Todays tutorial was dedicated to workshopping our Project Brief 4. Firstly the whole class presented their concepts and artefacts concerning their topics and we shared ideas and feedback with each other. There seemed to be an interest in focusing more around the ways audiences interact with audiences. Also, there seems to be some interest around the ways the media actually effects the audience.
We have finally decided to put a voice overs into our final video presentation. We have decided to present “audiences” with a choose your own adventure video that focuses on how a person interacts with media. The outcome of the video will focus on the effects of media while the content of the video focusses on the way people interact with media.
At the current time we are still putting together a full map of what choices will be given to the audience throughout the video, and we are still refining our ideas on how we will share our research
I spent the day deciding that i would catch up on my blog posts. Its now 1:30am and this is the last one i need to write. Why am i still awake, well, the procrastinating i was doing got out of control. I ended up spending most of the day watching Ed Sheeran videos.
However, its not all in Vein, there is reflection to be done. For those of you who are not familiar with the personal story of Ed Sheeran, the man is an extremely hard worker. He spend many years living on friends couches and the streets of London trying to make a name for himself. He is the perfect example of making an effort to achieve your goals.
Ironic, considering I watched his videos all day to procrastinate.
Through my search of his life i realised that on his early album networking and collaboration was very important, and its one of the main things which helped him build a name for himself. For example, touring with Taylor Swift helped him “Break the States”. It makes me think about how important the upcoming collaborative projects are. At this stage of semester one coming onto week 9 all my assessments are group projects. I need to make use of my fellow classmates and collaborate with them to create the best work that can help us all progress with our endeavours.
Narratives and Barratives, most people would tell me, ‘Barrative’ is not a word! but let me tell you something, it is now. In our Week 8 lectorial we were told that Narrative is Basically Cause and Effect. Therefore if i want to change the first letter of Narrative to a B and make it Barrative, isn’t it effectively the cause of me wanting to rhyme effectively creating a new word? We were also showed this video called “We have Decided not to Die” we then were asked to discuss whether or not it was a narrative. Here is a breakdown of my thoughts
How it is a Narrative:
Each scene follows a similar structure: no movment, crazy movment, deadly stunt. It has titles so that we follow a basic story.
How its not:
It does not seem to have much of a conclusion that ties it all together, this seems to leave it open ended, to me this is what really would have made it a narrative, a proper ending.
The reading for this week also outlined some good points, which might further support the idea that this is not in fact a narrative. For example Robert McKee says that a protagonist must have certain motivations and must use them to follow a certain structure of story or resolve a conflict. We briefly looked at this as well in the lectorial by graphing out the emotional intensity of common films such as Shrek and Frozen.
In this short the protagonist does not necessarily have any motivation, the only thing which might be relevant is that they “Have decided not to die” which is only evident because of the title itself, which is a grey area in terms of if we can rely on that to tell the story. There are brief ideas of conflict or narrative explored in this video, when we see a scene, for example the boy enters the building and takes the lift, but there is not a larger more encompassing narrative to tie the scenes together.
Overall, i believe that the short by Daniel Askill has lots of food for thought, and definitely challenges the grey areas around narrative.
McKee, Robert. (1997). ‘The substance of story.’ In Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York, USA: HarperCollins, pp. 135-154.
During this workshop we were given our final assessment task, Project Brief 4. This is a group presentation – groan. Now i dont have anything against group presentations, however, in my personal experience this is often time that people slack off work and allow others to do most of the work – lets hope that this does not happen this time. We were numbered off into groups, to ensure that we got to work with people who we previously had not. The funny part is, that i had temporarily left my table of friends to deliver a message to the other side of the room, this resulted in me being numbered into a group with my friend Tyler, who I know quite well. Exxxcccellent.
We then got into our groups and started working on our collaborative contract, this took some time because we also needed to introduce ourselves to eachother.
