Everyday Media

An everyday blog about media by everyday blogger Louise Alice Wilson.

Month: April 2016 (page 2 of 2)

A Tutor A Day

A tutor a day, keeps the anxiety away?

Having a tutor, is probably one of the best elements of the Media 1 course.

In the weekly workshops we usually discuss the weeks readings and lectures as well as complete workshop activities that often get us to practically engage with the content we have learnt about that week. All these things about workshops are pretty great, but I think the best thing about the workshops is having a tutor, and not just any tutor, but a great tutor, we have tutors who are engaged, have a load of media experience and knowledge and are always available to guide us when we need it most.

This week within our workshops we got the opportunity to talk about our project brief 3’s with our peers and tutors. As my tutor slowly made her way around the room, going from student to student, talking to each person about our own intricate problems and inspirations, I began to realise that I was anxious. I was so anxious and nervous about my project brief 3, that as she made her way around the room, I literally sat staring at my computer, to anxious to work, just waiting for her to get to me.

This was an interesting experience for me, being someone that often just ‘get’s on with things’ and doesn’t really stop to think about how I’m feeling. I came to the realisation that if this opportunity hadn’t presented itself to me, I probably wouldn’t have asked my tutor for advice or help, I probably would’ve just sat down and got on with it, but when I got given the opportunity I realised that I really wanted the opinion of someone exactly like my tutor.

As she slowly made her around the room I mulled over the questions I was going to ask, and the problems I would present:

“I’m not sure which direction to take it..”
“Well my subject is into this, this, this, and this.. I’m not sure if I should focus on this or this, or that and this?”
“But where is my three act structure? What can be the ultimate resolution?”
“Is this topic relevant?”
“Should my stock footage explicitly relate to what I’m saying?”
“Is it daggy if I mention this?”
“Do you think this setup looks good?”

As I slowly got my questions and problems out, she began to calmly answer each one, writing her notes down on a piece of paper, then handing it to me at the end. It was like a helium balloon, tied down by a string, nervous anxiety, and being set free with the cut of string, calming reassurance.

I know where I want to go and I know what I want to say but I’m so glad that we have tutors to calmly point us in the right direction.

Catch you later, Louise Alice Wilson

Are You A Human Wrapper For Blood?

Narrative via Twitter

I’ve read a lot about narrative this past week, mainly what is a narrative? how do we construct a narrative? what does a narrative look like? This is good for covering the basics, but i’m interested in where narrative is going and it seems that one place narrative is definitely going is twitter. Now I’m not sure if someone has released a narrative film via twitter, which would be awesome, but people have definitely begun releasing narrative fiction on twitter, which I find pretty damn interesting.

David Mitchell (@david_mitchell) the author of Cloud Atlas released a 280 tweet (140 characters or less) long book entitled ‘The Right Sort’ over the period of a week, back in 2014. Now David Mitchell isn’t the first, or anywhere near the last person to release a novel or short story over twitter, but it’s certainly one of the most interesting I’ve read.

Mitchell’s story begins with: 

“We get off the number 10 bus at a pub called ‘The Fox and Hounds’. ‘If anyone asks,’ Mum tells me, ‘say we came by taxi.'”

Has this somewhere in the middle:

“Blood’s strange. We think blood serves us, but what if a human’s just a wrapper for its blood, and really it’s the blood who’s in charge?”

and ends with: 

“I understand. That was my soul. My soul. It’s gone. Valium. Bad Valium. Bad Valium. Bad ”

It’s an interesting story about a poor young  teenage boy (Nathan) on valium, who follows his mother (Rita Bland) to a party at a wealthy mansion then get’s into all sorts of strife, as either the drug kicks in or as his nightmares turn into reality.

How does twitter affect the narrative?

