making the short clips to put up on the website.

We’re a week or two weeks behind the schedule but since we have given us plenty of time before the due date, there shouldn’t be too much trouble in finalising the project.

so far, everything’s going well.

Basically, the editing principles of fiction and documentary are the same. However, there are more possibilities when editing a documentary, as you are not bound by causality in the same way and thus do not need to tell your story in a certain way, which gives you a high degree of freedom; you should therefore consider alternative ways of piecing the material together. Try to maintain a certain sensitivity towards the raw material in order to avoid forcing it in the wrong direction because you are too focused on the story you had planned to tell.

-Guidelines for producing a short documentary-
by Kirsten Sørensen, Mette Bahnsen, Henrik Holch, Gitte Hvid and Lise Otte

It makes me feel good about being free with the editing. there are no limitations or rules or certain shots to appear at the scheduled time.

Since we had a direction to follow and have shot in that way, it will be a matter of deciding the bad bits and take out that so the remain will be our documentary. even though there were set up of picture/sound it will be shown in the most natural ways.

Documentary editing in this sense seems very unlimited. but still I think we shouldn’t force it to form in certain ways.

Documentary displays a tension arising from the attempt to make statements about life that are quite general, while necessarily using sounds and images that bear the inescapable trace of their particular historical origin. These sounds and images come to function as signs; they bear meaning, though the meaning is not really inherent in them but rather conferred upon them by their function within the text as a whole. We may think we hear history or reality speaking to us through a film, but what we really hear is the voice of the text, even when the voice tries to efface itself (Nichols in Rosenthal, 1998, p. 52).

while reading this statement, I wanted to re-think about our intension or the direction of the doco.

even though it’s documentary, we must have a flow and the direction and the key question will be to find it out. Find the value out of the footages that we already have.