It’s time for another assignment guys! Get excited because this one is a genuine, bona-fide movie (kind-of). It’s a one minute, edited media piece based on my last brief, maintaining the theme of ‘self-portrait’.

For brief two, I stuck to my original idea of emphasising my sense of humour through taking the mickey out of myself by pretending my life had been made into a movie. Because I now had the chance to create one continuous piece of media, I thought I would draw together my original materials through use of a self-parodying shot of a pretentious version of myself being interviewed, as though for a ‘behind the scenes’ documentary. I maintained the ‘script’, but added fake reviews as part of my text. The pictures of my ‘costumes’ and the video of my bedroom ‘props’ remained, because I thought they were both funny ways in which to highlight elements of my personality and things that were important to me while still alluding to the biopic theme. I created these pictures to move around on the screen, in the style of Ken Burns, to imitate common behind-the-scenes documentary tropes. Everything is dissolved in and out so that there is a sense of fluency. I felt in brief one that my link to Melbourne as my home wasn’t clear enough, so I made this more explicit in brief two with the picture and sound of an iconic Melbourne tram (sorry for the poor quality guys, it was recorded on my phone on a windy day!). At the end of the piece, I included the Oscar audio because I was quite proud of it and it humourously references my ambitions as a media-maker.

Overall, I have to say that I’m quite happy with my piece. I know that it is not quite as complex or in-depth as some of my classmate’s work in terms of meaningful analysis of my own personality; my media held simple meaning (tram = lives in Melbourne, sports clothes = loves sport), and I did not explore my personality in more depth really than my likes, home environment and overall attitude to life (do it for the laughs). However, that was really my aim as I know I am not a particularly in-depth or complex person and I wanted my piece to reflect this. It’s also not the best quality technically speaking – most of it was filmed/recorded on my phone, so it’s a little laggy and low-fi. However, on the whole I’m pretty happy with it, because overall, it has a playful, cheeky feel that I hope reflects my own personality.

In our tutorial yesterday, we continued looking at editing while going on with our next assignment brief. Because I haven’t quite finished it and haven’t got anything to show yet, I thought I’d look once again at editing, but this time from a different perspective: photo editing. It’s an interesting topic, because in some contexts – particularly the fashion context – it can get a little bit controversial.

Obviously, there are a lot of times where photo editing is a fantastic and essential tool. For photographers, the ability to clean up images in terms of light, contrast and colour is invaluable. Even in our personal lives, we use basic photo editing software to reduce red-eye, crop pictures to size and, as in on-trend at the moment, create ‘filters’ on programs such as Instagram to make our pictures that little bit more interesting.

This picture has had a filter added to it to make it look older than it is

Photo editing can also be a tool to create really interesting artwork. Photos can be unrealistically manipulated to create colours, patterns and designs that are interesting and artistic. The combined use of photo editing software and techniques such as a green screen can even turn realistic photos into fantasy or science fiction scenes.

In a classic example of ‘pop art’, here digital photo editing has been used to create an unnatural but artistic colour palette

But to understand the controversy that often surrounds photo editing (often referred to simply by the brand name ‘Photoshop’), we have to go back to my last post and the comments made by guest lecturer Liam Ward. Liam said that in his mind, film editing was the process of ‘breaking’ a film, so that rather than physically showing every single event relevant to the plot the audience can fill in the gaps using their own imagination. Here, I think, lies the key difference between film editing and photo editing: in a film, although you may not consciously notice it, when there is an edit between two scenes you recognise that there is something you are not seeing. You understand that time may have passed or that you are now in a different place. However in photos, often what we are looking at seems so realistic that our brain doesn’t recognise any edits; we take what we are seeing at face value and without thinking assume that what we are seeing is what really happened.

Most of us would look at this photo of Keira Knightly and not think twice, assuming that this was just how she looked; however, it has been seriously altered which is only noticeable when comparing it to the original

This, I think, is a problem and one that causes most of the controversy around photo editing in the fashion industry. As a feminist, I think it’s appalling that producers of magazines and catalogues feel the need to physically change the bodies of their already beautiful models to be skinnier, or taller, or darker. But I think the problem lies not solely with this editing but in the fact that as an audience we don’t recognise it. Photos seem so realistic to us that we don’t necessarily consider the fact that they have been edited, and so when the audience of these pictures – often women who are already vulnerable regarding their body image – sees models with slim bodies and perfect hair and make-up, they automatically assume that this is what the women look like in real life. Unlike in film, they don’t make that unconscious recognition that what they are consuming is a highly produced media product. And because media is so overwhelmingly present in our world today, from our phones to our streets (see my earlier post, Media Girl in a Media World  for more on this), it’s then not too hard to come to the conclusion that these ‘real’ women are representative of all women.

