Multi-Media Field Notes

Glenn Davis Stone & Gareth Barkin

Example of integrating 'clickable' thumbnail images into field-note text.

Software Used: JAlbum and Microsoft FrontPage [details...]

Excerpts from Gareth Barkin's field notes, 2000-2002

11/20/2000

Central Jakarta (Taman Ismail Marzuki)

Evening performance / taping of Ketoprak Humor

Arrived at the TIM theater well before the show was scheduled to begin (7pm) with Chris, but had some trouble getting through security, despite the fact that we'd been invited by the producer, Bapak Timbul, who I'd interviewed the week before at his house. Once I got back stage, and sent Chris to take some photos from the auditorium, I was able to find Pak Timbul coaching some of the players; he seemed to struggle to remember me, but eventually appeared to succeed; then again, he is an award-winning actor. Spent some time getting video of the preparations for the show. Several times children made it into the area seeking autographs from one or two of the most popular actors, particularly the guy who does all the commercials [note: find out who this guy is]. Audience was dominated by older bapak² in their batik finery, along with the occasional wife and a few groups of teen-agers. The teenagers were the hardest to figure out, since they seemed the most appreciative of the humor, but appeared to come from upper-middleclass backgrounds and were generally way too young for the target market. The Bapak were easier to understand, since the elite 'cultural preservationist' crowd was always out in force at this program, despite all the kung-fu and cheesiness. The teenagers weren't just there for the martial arts either, though, which made their presence more confusing, but later I was able to determine that they're mostly from the nearby arts school (IKJ), and that coming from the 'politically correct' activist background, they had kept up their Javanese and felt some obligation to support the 'kesenian tradisional.' But they also really seemed to like it; a surprise for us all. Chris, also, laughed uproariously -- I saw the point, but most of the humor escaped me. No, that wasn't it, I understood the humor, but it wasn't funny. Maybe all the good stuff is in Javanese.

3/8/2001 South Jakarta (Kemang) Casting Session for MIRES F-TV
The casting session at Mira Lesmana's production house turned out to be a bit of a disappointment because there were very few people actually waiting to audition. The casting director's style was, however, very interesting. He spoke to the girls as though he were coaching them through a nude scene, with a very gentle, reassuring tone that nevertheless had a touch of lasciviousness to it. I expected him to have them strip to a bikini, as he apparently had done before, but perhaps because I was there he didn't? In any case, the movie he was auditioning for, untitled at the time, was going to be a Charlie's Angels sort of deal, with each girl possessing some sort of crime-fighting power. As in Pulp Fiction, one was an expert at knives. They didn't appear to be casting for any role in particular. Tito's friend Dinda didn't appear particularly comfortable auditioning, and couldn't come up with anything whenever she was asked to improvise. It wasn't entirely clear why she was auditioning in the first place, since I don't believe she'd done any acting before, and didn't seem particularly interested in getting the role. Tito gave a solid improv performance, however, when the casting guys asked him to stand in for a minor character during a scene with Dinda. I think he wouldn't mind a little celebrity fame, but then which of us would? Ok, perhaps some of us. Certainly in Jakarta, it all seems eminently feasible.

2/18/2001 West (southwest?) Jakarta RCTI Studios, Impresario 008 shooting
After the interview with Niko, in the dressing room, I managed to get into the studio to watch them shoot 008. I looked around for people from the telkom company, but they appeared to have left. A red punch that tasted like unsolidified jello was served in wine glasses, and the audience sat mostly at round tables near the stage. The remote-controlled cameras swooped around over our heads, and their terrestrial cameras were also extremely impressive; RCTI lives up to its reputation for having spent 10 times more than they could have to set up. Those were the days, clearly. The program itself was one of the most bizarre I've seen. Their orientation toward elite/international audiences seems to show no sophistication, though it's more likely that I just haven't figured out the semiotics yet. There was a Belgian hotel manager whom I met back stage with the magician guy. The magician had met him while staying at a hotel, and invited him on the show (he must have more pull that was evident at first). When it came to his segment, the magician (whose card I have somewhere here) and Sophia Lacoba interviewed him largely just about Belgium, and why no one's heard of it. The guy couldn't speak Indonesian, so it was all conducted in English, with no subtitles since it's broadcast live. They had some travel-channel style video of Belgium which played on the plasma screen behind them. Since, apparently, there's nothing much interesting to say about Belgium, the conversation quickly came to focus on the manager's assertion that french fries actually originate that country, along with the details of how they were eaten with mayonnaise. I joined in the collective revulsion. Afterwards an ultra-cheesy American keyboard player came out and played a medley of tunes I didn't recognize, but which gave one the feeling of traveling in an elevator. When his segment was finished, he rushed off before I was able to talk to him.

