A little summary

Frankly speaking, it is a bit hard to reflect what I thought and did for the online documentary since the submission was two weeks ago. So I am going to give a little summary for the whole course and the online doucmentary in my own opinion. It is a very interesting experience when producing your own online documentary. You have to find a question and your target community first. And you really have a great interest in the community. You decide your own way to produce the documentary. There are a lot of methods to produce the documentary such as videos, photos, animations or texts. Through the rough cut showing tutorial, I saw a lot of interesting productions from my classmates. They really have a very unique concept and idea to produce their documentary. On the other hand, I did not really have a great interest on CTG at the begining. However, I found that CTG actually is a very systematic organization through the investigation. Their serious working attitude helps to perfect their productions. Many audiences gave a very positive feedback in their last production.

Sense of belonging is the other important point that need to focus in the documentary. I think it is not difficult to find out how united is the community. From interview with the producer, the production crew spent half year to concentrate their production. It is very easy to create and develop a sense of belonging within the group. In addition, the post production party and curtain call after the last show actually highlight their community sense. The transitional origin of the group also helps CTG to produce good quality production too. As a result, I joined the group and became a member of the production team.

I became a member of the community!

In the last tutorial, Dean said that he hopes us to reflect what we did about the documentary and from the community. Besides theory, I found that the community does not only influence its members emotionally. It also has a very systematic structure and serious planning on every productions. For its 2009 mandarin production, it has already started production meetings. As I mentioned in previous entry, different department leaders have been selected in order to organize the production. One of my friends becomes set leader and she asked me to join as set crew. As a result, I became one of the production members now. I think I can be more focus on the community internally if I can modify my online documentary next semester. Although it is not possible, it is still a very interesting experience as I totally did not have any interest on CTG before I take Transient Spaces.

Through the interview video, the director and producer of CTG also mentioned that CTG aims to promote Chinese culture by producing Chinese plays. I think they can achieve what they said through different productions. Their latest mandarin production is the first production of CTG, “Thunderstorm”. “Thunderstorm” is a very famous drama which created in 1933. Its author, Cao Yu, is a very famous playwright in China in 20th century. “Thunderstorm” is also the first production of CTG which was produced in English. In 2009, CTG reproduces “Thunderstrom” in Mandarin. I think it is a very suitable choice for its latest production. As “Thunderstorm” is a very classical drama, it is also the first production of CTG. There are already 17 years since CTG established. I think it is a good time for CTG to reproduce its first production. I am looking forward to participate as one of the members in the production team!

The day after submission

Finally, I finished all my assignments (excluding this blog assessment) in this semester. As week 13 is already the last academic week in this semester, it  is not easy especially I got four assignments to due within the week. Therefore, after the submission of online documentary on week 12, I did nothing for Transient Spaces. Anyway, I tried to reflect what I have done in transient spaces in the past few days. When I finished the documentary, I found that I am already a “CTG expert”. Before I started the documentary, I only knew that CTG is a student theater group and a lot of people go to see their production every semester. However, I really feel their sense of belonging during my documentary production. Each production takes a long long time to prepare from set design, script, cast audition to post-production meeting.

Last month they just finished their cantonese production. And they have already recruiting cast and production crew for their Mandarian production. Different production leaders have even assigned in order to start their work immediately. Therefore, there is no doubt that CTG is a very “professional” and serious student theater group. On the other hand, there are a lot of evidences to prove their close relationship. When I was still producing my documentary, I saw a lot of videos and photos about CTG’s production. I can ensure that there are more than 10,000 photos were taken during their whole production. Some members may even edit those photos and combine with music in order to produce a memorial video. I have already uploaded some memorial videos on my documentary site. Through these videos, we can see how much they have contributed to CTG and how CTG influence them.