Of course, the presentation of women in the media is a much, much, much wider issue than this and one that I could easily ramble on about for years (and I’m sure I will, because it’s an issue that means a lot to me and one that deserves to be talked about). But I think it’s important to constantly be aware of the presentation of the media around us, and to be aware of the editing processes that have occurred to construct a very carefully crafted work.

In my last post, I talked about Scott McCloud’s article on ‘the gutter’, and the meaning we create to fill in the gaps in comics. I mentioned that this applies to a range of different media, and this was what we talked about in our lectorial yesterday. Guest speaker Liam Ward (RMIT lecturer and media extraordinaire) spoke to us about film editing, and he had a pretty interesting take on it. He said that while most people see editing as a way of fixing movies, he says it as ‘breaking’ movies because you create gaps in the action in which the audience can fill their own meaning.

For example, let’s say there’s an episode of your favourite sitcom in which the decidedly unsporting protagonist decides he wants to join a gym. There is a shot of him stating his commitment to his new project, and then there is a shot of him sweaty, red-faced and exhausted. We haven’t seen him at the gym, but the edit implies a passing of time that allows the audience to imagine that he has been to the gym and that it hasn’t been easy.

Now imagine a man walking down the street in jeans and a t-shirt with a backpack. Where is he going? To work maybe, or to see friends? Now imagine that shot in between the shot of the man stating he will go the gym and the one of him sweaty and tired. All of a sudden we can say pretty conclusively that the man is going to the gym.

That’s what’s called the Kuleshov Effect. It’s a film theory that states that just about all the meaning an audience gains from a shot is not actually contained within the shot but in the shots around it. This phenomenon was first observed by Russian media theorist Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s, and it makes a lot of sense. Take a look at this video that Kuleshov created as an experiment to test his theory:

Now it doesn’t work for everyone, but most people find that the earlier shots affect the way they interpret the actor’s expression. After the soup, he looks hungry. After the child, he looks sad (or like a creepy child-killer if you ask me). After the woman, he looks lustful. The point is, the cuts between the shots and the arrangement of the shots affected their meaning.

To test this phenomenon – and indeed the power of editing – ourselves, in media one we in pairs had the challenge of creating a five sentence story in which all of the sentences could be rearranged, and the story would still make sense. We worked our way up to this, but in the end this is what my partner Russell and I came up with:

It may not be the most exhilarating story in the world, but hey, you have a go, this stuff is more difficult than you might think! It was particularly interesting though to see how the different arrangement of the same five events affects our understanding of them. If ‘she got free food’ follows ‘she was mistaken for a media official’, then it implies that that’s why she got the food. But if it follows ‘she went to parliament’, it implies she got the food at parliament. (By the way if it’s seeming like a really weird story that’s because it started off with us describing our day. And then adding time travel.) While not particularly revolutionary, it’s important when looking at editing to understand how the selection, omission and arrangement of certain elements affects the audience’s understanding of cause and effect and therefore narrative. And it’s not just relevant to media but our lives in general. When you’re telling your mum about your day, “I went shopping and met a friend” is slightly different to “I met a friend and went shopping.” And that, my friends, is the power of editing.

I’m afraid it’s a short post today as I’m in the midst of celebrating my 18th birthday! Well, to be honest it was yesterday but with the family do tomorrow I’m extending it to a three day long weekend of festivities. Anyway, in true media student style this week’s reading from Scott McCloud was an extract from what I can only deduce was a textbook made entirely out of comic strips. An engaging concept, McCloud in this chapter talked about the idea of ‘closure’ in comics: the audience’s inferred understanding of the missing action from the existing frames. For example, in the two below frames from one of Alex Noriega’s comics on his blog Stuff No One Told Me, we don’t actually see the protagonist go from the airport to his hotel room, but we infer that he has from the action that we can see.

I thought this was particularly relevant to us in media this week because of our self-portraits. While the media elements of our portraits didn’t create a narrative, the audience did have to infer meaning and fill in the blanks of our personalities based on what we supplied in our self-portraits. So, I want to do a bit of a shout-out to the three other guys who I was working with on Thursday when we were giving feedback on the assignment. Each took a very different approach and it was a really interesting way to learn a bit more about my classmates.

Daniel used awesome cinematography to capture his tendency towards introspection, although his ‘joke time with Daniel’ is sure to give a laugh.

Gloria captured her love of fashion and nature and used her text really creatively to give a clear sense of her personality and her lifestyle.

Emma reflected upon her years of travelling and constructed a really clear sense of home in her piece.

I’m a little excited today – can you tell? – because I’ve actually gone and made some media for a uni project! It’s nothing special – in fact it’s a pre-assessment so it’s not actually being marked – but here it is, done and dusted!

