Addiction.

Earlier this evening my wife asked me, “Do you think you’re addicted to media?” After a discussion about what she meant by media, I got to thinking, am I addicted to web technologies?

My gut reaction was, “Hell no! I can go without internet access whenever I want.” However, I then realised, “Isn’t that what smokers say? Shit maybe I am addicted.” I started to consider, when do I ever actually go without net access. Never. Whether I’m at home, at work, in a coffee shop, at my parents house, sitting in a mates flat, I always have my Macbook wirelessly connected. I have also noted that my attitudes towards people’s response times to email and facebook messages are often unrealistic and this in turn made me think about the times when I have actually gone without the interweb.

I began to realise that I have very rarely be disconnect since my first dial-up internet connection back in 1995. A couple of times my love for the web and all things digital have lapsed, like my first year of University and my semester abroad in the states. However, in the main, I’m “always totally connected” and I always come back to my fascination with online services. I then began to wonder about my learning abilities in this environment and if that had something to do with my passion. My recent foray into the world of Web 2.0 has happened very fast, and while I had a fundamental understanding of all things “web” that underpins my learning curve. It is undeniable that this self learning in an online environment is extremely empowering.

I have never been able to explain to people how I know the things I know about programming, the web, design etc. “I just know them”, has been my only response. I’m starting to realise that perhaps it is that “innate” ability is what makes this addiction such a comfortable place for me. I might have detested everything I was doing in the web world latterly, but now, with some distance, I can use this addiction to benefit my creative endeavours.

That’s enough of that…

K

The Brothers Coen

This weekend has been a uniquely Coen experience. On friday we watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada which is obviously trying desperately to be a Coen brothers film and failed slightly.

Then we went to see No Country For Old Men the Coen’s latest outing, which truely puts them back on the neo-noir map as a stonking force to be reckoned with. If it wasn’t only January I would be proclaiming I had found my film of the year. No Country eclipses anything released in 2007 and will be a very hard flick to beat in the coming 344 days.

Finally I found Barton Fink in Morrisons for £2.50 and couldn’t resist. It’s a great bit of filmmaking, surreal and confusing at times as well as brilliantly scripted. The dialogue is just amazing. I can’t say it’s the best story they’ve ever told but it’s definitely worth checking out.

So here’s the weekend run down:

19th January – No Country for Old Men.

20th January – Barton Fink

20th January – Four Eyed Monsters

And yes… I’m still 5 behind… don’t look at me like that.

K

365 films in a year – update

So I’ve two films to add…

16th January – Charlie Wilson’s War
A great piece of filmmaking, brilliant use of footage from the period in a film that might actually educate the world about war that many know nothing about.

18th January – The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Great independent flare and style, however I felt it dragged a little in the second act. In general I like revenge / redemption flicks and I did enjoy this one but not as much as I thought… it needed something, like a little edge of Coen brothers comedy to lighten it slightly.

Anywho, that puts me five films behind. Not a difficult amount to catch up on atm but worrying given we’re only 18 days into the year. If that gap gets any bigger it’ll be hard to make up the ground.

K

Internet TV… some opening thoughts…

I mentioned a few days ago that I had a lot of opportunities coming my way at the moment… so here’s what’s going on… in brief…

My main employer, a Students’ Union who currently employ me as a Web Developer, have been extremely receptive to an idea I pitched. I have been asked to write a proposal for an Internet TV service for the students. This is an extremely attractive proposition for me as I have been looking for a long time to find a job that will allow me to move my skills further in the direction of video production and editing.

The idea behind the online television station is to firstly promote the students’ union, its services and provide a better communication method with the students. Secondly, it is designed to be a platform for student content. A group of students could decide to have a weekly TV show, a film student might want to upload their short film or video production students might upload a piece of their coursework. I even had a conversation with the Live Music Society today who are keen to get vodcasts of their gigs up on the site.

So… I have never written a proposal of this sort and any advice anyone has to offer would be much appreciated. My main area of concern is scale. How do I decide what to do myself and what to buy in? How do I decide if to buy a whole studio of pro kit or a budget cam and imovie? I am very much aware that the Union doesn’t have a lot of money and it’s for this reason that I want to make the financial area of the proposal as reasonable as possible. Realistically, I would like get this thing off the ground with a basic hosting package, a Mini-DV cam, a mic, a iMac and a copy of Final Cut Pro. However, do I host my own server on the University network? Do I buy lighting? Do I buy a green screen? There’s loads of shit I could use but end up costing a lot of money.

