Archives: Knowledge

9 Things #ACAM350 Taught Me; 1 Thing It Didn’t

… And with our “final cut” finally done, I am extremely relieved yet somehow unsatisfied with the version we have handed in. Now that I have been through the whole process of creating a documentary, I can honestly say that the blood, sweat, and tears behind the production of our film was worth it, mainly because I had so much fun with my group mates (I swear we work when we’re together and not just eat! though twitter might show otherwise). Despite our group being the largest with 4 members, I felt like it was the perfect number to have. Everyone had their roles–– sound (Kaitlyn), main interview camera (Kathy), b-roll camera (Mimi), interviewer (me; excluding Vietnamese interviewees). As we proceeded with our 6 interviewees, we all fell into a rhythm of our own. It was a familiar yet exciting routine that I looked forward to every time, as I would anticipate what would happen when we asked our questions, what would be said, what sort of fun would we have while filming. As the important thing is the journey and not the destination, I would say I thoroughly enjoyed my journey as a member of my group, and as a short-term film student.

the pains of editing

Through the course of these past three months, I have condensed a list of things I have learned while being in #ACAM350.
9 Things I learned from ACAM350, 1 Thing I didn’t (not limited to the classroom):

  1. Editing sucks the life out of you.
  2. B-roll is random but is also not; you need to know what you need, but sometimes what you don’t think you need can become what you need.
  3. Translating is never really truly accurate.
  4. Patience is a virtue that will escape you––trying to find music and syncing the film to it will have you ready to give up.
  5. Interviewee’s opinions are important but ummm… uh…… sometimes it’s not relevant and we need to be ruthless.
  6. There are way too many files and content that naming becomes super important yet super random.
  7. I have FLAGGED1.prproj to FLAGGED8.prproj saved on my harddrive; premier autosave saves lives.
  8. Audio consistency and levels makes a big difference.
  9. Documentary film making is not as easy as it looks.
  1. Setting up lighting was like trying to wrestle with wires and frames.

The technical process of setting up pre-interviews, filming the interview, logging, editing, cutting, music hunting, audio tuning, b-roll filming… That wasn’t as difficult as the creative process. From brainstorming to proposal writing, then interview question making, constructing the narrative, cutting out stories, re-constructing the narrative; all of these took way more time and effort, and gave me an insight into the kind of thinking and analyzing that goes into creating a film. The nuances and the little details of each segment is broken down and analyzed by us to try and understand the film we want to create. There were many times when we would be debating about keeping or cutting a certain part, each of us having their own reasons for their decisions. The dialogues that we had regarding the impact of the interviewee’s voice, to the meaning of their words sparked interesting conversations about our own narrative direction and what we wanted to say with the film.

The learning I have done through interacting and speaking with our interviewees as well as my group members has made me aware of issues I didn’t know existed before. Looking back, my school just did the bare minimum of educating us about history, but what can you do. The struggles and the pain and hurt that our interviewees carry over from Vietnam or from their parents linger within them, and how each of them chooses to express that becomes a personal story about the Vietnamese. Sadly, because of the topic of our film we couldn’t delve deeper into a single person’s story. The use of the yellow flag is controversial because of what it represents, whether it be the “lost” Vietnam, or “Freedom and Heritage”. Our video only brushes the surface of the topic and what the flag represents to the different Vietnamese people in Vancouver. With each interview, I learned more about a history I have never come across, and through the creation of this video have become connected––to people, to history, to culture. And not just the Vietnamese, but also to Canada.

Canada has a reputation for being a nice place, somewhere you can go to for better opportunities, somewhere that’s nice to live. I found this motif to be recurring with a lot of our interviewees; and that really speaks to the kind of place Canada is, and to what Canada as a country has to offer to Canadians, whether they be immigrants or first/second/n-th generation. The conversations about being Canadian and living in Canada made me question what being Canadian means to me, and what do I see Canada as, whether its a country of opportunities, of open discourse, of community, or of beautiful natural scenery.

