Joan of Arts Seminar Week!

During the week of and leading up to our seminar, I was posting videos and images to Instagram and three separate Facebook pages (RMIT Adventure page, Joan of Arts page, seminar page). Other than just posting videos/photos I carefully composed captions and tags for each post.

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An example of one of my FB posts.Screen Shot 2015-09-14 at 7.45.49 pmStarting from the most recent, the 1st, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th posts in these screengrabs of the Instagram were posted by me. 
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On the day of the seminar I helped to set up by getting equipment from Building 9 and transporting it with Sarah and Maree to the seminar room in Building 80. There I helped to set up, specifically by getting the cameras working, getting tripods and stands for lighting/audio stuff up and running, carrying things, pinning black fabric to the chairs, finding people and making phone calls to find people. Here’s a pic of me when we were getting the seminar room ready:

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During the seminar I took photos and videos of our speakers and audience. After the seminar I helped to pack down everything, by carrying a blue chair and pot plant at once to Building 5, the lift wasn’t working so we had to carry them up the stairs, putting the seminar photo and video data onto a computer, taking down and packing equipment, doing a check to ensure everything was there, doing a quick rubbish check and eating left over cookies.

A day after the seminar I made a final post to the Instagram.

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And I will be helping with the editing of photos and videos in the week after the seminar.

Week 6

This week I played my biggest role in the team with the making of the film.

I was the DoP for the promotional video. I contributed ideas to the development of the video and also brought my camera equipment to be used in the filming. I filmed the video (other than the scenes in Building 80, where I was absent) and used creative direction to decide on many of the shots. I also contributed greatly to the editing of the film. Our group spent hours in the editing suites making the first cut of the film before the scene with Shelley was shot.

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They’re not the best photos, but that’s me in the striper top with the camera.

I also was active on social media channels.

Women in Media, what’s new this week (5)

As I am in the video group, along with Sarah and Matt and our group leader Mollie, we have come up with the concept for our promotional video and have set up a time and roles for the day. As I am a videographer in my work outside of uni, I will be DoP for the film, and I’ll also be bringing in a camera, tripod and recording equipment for the day. We’ve planned the structure of the film and decided that as our MC, Prani will star in it. We will shoot the film on the Friday of week 6, and Sarah and I will edit the film. I have also contributed to the social media page, where we are discussing content. This week has mostly been contributing ideas for discussion and making decisions with the group, but with the video and with social media, the two aspects of promotion that I will be helping with, we have had a productive week.

Women in Media, Week 5

This week I contributed by:

  • Suggesting that we divide our to-do list into sections and a group to each one

We were getting dogged down in the decision making process as it was so hard for everyone to meet regularly to discuss our option and the Facebook page often left people out. I suggested this move so that the different groups could make proposals to the whole group, to be approved, to get things moving a bit quicker as we have only three weeks to go.

  • Signed up to be a part of the social media group

The social media group will be in charge of the Facebook and Twitter pages, and Instagram content. We are currently doing research to find information on our guests that we can use to promote the event and have started throwing out ideas for content so that we can get those pages started straight away.

  • Volunteered to be in the video group with one other person

As a videographer with professional equipment it makes sense for me to volunteer for this position, where along with Sarah we will be in charge of creating the vide promo, intro to the seminar (if the group decides we need one) and recording the seminar.

  • Began brainstorming for the video promo

Women in Media (Week 4)

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the meeting this week as I was sick with the flu that everyone has been coming down with. However, I continued to discuss with our group members and our team leader via the Facebook group and volunteered for the role of managing the Facebook page, as well as contributing ideas for publicity content of the Instagram.

I created a mock up image based on our discussions as a temporary profile image for the Instagram and Facebook while we wait for the proper logo and background images to be designed:

Square for instagram etc Square for instagram etc2

 

Women in Media, Week 3

I attended the group meeting this week and we voted on three definite speakers who we would contact and a back up speaker if one was not able to attend. We also discussed poster design and the over all aesthetic of our seminar publicity. We’ve decided to have a Facebook and an Instagram, as well as physical posters, to advertise the event.

We got dogged down in the speakers and the aesthetic a bit too much and didn’t have much time to discuss anything else in the meeting. However, on Facebook we have mentioned the other things that we need to discuss very soon:

– Actual design of the poster

– Video promo

– Stage design

– Format of the event

– MC

– Catering

Women in Media, Week 2 (The first week)

Well, I’ve chosen to become a part of a group, and our topic, women in the media industry, is something that I’m very interested in and something that is obviously very relevant to me as a woman going into the media industry.

Our group has created a Facebook page and people are proposing names for potential speakers. I proposed Jannine Barnes, Producer of the Australian feature film, Downriver, who over saw my internship. I’ve also supported the proposals of other people in my group and made suggestions as to which speakers would be most relevant to our topic.

At the moment that’s about all that is happening. When we meet we will discuss more about the other things that need to be done.

