Category: Reflection

INAUGURATING THE SEMESTER OF THE TV SHOW

1/29/2015

When I was in college I used to have an argument with one of my good friends, a future filmmaker who would not give up his allegiance to the cinema at any cost. I’d annoy him whenever I could with a simple argument: television, I’d tell him, was set to overtake the cinema as the highest form of audiovisual art, the possibility to tell long form narratives with intense character development foretelling a genre that could be as complex as the novel without losing any of the aesthetic sensibilities which the cinema has developed in its hundred year history.

At the time, I was admittedly a TV newbie, having been deprived of the best American programming from the 80s and 90s while living in a conservative Brahmin household still thanklessly and ineffectively holding on to some type of anti-Western puritanism, which basically meant my early relationship to television was almost exclusively limited to children’s cartoons and sports (both of which I still love dearly). And so, when I finally had the opportunity to watch TV unencumbered by any suspicious family gaze, I devoured anything and everything, binging on Alias, 24, Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks, Beauty and the Geek, and untold hours of a reality TV genre that was just coming into its own and of which I remain a bit embarrassed for having consumed (and continuing to consume) so willingly.

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BLOG #2 FROM VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY SEMINAR

9/30/2014

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Written by Fatima Tassadiq

After familiarizing ourselves with the filming equipment, Lindsy, Jiawen (my project group members) and I finally started shooting a couple of weeks ago. As mentioned in my previous post, we are making a short film about the transitioning experience of two first year graduate students as they adjust to a new life at Penn. One of our participants is Tina, a first year MBA student at Wharton and the other is Hira, a first year doctoral student in the Economics department.

I have to admit that one of my first experiences with filming was rather disturbing. We were shooting some A-roll with Tina and I was behind the camera while Jiawen was in charge of the sound. I was so worried about getting the right camera angle, sufficient sound quality, making sure the top of Tina’s head didn’t slip out of the frame as she leaned back on the couch and a million other technical details that I barely listened to anything she said. As a result, my follow up questions were sloppy and failed to probe several issues that came up. Talking in front of a camera is always hard. To make things worse I think I transferred some of my own agitation to Tina and stressed her out even more!

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INAUGURATING THE SEMESTER OF THE TV SHOW

BLOG #2 FROM VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY SEMINAR

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