  • The story is spaced out. Not only by individual tweet posts, but also by long gaps of time, sometimes by 10 or more hours.
  • Most tweets contains at least one ‘beat’.
  • This creates rhythmic cuts, in-between individual actions and motivations.
  • Locations, actions, people aren’t described in a great amount of detail to ensure that an entire action, from start to finish, can fit into a singular tweet. For example, “It’s a grey afternoon. Rain’s forecast for later. Through a front window, I see wrestling on the telly. Mum walks ahead. I follow.”
  • The cuts created by twitter size limits, lend themselves to creating continuous jumps between storylines. For example, within the story Nathan constantly switches between current happenings on, filling in background details about characters and situations and the current stage of his valium trip.
  • Characters thoughts are added in ** and kept to a minimum, as a quick easy way to explain their current state of mind, or the undertone of a specific statement. For example, “‘Sure. My dad can put a bullet between a man’s eyes at a hundred metres. I’ve seen him.’ *Bet your posh ‘father’ can’t do that*, I think.”
  • The casualness of twitter allows Mitchell to explore obscure, sexual, abstract, meta statements which never seem out of place.

Overall:

It’s a pretty interesting story, very meta at times and very much geared to a young audience, so I’d say its worth a read, even if you just want to learn more about this “what if a human’s just a wrapper for blood” stuff.

Catch you later,

Louise Alice Wilson

 

References

Extracts from David Mitchell’s twitter account, July, 2014, found at https://twitter.com/david_mitchell.

It’s As Easy As 1, 2, 3

When it comes to constructing plots, whether it be for a screenplay or a documentary film the ‘three-act structure’ is one of the oldest tricks in the book, having been invented by the ancient Greeks. It may seem super boring at first, but it’s a great guide to ensuring  direction, interest and tension are worked into your plot, so feel free to change it up a bit.

The Three-Act Structure

Act 1: The Setup; establishes the environment, situation, characters, relationships and the ensuing dominant problem/s faced by the key character/s.

Act 2: Magnifies the complications in relationships, as the key character/s deals with arising difficulties, preventing them from solving the main problem.

Act 3: Intensifies the situation until climax or confrontation occurs, which the key character/s will resolve. Whether this be a good or bad resolution, or how dramatic the resolution is, is up to you. A squiggly example is shown below.

Three Act Structure

 

The Dramatic Curve

Another concept from the Ancient Greeks is the dramatic curve. The ‘dramatic curve’ represents the progression of dramatic elements as time passes: first problem > develop tension > scenes of added complication & intensity > apex/climax > resolution/change. An example can be seen below, it’s more of a ‘dramatic triangle’ but you get the drift.

Dramatic Curve

Catch you later, Louise Alice Wilson

 

References

Extract from Michael Rabiger, 2009, Directing the Documentary, 5th Edition (Focus Press) pp.283-291

Blog Affordances Afford…

What are the affordances of blogging? Or in other words, what are the specific and unique attributes of blogs? This was the key question brought up at this weeks lecture by Rachel Wilson, and it’s an extremely important question given that the answer contains what motivated the course to encourage blogging in the first place. Before we look at the affordances of blogs, let’s first look at common features of blogs and how these features add to the overall abilities and impacts of blogging.

Common features of blogs:

  • Blog name: personalisation, communication of potential topics and overall vibe.
  • Blog roll: links to outside blogs, creates community connections and directs viewers to specific spaces.
  • Post heading: personalisation, communication of potential topic and vibe.
  • Categories: organisation of ideas, defines key topic areas.
  • Date & time stamp: lends itself to connection between producer and viewer.
  • Archived by date: lends itself to documenting process and progress.
  • Ordered reverse chronologically: up-to-the-minute info, encourages viewers to check the blog regularly.

