BVA703 Research - Week 5

13/03/2020

Kathryn discussed with us about how to structure outlining our methodology and explaining our arguments

How can I use the methodology be used in my project?

Example on an argument in the research mapping
Argument: I will be using this methodology
Example: The definition of the methodology (quoting or paraphrasing from a reliable source)
Explanation: Explain how and why for the statement and/or relevance of your example. How is it to be used? Explain the role your blog plays in it

I could use both current and potential future methodology used for your project. I could have a heuristic approach to my methodology because I am exploring different sources as I go.

You have an explanation in every argument and the methodology you write in the mapping task

Keywords in your research question should be like a table of content on how you prioritize your arguments

Elements of the documentary in terms of aspect ratio
Interviews - Academy Ratio (4:3, 1.33:1, 1.37:1)
Main subject's life - 16:9
Protests - Cinemascope (2.35:9, 2.39:1, 2.40:1)

A couple of us discussed our question and arguments to Kathryn and the class. While some were discussion theirs before mine, I came up with different questions that addressed my research intentions better and I improved the research question on the spot.

New question
How can the choice of aspect ratio contribute to the effectiveness of
depicting the school climate strikes in Invercargill for a short documentary?

New arguments
Filming amongst a crowd in 16:9 can make the audience feel like they are there
Filming a real event in CinemaScope will help make a real event look cinematic

Kathryn and the class gave me good suggestions and things to consider on my research questions like...

• why is 'the school climate strikes in Invercargill' relevant to the arguments
• focus more on documentary examples (The Act of Killing, Mr Carter, March of the Penguins) and not examples from other film genres (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Lighthouse)
• move the methodology argument into my methodology statement
• add drama and action to the CinemaScope argument and explain what it means for my project
• add urgency of climate strikes into my 16:9 argument
• replace element with story in the choice of aspect ratio argument, as well as expand the argument to add that it is meant to inform or send a message

Some had doubts about me filming the climate strikes this year because the potential threat of Coronavirus intensifying in New Zealand, but I'm determined to film it since we don't know how that is going to unfold in the coming months and that a lot of it scaremongering from the media. 

Jacqui gave me advice on having newspaper articles in my short film, since I was uncertain about the copyright around. She told me it's easy to get permission from the media to use their articles for your short film.

Someone suggested me doing drone footage for my short documentary, but I wasn't open to doing that because it wasn't feasible, while another suggested having animation in my documentary and I said to the class 'okay, any animators here who would work on', and none agreed because they have a busy workload. It made me think 'yeah, that's what I thought'.

This discussion and receiving feedback from the class and Kathryn was very supportive in help improving how to communicate my research intentions and a lot of the feedback was really constructive. I added the changes to my critique presentation.

I double checked that I had every in order for my critique presentation and then sent it off to Kathryn. I submitted a PowerPoint and PDF document (just in case).


I spent time searching up for documentaries that are worth watching for my research. 

• Man on Wire (Kanopy)
• After the Flood (Disney+)
• Bowling for Columbine
• Bully
• Hoop Dreams (Kanopy)
• Elstree 1976
• They Shall Not Grow Old
• O.J.: Made in America
• Citizenfour (TVNZ Ondemand and Kanopy)
• Won't You Be My Neighbor?
• Miss Americana (Netflix)
• Paris to Pittsburgh (Disney+)
• Waking Sleeping Beauty (Disney+)
• Marvel 75 Years: From Pulp to Pop! (Disney+)
• Expedition Amelia (Disney+)

15/03/2020

Chinn, S., Gregory, V., Ryan, M. A. (Producers), & Marsh, J. (Director) (2008). Man on wire [Motion picture]. Magnolia Pictures: Discovery Films 

The dramatized opening scene is not quite close to amongst the crowd, but it uses close angles to convey claustrophobia, doubt, anxiety, and fear when are in the van and on their way to the World Trade Center. They manage to do this in 16:9.

4:3 is naturally used for archival footage

• World Trade Center construction
• Inside the Notre Dame
• Notre Dame wirewalking (narrower ratio to suit images, plus 4:3 footage)
• Sydney Harbour Bridge wirewalking
• View of World Trade Center from a helicopter
• B-roll of 1970's New York
• Phillipe Petite (the main subject) on a unicycle

I guess the majority of the uses 16:9 to express the scope of the subject and the view of the world from crossing the Twin Towers.

Split screen CinemaScope to express the drama and action leading to their end goal on both WTC towers, almost like a bank heist

Some archival footage and images filled the screen potentially because the images were either big enough or enlarged to suit, or the footage was also enlarged to fit. It would be unlikely it was meant for 16:9 at the time because that aspect ratio wasn't conceived until 1989.

