Vidcon is convention i’ve known of for a long time, but never really known a lot about. Pretty much, it’s a convention, where YouTube creators go to meet and interact with fans. On this weeks topic of fandoms, this is pretty much a YouTube fandom dream. Just think about the mad hysteria that you see in the comment sections of a new Justin Bieber, or One Direction video, and place that into one, giant convention centre. Here, we have Vidcon.

Held in California, the event attracts fans from every corner of the world. I remember back in 2014-2016, a girl who I knew from school flew across the world for the event, three years running. Like all events, there’s mixed feelings towards it. Most people love the community that Vidcon creates, whereas others resent the idea of paying money to people who create “vlogs”. What I think a lot of people are unaware of, is that YouTube creators, however many being vloggers, there is a more creative depth to it. VidCon is like fandom heaven, and i’ve even heard that it’s coming to Australia fairly soon.

This week everything kind of hit the fan. The person I had originally planned on interviewing, had to pull out due to being away over my filming period, leaving me back at square one. A few nights after my initial shit storm, I was over for dinner at a friends house, and I jokingly told her little sister I could interview her, and to my surprise, she was actually pretty into the idea! I was pretty sceptical about interviewing a child, just because I understand how fidgety and bored they get very easily. I decided to throw caution to the wind, and just go with it. I’ve planned some questions, and begun to get an idea of what I hope everything will look like by the end, and to say the least, I’m actually pretty excited about it. Oh, and so is she!! So that’s always a plus. For now, fingers (and everything) crossed.

In light of this weeks reading/general topic of youth sharing so publicly, I wanted to get a little deep. This post probably wont really answer anything, more so get all the raging thoughts and questions out of my head.

Why do we choose to share so publicly? Do we crave attention? Recognition? Acceptance?? As much as I like to claim that I don’t care about likes or comments on pictures, despite whether it’s a photo of me, or not, I can’t help but check my phone every few minutes after posting a photo on instagram. Yes, that’s kind of embarrassing isn’t it? We all do it! Some more than others, obviously, but I don’t think anyone can deny that it hurts just a little bit when your picture gets 13 likes, as compared to your best friends 124 likes!

It’s okay, we’ve all been there at one point or another. More on the topic of the actual “sharing” part of it, I share a lot. Or at least I used to. During my early web days, I had a twitter account where I would spill all my most frustrated feelings, achievements, pretty much anything. Nobody ever really responded to it. With 26 followers, 7 of them being spam accounts, what did I expect? I think it was down to the fact that maybe, for once, I wouldn’t be the only one who knew what was going on inside my head. That also sounds a lot more dark and deep than it really is (it isn’t). I was probably just posting about my mum making me tidy my room to be quite honest.

For this weeks reading, we read “A night of a thousand Wizards” by Henry Jenkins. The piece pretty much delves into the fan club, or “fandom” that has been created around the world of Harry Potter. Whilst I am not an avid Harry Potter fan, having only watched a handful of the films out of order, I am not one to discriminate against a good fandom. I enjoyed Jenkins’ piece, as he speaks from a personal light, regarding his love and involvement for Harry Potter, whilst relating it to the idea of fan culture as one entity.

Fandoms, from personal experience (*cough* my Fall Out Boy and All Time Low phase of 2012…), can go from inviting and fun, to just plain terrifying, in the blink of an eye. Obviously, this depends on just how deep you get. Fandoms, in my experience are ways to create the sense of community and togetherness that we all naturally crave. It also helps to embrace creativity, what more could you want?

Looking past the mad hysteria that comes with fandoms, I think they are great things to get involved in, to an extent. It’s something you probably wouldn’t completely understand, unless you really experience it yourself.

(For some reason one of my audio rows* won’t appear in the timeline) 

For project brief 3, we were given the task of conducting an interview, and creating a 2-3 minute video from said interview. The process to get to my final video was very up and down. I had originally planned to interview an old teacher of mine, who has done years of travel around the world, as well as doing a heap of charity work in Nepal. Un-ironically, he was unable to take part in the interview due to being overseas over the school break (when I was planning on filming). Whilst over at my best friends house, as an off comment I joked to her little sister, Artemis (Artie), that I could interview her. Thus, my interview was born!

I’ve known Artie since she was about two years old, and she’s always been like a younger sister to me, so I knew there wouldn’t be any issues regarding her being to shy to speak to me. What I didn’t anticipate, which I should have, was how her answers were often very short. I realised I needed to take a slightly different approach when asking questions, straying away from the traditional interviewing style. Despite being challenging at times, I think it was a great practice in patience, and just allowing the interviewee to speak.

I found it very useful to ask smaller questions, within the bigger questions that I was trying to get answers about. For example, when asking her what her favourite part about school was, i prompted her by asking questions along with it, such as, “do you enjoy playing on the playground?”. By asking less in depth questions, and helping her along, it prompted longer answers, and even some more in depth stories.

When it came to editing all of my footage together, I really enjoyed going through the b-roll shots. Artie being only seven years old, she’s at a super playful and fun stage in life, and I think that footage really captured that. Along with the interview, I think the b-roll footage really helped present Artie as her truest self. This footage working so well with the interview questions was great, and I think really helped tie the whole interview together.