Affordances of Blogs:

  • Comments & Interlinking: encourages relationships between content producers and content viewers, allows for sharing of information and expansion or diversion of topics.
  • Networking & Connection: a space for peer support, learning & interactivity.
  • Range of voices: professional, personal, informal, scholarly. Promotes personalisation and freedom of expression.
  • Up-to-the-minute info: lends itself to exploring daily topics, current ideas and new inspirations. Encourages faster and greater engagement between producer and viewer.
  • Brief posts: encourages higher post rate and greater engagement with each post.
  • Content Control & Freedom: posts can be as silly and specific or as broad and meaningful as the poster desires. Encourages exploration of non-typical topics, extraordinary ideas and alternative thought.
  • Document progress: record of achievement, literal time capsule of ideas, tastes, thoughts, inspirations and work.
  • Multiliteracy development: complexity of the medium, lends itself to complexity of understanding and engagement.
  • Embedding: link ideas, inspirations, references influences through various mediums such as  images, texts, sounds, videos etc. Encourages audience engagement, greater audience understanding and adds vibrancy and personality to a post.
  • Accessibility: Accessable to anyone with an internet connection, boosts potential impact and overall versatility.

Keeping the affordances of blogs in mind, will ultimately lead to better blogging, as the affordances of blogs are what make blogging dynamic and impactful.

Catch you later, Louise Alice Wilson

Blue

University students are a funny bunch of people. For the most part, they’re a funny mix between adult and child. We’re in that halfway stage between; home & moving out, amateur & professional, easily distracted & focused and exploring what we want and finding out. In ‘BLUE’ I attempted to explore this tentative balance between the considered, focused university student and the sociable, explosive and random inner kid. A link to the video can be found below:

BLUE from Louise Alice Wilson on Vimeo.

Catch you later,

Louise Alice Wilson

 

 

Donnie Darko Explained:

Donnie Darko wasn’t my first taste of textual analysis, but it certainly was one of my favourites. After analysing this film in year 11 media I’ve never got it out of my head, I was contemplating a tattoo at one stage.. who’s kidding, i’m probably still contemplating getting a Donnie Darko tattoo. But the point is.., that textual analysis does not ‘ruin’ films for people, textual analysis can often ‘make’ a film, or for me, add to the already impressive allure of the film.

Donnie Darko in general is about a ‘troubled teenager’ (Donnie) that narrowly escapes death when a jet-engine crashes into his bedroom, by following a giant Bunny rabbit named Frank outside. Frank proceeds to tell Donnie that the world will end in 28 days, which causes Donnie to go on a series of adventures investigating the possibility of Frank’s claims.

This sounds simple enough? weird. But simple enough, right?

Wrong.

For a film that was directed by 26 year old, first time director Richard Kelly the film is incredibly complicated, well at least to the uninitiated viewer. The surprising thing about this though, is that many people who end up watching the film, and not understanding ‘what the film is about’, still say that they love the film? In fact the confusing aspects of Donnie Darko seemed to be Donnie Darko’s greatest strength, making it the biggest film of Richard Kelly’s career and a major cult classic.

But how many ways are there to read Donnie Darko? Well if your an open-minded person, you’d say there’s a million + but if your focus is on summation then i’d say that there are three major ways to read Donnie Darko:

  1. The Time Travel Hypothesis
  2. Schizophrenia
  3. The Looping Tangent Universe

and of the course, the forever tacky

4. It was all a dream

but that explanation sucks, so I’m omitting it.

Note: The explanations of these films will make no sense whatsoever if you haven’t seen the film, though I think without seeing the film it would make for some funny reading, so maybe read it anyway?

Time Travel Hypothesis Explained:

The film Donnie Darko exists in a ‘tangent universe’, where there is a ‘tangent universe’ there is an ‘artefact’, in this case the ‘artefac’t is the jet engine of the airplane that crashes into Donnie’s room at the beginning of the film, that was meant to kill him, but didn’t because Frank woke Donnie up. Throughout the film Donnie acts as a ‘living receiver’, which is the person who is chosen at random who’s mission is to guide the ‘artefact’ out of the ‘tangent universe’. The living receiver is blessed with supernatural powers, thus explaining Donnie’s ability to control elements like water and fire as well as his incredible strength which allows him to axe chop a metal pipe within the film. Even though Donnie is the living receiver, he is not aware of this, he also not immediately aware of his ‘goal’ nor of ideas regarding the tangent universe and artefacts etc. until he accumulates knowledge from various sources such as the philosophy of time travel book, the manipulated dead and the manipulated living. The manipulated dead (Frank and Gretchen) are people who die within the tangent universe that are connected to the living receiver, thus allowing them to guide Donnie with their knowledge of the impending disaster. The manipulated living are people connected to the living receiver that subconsciously help guide the living receiver.