Reflection after submission

Just now Dean said that we totally need 24 entries for the blog assessment. I think the requirement is very reasonable as I originally thought that we need 28 to 42 entires! Therefore, I only need to do few more entries and I can fullfil the requirement. I am not sure how many entries I can do totally but I have quite a lot of things to reflect about the documentary and CTG. I will not do the reflective entry before I submit the documentary but I really inspired by CTG after I produced the documentary especially the interview video. Frankly speaking, I am not following the schedule tightly to do the blog entires. That’s why I was quite worrying that I cannot achieve the assessment requirement. After I started my production, I tried to do as more entries as I can. I found that it is not difficult  to do the blog as I wrote down the things immediately after the production. The blog assessment also helps me to reflect what I need to do next and the structure of the documentary. It even helps me to design the assignments schedule! After the semester, I think I will start a new wordpress blog as I really think that it is a good blog site for bloggers! I am using Xanga currently but I found it is not as user-friendly as wordpress. Therefore, I think I will keep a wordpress blog for private use.

Week 12!

This is week 12 now and I am in the tutorial and listening to my classmate’s documentary presentation. I find that they really work hard on their documentary and they did really very good! All the documentaries are well organized and very details. This impresses me and I am really stress now! There are only two days left before the submission and Dean already extended the due date from Wednesday to Friday. To be honest, I originally really do not know how to match the community and theory together. I think it is hard to balance between the documentary and theory. Of course I know that I should plan the documentary well before I start the production. Luckily, I saw the community theory of McMillan and Chavis on Dean’s blog. McMillan’s theory really helps me a lot. I reflected the concept of my documentary after I went through the theory. And now I plan to put McMillan’s theory into my documentary. I hope this enriches my documentary!

As mentioned before, I actually produced the final version of my documentary video. The only thing I need to do now is just making my documentary more complete. I also found some more videos which are about CTG’s past producitons. I found two videos which are extremely helpful to my documentary. A member of CTG produced them to promote their productions. I think that these videos actually show a sense of belonging of CTG members. In the photos, you can see that they enjoy the production and full of joy!

Total budget rundown! 10 litres Coke Zero to get a documentary video.

After spending eight hours on the video, I finally finished the video part of the documentary today! From choosing the research topic to edit the video, it takes almost three months for the whole research. Originally I really don’t know what to do for the documentary and I only decided to do international students’ life in melbourne. However, I cannot find any suitable theory for this topic and I didn’t find any interest on it. After that, I realized I actually got two community which are quite special within my network. They are CTG (Chinese Theater Group) and HKSA(Hong Kong Student Association). I finally chose CTG because I thought that CTG is more special than HKSA as HKSA is a very normal student community which aims for providing benifits and chance for Hong Kong student to know each others. CTG is different. It owns a very straight and main purpose, Semester Production.  CTG produce two plays every year and each semster produce one. Every semester it has a different production crew like director, producer and cast. Therefore, it transits every semester. Although it doesn’t own the same production crew every semester, their members always show a close relationship to each other. That’s the reason I picked CTG instead of HKSA.

Just a brief review for me to remind myself the reason of producing CTG’s documentary. To memorize my complete video, I am going to list out the budget rundown now! We (me and Allan) totally drank at least 10 litres of Coke Zero. Actually it mostly drank by me. A total of 30 hours (x2 if mine plus Allan) were spent in the documentary. I used 5 times two hours to pick Allan up to my place as he just cannot remember the road! Extra 50 messages were sent as I need to contact CTG members to conduct interviews and get their videos. Could be more but I am already too sleepy to do anything. So, what’s next?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlpcMCSF-1U

I will put this video on the documentary’s blog.

Behind the scene – CTG

I am so glad today that I finally got the videos from a CTG member. I actually just got some videos yesterday from the other member. But those videos I got today are all behind the scene, to a certain extent those videos may even more important than their on stage videos. The importance of these videos is that they can show the team spirit of CTG members. After I went through these videos, I found that they would do some warm up exercises before their shows. And I can say that these exercises are really enhancing their sense of belonging. After rehearsing hundred times of the play, CTG members already built up a close relationship between each other. Those warm up exercises can show how they know themselves well. Originally I want to upload these videos in this entry but the videos belong to CTG and I am not sure I have the right to publish them besides my documentary as I only get the permission to use it on documentary.

Anyway, I am going to cut and edit those videos into my documentary. So that the interview video will not be so plain. Yesterday Dean said that I should talk about how the function and characteristic of CTG attract people and how it persuade people to join. To be honest, I plan to join CTG next semester after I did this project. One of the most attractive points of CTG is its strong Chinese culture. As I mentioned in my earily entries, there does not have any kind of student community like CTG. The sense of promoting Chinese culture of CTG is even stronger than some Chinese society like Hong Kong. Their team spirit is the other attractive points to me. From a brief idea to the whole production, you are working with almost hundred of people for half year. It is a very uncommon and unforgettable experience.  Although I don’t have any talent to be the cast, I probably can be the crew. =P Let’s see whether I would become one of them in their production booklet!

