Media 6 – Week 6 Reading

This weeks reading was ‘Minds Viewed Globally: A Personal Introduction’ in Five minds for the Future, written by Howard Gardner. This reading was a hard one to wrap my head around, mainly because there is a lot of information that you have to sift through. At least the first two pages just seem to be Gardner displaying all of his achievements which in context isn’t worth more than a paragraph to the reading. Once you get into it though you find a few themes emerging. He talks about mind-sets and how, if we are to progress as  species we must cultivate certain types of minds. He first turns to the education system stating that things need to change because as far as “cultivating minds” go, the education system is lacking in a few areas, areas that they seem to dismiss entirely. Which isn’t really news, everyone learns differently and the education just isn’t equiped to help those minds that don’t fit into their moulds. He then goes on to review science and technology, stating that in todays age they are both closely knit and one can not proceed too far without the other, makes sense I guess. Just as I was going to raise the argument about the creative mind, as in science and technology would be nothing without someone to conjure up creative ideas such as: how could a human fly, Gardner asserts my point of view, we also need creative minds. Finally he talks of globalisation and how as a world wide community we need to work together as a worldwide community but also as a local community, pretty straight forward.

My only problem that I have with this theory is that like the education system he is talking about, he is trying to mould minds of the future, isn’t it better to steer them where their own mind wants to go, not try and categorise them? In such a large world with such complex networks in place surely the answer to disruption is be fluid and ever changing along with it.

Media 6 – Week 5 reading

Ironically enough, as it comes closer and closer to the end of my schooling, where things are building up and I find I have less then enough time, this weeks reading is all about time management. Before I started I found myself say “I don’t have time to read this!” But I persisted.

This reading by Judy Wajcman, entitled “Finding time in a digital age”, is all about how technology is making us more harried for time instead of what was predicted where technology would solve our work time problems leaving us with plenty of leisure time. A few Problems are determined from the advances of technology. For instance, in the past there was a definitive line between work time and home time, now that technology has become so interactive and specially freeing, the line between work and home has been erased, if we take the smart phone as the key example: now, thanks to the smart phone you can check your work emails whilst you’re in bed. It’s a good idea in theory but in reality, this keeps us constantly connected to our work lives, which results in us constantly working.

Another point that I’d like to bring up that was mentioned was the fact that society has been trained to take up their time. Someone who is busy is considered lucky and wealthy and a characteristic to be proud of; whereas, if you have a lot of spare time and spend most of your time on leisurely activities then you’re considered lazy, which, when you think about it is really unhealthy.

Wajcman does consider taking things slowly but as she mentions there just isn’t enough time to do so, either the whole world goes slow or you just have to try and keep up.

The line to be drawn is one through speed and hurriedness. Speed is good, if you can do things quicker you can fit more into your day, but if you’re harried your frantic and that is unhealthy. In the end Technology is there to help you and only works under your own constraints so at the end of the day, it is really up to you how much you work.

Media 6 – week 4 Reading

Let me just start off by saying this reading is a breath of fresh air. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I was intrigued by what Cal Newport, in his chapter “The Clarity of the Craftsman” in So Good The Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work was sayingI would’ve happily continued reading, this is by far is the most interesting reading I’ve read in a long time!

Newport takes this chapter to introduce a theory that there are two approaches to working on your career, the first and most popular in society is the “Passion Mindset” and the other one that Newport supports is the “Craftsman Mindset”. Newport argues that the passion mindset, where we are taught to find our passion in life and follow that, leaves us in a somewhat ambiguous stage of our lives questioning ourselves “is this really my passion” “do I really enjoy doing this work”. He explains that this is a very self absorbed way of thinking, believing that the world owes it to you to give you something to be passionate about. The Craftsman mindset puts passion to the side and is based on the person just putting their head down and getting on with it. Newport takes a quote that started this whole idea from an interview with Steve Martin. When asked how he became a success Martin says “Be so good, they can’t ignore you”. And from this the craftsmen mentality rose, its not about what the world is giving you, but what you can give to the world. Newport visits a budding musician with a similar mentality and admires the fact that he practices his profession by himself in a tiny room and pushes himself to the extreme to constantly better himself. He’s not focusing on creating the next hit song, he’s focusing on getting better skills in his profession, this is how people become successful.