This Donnie essentially goes throughout the film attempting to understand Frank’s claims, understand the concept of time travel and eventually understand what he is being shown by the philosophy of time travel book, the manipulated dead and the manipulated living in order to deal with the impending end of the world in 28 days. By the end of the film Donnie becomes aware of how to guide the ‘artefact’ out of ‘tangent universe’ thus ensuring that the primary universe be reinstated.

Schizophrenia Explained:

Within the film it is implied that Donnie is schizophrenic (Donnie’s medication and visits to psychologist) and thus assumes that the major plot driver of this film, Frank, is simply a hallucination caused by Donnie’s illness. This theory is plausible as all major aspects of the film could be attributable to this, however it was most likely added by Kelly as a red herring to allow first time watchers to still enjoy the confusing film.

The Looping Tangent Universe Explained:

This theory very much follows the philosophy of time travel hypothesis but with one major change: the tangent universe is created every 28 days then it collapses, looping back to October 2nd then starting all over again. This posits the tangent universe as a time loop that can only end when Donnie is successful at returning the jet engine into the primary universe. This suggests that our viewing of Donnie Darko is simply Donnie’s first successful attempt at ending the time loop, however there have been many failed previous attempts. Aspects of the film that point to this hypothesis include Donnie laughing at the beginning of the film, suggesting he is remembering something from the previous tangent universe loop and the fact that characters Mrs Pomeroy, Grandma Death and Dr Thurman all seem to have inside knowledge about what is going on.

To sum up:

These alternate readings of Donnie Darko  are the perfect example of the beauty of textual analysis, within textual analysis you often subconsciously or consciously impress your own ideas onto texts, it’s hard to escape this as thought formation is innate and will ultimately underlie the choices and perceptions you make and have in life. However maybe seeing an element of yourself, or reading into a text in a unique way is not always negative but explains why media can have such a strong emotional impact on viewers. For me, the multiple ways to read the film, as well as the individual way in which I read the film only added to my interest and respect for the film itself, thus I think textual analysis can be a wonderfully personal and beautiful thing.

To finish, here’s one of my favourite scenes from Donnie Darko:

Catch you later, Louise Alice Wilson

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy 

Alan McKee’s Guide To Textual Analysis

Alan McKee, an Australian Creative Industries university professor at the University of Technology Sydney  has written a handy beginners guide to textual analysis.

Textual analysis is an attempt to predict what the most likely interpretations of that given text would be, through gathering and analysing information from associated academic research.

Although McKee acknowledges that textual analysis often gets distracted by assumptions about ‘correct’, ‘accurate’ or ‘realistic’ interpretations, he does consider it an important tool to discern viewers interpretations and understandings of media texts, when these assumptions can be avoided.

Without further ado here’s Alan McKee’s guide to textual analysis, or rather a much simplified version of Alan McKee’s guide:

1. Choose your topic of interest.

2. Make your question more specific.

3. List texts relevant to this question from your own experience.

4. Find more texts through academic and popular research.

5. Gather these texts.

6. Watch each example, note how particular textual elements work in each (relationships, character development, story arc involvement).

7. Watch other programs in the same genre to see how they work.

8. Understand the wider semiosphere (world of meaning) as you can, to get a sense as to how these texts fit into the wider context.

9. With all this in mind, return to the texts and attempt likely interpretations of them.

Alan McKee’s guide provides a wonderful simplification of the textual analysis process, which will be extremely helpful throughout this degree. McKee manages to avoid assumptions of viewer ability or level of understanding as a mediating factor for viewer capacity to analyse content, which is wonderfully refreshing as it accepts all viewers as potential analysers.