Feedback for rough cut showing class

After today’s rough cut showing, I found that my documentary is not rich enough. I just produced a video as a documentary originally. However, I found that most of my classmates put a lot of efforts to make the documentary. They have a very clear concept on producing their documentary and they know how to use the online sources effectively. A well organized documentary comforts people. For example, a classmate uses her mother school as her community to investigate. She even links a google map in her documentary which gives a feeling to people that the documentary is fully produced. Photos and music are matched as well. Frankly speaking, the rough cut showing of my classmates really shocks me. That’s the reason why I changes my mind to modify my documentary settings.

As Dean mentioned in class, we better create a new blog to put all the stuffs together. So that I just created a new blog which is specific for the documentary named “Chinese Theater Group”. In the new blog, I will introduce CTG in the frontpage and also specific its characteristic as ” transitional community”. The characterestic about transition is advised by Dean today. It is because most production crew of CTG will changed by semester which means there are always different crew in different semester. Therefore, the function of CTG among the members, audience and its circumjacent community become more and more important. I will also upload the interview video on Youtube and put it in the “Interview” page. I have already linked the blog to CTG’s offical site, its facebook group page and a flickr albume which is created by me. In the new blog, I will also put a bit more theory to enrich my documentary. Right now I am still deciding how many theory should I put on the blog.

My documentary blog : http://blazectg.wordpress.com/

The last part of this entry is to highlight those things I need to finish in the documentary.

1. Enrich Front Page, About CTG –> theory about community, what is a community,

About CTG, How CTG match the community’s theory

2. Upload interview video on Youtube and put it on “Interview”

3. May add a page of “Theory – Social Capital or Liminality

……

Preparation for rough cut showing (Photos)

Although I put a lot effort in the video part, I did not really concentrate on the photos part. Photos and texts are also important in my documentary as the video cannot express all of my ideas in CTG. However, I found that it is quite difficult to express my idea through photos. I tried to describe every photos I uploaded in a sentence but it seems that most description is not related to my core concept. Therefore, I would like to change the balance of different formats in my documentary. Originally, I planned to use videos, photos and texts to produce my documentary. Now I would like to make video and texts as main elements in my documentary and photos would only help to enrich the documentary.

The change in my documentary will help me to create a new style of my documentary. Video is my main part in the documentary originally. The video also helps to express my idea on CTG as a community. Interviews of CTG members highlight the function, vision and mission of CTG in Melbourne University, Chinese Community and its audience. However, the video cannot well introduce CTG and uses CTG as an example to answer what is a community. Therefore, I have to change my plan after today’s rough cut showing class. I will discuss it in the next entry.

Subtitling the documentary! Sounds funny right?

Right now I am subtitling my documentary as I used Cantonese to interview my respondents and they answered Cantonese as well. I originally plan to use English to interview them but it is not really suitable to them. As a Chinese theater group, they should use Chinese language in the interview in order to highlight their background. However, I did not foresee the difficulties of translating the interview!!

The difficutly on subtitling the interview is that Chinese and English are two total different languages. That we cannot translate the answers directly as it may gets lost in translation. The rough cut I own now is a five mintues long videos. It only contains interviews of three CTG members. Totally I spent almost five hours in translating interviews and subtitling documentary. As Allan said, we need patience to edit and subtitling! I replayed every single shots in order to listen clearly to the interviewee’s sentence. Now my brain is full of their voices! Overall it is a very positive and good chance for me to improve my grammar language skills for use in my future research.

Producer of CTG , Antony

Director of “The Importance of being vulgar” , Felix

Despite of long working hours of subtitling, it is a very interesting and rewarding experience. But I know that I cannot do this kind of work as a career as I cannot sit still very long. For the documentary, now I need some more videos as I mentioned in previous entries. Rough cut is finished at this stage and all I need to do now is waiting for the feedback and extra videos footage. Probably I need one more day to do the final cut that includes titling, music and audio level check.