A colleague of mine is very keen to do everything ourselves and this raises issues of how involved the students become. I have, given the amount of time I’ve spent writing my own code, become very fond of implementing pre-existing technologies. I want this project to “just work” I don’t want to spend my time bug-fixing or patching servers together with gaffer tape. I want to spend time being creative and working with video and the web in a creative manner, not complicating my life with pathetic bugs and failing servers.

It leaves me with a lot of questions, spend a little with the room for possible expansion? risk under budgeting my project? spend a lot and have a lot of pressure? do everything ourselves for the sake of custom enhancements or use pre-existing solutions for stability?

Lots of choices, any advice?

K

Going to prison has always been one of my biggest fears…

So, for some unknown reason, I just watched Louie Theroux’s latest BBC documentary Behind Bars a exploration of life inside San Quentin State Prison in California. Holy shit! If ever anyone doubted, which I’m sure they didn’t, I’m not cut out for prison. I’m not saying that any of the crimes committed by the inmates were at all shocking to me, you see worse on CSI: Miami. However, could I live with inmate law and super-heightened masculine enviroment – hell no!

So this combined with an online conversation with a friend of mine about strange and unexpected occasions when people he knew went to prison culminates in the idea of going to prison scaring the utter shit outta me. AND now you can get a jail sentence for accidentally killing someone by using your mobile or SatNav prior to a car accident. I am never-ever gonna talk on my phone or text while on the motorway again! ever… ever!

*shudders

And yes… I’m still behind on 365 films in a year. Don’t ask!

K

365 films in a year

Last year, a number of my online friends set about watching 365 films in one year. Their goal was primarily to significantly increase their film literacy. Over the course of the year I followed their progress and was interested by how hard they it to stick to their schedule and follow their predetermined film watching plan.

Their plan was to create a list of 365 films that they would watch, in order, during the course of the year. It transpired that this was not the best of plans. For example, you’re in a bad mood, you’ve had a terrible week, everything that could go wrong at work, did go wrong and tonight you have to watch some really heavy going avant-guard filmmaking. Not gonna happen. So needless to say, they completed their goal of watching 365 films in one year. However, they didn’t necessarily watch all the specified films on their list in the designated order.

So, with this in mind, I have decided to do the same this year. However, my model is going to be a lot less ridged. Basically, my goal is to watch 365 films in one year… and document each and every one of them.

January 1st – 12th

1. Sister Act 2 – An appalling start – don’t ask!
2. Knocked Up – More touching comedy gold from Seth Rogen
3. Rushmore – I can’t believe I hadn’t watched this yet. I think Wes Anderson is a genius.
4. SuperSize Me – Morgan Spurlock is inspirational in so many ways.
5. Touch of Evil – Orson Welles in one of his best roles imo.
6. Pulp Fiction – More re-watching my inspirational films.
7. The Third Man – Totally beautiful and part of the inspirational list.
8. Kill Bill Volume 2 – Reminding myself why I love QT
9. History of Violence – With directors commentary, fascinating.
10. Jackie Brown – Doesn’t deserve its bad reputation. I think it’s decent and always have.
11. Dogma – More re-watching my inspirational flicks.

And… yes… I’m already one flick behind.

K

A sad day for Internet Music. Pandora.com closes its doors to UK listeners.

I woke on Tuesday morning to find in my inbox an email from Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.com an Internet Radio site that’s part of the Music Genome Project. Tim’s email contained very sad news for all British Internet music fans. Pandora, one of the best Internet radio services is having to close its doors to UK listeners. The music licensing authorities are refusing to make the enterprise economically viable for Pandora. Yet another example of big business destroying a service that provides Internet music fans with a wonderful service. I particularly enjoy using Pandora to discover new music.

Here’s Tim’s email:

Learning methods and life choices.

So as usual I am starting this blog with an apology for not posting more often. I have changed direction a lot with this blog first it was a general dumping ground for my film thoughts, then it turned into a forum for my worries and concerns about academia and now, I dunno really, it’s just become a general common all garden blog.