Catch you later, Louise Alice Wilson

 

References

McKee, Alan (2001). A beginner’s guide to textual analysis. Metro Maga- zine, pp. 138-149.

wwwww.interview

Louise Turley gave a great lecture on “The Art of the Interview: The 5 W’s” so I decided to use it as a template  to guide me before, through and after my interview:

WHO?

1. Do they have something to say?

Yes, they have a lot to say, often too much. So i’ve ended up editing a lot of it out in order to stick to the criteria. I have found though, that I can help direct them in the right direction and keep their answers brief if I guide them on what is most relevant.

2. Are they credible?

Yes, they have years of experience as a musician, a teacher and a lecturer and they’ve also completed an undergraduate and are currently completing their honours on the same topic.

3. Can they deliver on camera?

If i’m supportive, provide the right energy and can prompt them in the right direction, then yes.

4. Are they good ‘talent’?

Yes. Sometimes too good. They play multiple different interests, so there’s almost too much good material.

5. Who is my audience?

My class members and anyone with a general interest in music or short expository films.

 

WHAT?

1. What are you going to ask them?

  • When did you start playing music?
  • Where did your parents meet?
  • What instrument did your dad play?
  • What instruments do you play?
  • What do you love about these instruments?
  • What do you love about playing music?
  • What do you love about music in general?
  • What are your favourite types of music?
  • What types of music do you play?
  • How did you get into Jazz?
  • How did you get into Ethiopian Jazz?
  • Why are you controlling your honours thesis on ethnomusicology?
  • How was your recent tour of Africa?
  • What was the best part about playing with Ethio-Jazz legend Mulatu Astatke?

2. Research – reading, speaking, observing:

I’ve known this person for a long time, so I know a lot about their musical history, experience and interests.

3. Write questions: simple, as short as possible, open ending, check wording (bias).

Check. As seen above.

4. Practise

Check. I wrote out a list of potential questions prior, informed my interview subject of them, then conducted a rough interview. After the first interview I conducted a second interview, that was informed by the positive and negative parts of the first interview. This gave the video short an overall clarity and level of professionalism it may of not otherwise had.

 

WHERE?

1. Location – home? work? other? why? permissions?

At-home recording studio, M.E.S.S Studio, The Horn Ethiopian Cafe & various street locations.

2. Things to think about: light (is there enough), sound (background noise, interruptions), background (what does it say, will it change, artworks).

All four locations have interesting light, the first two are well suited to sound recording, with the latter having a decent amount of background noise, the background in all four locations are dynamic and engaging.

 

WHEN?

When you are interviewing your subject remember:

1. Brief the subject: clothing, questions & answers, repeat your question in their answer.

Non-disruptive t-shirt, and comfortable everyday clothing, that represents the interviewee. Subject briefed on questions and was great at repeating the question in the answer.

2. Maintain eye contact

Check.

3. Listen (use nods and facial expressions not ‘uh-huh’s and mmm’)

Check. I followed this advice explicitly during recording and I’m glad I did because I heard a lot of other people spent a long time editing out mhmm’s and yeah’s.

4. Be flexible/adaptable

Check.

5. Be respectful and show empathy

Check.

6. Stay focused

Check.

7. Be quiet. It’s not about you!

Check. Can hear my breathing in some takes. Creepy. Right? Haha. I didn’t end up using these takes of course..

 

WHY?

1. Why did I interview this person?

Because they are interesting and obscure.

2. Why was the interview good/not good?

Good: I learnt new things and explored someones passion/obsession which was fun.
Bad: Learnt how long it takes to put together even a short piece of video.

3. Why did I ask this question instead of that one?

Generally speaking, because it was more specific and would more likely explore what I wanted covered.

4. Why did they respond in that way?

Generall speaking, because that is there general understanding and experience.

5. What did I learn from this interview?

  • How to be a better interviewer.
  • How to pick out the good from the bad.
  • How to encourage an interviewee to give better, more fleshed out responses.
  • How to construct a narrative from random pieces of footage.
  • How precious light is.

Catch you later, Louise Alice Wilson

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