Some footage you could tell whether it was authentic or dramatised, but some I couldn't tell

None of the staged sequences were in 4:3 or in colour, but the archival footage was both in black and white and colour. However, the staged sequence were more artistic.

Some conflict, tension, and other drama were more clearer in this documentary than in the Robert Zemeckis film. It was like comparing a novel and a film adapted from the same novel.


Kohncke, A., Sorensen, S. B., Brink, J. T., Tveit, B. M., Uwemedimo, M. (Producers), Anonymous., Cynn, C., & Oppenheimer, J. (Directors) (2012). The act of killing [Motion picture]. Madman Entertainment: Final Cut for Real. 

I managed to find a streamable copy of The Act of Killing on Kanopy
I tried to pay attention to this film both as a viewer and as someone analyzing the choice of aspect ratio, but I found it difficult with watching this documentary today, especially a documentary like this that's nearly three hours long. I did manage to watch the first half hour of the documentary.

16:9 is used to open the wide open space and Indonesian landscapes to start with, but I soon discovered it was used for conventional reasons as a modern day documentary. It gives the impression of seeing on HDTV, or footage from a DSLR or digital camera.

This film is arguably performative documentation in itself


Batzias, N., Kaplan, A., & Whitwell, V. (Producers), & Gameau, D. (Director). (2019). 2040 [Motion picture]. Screen Australia; Good Thing Productions.

2040 uses CinemaScope to make the message clean and pristine, and have consistency between the dramatised and factual parts of the film. I'm struggling to find meaning or how aspect ratio conveys a message in a film at this time.

Bates, J. (Director). (2010). The whole world's watching [Television series episode]. In I. Gardiner (Executive producer), 50 Years of New Zealand Television. Prime Television.

I seem to remember just getting right in behind their batons, so I could shoot through the police lines at the demonstrators

- Allun Bollinger, 2010

Allun Bollinger shot some stuff in Christchurch... just fantastic footage. Right by the elbows of the cops going 'move, move'. If you're being paid 25 bucks an hour, you're not going down there to get your head smashed in, you know what I mean. So the television guys were all in the back with their telephoto lenses. So they covered it in terms of the news, but it was all distant, it didn't have that same immediacy, you know. It was not effecting in the same way.

- Geoff Murphy, 2010

AlBol footage

TVNZ footage

This shows that depending on the circumstances, there can be danger or health and safety risks as a camera operator shooting amongst the crowd. I do not see that happening in shooting the climate strikes. The 1981 Springbok tour was different, it was the country on the edge of civil war.


Maybe the choice of aspect ratio in 2040 (in this case, CinemaScope), it is to encourage wonder and optimism on what could be possible in the future, which is supported by the VFX.

Urusa tests
I did some camera tests on the Urusa with its framing guides involving aspect ratios. 
I will add overlays in post later. The frame is of the jackets on my bedroom door and did multiple takes and was framed in respect of the selected aspect ratios.
It could be good for my exhibition content

16/03/2020

Critique

We had critiques today, but we didn't have enough time today to get to my presentation. The presentations shown today had their solo project included, which is something I didn't do because I didn't think was necessary because it didn't exactly specify that in the course outline and that the solo project is arguably for a different paper.

Gayle's presentation really interested me. I asked to participate in her project because I felt my personal story would be a valuable addition.

Ben Dean. (2020, January 16). KITT [Video file]. https://vimeo.com/385369619

This is a short documentary that Nick at SIT Pro recommended to me and it experiments with aspect ratio in a similar way to what I have in mind. It's also a Staff Pick video on Vimeo.

4:3 used to a personal and somewhat nostalgic, but not personal enough to be for an interview. It does manage to help you focus on one subject, the main subject. 

16:9 and CinemaScope is used to be more formal looking and to convey an artistic look to convey drama and action to the main subject. This is more likely to happen in 16:9 or CinemaScope in this documentary, but it does happen sometimes in 4:3. 

The documentary switches between aspect ratio very quickly and in an instance.

The fast paced editing makes you more engaged in the visuals than the actual subject.

I might watch this again later to see if I can come up with any more thoughts on this short documentary.

17/03/2020

I watched KITT again this morning...

The 16:9 is used for drone footage to fill up the screen like you are floating in the air like the drone, as well as being like how 4:3 is used, which is gives the impression of an archival home video. 4:3 in this documentary doesn't always trap the viewer in focusing on the main subject and so it still somehow manages to allow the background to compliment the main subject like CinemaScope or 16:9 would. 

The use of 4:3 changes in purpose every now and then, chaining from a VHS overlay with film grain (sometimes the use of 16:9 does this too) to an crystal clear artistic look and then back to the VHS overlay and so on. I think perhaps the filmmaker wanted to experiment and see what it would look like if features of one aspect ratio were applied to a different aspect ratio as seen in here.

