Race Around the World

This interview with John Safran was recorded for the website From Wireless to Web, produced in 2005.

John Safran is a filmmaker and self-proclaimed media hooligan. You can view his full biography at From Wireless to Web

The website is a selective history of broadcast media in Australia. Decade by decade, from radio and newsreels to TV and the internet, this history shows how the Australian broadcast media developed and shaped the way Australians see themselves.

From Wireless to Web is a Film Australia production in association with Roar Film.

Area of study 2. Technologies of representation

This area of study focuses on the production of representations by students in two or more media forms. Students then compare how the application of the different media technologies affects the meanings that can be created in the representations. The implications for the distribution and/or consumption of these representations are also discussed.

Different media technologies represent the world in different ways. Each, through its technology, materials, techniques, applications and processes, produces a particular representation of the world. While the different forms of media (for example, television, radio and the internet) have practices that are common, they also have features that result in the production of media products with characteristics that are unique. The use of codes and conventions to convey ideas and meaning in the representations is considered in the context of the media forms in which the technologies were applied and with reference to the specific forms and characteristics of the representations produced.

Digital Video
In 1995 Panasonic, Sony, Sharp and JVC all launched the first digital video camcorders. LCD displays replaced viewfinders – in fact, today’s camcorders are little more than an LCD with a lens assembly attached. Miniaturisation, plus digital recording and editing, have consolidated the place of 'guerilla’ recording for Internet and television broadcast.

Internet
During the 1990s, the Internet took off with the advent of the World Wide Web. Advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs), plus the rollout of high-speed broadband access have ensured a powerful role for the Internet in the post-broadcast era.

Non-Linear Editing (NLE)
Starting in 1989, Avid pioneered computerised or digital non-linear editing, which has radically changed production for film and television. Linear editing goes back to the days of silent film, but the traditional process of sequentially spooling shots from reels of film has almost vanished.

Before NLE, an editor sat with a number of videotape recorders, each connected to a monitor – two source decks and an 'assemble’ or record deck. With NLE, the video editor sits in front of a computer and the digitised source material and assembly all occur on the computer screen. Instead of reels of tape, editors rely on powerful, high-speed hard drives.

Answer the following questions from the Video Clip Context and the video clip itself:

1. How has technology made filmmaking more accessible?
2. What do you think John Safran means by ‘guerrilla’ filmmaking?
3. With digital editing and special effects do you think there is a tendency to concentrate on these rather than on the content? Some people say that there is often too much emphasis on how a film is made rather than on what is being made.

Go to From Wireless to Web for more about the history of broadcast media in Australia.