There is something about this idea that I can really relate to. I have definitely felt times when pursuing a career in media where I wondered whether this was my true passion but having it laid out like this it makes me feel like its up to me to create the passion, its up to me to use it to make the world better and not wait for the world to make me better. There is something quite invigorating about putting your head down and just getting on with it, the Craftsman Mindset is definitely something I would recommend thinking about next time you concerned about your future career. This reading has definitely inspired me to become so good that they can’t ignore me.

Media 6 – Week 3 Reading

This weeks reading of ‘Work’ in The Informal Media Economy, Written by Ramon Lobata and Julian Thomas, discusses the problems faced with media Practitioners who work on a freelance or short term contract basis, those that are more entrepreneurial. There are arguments for this being a good thing as there is more bargaining terms between the employer and the employee; however, this article mainly seems to be warning future practitioners of the dangers of being underpaid and over worked due to the changing climate of the industry. Kodak was used as an example: Kodak was the leader in everything Photo related for many years and the employed thousands of people, now kodak is obsolete and the main photography related company is instragram who only had 7 people when it was actioned off for millions of dollars.

There is also problems with the type of work people want done, the work is very basic and anyone cane do it which means that someone who deserves more because they have a higher skill set isn’t being utilised.

Although I feel that there is some truth in all of these findings I do feel this article is a bit doomsday related. The thing that sets the good from the bad is the quality. If a company is looking for good quality work then they will be willing to pay for someone who can deliver that high quality. I know many freelancers who love doing it that way because they can choose there own hours and charge a more substantial rate then what they could in house.

I believe that the fact remains: good quality is king.

Media 6 – Week 2 Reading

This weeks reading was “A World of Differences” by Chris Lederer and Megan Brownlow for Price WaterHouse Cooper. I an attempt to predict the future of the Entertainment and Media industry and help those companies trying to navigate it they divide their findings in 5 separate categories to consider. Shift 1: Demography: Youth will be served, Shift 2: Competition: Content is still king, Shift 3: Consumption: the Joy of bundles, Shift 4: Geography: Growth Markets, and Shift 5: Business Models: Transforming with Trust.

Each section explains what the future might hold as we look back on the trends that happened in the past, which at the end they actually go against as they explain it is a disruptive environment and really everyone should just be ready to make changes to stay afloat.

One thing that I intend to hold onto is one section about Globalisation and localisation. As they look at their numbers it seems to be that Even though the Global (which they assume is American Content) isn’t doing too well globally, the Local production of media is being far more supportive in their homeland. Australia was used as one of these examples where the local television was getting a lot more attention than American programs. This is assumed because of their sharing the characteristics of the viewers more closely then something filmed and pre-recorded on the other side of the world. In this case it is unfortunate for America because apparently the “Local” American Media is Also “Global” Media so it doesn’t gain as much of a differences as other communities but I guess thats what you get for calling America the Global industry.

It is also interesting how China is apparently going to take over in the leading revenue of some forms of media even though they have such tight restrictions on their media and what is allowed to be consumed. It is stated that because it is restricted it allows the local media production to expand as it doesn’t have to contest with the global media and thus creating a richer economy growth within its own borders. . . I wonder if Australia cut off its ties to American content would Australia’s media industry thrive?

 

Media 6 – Week 1 Reading

When reading through the pages of The Fourth Industrial Revolution (world Economics Forum) – Klaus Schwab 2016 – I couldn’t help but reminisce over movies such as the Matrix, I-Robot, Terminator, Enemy of the State etc, (the list could go on). For some reason reading all of these predictions about the future use of robots in society and the constant threat of everyday surveillance for the future seems like theses movies predicted it quite a while back.