All in all, the film has become a way for me to learn not only about Vietnamese history, but also of the conversations around being Canadian. The technical skills are definitely something that will be helpful in the future, but the dialogues we have had and the stories we’ve shared are ones that I will continue to think about and investigate. I really look forward to the screening, to see how everyone’s films turned out! Thank you for an enjoyable class, and keep creating #ACAM350! (:

A Stamp and A Soul

Because we were talking about oral history, I’ve decided this blog post will consist of my grandfather’s oral history. Maybe this will be the written record of his experiences in English. (:

Story time: My paternal grandfather was a young adult when he made his trek to HK from the outskirts of China. He was in HK when World War 2 happened. He was there at the time when the Japanese occupied the city, and was struggling to make a living after having followed in his brother’s footsteps. He tells stories of when he was young, starting out as a small business owner that sold ivory and the like, including chopsticks and name stamps. There was once when a Japanese soldier commissioned my grandfather to make him a name stamp, and he paid in advance for it too. My grandfather told him to come back in 2 weeks. He waited. The soldier never showed up.

I know of this because of a project I had to do in high school, where I had to interview a WWII survivor and listen and record their stories. I had to transcribe them and present it in a report to the teacher. The ones that wanted their works published in the HK Heritage archive could do so as well. There were many stories that were told, many that were recorded, but also many that was never heard. Having our discussion of oral history and the importance of it reminded me of the project. Through it, I got to know my grandpa and his struggles, his efforts, his toil and his fears (of the world wars, of the communists, of providing for his family). Oral history may be someone’s personal history, but it is history nonetheless. The underlying tensions between the Hong Kong people and the Japanese during its occupation, along with the stark realities of war can be easily understood with my grandpa’s story.

Of course, now that he is older, he constantly talks about the old days, of when the communists came. I always hear him talk about communists this, communists that, but the stories aren’t so clear. He doesn’t talk about it. He talks about other people’s experiences, where the communists come and take everything. According to my father, he was sent to America by my grandfather to start a business in order to have the whole family immigrate to the US. Dad worked hard, and the whole family moved.

I’m always confused at the timeline of everything, because I never know exactly when we were in the ivory business, and when it stopped. Grandpa apparently owned a restaurant too. Apparently lots of people went there. Apparently it was popular. I didn’t know that. It’s not there anymore. I ask my Dad about it too, but it’s not a really satisfying answer. Maybe I’ll ask more when I get back to HK (:

problems become one, two, three, ta-da!

The “funnel” essay model––where big concepts are “funnelled” and become a single idea (thesis), which is then supported by several arguments, and is then followed by a conclusion that widens the scope once again. I think the funnel captures my way of thinking and information processing rather accurately. Whether it’s assignments or everyday problems, the model has become so ingrained into my thinking by English teachers throughout the years––thank you very much––that I naturally think through the steps of the funnel without realizing it. The idea of thoughts going from “big > small > big” mirrors the “general > specific > general” thinking that our minds go through everyday. Even in the realm of business, I think everything, whether it be products or services, is “concepts > details > concepts” turned into reality.

If I need to explain my thinking in terms of divergent/convergent thinking, I think my initial answer is selected from a quick diverging of possible options. This then converges into one single point to then diverge again to explore the array of solutions within that one point before converging again into a concrete answer… I’ve come to realize through this assignment that the way our brain processes information happens so instantaneously that explaining it step by step is a rather grandiose task. Nevertheless, I will attempt to explain the way my brain handles problems, how it makes its selection among the possible solutions, and how it decides to present that information.

screen-shot-2016-09-16-at-9-40-54-pm

Infographic of my thinking process

My thinking takes shape in the form of writing, if scribbles count as actual writing? My mind map isn’t so much a map rather than just blocks and points of sentences and thought segments that continue itself down the page. I guess you could say I organize myself with words rather than with pictures or by visuals (English major, go figure). Despite this, the way I present my thoughts could end up being very visual, as with the infographic I created in an attempt to explain the way my brain processes information (I hope it helps). As much as thinking and analyzing is involved to create a single idea, the effectiveness of transmitting the message is key if I want people to actually understand what I am thinking. No matter how efficient or how brilliant my ideas are, if I can’t translate that into comprehensible data, then all is for nought. Because of this, I consider being able to think through how to create an easy to understand and effective presentation is just as important as the whole thinking process.

Of course, showing is always more effective than telling, and luckily I have some outlines of previous papers lying around my desk. Exhibit A: Photo evidence shows an example of an outline to a research essay I had to write for an English course. The left page is my initial scribbling and brain blabbing on the possible arguments and theses, while the right is a more organized, well defined and explained version of the scribbles. Those are both incomplete as I suspect there was a third piece to the puzzle, but alas it is lost among the chaos of term papers and finals. Notice the use of colours too––I get bored easily and using colourful pens makes it easier to cope while making my thoughts easier to organize as well.

img_0657

Exhibit A: My research paper outline

I look forward to the Business Innovations course as a way to further refine my way of thinking and problem solving, as well as finding effective and creative ways to present information to the world outside my consciousness. I am always for simple, beautiful and effective types of engagement, and if I am able to learn about design processes during my time in this course, I will for sure take advantage of this chance to further improve my skills.