I have been thinking a lot about something that Arin Crumley discussed in his blog recently. Arin is a independent film maker, distributor and viral marketeer who very successfully created the award winning Four Eyed Monsters. In his blog entry he posted screenshots of a iChat conversation he had with a graduate considering taking a postgrad course in Animation at the Vancouver Film School. During their discussion the graduate asked Arin what he thought of his plans to attend graduate school. Arin’s response was what has been playing on my mind. His basic response was not to go to grad school and to take a year to himself to travel, learn about his craft, learn about the world and learning by lending his time to professional animators. This approach while sounding like an excuse to slack around and do nothing is actually exactly how I feel about the topic.

As an aspiring filmmaker, god I hate saying that, I honestly believe that you are far better off learning by doing rather than studying something in theory. While I have a lot of admiration for theory and theorists, I can not help but think that they are secondary to the overall process. Without going down the road of calling these people parasites because that is far from what I think, they do, however exist as a result of filmmakers and their art. This lead me to the conclusion, I want to learn from doing. I have always achieved most by this form of learning. However, I do not want to abandon my studies. This is of course a hard choice. Arin’s assertion that you should also give up your job and commit to your art form full time was also reiterated by singer songwriter Amber Rubarth who claims if you have a passion, you owe it to yourself to commit 100% to this passion. Agreed, but how do these people pay the bills?

I have had several opportunities come my way in the last week. They have come fast and I have had little time to digest them. It is important for my future that I take time in choosing which path to take. This is a time in my life when I have to decide to give something up, practice or theory and that’s very hard.

Right, that’s it from me…

K

This week has been a research disaster! (aka the blog I forgot to publish)

In this entry: Dublin, Genre as social action, reading, teaching, marking in the future.

This week has been manic! I have had so much to do and absolutely no time to focus on my research. Before departing for Dublin I received 55 essays to mark for the class I teach every Friday. As the first marking work I have ever had to do I was understandably concerned to get going and make a start of the box full on my desk.

However, I decided to put it out of my mind, go to Ireland, enjoy Dublin and return to the work after the trip.That was, it would seem, to be easier said than done. Most of my Dublin break was spent wondering about the ins and outs of marking and concerning myself with whether I was qualified to be be writing professorial comments in the margin on a 1st years work.

Marking aside, Dublin was mixed. A good time was had by all, it was great to see my father in law and spend some time relaxing with him in the very nice surroundings of Dublin.

– CONTENT REMOVED —

(sorry if certain things don’t make sense anymore, I decided that however little known this place is, it’s still public and therefore accessible by anyone and everyone)

There was an incidence which overshadowed proceedings… the loss of my wife’s diamond necklaces. It was the third day of our trip and she and I were had been walking the streets of Dublin almost all morning. We decided to go to a café in the Temple Bar area called The Elephant and Castle for brunch. As my wife takes her coat off I notice the chain of her necklaces hanging from her woolen jumper, minus the pendant. I could barely bring myself to point it out. After a VERY nice Irish breakfast we spent the whole afternoon searching for the necklace in every street we’d walked that morning. Unsuccessful, we returned to our guest house where the owner (Robert) suggested that we report it to the police so that we could claim on our travel insurance. Admittedly the experience of reporting this to the Gara (the Irish police) was actually not that unpleasant and the insurance company are currently considering our claim… so we’ll see…

Also during our trip, my wife’s Dad was talking to me about Genre as social action. His explanation focussed on upon how every social phenomenon is a genre. Take for example an email. A email is a genre and then within that genre there are many sub-genre such as a formal email applying for a job, a one line note to a friend or a forwarded message. This confused matters even further for me and got me to thinking about scope. How do you scope an exploration of genre? If genre is everywhere, how do you proceed in addressing it in terms of Hollywood?

Having returned from Ireland and read an article on Popular Culture Perspective by Clinton R. Sanders I am beginning to understand better where the separation lies. Finally, I have been considering my options for the future and trying to get some more teaching work for the coming semesters. I get the feeling there is a lot of change going on at the University at the moment and that may or may not be a good thing.

While I am enjoying my teaching I am also concerned that I am going to lose focus on what I actually what to end up doing. I want to write and direct. However, I realise that I need a financially viable career on top of my lofty dreams of being an auteur. While I realise that I am on the right path, financial concerns and lack of immediate job opportunities in University teaching are a bit of a worry….