It also uses the same subject or composition with different aspect ratio, which could work into more than one of my research arguments.

This is a very experimental documentary and I think that why there is so many potential meanings or purposes to the use of aspect ratio in this example. I should probably look into more experimental documentaries.

Research argument; The purpose or feature found in one aspect ratio can work in another aspect ratio

Overlaying the Urusa footage

I tried to download aspect ratio overlays, but it had troubles doing so. I find the computers tend to have problems accessing and connecting to the local networks. I could only test 4x3, Academy Ratio, and 1.85:1 for now onto the Urusa footage using Premiere

I found there very little and subtle difference between 4:3 (1.33:1) and the Academy Ratio (1.37:1)

1.85:1

4:3 / 1.33:1

1.37:1 (Academy Ratio)

I spent the night doing work on my first research mapping, in which I typed up about my methodology and some of my research arguments

18/03/2020

I managed to download aspect ratio overlay properly at home and ingested into my hard drive. When I got to campus this morning, I went into Premiere and applied the overlays to the remaining footage. The difference between these three are limited, but very subtle.

2.35 (pre-1970 CinemaScope)

2.39:1 (post-1970 CinemaScope)

2.40:1

CookeOpticsTV. (2019, March 21). Aspect Ratio in Cinema: Explained by Seamus McGarvey || Spotlight [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR8dNXl_dxc

I included this source into as an example into one of my argument. I initially used it as an example for my choice of aspect ratio argument, but after a while of consideration, I felt it was better suited for my CinemaScope argument

"The cinema screen is almost an architectural space and the shape of it is very important to me"

- Seamus McGarvey

1.85 is a more beautiful shape for the human face. There was a discussion between Seamus McGarvey and director Joe Wright on Atonement, whether to go 1.85 or 1.33 because close ups are dominant in this film and is to invoke the time period.

In widescreen formats, you can express alienation, to work on focus, to show your characters in a context, to have two close ups in the same frame, and good for framing a conversation between two people.

Disney and Marvel were shocked that McGarvey, Joss Wheldon, and the production went ahead with a full frame format like 1.85 for The Avengers. 1.85 was necessary in order to show all the Avengers and the tall buildings in the same framing

Disney and Marvel have consistently used 2.39 for almost all of the films in their cinematic universe. The Avengers sequels (Age of Ultron, Infinity War, Endgame) reverted back to 2.39, potentially because McGarvey had no involvement in the productions.

"I like watching films in other aspect ratios because it is like going into a different room. There are different attributes to how you frame a picture. It's like any frame on a wall, it's got a different sensibility on how the eye moves around the frame."

- Seamus McGarvey

Other aspect ratios mentioned by McGarvey

• 3.00:1
• 1.35:1
• 1:1

Anamorphic formats - grandiosity, epicness

For The War Zone, they used 2.39 to express the epicness in everyday life and the domestic interior (complimenting the production design), and potential for horror.

In the production design for Bad Times at the El Royale, they had CinemaScope shapes consistently throughout the film

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/video/discover/aspect-ratio.html

I include this source to help support my argument on the intimacy of the Academy Ratio.

Widescreen format are perfect for stories where you want the audience immersed in landscape, environments (various genres e.g. documentaries), battle scenes (action / fantasy genres), or musical numbers (musical genre)

Throughout cinema history,, filmmakers have worked on to expand the width of an aspect ratio, rather than the height.

4:3 - Intimate conversations, but limits the background

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/blog
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/documentary
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/aspect-ratio
https://www.lexico.com/definition/effectiveness

I spent time tonight to quote definitions to specify what I mean in my key terms and I gave a go at typing up my methodology and approach to documentation, but I had a hard time in wording them in a way to be different from each other and not repeating myself.

I really need to learn EndNote as required for the APA referencing, but I need to do stuff at home tomorrow morning. I did notice a PDF on how to use EndNote on the MySIT, which I will give a look when I have time.

There is still more room for improvement, I need one more argument for my research mapping and there could be stronger sources to support my arguments. I also have the conclusion, citations, and annotating sources parts of the assessment, but I'm unsure how the annotation part fits into the structure of the research mapping, so I might email Kathryn about that tomorrow morning. On another note, I may print out my progress before submitting on Friday because I tend to proof read and notice mistakes more if it's on printed paper.

Oh wait, I took another look at the BVA703 course outline and realise that the annotated text is actually for my blog, not the research mapping tasks itself, which makes thing easier and less complicated.

19/03/2020

I received a text from SIT this morning that the deadline for the research mapping task has been extended for another week, which puts stress off my shoulders and allow me to finish the task with a clear mind.