This piece basically shows the predictions of the future and how things like advances in biomedicine, engineering and the digital world are going to impact the human race.

The thing that I found most interesting was the discussion of how the social structure changes due to the internet which has created a Global community, one that traverses country borders. As a media Practitioner this is quite a profound concept that is already in affect today. If we take the film industry as an example; it is widely assumed that the majority of films are created in America, a multitude of studios and practitioners are based in America. However in recent years, thanks to technology and the global market, Film studios are now filming all over the world and are employee people from wherever they happen to be shooting. Australia has seen some great opportunities in this market, mainly specialising in the post production phase which the internet and digital technology has allowed them to do.

 

 

Project Brief 5 – Digital Director Final Reflection

In the final Group Project of digital director ‘Sketchy Students’ I was a part of the writing group. My individual title was Storyboard Generator. I’m a very visual person so it made sense that I would be able to work in this role and it was a generally well-received idea. I also came up with some very basic concept art of the characters and what there personalities might look like. As a part of the Writing Group we all came up with our own ideas and bounced off each others ideas to create the scripts for the episodes of our project “Sketchy Students”. Unfortunately, for one reason or another the scripts went through a lot of critiques by the management team and other individuals, which meant that a lot of our original concepts were changed or left out entirely. This was a valuable lesson that I learned to live with and adapt to: you can never have full creative control when working with a large group of people.

 

Besides the fact that a lot of my ideas got cut in the script editing process I was still pleased with the content that stayed in. For example, the concept for the third episode was an idea that I had brought to the table. I was really proud to see it when we were filming and seeing it evolve into the final product.

 

In regards to my individual job as Storyboard Generator; I hit several snags on delivering them/creating them. I only ended up creating 2 storyboards for episode 1 and episode 3. It was my intention to experiment with how a storyboard might aid the production team in delivering a product that mirrored the writing teams vision. The idea being to juxtapose the two episodes that had a storyboard to the ones that didn’t. Unfortunately neither of the episodes with the storyboards really matched the storyboards because the scripts had gone through such a rigorous critique that by the time the script was finalised the storyboards didn’t make sense anymore. I guess if you can pull anything from that experiment it is that storyboards, at least in the pre-production stage, wasn’t useful at all. The message being that the script needs to be finalized before the storyboards can be created, otherwise it’s just a mess. Upon reflection if there was less critique and a timeline system in place for individual due dates then the whole system would’ve worked a lot more.

 

All in all it was a good class and I had fun collaborating with my fellow students. I also learnt how difficult it is to keep a singular vision when there are so many people working on the project. It was difficult keeping track of the project as a whole because there were so many people working on it, I think, moving forward, it would be good to get a different view point such as working on social media, in order to broaden my knowledge and understandings further.

Exhibition Reflection

The day had finally come, it was time to see everyone else’s work in the various studios and I was impressed! So many cool things to watch and listen to!

Our studio went second in the presentations so it was hard at first to see how we stacked up against the other studios. After seeing all of them I do feel that our studio had a lot of content, perhaps thats only because I’ve seen all of the behind the scenes things going on and have seen all that content before in the week 12 presentation but even still I feel like we had a lot to show for this subject. In terms of reception from the presentation it was really hard to read because each of our clips only got a minute to screen before the next group had theirs screened which created quite a jarring effect on the audience. There were a lot of videos trying to do a lot of different things such as creating different specified moods and playing with a lot of different concepts, things which I don’t think were fully grasped in the 1 minute they had.

In terms of reception to my video specifically I thought it was received well! once again, hard to tell what an audience is thinking in such a short time frame. I was going for informative and epic: the surround sound definitely helped pull off the epic part of that equation and I think the clips that I chose along with the words inserted told enough of a story for people to get the gist. Ours was definitely not the funniest, but it wasn’t trying to be, there were slight chuckles here and there at the appropriate times but other than that it was silent, which I like to think means that everyone was on the edge of their seat in anticipation to see more. At least people weren’t talking to each other in boredom so all in all it was a success.

