For my first project brief I received feedback that suggested I didn’t communicate enough about myself as a person. So for my self portrait I wanted to create something that explained two aspects of myself. I showed the part of me that loves adventures with videos of some of these ‘adventures’. Hiking in the mountains and climbing on over hanging rocks. In contrast to that I also captured things that reminded me of home – something I find just as important and exploration. My cat standing up and stretching expressed my love of a comfortable environment. In order to connect the two aspects and to emphasise the contrast between them I used the footage and sound of a plane. The sound drowns out the upbeat rhythm and introduces the soft, even heartbeat.

I opened my video on the sounds of my birds, something I’ve woken up to almost everyday. I wanted to create the video as though it was displaying a day of my life. Although I don’t necessarily go hiking everyday, by displaying the car travelling displays my desire for fun and adventure, while the shot over my blankets emphases that at the end of the day I’m also happy to be home.

I was a bit unsure of using premier. I had trouble using it at first but quickly became accustomed to it. I made mistakes along the way (not saving three hours worth of work before Premier crashed was a pretty big one), but I’m happy with the final result.

I was also conflicted with one part of the brief that stated we needed four photographs. I didn’t know how to incorporate these and with a bit of playing around I found that lowering the opacity and placing them over a video gave a nice effect. I especially like how the technique turned out on the ‘spontaneous’ frame. A photograph of the city skyline layered on top of a video of fireworks made it seem like the display had taken place in the city, and definitely emphasised the spontaneousness.

Although it was challenging I really enjoyed this activity and learning how I can display who I am in multiple ways.

Have you ever been in a situation where you’re eating a meal and the person next to you is eating loudly? You can hear the wet sloshes and smacks as they begin the first step in digesting the food. You can’t say anything. It’s impolite. Plus they can’t help it. So you attempt to distract yourself, you try to make conversation or you tap your cutlery a little too hard against the plate in an attempt to drown out the sickening sound. But it never works, and you spend the most agonising and uncomfortable twenty minutes of your life listening to the horrible sounds doing your best to ignore the sickening feeling in your stomach. Yeah, I hate that.

But then you look outside the window and you see dark clouds making their way towards you. A sweet scent fills the air, promising rain. That night you decide to leave your blinds open, the rumble of thunder is soft for now and the flashes are few and far between. You lay down in bed and the rain starts, softly at first. It’s tapping against the window and your dark room lights up for the quickest second. You start counting. Something you’ve done since you were little, to see how far away the storm is. You get to three and theres a crack, it dissipates and rolls through the clouds. It’s too loud to let you sleep but pattering of rain and the rumbles of thunder create a music that relaxes every muscle. I love that.

A someone who is terrible when it comes to applying sound to my videos this week’s reading definitely gave me some much needed insights. It really put into perspective (badum tss) what I’ve been doing wrong.

I guess it makes sense that sound requires layers of depth, just like visual shots. Just because something is far away doesn’t necessarily mean it will be unheard (or entirely noticeable). Some things are critical to the atmosphere in a scene.

It’s definitely something I’ll pay attention to in the future, with practise hopefully I’ll get become more confident when applying sound to my videos.

In Friday’s workshop we discussed as a class which social media site belonged on which side of the ‘postive – negative’ spectrum as mentioned in the previous post by David Gauntlett. After the entire class seemed to agree that Facebook was definitely on the negative side, due to the unwanted ads and clickbait the conversation turned towards Uber. Much of the class seemed to like Uber, though there were a few who were completely against it. At the beginning of the year I stood firmly in the middle. I agreed that Uber was an excellent system however I would have been reluctant myself to use it.

One night my sister and I, as well as two of my friends, were stranded in the city. We had no idea how to get where we needed to go and had spent nearly an hour walking and taking public transport, only to end up even more lost (Thanks to the PTV app). So my sister suggest we take an Uber. It took some my friends some convincing, but after assuring them they could sit by the doors they agreed and we arrived at our destination with in ten minutes, with handfuls of mints. In that time both our friends had warmed up to the idea of Uber and now often suggest we use it wherever we go. Of course there are risks, but there are risks with everything. I think the safety precautions Uber takes to ensure their system is safe is what makes it such a popular app.

David Gauntlett mentions how in the 1980’s media studies was generally made up of four categories; institutions, production audiences and texts. Things aren’t exactly like that now as most people are doing these things themselves.

I like the phrase Gauntlet used “people still make stuff, and people still look at stuff, but often they are the same people doing both.” It drew me back to year 11 media when we were studying citizen journalism and how everybody is now able to create their own media and make their own products, due to the wide accessibility of technology.

Gauntlett also mentions the “two peaks” of media. The creative side to media and the side that offers surveillance and digital exploitation. Two sides with very separate intentions. Gauntlett mentions that usually the negative side gets the most attention from the public. Often articles and poles will mention how media companies exploit our creativity for money, and it’s a comment argument that seems to put a bad reputation on media and media technology itself. As Gauntlett states, it’s important to find a way in which both these ‘peaks’ can work together.

I admit I was a little intimidated when I found out we absolutely had to use Adobe Premier. My entire high school life had been plagued by doing what I could with iMovie. I was didn’t mind using iMovie. It was familiar and I knew how to do everything I ever wanted to do. Premier was something distant and unknown. Now that I have it – it still is.

I’m doing everything I can to learn, the haiku activity definitely helped. But I find it exhausting and time consuming. The fact that my laptop is quite ancient and so incredibly, frustratingly slow doesn’t help either. I seem to be more focused on trying to learn how to use Premier then what I’m doing to my film. I’m learning though! Very slowly, but I’m learning. With more youtube tutorials I’m sure I’ll get better at it. I can’t wait until Premier is just as familiar to me as iMovie was.

I never understood what exactly is constituted as ‘authentic communication’. When it comes to verbal vs digital communication I personally believe they are both just as authentic in their own ways.

There are things I can communicate online that would otherwise make no sense in person. I can share photos to my friend overseas and use emojis in place of facial expressions, punctuation instead of tone. We’ve evolved languages to suit this new form of communication, I can abbreviate an entire word into one letter and my friends will understand exactly what I’m saying. However there are of course some problems with digital communication.

Although digital communication allows us to connect with our friends and family that live hours away, there are just some things that won’t work unless they are spoken in person. Sometimes you can’t find the right emoji and you can’t express your tone in an efficient way. Because of this I think we have to carefully consider whats best left to be said in person.

I really enjoyed the set reading for week 2. I’d never considered that as the reader  we can determine what exactly happens to a character based on our knowledge of the text. I definitely felt a slight tinge of guilt when I was told that I’d participated the murder – in the name of closure. It was unintentional, and between the panels there was not a lot of time to discover another outcome.

It was also interesting to see how different cultures experiences art forms and how the ‘gaps’ in between play just as important part as the thing itself. It definitely drew attention to how the choices of a creator are so important in taking the reader where they need to go.