The brief was to create two audio recordings (20 secs each), two videos (20 secs each), four photos and 50 words of text that would collectively become a ‘creative self-portrait’.

My immediate thought was that I’m not nearly complex enough a person to be able to represent myself through abstract media creations, so true to form I decided to have a little fun with it. Referencing both my sense of humour and my love of media, I decided to imagine that my life story was being made into a biopic, and thus each of the media is a fictional or mock document related to the production of that film.

The story starts with the text. Fifty words is not a lot to work with, so I decided to focus not on the content of the words but the visual of them, and so created the title page to the script of my fictional biopic. The sardonic title “a perfectly satisfactory childhood” is self-deprecating and mocking but the script’s inclusion of the details of Australian production house Working Dog emphasises the importance of my Australian and Melburnian identity.

The first audio file is imagined to be a composer writing ‘Maggie’s theme’. Bound by my complete lack of musical skill, the piece is simple but chirpy, which I hope is also reflective of my personality.

Then come the four photos. Borrowing my friend Lucy’s mannequin (thanks Luce!) to imitate a costume designer’s studio, I picked four outfits that represent important things to me or fundamental parts of my character: my school uniform, my sports uniform, a casual outfit and my pyjamas.

The two videos are designed to look like out-takes or off-cuts from the film’s production, in which the fictional set dressers’ attempts to construct my world reflect different aspects of my personality. The shot of my bedside table (in fact my real bedside table) says a lot about me as it is probably my most personal space, while the director’s critique of the empty fridge prop jokingly references my love of food.

Finally, the second audio tape is simply a teasing reference to my dream job of being a top media producer. It was probably the most fun to make of all, so I hope it makes you giggle too. Apologies for the low quality guys – working on your smartphone is convenient but not necessarily ideal, and my acting skills aren’t the greatest – but thanks for watching. I know it’s all pretty daggy, but so am I so I guess it’s a good self-portrait. 🙂 Enjoy!

Unfortunately, our reading for this week is copyrighted so I can’t post a link to it, but in short it was a fascinating article by Kay Donovan on the subject of ethics in documentaries. Donovan looks at issues such as the representation of the truth, the consent of subjects and the film-maker’s duty of care to those involved.

It was this last point that I found particularly interesting, not just in relation to documentaries but to the film and TV industry in general. A few weeks ago, I was watching a morning show as they discussed the currently showing Fifty Shades of Grey film. Never far from controversy, Fifty Shades was being discussed on this occasion because its two stars, Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, had publicly commented on their discomfort filming some of the raunchier scenes of the film.

The stars of Fifty Shades were understandably uncomfortable filming some of the raunchier scenes. Picture courtesy of the New York News.

To me, this isn’t particularly surprising; just the idea of watching Fifty Shades in the cinema makes me blush a little and so I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it must be to have such a personal experience manufactured and published for a mass audience. But the thing that particularly interested me in the discussions of this particular morning show was when one of the hosts blamed the film-makers, asking the question “in which other workplace would this kind of sexual discomfort be appropriate?”

It’s an interesting question. Obviously, in the interests of a good story the film and TV industry requires its actors to do some crazy things, from sex scenes to shoot-outs to scary stunts. And yet, actors are professionals too, working in a professional environment, so where do we draw the line with what we ask them to do? When does the desire for the perfect shot end and the film-maker’s duty of care begin?

There have been some pretty crazy and controversial cases in the past when film-makers have been criticized for pushing their actors too far. For example, in 2010 it was revealed that on the set of Inglorious Basterds director Quentin Tarantino actually strangled actress Diane Kruger in order to get a realistic reaction from her. Kruger assured fans that she had agreed to the deal, but some were still shocked by Tarantino’s decision and questioned its necessity. Other examples of demanding directors include Werner Herzog filming a documentary on the side of an active volcano and Francis Ford Coppola insisting on filming  the entirety of Apocalypse Now in the jungle, leading to Martin Sheen’s heart attack (check out this article from What Culture on 10 of the craziest directors of all time).

Diane Kruger in Inglorious Basterds. Picture courtesy of BlogSpot Blog The Natsad Diaries.

For some of die-hard film fanatics, these struggles are labours of love that are worth the pain; for example, Apocalypse Now is regarded as one of the rawest, grittiest films around that wouldn’t have been the same filmed on an LA sound stage. But were these directors breaching their duty to keep their actors safe? Is putting someone’s safety at risk ever justifiable?

Martin Sheen in the jungle in Apocalypse Now. Picture courtesy of OK Quizzy.