I think if I was to do an interview again, in particular, with someone so young, I would involve the interviewee in my preparation a little more. By this I mean, I think it would have been beneficial for her, if she was able to have some time to think of some answers to some of the questions. Understandably, being so young it was hard to get answers from her straight up, but nonetheless, I don’t think I could have interviewed a better child. I think my ability to remain patient during the interview really helped create a very natural and real interview. So despite not work with my original interviewee, I think a really great interview came out of it.

Okay be prepared for excuse upon excuse, but the semester break has slightly thrown me off track with my blog posts… I guess as long as they get done eventually! We didn’t have a lectorial this week either which sucks, because Brian always seems to make whatever reading we did make just a bit more sense. This weeks reading based on fears. I can name two things in particular that I am petrified of. Getting old, and chickens. Clearly two VERY different things. Strangely, I’m going to focus on my life long fear of chickens, and somehow link it media. At this point in time, I’m not aware of why I’m so afraid of chickens. There is however a theory that your biggest fears are linked to how you died in your past life. Death by chicken? It wouldn’t surprise me, I do not trust chickens.

On the note of chickens and fear, I would like to present my obviously* unbiased thoughts on the 2005 film, Chicken Little.

With a smashing rating of 36% on Rotten Tomatoes, Chicken Little is quite clearly an awful film. Terrible choice of main character, and film title. What was wrong with STUART Little? I personally would watch a film about a mouse, over a chicken any day of the week. Stuart Littles solid 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, trumping Chicken Little, continues to prove my point. I have also received input from my friend, and fellow RMIT student, Caitlin regarding her thoughts on Chicken Little.

“chicken little was shit”

“chicken little was a waste of my time”

“never have i ever regretted watching a movie so much”

I think this has proved my point quite well. I don’t trust chickens, I will never trust chickens, and I will not support movies that so blatantly shove chickens in my face.

fin.

This weeks class we began by having a viewing of everyones films from the week 7 tutorial! I really enjoyed everyones individual takes on the task, seeing as we had some pretty strict guidelines. One group in particular had opted to make theirs a silent film, the only dialogue being written on paper and then filmed. I really liked their take on the task, and I think making it a silent film, whilst probably making the filming process easier, it also helped enhance some of the acting in it.

Later we got put into groups to share rough cuts of our interviews. As much as I hate being put into a random group, I did find it beneficial to get feedback from some of my peers that I don’t know so well. James pointed out regarding some of my raw footage, some different sorts of cuts I could use to help my interview flow. I definitely think i’ll keep them for my final video.

The class discussion at the end of the lesson got slightly~ off topic, but I didn’t really mind. I think that just shows we’re all engaging and participating (maybe…). Again, like other aspects of the lesson, today I especially enjoyed everyone’s different takes on the topic of fandoms, and cinema culture as a whole. The whole talk got me thinking a lot about how much fan culture has evolved since I began interacting through social platforms online.

This week we were given the task in class to shoot a short film based around a pursuit. The basis of the task however, was that we had to shoot the film, with no post production. This meant, no reshooting clips, deleting, reordering, or adding any effects or sounds after we were finished.

I found this a really challenging, but also a really fun task to partake in. Fun, because it was something I had never tried before, but challenging as I can be quite a perfectionist. My favourite part of film making is the post production stage. Things like able adjust colours to enhance the mood or feelings, adding sound effects, and with this task, I wasn’t able to do any of them.

In a sense of learning something new, it was super beneficial. Not being able to reorder the clips or reshoot, meant we really had to make sure we planned exactly what we were going to film. I’m always very quick to get straight into tasks without doing as thorough planning as I probably should, however with this task, it wasn’t a choice. The storyboarding process had to be concise. I think that the fact this task involved a lot of practical thinking and planning, it’s helped me a lot in a sense that I think I will be better at planning my shoots better in the future, even when I do have the opportunity to do editing in post production.

The practical thinking that was involved when planning where we would shoot definitely made me more aware of time management, which will be hugely beneficial in future projects I take part in.

(Will post link to finished film when I get access to it)

Unfortunately for this weeks tutorial I wasn’t in class. I was a bit bummed out, because from what I read on the lesson plan, it looked like we were going to be doing some more hands on work with the camera, which sucks that I missed it. There was a link to storyboard templates, which I can only assume everyone was working with to compose their shots.

For me, storyboarding is one of my biggest downfalls. To an extent, I can kind of be a perfectionist, so the idea of drawing quick, messy, half-assed drawings, just really doesn’t sit well with me. It’s not as if I can draw well to begin with, but I still can’t bring myself to just get down what I need to. That being said, I’ll always do it anyway. Being such a visual person, having an entire shot, scene, and even film, laid out in front of me, is pretty much half the stress gone already. This weeks class was about composing shots. Again, this is where I wish I had been in class this week. I am fine when it comes to storyboarding a scene, but having to map out small changes within one single shot, I find difficult. This really probably comes back to my desire for each drawing to look at least half-way perfect.

After missing this class, it would probably be pretty beneficial to practice some single shot storyboarding, especially since I’ve never really looked much into before, let alone put it into practice.