The rest of the day went really well. The exhibitions all looked really exciting and it was great to have a look at some of the other studios I was interested in and talk to their students one on one. I spent a bit of time hanging around in our exhibition space, talking to other students about our studio and project and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I think they especially liked the fact that we were working with the creative writing students. It was good to see our longer clips getting watched by people who walked in, at least that tells us we’re doing something right to captivate the audience.

I think this exhibition day is a real reflection of the effort that we all went to throughout the semester. We all put in the hard yards to create something that we can all be proud of, and when you see the end result and people enjoying it, theres nothing better. I’m looking forward to putting my new found skills from this studio into practice in my further studies and my other project. I think this was a great learning experience for me and I definitely feel much more confident when writing for film.

Television Reflection

During final stages of logging the time use diary I moved from my family home to an apartment in the city, I thought this was a great opportunity to see how my viewing habits might change, so in this reflection I plan on looking at various differences I found during my change of scenery.

as we learnt in the second lecture of the semester scheduling is one way audiences behaviour is regularised. ‘The means by which a days broadcasting is arranged so that particular programs coincide with particular supposed events in the life of the family’ – (Ellis 1982). In my early weeks of the Time-Use diary it is easy to see that there is a correlation between watching TV and eating dinner. On a regular basis, if I was home for dinner I was in front of the television with my Mum and Dad. When I moved however, as I was responsible for cooking my own food I began eating dinner a lot later, where once it was around 6:30 – 7:00 it was now 8:00. Another variable I’d like to throw into the mix is the fact that I’m currently watching all of my TV on Netflix, the program that allows you to watch programs whenever you want. So where the Broadcst networks were once able to choose when programs where on, thus in my case choosing when dinner was, I now have the power to choose when I watch.

Another interesting aspect about my habits when I moved were the types of shows that I watched before and after my move. When I was at home I noted that whenever we’d refer to a TV show it was classified as someone’s TV show; for example, whenever we mentioned Doctor Who it was said to be “Mum’s Show”, Later when we were watching Jag it was noted as “Dad’s Show” in regular conversation. When I moved I no longer had to watch anyone else show but “my show”. As it turns out I love a good comedy, however I’m now not reaching the range of different shows that I was once watching, I seem to be more honed in on a single series as well, not watching anything else until I finished the series that I was watching. Jason Mitten (2001) explains in his article that “Genre should be situated within larger systems, cultural hierarchies and power relations”, which is an interesting concept when I have changed the cultural hierarchy from my parents house to mine. Perhaps this also has something to do with the Flow that Netflix creates (as mentioned in the third lecture), one episodes starts playing right after the other and when you open Netflix it always asks you if you’d like to pick up where you left off.

I think it worth expanding on my choice of Netflix over other web services. As Mentioned in Lecture 9 on HBO certain brands are connected to “quality TV”. As Deborah L. Jaramillo (2013) explores AMC and “calls into question the power of the brand and its connection to quality TV” the power of “Netflix” as a brand is a lot stronger than Presto or Stan (I’ve never heard of “Presto and Chill” or “Stan and Chill”). Ultimately it was this Brand Power and promise of Netflix Exclusive shows such as Daredevil that brought me to Netflix.

As Ben Goldsmith states, Netflix could (and has) changed where and when and how viewers look for and watch content. I’m a perfect example of this, during my change over from watching Free-to-air with my parents to watching Netflix, it has changed my common viewing place, from the lounge room to my bedroom, it has changed when I watch things and how much I watch things (I tend to binge watch a lot now).

Ultimately the Time Use Diary has helped me explore the change in my viewing habits not only from changing location and cultures (from parents household to living alone), but the difference in changing the form platform I watch things on, which is not necessarily a good thing but interesting none-the-less.

