Niadin has long list of points from the last lecture. Niadin also links to the Oracle of Kevin Bacon game. The point of this is what we call “small world networks”. Imagine a large group of things (people, web pages, works the same) all with connections between them. The way this works in the real world is that most will have only a few connections, but a few will have a lot of connections. Because of these few you can easily move through these groups. This is the Kevin Bacon example, he’s in a lot of films with a lot of other actors, this means he is a very strong connector between different groups. This can also be a way of thinking about how to use links (keywords) in your k-films. Eric is pretty pumped with the Oracle too, it scary perhaps. Though it is really good to see that he sees the future as exciting, and not as the dissolution of standards, or whatever.

Kim has some very good notes from the final lecture. While Ruby picks up a Shirky essay about the same stuff. Michelle has some good comments from this lecture too. We did end with provocations, didn’t we? Nikki thinks she had an epiphany in the lecture. She didn’t, but I do like the realisation that “Perhaps it isn’t the matter of filming something to perfection, but finding something in our world that’s perfect to film.” This is what we’ve been trying to do, it is closer to documentary than drama, but there is also an ethics of making there that is more like a blog, of using the to-hand. It is also asking you to just learn to listen to the world.

Adeline thinks of the course as about how to make softvideo. That’s a pretty apt view of it I reckon. And yes, an awful lot of what gets called interactive isn’t. K-films give us a bit of room to stretch and contribute to improving this, don’t they?

Niadin has her project’s Gantt chart online. Louise points out how the project has changed from being narrative driven to something that comes out of a system of gathering content (travelling), and then goes on to outline some project ideas that push into some interesting ideas.

Louise has a good discussion about closure and k-films and how meaning is determined in retrospect, after what has happened has happened, not during. This will happen, no matter what the last shot or sequence is (just think back to the exercise in Editing Media Texts when you assembled a story from cut up bits).

Ezra shows interface sketches and responds to the proposition that a clock, for a project about time, is too literal. Ezra also discusses what he thinks a prototype should do which sits well with the course notes.

Erni discusses their project’s feedback in class. Jess realises that just having a camera and filming in situ, as you go, is not so bad after all. The trick here is to film enough to have plenty to throw away. This is how I often film and even for informal stuff I only keep about 20% of what I film - some is irrelevant, some doesn’t fit, and some turns out to be rubbish.

Meenal discusses the role of movement as the theme of their k-film. Glenn P has a list of topics which forms the web of their ideal k-film project.

Nelson describes a shoot for a k-film project which seems an interesting mix of material and formats.

Laura has some brief notes on the softvideo reading. Glenn P has some brief notes, a k-film is softvideo (in my definition). The same Glenn also provides useful commentary for you all on Vernacular Video. Eric has an interesting view of this too, arguing for a revolution of media (I’m with you on that one Eric). Tien Yi-Chieh has notes on softvideo

Louise’s lecture notes on the Barthes lecture. And her followup reading notes, and yes, writerly is like softcopy, that is a great connection to make. Meanwhile Meenal provides some comments about intertextuality and postmodernism.

Maya has a long post about a k-film as being like a child. Interesting direction, the point for me of this example was that a child is something independent, it just is. It comes from you but it is not you. Yes, it needs some looking after, but that’s so you can hopefully get it on its way. The flip of this, or the deeper part, is that being a good parent of a k-film is to let your k-film have its own life, for itself. And to think what does this mean? And yes, a poignant individual is probably a good aspiration for a k-film.

Louise has some tech problems. Korsakow does let you do this, I’ve done it plenty of times. But you really need to put things in the right place and leave them there. The stuff on workflow might help. But it can do this, and it is not the software’s fault if it doesn’t work for you. Louise is also right, exporting as you go makes a lot of difference as you can see the work in progress. Louise also wonders why subtitles don’t appear on the interface automatically if you’ve used them. 1. You might not want them in this version (perhaps they are a translation of what is said for instance) 2. You might want them in two places. 3. You actually want to control where they appear, how wide, how high, what font, what font weight, so you have to visit the interface editor anyway, 4. Programs that make decisions like that on your behalf are bad, it is like Word forever capitalising things you want lower case, ask, or provide an option to ask, but don’t just do because you want the software to know best. And then Louise has what is nearly an epiphany. Yes, k-films might become common, but they probably won’t. Think about how much time and thought we have had to invest to get to this point, and the resistance there was to much of it (and that remains). It is work that happens on the side, the margins. But as I hoped to indicate in the last lecture, this is where you need to look to find innovation. You might like to innovate, cool, good thing to learn now don’t you think?

