Archive of ‘Readings’ category

Future Thinking – week6 reading

In this article, the author, a researcher in psychology discusses and analysis five different ways of thinking.

The first way – disciplined

Disciplined way of thinking refers to training to perfect a skill. For instance, when you start doing something, don’t just do it, taking down notes while you are doing it. In this way you can look at and learn from your notes after. There will be a big room for you to improve next time. After few times’ practice, you will become more skilled and confident in whatever you are doing. Practice makes the perfect.

The second way – synthesizing

Imaging that you are making a collage, you take whatever you need from somewhere else to make a whole new thing. It works the same way in business. For a manager, his/her job is to call for synthesis. First of all, the manager needs to know what to be done, then they distribute them to various workers to finish. Also they look back and try to carry out the best future missions.

The third way – creating 

It is born from the synthesis of disciplinary perspectives. Creative breakthrough usually happens more on young generation, leaders, creative industry like media, fashion and etc.

The fourth and fifth way – respectful and ethical 

When it comes to respect, it refers avoiding stereotyping and caricaturing. Try to understand others from their perspectives additionally. What’s more, learn to trust others and at the same time, earn their trust. When it comes to ethical, identify yourself.

 

Finding Time in a Digital Age – week5 reading

In this article, how to allocate your time in a more wise way to be more effective is addressed.

Reformulating Working Time 

We can use some tools to help us manage our time effectively. For instance, the smartphone application, it can track what you have been doing throughout the entire day. According to this, you can make some improvement on your effectiveness. Reducing working hours is the most easy way to get out of time pressure. According to Keynes, the hours of work have been fallen rapidly from 1870 to 1930, and the falling will be continuing.

Work-Life Articulation 

With the arriving of digital time, the boundary between work and life is becoming blurry. ‘The traditional time/space of the week and weekend and their characteristic social relations are now porous as people increasingly work, play, consume and interact anywhere, anytime’.

Slow Living in Modern Times

As time going by, the appealing for slow life is gaining. Slow living like cooking and sharing, growing vegetables, riding a bike and walking is fading away from our life. Instead we choose the way of fast living, eat outside, buy fast food, driving and so on.

New Technologies for Emergent Times

The digital world is like a big magic box filled with society, people’s imagination, representation of people themselves on social media. People expresses and represents themselves in new technology, but it is the same narrative.

Nowadays, people feel more stressed than before from time to time. However the feeling of getting rushed sometime can become creative tension. It is the time to take control of more our time out of time.

Reference: Judy Wajcman, 2015, ‘Finding Time in a Digital Age’ in Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, ch.7.

 

 

Passion and Career – week 4 reading

In this week’s reading, it addressed a lot about mindset. Based on my own experience, mindset is essential, it affects you a lot, and it leads you into different results.

I remember when I first arrive in Australia, two and half years ago from now, I was confused, scared and don’t know what to do at the airport after landing. But now, when I look back, I saw how much I’ve grown. When I choose this major at the first place, I just though it would be interesting, that’s the reason. Now I find it really fine, I’m fine to work in this area after graduation. So I think everyone doesn’t really know who they are, what they want, life is not always like the same you planned. However once you pick something, for me, I agree with the craft man mindset which is to be so good, they can’t ignore you. To do that, you need to devote your time, energy and passion.

Craft man mindset

I’ve been preparing for a dance performance for almost two months, and it is coming soon which is in two days. I can’t believe how much I devoted myself into, how many times I practiced. After so much hard work, it finally paying off. everything is connected, if you apply the same mindset to your work, your hard work will pay off.

Time and quality

Time is another important issue. When I’m doing multiple tasks, uni, internship, dance and part time job, I need a detailed schedule to help me to finish more work in shorter time. Remember time doesn’t equal to quality.

The tape doesn’t lie

Look back your life from time to time. In this way, you can make progresses from you pervious mistakes and you will be surprised about how much you’ve grown.

The passion mindset

Try to think the other way around, what’s your life is bring to you. There are so many things you can be thankful to. But always remember, you need to earn it and the process won’t be essay

Reference: Cal Newport, 2012, ‘The Clarity of the Craftsman’ in So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work, NY Business Plus, ch.4.

Annotated Bibliography #3

Geneva 2014, ‘Employment relationships in the media and culture industries’, international labour office, vol. iii-v, pp. 1-24 

http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_dialogue/@sector/documents/publication/wcms_240701.pdf

This article analysed the motivation behind freelancing. By pointing out different categories of freelance, it shows that freelance sometimes can be employees as well. Grey areas exist between them. Some freelancers consider themselves as businessman who runs their own enterprise, at the same time, they are workers themselves. In this way, freelance is actually mirco-enterprise. It also outlines the legal issue of freelance varies from country to country. As self-employed is not exactly freelancer. So there is no legal middle ground between employed and self employed status except considerable overlapping. For instance, in Spain’s 2007 Self-Employed Workers, it says,’ economically dependent self-employed worker’.

