Shrinking Cinema

The purpose of this page is to reflect on the creation of the podcast Shrinking Cinema. The podcast was created to express an understanding of the provided text for research: Cinema, The Body and Embodiment, specifically a chapter written by Gavin Wilson called A Phenomenology of Reciprocal Sensation in the Moving Body Experience of Mobile Phone Films. This text offered theories on how mobile technology could expand the industry of cinematic viewing experience, and yet reduce the cinema industry itself as more and more services provide cinematic releases for individual mobile.

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Five major points of research were selected from the text to be explored. The following were topics of discussion in the podcast:

• Intimate physical connection of the body with filmmaker’s phone similar to cell cinema spectator with moving image on screen (p79)

• More control in viewing conditions with mobile technology (p75)

• The mobile phone screen being a bodily-connected, personal exhibitive devicestanding in for the eyes of the filmmaker (p75)

• Speed and cheapness of production and distribution make phone films andfilmmakers reflexive to contemporary events that professional cinema and TV is not(p80)

• Bergson’s idea of dwelling on memory of sensation, re-playing that experience(p77) (this point was given its own section in the podcast known as Are We Recording Devices?)

 

The team were introduced to the workspace and the GarageBand software, which the podcasts were recorded and produced with. However, three microphones were provided in the studio, and as there were four people in the team, each of us had to take turns hosting their own podcasts, participating in two podcasts as guest speakers, and be omitted from another.

 

For the team, arranging time to meet together to make each of their podcasts was disarranged due to conflicting schedules, largely due to coursework. However, the team kept regular contact on WhatsApp to find a common time to meet. They managed to meet in the evening of Thursday November 11 while the Design Studio was open. Two members hosted their respective podcasts that night, including Shrinking Cinema. The other members had to host their podcasts on Sunday November 14, again due to conflicting schedules.

 

While recording the podcast, the team had a minor debate on Nicholas Rombes’ quote in the text on how “hand-held screens have liberated not only the spectator from the theatre, but the screen as well”. It was considered disagreeable between the team as the public are not liberated from the screen, especially with mobile game technology.

Listening back to the recording of Shrinking Cinema, it was evident that as a host, I had multiple pauses due to nerves. Removing blank spaces and some bloopers made the podcast sound professional, but still natural with flowing conversations. It became necessary to increase sound wave levels of our dialogue, but this allowed more background noise to seep through the wavelengths. So, a sample of “silence” or white noise was selected as a Noise Point and the noise levels throughout the recording were reduced.