As you can probably tell, we’re straying away from media to ethics in general, which is a complicated issue and one to which we all have different answers. I guess actors all make their own choices and only take on roles that they’re comfortable in, but let’s just say you won’t see me in a Fifty Shades film anytime soon.

Thinking about adaptations again something in the paper this morning caught my eye: check out The Age‘s list of top-selling books for the past week. It comes back to the commercial benefits of adaptations and the way adaptations aren’t just linear but can be reflexive and come back to the source text.

Four of this week’s top ten best-selling books have film adaptations currently showing

Due to an unfortunately placed public holiday on Monday, media one didn’t have a formal tute yesterday, so I thought I’d change tack a little bit and write a quick post about one of my other elective subjects that’s really fascinating me and still particularly relevant to media: Textual Crossings.

Textual Crossings falls under a literary strand, but it’s all about adaptations. As both a keen reader and  a media studies student, I find it a particularly interesting subject, but I think it’s relevant to a lot of people. I mean after all, who hasn’t spent some time complaining about how “the film wasn’t nearly as good as the book”?

As with everything at university, I’m finding that the course is not only educating me but widening my definitions and the way I think about things. Previously, I’d always thought of adaptations as being the same story told in a different medium (for example, the film versions of Harry Potter), or the re-working of a story with a different context or twist (for example, the setting of the Hamlet story in the African desert to create The Lion King).

However, in Textual Crossings, we look not just at stories but ‘story worlds’. An adaptation is defined not just as a reworking or transmedia production of a story, but anything that uses an element of the original ‘story world’ or diegesis. So if we return to the Harry Potter example, and think of the novels as the original, we can find adaptations not only in the films but also in the video games, the theme park, the merchandise and even the fanfiction. All of these use Harry Potter‘s magical world and its main characters, and so we can call them adaptations.

It’s a really interesting way of looking at adaptation, and I’m looking forward to the next few weeks when I’ll get to my in-depth discussion of a multimedia, ongoing adaptation. Look out for that one; I haven’t settled on a story yet but I’m thinking a certain deer-stalker-wearing detective would be an interesting choice, particularly looking at fanfiction . . .

Actually, fanfiction is one of the most interesting aspects of adaptation, and one I’m looking forward to discussing in my essay. In our lecture, we looked particularly at the interesting phenomenon of ‘sweding’: a short, low-budget fan-made remake of a popular film, primarily for comedy. Have a look at this Steve Seller swede of Jurassic Park for bekindrewind:

So we went on a class excursion today. Sounds more like something for a geology or biology student, right? Seeing things out in the field? Well media too is something that is well worth observing in its natural habitat because like it or not, in our day to day lives we’re bombarded with media.

Now, this may seem like a bit of an exaggeration if your definition of media still aligns with the traditional concept of ‘broadcast media’ as mentioned in my last post – eg. TV, film, print media, etc. However, a better way of defining media, as we learnt in our lectorial yesterday, is with the term ‘mediated communication’. Basically, media can be seen as any form of communication or message that has been ‘mediated’ or crafted in some way or into a specific format.

Keeping this in mind, it’s perhaps unsurprising that when we were sent out to the city to list every piece of media we could, a lot of my results were advertising, from tram stop posters to the logo on the free cup of tea I got at Fed Square (see below). Because of course if we see media as simply ‘mediated communication’, advertising has a lot to benefit from it; instead of just telling me that their product is happy and healthy to my face, Lipton can use bright colours and images of fruit and leaves to let me come to the conclusion myself.

My free Lipton iced tea

But advertising was not the only type of media I found. My forty-item list ranged from art to performing buskers to informative media, such as street signs, tram maps or this info station at Fed Square (see below). It’s amazing just how much ‘mediated communication’ we not only come across but rely on in our daily lives.

An info station at Fed Square

And that’s not all. Going back to last week’s post, we have to think of media not just as ‘broadcast media’ or messages aimed at a wide audience, but also media that we consume personally. Text messages, apps, phone calls, videos and just about everything contained on our personal phone or tablet can be considered media as well. I was highly amused to see the woman pictured below using her trusty selfie stick to grab a panoramic shot of Fed Square. Whether for her own collection or to send to friends, her posed smile was clearly a carefully crafted message communicating her excitement at being in a new city.

An excited tourist uses her selfie stick

We started our lectorial on Tuesday with a look at John Cage’s four minutes and thirty-three seconds, an avant-garde composition that consists entirely of silence. While my tastes are too simple to appreciate the hidden meaning behind music that isn’t music, it sparked an interesting discussion about noticing. The fact that I don’t regularly notice the forty pieces of media I listed after my trip to Fed Square serves to demonstrate just how media-saturated our world has become. Is this a bad thing? I think that’s a post for another day. Suffice to say for now, I’ve got renewed confidence in the relevance of my degree.