References:

Ellis, J 1982, ‘Cinema, Television, video’, Visible fiction, London, RKP (1982).

Mitten, J 2001, ‘A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory’, Cinema Journal, vol. 40, pp. 3-24

Jaramillo, D.L. 2013, ‘AMC: Stumbling towards a New Television Canon’, Television and New Media, vol. 14, pp. 167-183

Goldsmith, B 2015, ‘What do Netflix, Stan and Presto mean for Australian TV?’, The conversation, viewed 28th October 2015, <https://theconversation.com/what-do-netflix-stan-and-presto-mean-for-australian-tv-39244>

Is Gogglebox real?

In this post I will be looking at the screening of Goggle Box during week 12 and discuss its construction and its attempt to set itself apart from other reality TV shows.

Gogglebox is a Television show about people watching television, a real gripping concept, so its easy to believe that many critiques were negative towards the notion. However once it aired it seemed to receive much praise. Obviously it has to be constructed in some kind of a way otherwise it wouldn’t be able to captivate its audience. Arguably the show captivates their audience by making something “real”. But hang on a second, isn’t that what reality TV did in the 90’s! Basically Goggle box has re-used the same premise that started the reality TV craze, which, ironically, is that “its doing something different”.

Gogglebox was originally a British television show, it first aired in 2013 and is up to its 6th season! More recently Gogglebox has come to Australia, airing its first season at the beginning of this year (2015) it is now on its second season, obviously the show is doing something right. Obviously the transnational format works, but thats nothing to stick it apart from other reality tv genres such as the Bachelor and Bachelorette, big brother, britain/australia’s got talent, all of which (in fact the genre of reality TV in general) seem have a good transnational format.

In the advertisement for the Australian Gogglebox there are words that flash up on the screen that try to distinguish the show from anything else. Unlikey, funny, compelling, heart warming and original are all words flashing up on the screen, “the TV show about people watching TV”. The advertisement also shows the people watching a few shows, interestingly enough all these shows are based in reality. Family feud is first to be watched by its audience who laugh and crack jokes about it. The news is the second thing to be shown which talks about negative effects of alcohol, where a few of Gogglebox members, the members with drinks in their hand, ridicule and make fun of the accusation. The last show is on Village Vets, this show takes a turn in the mood, picturing an animal in need, various female members tearing up watching the screen. By choosing these types of shows the advertisement is trying to prove the realness of its own show, trying to put it as a step more real than the other shows.

The first episode of season 2 displays some common reality TV tropes, a narrator recalls what the Gogglebox families have been doing since the last season ended. A couples dog died, an elderly couple got a grandchild, some got engaged, someone went to Sweden and back and daughter had a debutant ball. This has nothing to do about TV but is constructed to create a connection between the families and the potential audience. It’s peculiar to note the different shows that they watch in this episode: The Bachelorette, Worlds biggest Pets, Celebrity apprentice, The Australian Story – Malcolm Turnbull, X-Factor, Road Breath Test and Nigella Lawson. It’s is interesting to note that the only scripted, planned show they watched was Nigella’s cooking show, all the other shows are based in reality in one form or another. This might be in order to keep relevant with the reality TV craze or it might be to do with the fact that there is a lot more reality TV shows in TV. Another explanation is Gogglebox might be undermining the integrity of the “reality” in these shows in order to create its own realism.

So is the show constructed? We may never know for certain but I, for one, don’t tend to talk that much in front of a TV! In the end Gogglebox uses its common looking various families commenting on other reality TV shows in order to distance itself from the negative connotations of that genre even though, when you analyse it closely, it is still doing the same thing, looking at drama in the everyday lives of “ordinary” people.

References:

IMDb, Gogglebox (TV series 2013-), viewed 27 October 2015, <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2762330/?ref_=nv_sr_1>

youtube, Gogglebox Australia: First look, viewed 27 October 2015, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZZt1NT14tk>

GoggleBox 2015, Television Series, 2, Ten Network, 1 October.