To sum up, there are areas of overlapping between real freelancer and employee freelancer. A obvious thing to test this is to see if they are economically independent. However, the overlapping areas push the creative mirco-enterprise to happen.

Work – week 3 reading

In this week’s reading, it mainly addressed the borderland between formal and informal media work. It highlights the disadvantage of informal media work, for instance, it can be very insecure, overload and low pay. This is especially common in freelancer and some other media workers who are at the bottom of food chain. The flexibility and exploitation exist at the same time, sometimes the boundaries between these two elements can be very leaky. Based on the experience of an old freelancer named Muise, he suggests that ‘give nothing for free, and discipline yourself to making some system- any system- work for you’ It is very common for media companies to hire professional media workers. In comparison, non-professional workers become contributors. There are no minimum payment standard for them. This low-pay model of freelance writing industry has caused criticism.

According to Toby Miller, labour is the power of all, it produces media and then culture and then humanity. The common and typical labour issue in media industry is unpredictable and insecure aspects of work. The ground-level workers suffer even more. Firm culture workers are not as good as they look like, they are not ‘stars’, rich or successful. In fact, they work for their company to get the basic payment. Sometimes they don’t get credit for their contribution. In the end, we can see a range of ideas developing, conflicting and connecting. Both of inevitability and contingency exist in the capitalist knowledge economies world. So take the chances, there is a liberation for flexibility and informal employment after all.

Reference: Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas, 2015, ‘Work’ in The Informal Media Economy, Polity Press, Cambridge UK, ch.3.

Annotated Bibliography #2

AGCAS editors 2012, ‘Industry insight – Media’, agcas, pp. 1-13 http://www2.open.ac.uk/students/_data/documents/careers/media.pdf

This article describes the typical employers which includes self-employment, freelance. It states that the challenges you might run into in this market, the competition, the changeable market trend and hard-to establishment. As a freelancer, firstly you need to be aware of these potential problems. The paragraph in this article can be a good reminder for us. It also highlights the importance of network in this industry. Be in the freelance industry gives you enough room to develop your own specification. And you can always spend enough time on building it up into your portfolio. It also reminds us about the independence and ability level are required in freelance. What’s more, it points out the consideration we need to take about mange our own finances including tax, VAT  and National Insurance contributions. The article provide us with the basic information flow of being a freelancer. It gives us a general sense of what it is like, what need to be considered and prepared before you enter the market.

Freelancer is a part addressed in this journal. It covers a lot more than that. It generally provide all the information in media industry to us. For instance, what kind of work can I do? What’s it like working in this industry? Entry and progression, Where can I find experience? Typical employers, opportunity abroad  and future trends. All of these are like a futurism guide for us, the graduates, entering the industry, which is very helpful and worth more further reading and researching.

Industrial Revolution – week 1 reading

All of the development and technologies have been invented through industrial revolution have always been relying on the power of digitisation and information technology. Three clusters are addressed in this process, physical, digital and biological. These three clusters based on and get support from each other in order to make progress.

physical

In physical branch, there are four main streams, they are autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, advanced robotics and new materials. Autonomous vehicles dominates the information without a driver. They are developing into more strong function of transferring messages in the environment. 3D printing is also called additive manufacturing. It produces subjects layer upon layer based on model or drawing. Roberts are used in automotive environment for the most of situation. New material is being created based not he principles of lighter, stronger, recyclable and adaptive way.

digital

The key connection between physical and digital branch is the Internet. Internet provides platforms, products, services, places, etc. People is walking through these paths between technologies and platforms. Digital platforms save people a lot of transaction and friction cost. Individuals are sharing the same asset.

Biological

After long time researching and huge cost has been spending on it, biological realm has arrived a new level. On the other hand, computing power has been helping scientists go on the right trial.

Internet has been playing an essential role in the industry. It connects everything, it makes the communication faster, easier and more effective. It save money and space.

Highlights, shadows, quality, source & color in lighting

Highlights and Shadows

Objects are usually shaped by highlights and shadows in lighting. Audience usually can see the texture of the surface through highlights. If the surface is smooth, then the highlights will be gleam and sparkle. If the surface is rough, the highlights will be more diffuse. It is the same for shadows. Lights have a dramatic influence on both texture and shape of the object. For example, if we see a ball lit from front, it appears to be round. However if we see it from side, it appears to be a half-circle. ‘The proper use of light can embellish and dramatize every object. (Stenberg, J, V) Lighting shapes our sense of space in some degree. It also shapes the overall composition of shots. For example, we can see some off-screen space through the shadows. In some films, the main character is emphasized by a clearly lit and frontal figure.