2/2/2001 West (southwest?) Jakarta RCTI Studios, Impresario 008 shooting
The most interesting aspect of the shooting was the holiday special show for the Hajji day, followed closely by Niko’s ‘hissy-fit’ over the move from RCTI to YTC, and the resultant loss of friends on the crew (plus the hiring of a young kid out of Sjarifuddin’s old school as assistant producer). And truly, the kid seemed to have no qualifications at all; the incident showed that the ‘talent’ on TV quiz-shows are perhaps the only ones with serious power at the production level, meaning that they can stop production because they are required, and their loss is potentially damaging to profits. Still, Niko went on, just an hour or two late, and he later told me his only real goal had been to get ‘Fred’ or whatever his name was, on the set — he never came to the set, apparently, and had not seen the new facilities (which--a converted horse arena--were a far cry from the luxury of RCTI’s studios). For the holiday special, the casting woman ensured the contestants would be Muslim, and then encouraged them to wear Muslim-themed clothing, providing the men with matching hats and the women with the extra-lacy jilbabs, which they seemed to have some trouble fastening. Niko was dressed in ambiguously Muslim robes and kain for the occasion; after the show I found him in a back room eating dog with a small group of Christians from the crew (including the director). It seems that every workplace I visit, the Christians gather at lunch somewhere and whip out plates of pork or other haram foods, as though being Christian required they eat pork at every meal. Not that it wasn't tasty. I asked some people about his clothing and no one seemed to think it out of the ordinary, describing the costume as more holiday attire than a religious mis-representation. It should also be noted that the words on the quiz were related to Islam, at least at first, but then faded into regular quiz material. Decorations on the set looked more like a birthday party than a religious holiday (see video tape), although clearly I have weird expectations as to what a Muslim holiday should look like.

4/18/2002 South Jakarta *Private Residence - Doa Membawa Berkah* shooting**



1/10/2002 Central Jakarta M.U.I. television awards deliberations

How this page was made:

As discussed in [Barkin & Stone 2004], this page was created with the free software JAlbum and with Microsoft FrontPage, though nearly any web-page editor could have been used instead, including Netscape Composer, which is also available free of charge from Netscape, as part of 'Communicator.' First, all the images for the page were put in their own folder, since JAlbum converts only complete folders of images. Next, we used JAlbum to create a "gallery" of thumbnail images. In this case, we selected the "create slides" option, to standardize the sizes of the images, and also to make them easier to upload to the Web. Depending on your images and your purpose, you may wish to link directly to your original images (which saves disk space, but does not standardize image sizes or facilitate uploading to the Web), copy the originals to your new 'output' folder (which facilitates putting the originals on the Web, but may consume considerable disk space), or simply linking the thumbnails to the standardized 'slides,' as in this example.

We then selected the 'appearance' of our web page, using the customized "field notes" option which is available for download here [ADD LINK]. If you do not wish to install this skin, you can always choose the "standard / plain" appearance option, or the skin of your choice, but be aware that darker styles may lead to illegible notes.

Once the page was generated, we opened up the file (usually 'index.html' in our output folder) in our web page editor. Note that one may use Microsoft Word to edit the page, but a standard web page/html editor is recommended. In the editor, we created a table structure that placed images on the right hand side of the field notes. We then dragged and dropped the images next to the appropriate text. Links from the thumbnails to the larger images are retained automatically. The text itself may be cut and pasted from a word processor into the editor. In this case, using Microsoft products can be of benefit, since dropping test from Word into FrontPage, or any other MS Office application, retains the formatting of the original text, such as fonts, colors and point sizes. This may not be the case when dropping text into other web page editors.

Alternatively, the thumbnails in the automatically generated html page may be cut and pasted into an existing html document that already contains your field notes. In such circumstances, be aware that the thumbnails' hyperlinks may be compromised if it can not locate the targeted images. To avoid this, place your field note pages in the same directory as the automatically generated thumbnail page.