The collaborative contract was interesting, because it required us to make a detailed outline of how we would go about this task. I have been privileged enough to work with groups before so I believe that i have a have a strong grasp on concepts such as consultation and conflict resolution. Nevertheless it was an interesting activity to put together a plan of collaboration, it somewhat ensures that everybody will pull their weight. Lets Hope
For our workshop this week we met in our Groups for Project brief 4, Oh No. Tyler Perry was sick! For those of you who aren’t in with the ‘cool crowd’, let me explain. I call Tyler Foster, Tyler Perry… i dont know why, but its fun. He had been admitted to hospital the past week because of pneumonia, and was unable to attend class. No fear, the remainder of the group – Annick and I started our Brainstorm:
Jasmine (our tutor) gave us a big sheet of paper on which we started brainstorming about our topic:
We then started to narrow down the areas of “Audiences” in which we were interested. Considering that both Tyler and I have youtube channels and Annick had an interest for social media we decided to pursue something in the direction of Social Media, Interactive audiences and Youtube. This idea was very much in accordance with the ideology of our collaborative group contract. One of the terms was that our area of research will be one in which we have genuine interest. The reason for this is that, often times for assignments, there is very little invested or personal interest from the participants, and this leads to lack-luster work. By choosing social media and youtube audiences, we intend to have a genuine interest in the topics.
During out tutorial we all presented out Project Brief 3’s One which i found particularly interesting was that of classmate Jen Farrow. She did a portrait of her partner who experiences sight very differently to most of us. Her video was quite confronting, as it was a visual representation of how he views the world.
It reminds me that often I take my own sight for granted, and that there is more ways of viewing the world than i myself perceive.
Finally! Week 7 Lectorial and it was mentioned@
What was mentioned? Well… I remember writing a scathing blog post earlier about over analysis of texts, looking too deep for meaning. What if it just “IS” what if thats just the way it is? Finally i believe it was Rachel Wilson that mentioned, sometimes we can take this analysis too far. And i totally agree.
However, what did we do in the Lectorial, well, this weeks topic was “texts” this was the focus of the lecture and the readings. Particularly interesting was the analysis of the photographs that we conducted for example we took a photo of a clothing ad and then we broke it down. for example
1. The meaning its trying to communicate
2. The individual media components. ie. text, images, colours
In the particular billboard we analysed we were able to pick out the different elements and discuss them. I believe that one way in which we can think of ‘texts’ is see them as ‘contexts’. So in summary we analysed the context of the place it is displayed.
I do this lots in my life as a media content creator. I have worked extensively for Townshend International School creating their Promo Material and helping with their website. We always needed to make sure that the images and ideologies that the school supported were being conveyed and displayed appropriately. For example in the image below it was important that all the uniforms matched, there were both males and females, they were all happy and they were from diverse cultural background. This photo appears on the home page of the Townshend website and needs to appeal to both parents and prospective students.
In this way, analysing texts for a purpose and not just to give them meaning is whats most important to me, and thats the part I have valued learning about this week.
After posting my “Project Brief 3” we attended class and presented them. Using the following “Hats” or reactions we then provided feedback to each other.
RED – Initial response to the piece
YELLOW – Something you liked about the piece
BLACK – Something that Doesn’t work
GREEN – Another creative possibility
These are the reflections i received
Red – The tone of the video started out from the beginning as relaxed and not too intense, it gave time for us to become familiar with Khalil before it went into the more intense montage about dance
Yellow – The way the cartoon contrasted yet suited the narrative. The way that it was a small box in the middle of the screen also reminded of “The Illustrated Auschwitz” (YES! This is what i was going for!)
Black – Felt as though there was not enough time for the audience to really comprehend what was happening in the cartoon cut-aways. Perhaps allow them to run longer and allow time to absorb. Also it would be nice to learn more about Khalil, it felt very surface level.
Green – Perhaps you could use a larger variety of found footage. Not just the one cartoon of the bird – it would be nice to see a range of different perspectives.
During this weeks lectorial Rachel Wilson talked to us about collaboration.
– Cold Sweat –
The thing about group projects is that although they have so much potential to be amazing they often end in blood sweat and tears. Theres an old phrase that states: “If you want something done right – do it yourself”, sadly there is an element of reality to this that is unavoidable – which is: If you don’t care about your well being; nobody else will. If we think back to the days of high school many of us will remember the dread that was group projects, one or two people would do all the work while the people who were less interested in passing the subject would happily allow it to happen.
The problem with these scenarios was that there were members of the group that did not feel motivated or interested int he project; fair enough, it was high school and we all at some point had to do things that we didnt have an interest in.
Hopefully now, in the world of university where everyone has chosen to be here its going to be different.
The pinnacle of productivity in group work comes from motivation and desire to succeed, this is why companies that are formed with teams of interested people are usually successful, because the members of the group have an actual interest to complete the task at hand.
So hopefully, from now on all group projects are only comprised of people that care.