Quality

There are generally four major aspects that filmmakers exploit and explore in lighting, its quality, direction, source and color. Quality refers to how intense the illumination is. The problems hard lighting may cause are clearly defined shadows, sharp edges and crisp textures. By contrast, soft lighting creates a diffused illumination. The noonday sunlight is usually hard lighting, an overcast sky is usually soft lighting, there are lots of lighting situations are between these two extremes.

Source

In making documentary films, filmmakers usually use lights that are available. However in fictional films, extra light source are needed. These extra sources help to obtain greater control of images’ look. The original lights in the set are usually not strong and varied enough to create the great image effect on big screen.

Color

We usually imagine that there are two basic lights in filmmaking, the white sunlight and the yellow lamp light. In fact, filmmakers use the as purely white a light as they can, then they put filters in front of the light sources, they can design any color of fashion as they wish.

 

Old Hollywood And New Hollywood

The highpoint of classic Hollywood cinema is from 1930 to 1945. The conglomeration of Hollywood and advertising and marketing, people do not care about which movie they need to get financed but which movies they are going to sell (Godard and Kael, 1982, pp.174-5).

New Hollywood was from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. It was whole new cinema adventure linked to traditional classic Hollywood genre filmmaking with the stylistic innovations of European art cinema. No one was sure about the directions that should be taken because it is a new idea. The success of the musical film, The Sound of Music touched off the ‘youth audience’ and ‘youth’ and ‘alternative’ films in late 1960s and early 1970s, all relate to ‘anti-heroes’. It was descried as a cinema of ‘alienation, anomie, anarchy and absurdism by Sarris.

Then the ‘movie brats’ arrived, it is a film-school-educated and/or film-critical generation who began making commercial American cinema with an elan. It was considered to be the moment of symbol of critical practice of auteurism within American filmmaking, resulting in a self-consciously auteurist cinema. This moment is dubbed by Noel Carroll to be a ‘cinema of allusion’, according to classic Hollywood cinema and European art cinema. Based on Bordwell and Staiger’s claim, the new Hollywood directors are not youthful and technologically competent than their predecessors. They grafted art cinema conventions on classical traditions in a genuinely new aesthetic. ‘In keeping with the definition of a non-Hollywood Hollywood, American films are imitating the look of European art films; classical film style and codified genres swallow up art-film borrowings, taming the disruptiveness of the art cinema’ (Bordwell and Staiger. 1985, p.375). ‘Most American commercial cinema has continued the classical tradition and observing that the New Hollywood can explore ambiguous narrational possibilities but those explorations remain within classical boundaries’ (p.377)

Reference: “New Hollywood” in Pam Cook (ed) The Cinema Book. 3rd Edition. BFI. London. 2007. pp. 60-67

I Lost It at Movies-Circles and Squares: Joys and Sarris

Auteur critic is not a rigid formula, but an art requires extraordinary intelligence, discrimination and taste. A critic who has none of these qualities may fail in perceiving what is original and important in new work and helping others to see.

‘The Outer Circle’-The Technical Competence

The technical competence is the most outer circle. This means it is the least important for a director. A good direct is being able to achieve his/her own personal expression and style. To create a new standard is very helpful and worthy for a director because the standard of technical competence are based on comparisons with work already done. Sometimes the good use of technical competence can even redeem the weakness of the material.

‘The Middle Circle’-The Distinguishable Personality

The unsuccessful movies of a director is always more noticeable than the good ones. The audience are most aware of the personality of the director are his worst film. After few films are done, the personality of the director is like the label of clothes, audience judges it from the personality.

‘The Inner Circle’-Interior Meaning

The inner circle is the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art. Interior meaning is extrapolated form the tension between a director’s personality and his material. The inner circle is the place that keeps secrets and is full of mystique.

‘Outside the Circle’-What is a Film Critic?

A critic is an important role to help people go deeply in the work. People can understand more about the work with the help of a critic. The art of the critic is to transmit his knowledge of and enthusiasm for art to others. There is no fixed theory of judging a movie. The desire for a theory that will solve all the riddles of creativity is in itself perhaps an indication of their narrowness and confusion. Criticism is exciting just because there is no formula to apply, and that film criticism is particularly exciting just because of the multiplicity of elements in film art.

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