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.
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DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JANUARY 30TH, 2015 We invite all UPenn undergraduate and master’s students to apply to this year’s fellows program! The SSMF fellows program provides undergraduate scholars and media makers at the University of Pennsylvania with the opportunity to explore and engage multiple media forms for their own research projects with the support and guidance of experienced scholars and researchers. Fellows must show interest in an individual media-based project they would like to work on. This can be for a course requirement, an independent project, or the senior thesis. Each SSMF fellow will become part of the Camra community and attend special fellow events during the spring 2015 semester, attend the media festival (March 27-28, 2015), and work one-on-one with a Camra mentor on their projects. In May, fellows will have the option of submitting their media work in a project competition. All you need to do: Complete the online application (http://bit.ly/ssmffellows). Personal Statement Description of proposed media project Faculty Reference We are so excited that the Call for Submissions for the Screening Scholarship Media Festival (#SSMF2015) is out! Our theme this year is “Performing the Digital” and in case you have not seen it, here is the call: This year at the Screening Scholarship Media Festival we invite submissions from scholars, activists, artists, filmmakers, and educators that creatively explore how the social world is performed in and through digital media. Over the last few years, there has been a proliferation of scholarship that looks at media as a vehicle for performing and constituting reality, not merely representing it. With this in mind we ask: What are the ethics and politics of (re)presenting our work on screen? How do multiple lives — digital, analog, physical – connect and disconnect through on and offline pathways? What does it mean to be a scholar, artist, and/or educator in the digital age? What are the affordances and tensions of digital mediafor scholarship, activism, and pedagogy? With this theme we want to highlight how the production of multimodal research in today’s environment is always, in some ways, an act of “performing the digital.” Every time that we pick up a camera to film informants, students, cities, or scenes, we are performing a research personae that is informed by digital media, and because of this, the theme for this year is intrinsically connected to camra’s mission. It’s going to be a great festival this year. Check out these photos from last year’s SSMF and get excited! 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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