And there I stopped… dunno why, think I got distracted with making the tea or summat… more in the next blog coming THIS weekend

K

Generating a context for my research

First up I should note, for my own memory, that the tutor explained the context and the literature review as words that can be used in tandem. Think of the literature review as the macro and the context as the micro. The context gives you a stable basis from which to write your RD1 and then develops into your literature review chapter in the final PhD.

Alrighty then, so I went to the Saturday session of MR401 or “Philosophy of Research” yesterday and the topics up for discussion were “Generating a context for research” and “Generating Research Questions”. This process proved really useful for me and enabled me to think more about the scope of my project as well. While I am interested in the script as a mechanism of change within genre as a whole, I realised that I need to keep this research focussed to the neo-noir genre.

During the course of the session we were asked several questions and here are my answers:

1. Topicality/Timing (why undertake this now?)

This was a difficult one for me, I thought long and hard about it and topicality is very difficult for me. The field of genre studies is ancient and is just as relevant now as it was then, so how do you answer the question of topicality? I have identified a gap in knowledge that I plan to fill. That is the closest I can come to making this piece of research topical. Other than that there is the recent news in the press of the WGA strike which is pertinent to my research because I am attempting to draw attention to the script as a mechanism of change with genre and as a result the industry itself.

2. What does the research build on?

The research builds on a fantastic amount of work in the area of genre study as well as the study of noir and neo-noir. Primary theorists would include Rick Altman, Steve Neale in the broader area of genre-studies and Forster Hirsch in the field of Neo-Noir.

3. What are the key issues?

This one I am still not 100% clear on but this is how I answered. What is a genre? How is it formed? How does the process of generic revision take place? Where does the script fit in all this? Authorship, who and what has influence over the process?

4. Where does your proposed work fit (what gap does it fill)?

While the work of Altman and Neale addresses the same questions I will be tackling they do not approach the problem in the same way. Their work, while exploring the concept of generic revision and mechanisms of change they do not specifically address the question of what part the script / screenwriter plays in this process. Therefore the void I am filling is the space left by Altman and Neale when they neglected to address the script as a key mechanism of change.

5. What concepts and ideas underpin it?

Another hard one… here goes nothing:

Genre, Generic Revision, Mechanisms of Change, Semiotics, Textual Analysis

6. What are the theories, interpretations and arguments that are relevant to your work and can you arrange them into themes or concepts?

Mechanisms of change
- Industry (writers, directors, producers, studios etc.)

- Audience (the audience as author / a mechanism of change)

A Literary Tradition

Noir / Myth

Textual tropes (narrative, characterisation, setting, dialogue)

I have all these words flying around my brain and no real way of controlling or forming them into and groups of themes etc. so this was again a hard one and something I need to talk through with my supervisor.

7. Who are the key theorists/practitioners that you are going to dialogue with?

Altman, Neale and Hirsch from the genre theory point of view but also, Rian Johnson (writer/director Brick), Andrew Kevin Williams (writer Se7en, 8MM and Sleepy Hallow) from a practical screenwriting perspective.

8. Which theories/theorists/practitioners MOST help you to ask your questions?

Chiefly, at this stage of my reading I would say Altman, Neale and Rian Johnson are the most helpful in helping me ask the questions I need to. Altman and Neale’s interventions into the areas of genre study have done more than anyone else to systematise the process and explain the intricacies of generic revision. While Rian Johnson is a writer/director who has created a film Brick that acts as a perfect case study in the genre of neo-noir that best helps me ask questions about the role of the script in its creation.

Finally the Lecturer asked us to created some research questions:

This is what she said about research questions…

- Research questions come from two sources the context and the method

- What are the current gaps in knowledge which allow you to ask these questions?

- What are the key issues you will focus on?

- Different methodological approaches demand different questions

- It is essential that there is an overall question!

And that this question is broken down into smaller questions, normally 3 (sometimes 4) questions for a PhD.

Question: What form will your research take?

Answer: Mixed method; qualitative(textual) & practice based.

- What sorts of questions do gaps in knowledge permit you to ask?

(this one I struggled with but I did come up with two research questions having skipped this step)

1. Why has the script been neglected in the study of generic revision?

2. How does the script manifest itself in the text?

(the tutor commented that while this is appropriate for the overall question I will be able to be more focussed in my questioning once I have read more)

That’s it from me… I way too tired to continue but I needed to get this down before it all escaped my brain forever.

K