Video  

View this post on Instagram

Very convenient shopping bag #gooddesign #bag #convenient #design

A post shared by Euan (@perceived_affordance) on

 

How did your author the video you recorded for upload to Instagram? 

Continuing with this week’s theme of good design, I found a conveniently designed shopping bag which folds up into an even smaller pouch which you can carry about easily. But I had a problem. How could I film this while showing the audience how it works? Simple. I set up my phone on a tripod allowing me to shoot without the worry I had experienced in week nine’s video with shaky footage. This allowed me to explore different angles and positions of the camera, meaning I could get shots that would not be possible to achieve by hand.

Instagram has limited capabilities when shooting video so I used the default camera app on my phone to capture the shot. However, I realised that ‘…algorithms in phone cameras… [only implement] some [features]’ (Manovich 2016, p. 59) meaning, unlike photography I could only point and shoot, limiting my creativity and control over the output. I was able to upload the footage to an editing app which I used to trim and speed up the video but didn’t like the filters and was unable to control lighting or exposure so ended up going back to the Instagram app. 

 

How did you publish the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?

I wanted to put a ‘particular effort in the planning’ (Leaver, Highfield, Abidin 2020, p. 71) of my video and decided to use the same location as my week ten photography which had great lighting and a plain background. I did a few a practice takes to determine the best way to record the video and lower the chances of having to do retakes which is frustrating due to the lack of post-processing tools Instagram offers. 

I decided to go with a simple yet clear explanation for the caption of my post, as the subject was a particular style of bag I hadn’t seen before. To reinforce my message further, I related it to the theme of good design by claiming it was “very convenient.” On the subject of convenience, the video is set up to be auto-played; users are more likely to view it when scrolling their feeds and may be less willing to interact with it manually.

 

How did you distribute the video you published on Instagram to other social media services? 

I used similar styles of hashtags as in my week ten photography post, including “#gooddesign“, “#bag“, “#convenient” and “#design.” I deliberately avoided using too many hashtags as I didn’t want to spam my post to everyone but rather target a specific audience who I felt would have an interest in the subject. After I distributed the post, I found the video had a very grainy quality due to Instagram compressing it, which was frustrating because phone cameras can ‘show much more detail than a human eye’ (Manovich 2016, p. 61) yet compression prevents these capabilities.

I discovered some positive and negatives about other social media sites. At first, I found it annoying having to upload my video manually to Flickr because I can’t link my Instagram, however, there are benefits like being able to easily play the video without needing an Instagram account. This was the issue I discovered in my video blog from week nine, although the video is on Tumblr you need Instagram to view it, uploading it manually allows anyone to play it on Tumblr, however, this was more time consuming for myself and no longer linked to my Instagram.

Instagram Post

Tumblr Post

Flickr Post

 

References

Manovich, L. 2016, ‘Part 2. Professional and Designed Photos’, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA. pp. 58-70

Leaver, T., Highfield, T., Abidin, C., 2020. ‘Chapter 3 Ecologies’, Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Digital Media and Society, United Kingdom. p. 64-79

May 16, 2020

Leave a Reply

Skip to toolbar