As a wise woman (a.k.a my mother) once said: “We never focus on the effects of the problem, always on how to solve the problem. Because what is the point of getting emotional when you can do something about it?” And I truly believe this has affected my way of thinking way more than any other methods I was taught, because part of the fun of constantly thinking through problems is the smile on people’s faces once you’ve solved them, rather than being upset over how much the problem is well… a problem.

 

Naming the unknown –– Antigone’s Claim by Judith Butler

What we have here is The Ambiguous Case of Antigone, where she is “unintelligible and unthinkable”. So… why do people even bother trying to understand her?

Here’s why I think so many people have attempted to define and classify Antigone as something, yet end up failing to some degree: because society and its people cannot deal with individual anomalies. They cannot deal with the appearance of something unknown, unable to be classified and put into order. In my opinion, it drives them insane like some kind of OCD for the whole of society, going along the lines of the exclamation “WHY WON’T YOU FIT?!”, similar to that of someone trying to complete a puzzle.

This form of anxiety and interest in the anomaly is greatly influenced by the idea that society fits together; everything is within society and has a place, name, and function in social structures. Because Antigone is such a far off point in the collation of humans in general, everyone looks at her like she’s some sort of rare extinct animal. I find that these specimens of humans or characters to be the ones who challenge what we or society believe as a whole. It’s interesting to think that in classifying Antigone, humanity might gain some understanding of what or who she is, and add her to the organized list of What To Name People.

But perhaps this isn’t the point of Antigone’s ambiguity, to be named, but rather to stay unnamed so as to always remain a mystery, an unidentifiable being that transcends society and social norms to give people something to fawn over and obsess about because she does not fit, and because she is special.

Ambiguity then, I think, is good for human kind. We do not know and we are uncertain.
But isn’t that the beauty of knowledge, that we might never know? I think so.

I believe you but you don’t know what you’re saying? — Gorgias by Plato

I am confused by a very simple point in Plato’s Gorgias.

If Gorgias claims that what oratory is is simply being able to persuade a person or crowd without knowledge that he is knowledgable in something he actually isn’t, then what does he use to persuade the crowd? I’m sure the lengthy style of speech Polus gives when trying to answer Socrates gives an idea of how he does it, but then this brings me to a similar conclusion to what Socrates said: he isn’t really answering the question, just making it sound nice and grand. In the end, it’s kind of like a bluff… no?

What kind of persuasion would it be if the basis of it is simply on the words of one person without knowledge? To a person lacking knowledge, it would sound perfectly fine and seem rational, I presume, as long as someone seems to knows what they’re talking about, but it does not provide any solid ground for a claim. This leads me to question how much we actually trust other people’s words, and how much we believe what we hear. People lacking knowledge seem to be blindingly trusting in what they hear from the orator, because he appears to be knowledgable, at least in how Plato portrays the unintelligent population. Does this not mean that whoever speaks persuasively can move those lacking knowledge, even if it may be completely false and inaccurate? I guess so, but I think this also downplays humanity’s intelligence and complexity in someways, as I do not think it is as simple as Socrates rationalizes that “a man who has learned what’s just [is] a just man too” (pg, 19, 460b)

Then again, maybe what Plato portrays is true. Words can move people, as demonstrated by many great historic speeches (Martin Luther King, Hitler, etc). But do people believe in these words simply because it aligns with their motivations and goals, or is it maybe because the speaker has a certain charisma? Successful speakers certainly seem to have both, however, what I’m trying to question is how much can we believe a person based on their words without knowledge or facts backing it up? Or, as Socrates describes, how much can people be swayed by “conviction – persuasion” as opposed to “teaching – persuasion”? Doesn’t providing evidence and teaching with facts and knowledge lead to a more solidified and grounded claim? Am I just veering towards rationalism in regards to knowledge? Maybe? Regardless, given our progress in technology and availability of information, it is hard to imagine an argument or persuasive speech without at least a hint of factual evidence to support an argument. Perhaps this is just my instilled process of thinking and therefore cannot understand a “conviction – persuasion” Socrates and Gorgias is referring to.

Either way, I would like to end this post by claiming this: I don’t really have anything to back up what I’m saying.