Things that went to plan and things that didn’t went to plan

 

  • Schadenfreude- If Tumblr treats me well (if we’ve learned anything from this project it’s: always trust in Tumblr) schadenfreude is a German word for “the feeling of pleasure derived by seeing another’s misfortune. This was always meant to be our motivator for the story, a kind of black comedy element where the audience must eventually look at themselves and think, oh god how did I get here. I think this has stuck. I’ve tried navigating our project as if I’d never seen it before and I feel like I am motivated by some sick desire to see what happens to Emily and discover more about her incredibly sad personality. Whether or not the true audience (I’m looking at you, Dan) will be motivated by the same desire and see the irony still stands to be seen.
  • Sexualisation unexpectedly came up as a major theme but I made a whole other post on that, I think it’s worth a read.
  • The narrative was pretty fleshed out, but considering the universe of Emily, very similar to our own, is unending, we could have fleshed it out a whole lot more. If we had countless hours and dollars to spend, we could have created online presences for other teenagers in Emily’s school, we could have used models in order to give them a more realistic persona through the use of selfies. More would have taken place through video and voice acting. All that kind of stuff. Instead we’ve used lots of reblogging and textual posts. This is ok, for a project of this size, but there was potential to go bigger.
  • It was almost too realistic. I think in the beginning we expected our themes to be so obvious that we didn’t think that we’d need to explain anything. However when testing out the story on people that knew nothing about it, they mostly just said it was super realistic, and because the teen attitude that we’ve portrayed is so common and normal, people didn’t think much of it. This is ironic because the comedy of our project is that this is a caricature of real life, but apparently it’s so realistic that it’s difficult to see it as fiction and therefore understand the themes and concepts behind the story. Because of this we had to add the Statement of Intention page. It’s a definite improvement and hopefully clarifies the decisions that we made without giving away so much information that it tells the story without people needing to follow the actual story.
  • The Instagram page, that we originally thought would be an important element, became almost obsolete.  The transmedia method requires that different elements of the story be significant to the story, but the Instagram elements aren’t. They build character but only slightly and in a way that is very similar to the regblogging on the Tumblr anyway. We were originally intending to post information on the Instagram so that not all events unravelled on the Tumblr, however we found it difficult to do with only images. If we had more time I think we could have used it much better, but it did become irrelevant. Instead we created a Facebook page that fleshes out the story in place of the Instagram. It adds a whole other element of discussion about the themes after the event of Emily’s death and allows us to employ more remix theory by linking to similar stories or studies about our themes, that reinforce the significance of the issues that our story explores.

The Sexualization and Suicide of Emily Doee

A theme that came up that was not planned was the sexualisation of women and the more interesting and significant issue of young women sexualising themselves and the motivations/influences behind this. It’s interesting that this came up because feminism is something that united our group form the beginning and yet it wasn’t something we planned to work into the story, but of course, this feminist issue surfaced naturally.
We’ve really tried to reinforce the fact that Emily is not only influenced by highly sexualised celebrities, but also by young women posting sexualised photos of themselves on Tumblr. We showed that these are real young women making their own decisions by reblogging real ‘selfies’ from young women that have been posted to Tumblr; thus demonstrating that we’re not making this up, it’s a real and widespread issue. It felt a bit gross reflagging them but it’s supposed to and it’s as terrifying as it should be when viewed in the context of Emily’s blog and her mindset of self-hate due to unrealistic expectations.
What we’re trying to say here is that the sexualisation of women influences naive young people to mimic the behaviour because the media, now more than ever in the digital age, has positioned beauty and attractiveness to the opposite sex as the main factors of worth. All you can see in an image is aesthetic beauty; a photo shows nothing of intelligence, kindness, creativity or resilience and mental strength. Yet, because photos, often photoshopped or portraying unrealistic models (and a model is always a role model), are what we consume most, directly or indirectly; aesthetics are becoming more important than substance to those who only look to these images for an understanding of the world. This is so often young people, who in general consume main stream media as a majority because it is so easily accessible to them (companies are competing aggressively for their attention) and through widespread circulation it becomes perceived as popular and spreads and so similar content is made.
It is a vicious cycle. Emily is a victim of this cycle and this problem is at the very core of our story, it is, in my opinion, the antagonist that Emily does not recognise and therefore does not even attempt to overcome. (Another important point, when the bully is invisible to the victim, it’s impossible to for them to overcome the bully.) It was inevitable that sexualisation would come up, and I’m so glad it did. Learning to say ‘fuck you’ to the ideals that are sold to me and to others by the media we consume, rather than falling to it and feeling shit about myself, is something that I have struggled with alongside the timeline of this project. I think that the purpose of story is to broaden people’s understanding of the world. As it is, we generate understanding through our own experiences of the world, story is the way in which we understand the world through other people’s experiences. Creating this project made me understand more about the world than I did before, and I hope that that is the result for others as well.