Niadin has several interface options for consideration. There is no perfect one, just better and worse ones. She also picks up on my comments about interface and points out that they have 6 working versions to think with. Then Niadin conveniently pulls out main points.

Thomas thinks about spatial montage and the thumbnails in a k-film. Esther’s notes on the softvideo reading (this I obviously did not do well in the talkings, as most of the guts has been missed by bloggers here), and then she has notes on Vernacular Video but not the Sherman reading, it is Howard Rheingold’s variation. Pavita’s notes on ergodic stuff. Yes, ergodics has nothing to do with computers, they are texts that require users to do things where this ‘doing’ fundamentally affects the text, in itself. Esther on the readerly and the writerly. The writerly is not just that each reader interprets differently, it is (if we use interpretation as one thing that the writerly is interested in) that a writerly text happily knows there is no right interpretation, and that a writerly text i about the open creation of interpretations, about making lots of interpretations possible, rather than hiding a secret meaning, or being somewhere somehow about a secret meaning. Flavia talks about a conversation with a film maker about k-films and low bit rate cinema - 1, a k-film could be to DVD standard, we just are working differently 2, music in iTunes is just below CD quality, and while he is technically right it is also my point - 99.99% of people can’t tell the difference and don’t really care since they’re not audiophiles 3) of course he’s offended, if you have specialised skills that cost money to implement you must internalise these values (otherwise you wouldn’t do it) so things outside of this get dismissed, same thing was said and is said about blogs by writers and big media, but it really is not about technical standards, is it? Megan has some nicely framed questions about softvideo. Hannah has notes on the Vernacular Video reading. She is right not to dwell on all of it, some of it is better than other bits, and some more relevant to us than others. See the notes I have on the course site which I preface the reading with. I like the idea of vernacular though. That is what you are all making and exploring. An informal, everyday, ’slang’ sort of video. A video language and practice of the street, not the studio, of the informal and near enough, not the stylised rules of conventional cinema and perfection.

Hannah has some interface options on screen, Thomas’s group got some hard direction via a class critique (but I think it is pretty clear that you are beginning to see the value of this sort of feedback - it does improve your work, it helps you get perspectives about your own, and you are developing a language of making), and then after some time some new directions. Nikki documents the difficulty and scale of the project. When you notice there’s lots about food, eating and so on then think about what that tells you about your theme (what have you discovered through this?) and then how you could use this pattern to build a structure. This is, after all, what this is, you’ve noticed a pattern (food, eating, drinking), think about why it is there, and then how to use it. Sarah writes about feedback and the pros and cons of using subtitles in the final project. Julian answers his earlier queries about “why the grid?” James talks about the two way communication going on in the making of the k-film, rules for content, then the content helping frame rules of composition which also become the rules of reading/viewing.

Then we have the third version of possible interfaces for Hannah’s group k-film. Flavia blogs the start of the k-film project with the ideas for how the work will be structured. Ao Xu has a sketch of the ‘connection tree’ for the k-film project (nice phrase that). Louise sketches four simple, related keywords as a possible link structure.

Pavita has comments on crits in the classes and documents progress. Jill is frustrated, particularly since I gave their work in progress a pretty hard time. She is right, just because you film it according to rule X does not mean you need to stick with this when composing the work, however the point is that if it is about someone’s day, and the time of day is important to the structure, then this presumably matters in the composed work. If it doesn’t, then that’s fine, but it isn’t about time of day, it is about things done in a day, but then how it is structured is about the things done, not when they were done. Jessica talks about how they started, they did a lot of work making, only to realise there was no real plan so they were at square one. Again. So to the next step. William outlines their project’s three clouds. Joanna has a drawing of an interface and notes about progress. Marta has drawn their possible k-film structure, and their video list and relations, and a prototype interface.

Jill then describes how their project is changing, and includes how it will be driven by three individual ‘lines’. Melissa realises that her team have to ‘listen’ to the material gathered to find what is common to it. What is common helps with thinking about how to structure it in terms of connections (keywords), and so in turn patterns. Julian’s group view their stuff, and are happy. Abstract, patterned but lots of possibilities. Then there’s the critique. The grid. No easy answer, it gives visual solidity much like a good edit gives something to the sequence. You can’t specifically name it. But if you look at projects that think of the grid (it does not mean that you align everything to everything else, but to the underlying skeleton which is a grid) well, they immediately just look good compared to those that don’t. As I mentioned elsewhere, your blogs all rely on grids, and there is a reason why.

Gina has her group’s Gantt chart available. Helps to keep things on track, or if off track then what needs to be done to get back again. After their critique they changed course, with some useful ideas about the difference between the arbitrary and the literal.