April 2015 archive
As I was writing an essay for my ‘Music in Popular Culture’ subject, I stumbled upon an online video that I found quite interesting. William Pharrell released a music video some time last year for one of his hits, Happy, and it received much response from his fans and the media due to how unique of a video it was.
It was a “never-ending” music video, which played on and on and wouldn’t stop till you closed the window. It held the title as the world’s first 24-hour music video, and it’s great because you can actually control the time of the day. Initially I wondered why he did that – does he want to deliver a message of some sort or is it simply for publicity purposes? Maybe both, but either way, the video managed to leave a mark as the first music video of its kind. Which, is pretty cool.
Quite a lot goes on in the video, and it is mostly people dancing and lip-syncing to his song. It isn’t too interesting in its narrative structure but what stands out is the fact that it is a video much unlike the others on YouTube. In fact, this one has a webpage all to itself.
Before I began classes in this studio, I used to think of online video as simply one that lived on YouTube. Need a tutorial on how to use Adobe Illustrator? YouTube’s got you. Want to keep up with your favourite artists? YouTube’s got you. Looking for something to keep you entertained while waiting for your girlfriend to get ready? YouTube’s got you.
On the contrary, YouTube may be one of the most popular platforms for online video, but there is more to that than what is on YouTube. You’ve got webpages like the one for Pharrell’s music video, you’ve got Vimeo and DailyMotion, you’ve even got social media services like Instagram and Twitter. The possibilities are never-ending.
Reporting
We were the second group to present today, and I was actually pretty excited to share our discoveries with the panel within our 5-minute presentation. After telling them about what we have done and what we plan to do in Project Four, we received our feedback. We were told not to carry on with Korsakow, which, looking back, I agree with. They told us that by giving people the option to make their own decisions on this platform, we are also limiting interactivity, in the sense that we would not be able to get comments from other people who may have visited the café. By putting our travel video review in this closed space, we do not give people the opportunity to share their opinions.
Relating
The experience with the panel reminds me of another project I did back in college. Back then, my group and I were so enthusiastic about so many ideas that we forgot about the main focus. We came up with so much to do and were so excited – and drained out at the same time – that things begun to become a little messier than desired. Getting feedback from the panel today was a good reminder to stay on track and work with what we have, rather than jumping to different things and trying to achieve something else without noticing the potential a certain idea already possesses.
Reasoning
Because Jia Jia and I liked both the scrapbook and Korsakow ideas, we felt like it would be a good idea to combine the two. On the contrary, it restricted certain things and caused us to stray away from the fact that there we already have a good thing going on in the scrapbook idea. The panel’s comments were important to helping us realise that, and it is only through this sort of constructive criticism that we would be able to get better.
Reconstructing
With the comments received today, Jia Jia and I plan to scrap the Korsakow idea and fully concentrate on improvising and improving our scrapbook idea. Overall, today was a good experience and we look forward to starting on Project Four.
Seeing as how we will have to reconstruct our presentation for this Monday so that the panel would understand what we have been doing in the studio for the past seven weeks, Jia Jia and I discussed which two out of the four presented on Friday we felt would make it to Project Four.
We like both the scrapbook and Korsakow ideas, so we thought of a way that we may merge both to create a non-linear sort of structure. That way, people would be able to make conscious decisions as to what they would like to be exposed to. For example, in the context of our project, which café would they like to visit? What drink would they like to order?
We also want to further explore our scrapbook idea by using moving visuals instead of still images. Hopefully, that would make our travel video review more engaging and entertaining. Hopefully all goes well for Monday’s presentation!
Spent the past few days getting our sketches ready for Project Three, and now the day of our presentation is finally here!
Reporting
Since we had only 10-12 minutes to presents, Jia Jia and I decided to present only four out of ten of our sketches, which turned out to be a good idea. If we were to do more – as in our the presentation for the previous project – I’m pretty sure we’d be rushing through the whole thing. We presented the four that we might to pursue in the final project, in hopes of getting better insight on which one(s) we would present to the panel the following Monday. As we were running quite short on time, we didn’t get to hear much feedback from the class. However, Seth did give a good suggestion which we happened to miss out on, which is to elaborate on how we got to the whole topic of travel video reviews. Overall a decent presentation, in my opinion. I also really enjoyed listening to all my classmates’ ideas. It’s so refreshing to see just how much potential online video has, and the various ways in which it can be put forward to its audiences.
Relating
I really liked the fact that we were able to first present to our class before proceeding to facing the panel on Monday. I do remember a time when Jia Jia and I did not get to present due to the lack of time. We couldn’t get any criticism nor comments, and that made coming up with ideas a little more difficult.
Reasoning
I have come to realise the importance of consulting your lecturer and peers – that sometimes it is necessary to first go through them before you proceed to improving a certain thing, as they would be able to notice your mistakes better than you, and give you suggestions that you may not have thought of.
Reconstructing
Based on the comments that were given today, Jia Jia and I plan to pick two to present this Monday. We also plan to better our presentation such that we will come up with a clearer explanation for the entire project as well as make some slides to present to the panel.
For this sketch, we extracted inspiration from reality TV shows like ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ and ‘The Voice’. There are segments in these TV shows that feature characters telling their life story or how they got to where they are today. From there, we wanted a sketch where vlog reviews would adapt other people’s opinions, giving the whole thing a fresh perspective.
Rather than only having a reviewer’s thoughts or opinions on a certain thing or place, you would also get to hear experiences from others (eg. cafe owner, shareholder or customer). From there, viewers get to understand the back story of a certain place, or how a specific thing came about. It would then not be a one-sided story, but one that contains collected opinions from different perspectives. Viewers would be able to get the full picture of a particular place or product, and may even adopt emotional feelings towards it.
We did want to conduct an interview with one of the owners of Short Stop, but felt that it would be too time-consuming and probably even a little difficult. Why we say this is because after approaching them personally, they told us that they could instead reply our interview questions via e-mail instead of conducting an actual video interview.
What if we explored a completely different genre, making a hybrid video review much unlike the usual? And we thought, what if we tried something experimental? Rather than having it very flat or commercialised, we wondered how it would turn out if we assembled together something that was more abstract and artistic. We found the whole genre of experimental films very different and unique, and thus wanted to try it out as a sketch.
After having taken the footage and editing it into a video, we felt that we would require more research on experimental films, should we decide to pursue it in Project Four. Seeing as how experimental films put a lot of emphasis on colours and editing, we may need to expand it further by making it more visually uncanny and also play around a little more with video angles and background music.
Here is an example of an experimental film that we quite enjoyed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc-J9fFXZjk. To be on that level, combining both experimental film and video reviews, would require quite a bit of thought and experimenting, but we do find it a rather interesting concept and might consider working on it in the next project.
As we continued to think about some other ways that we could make something different, we were inspired by scrapbooks, seeing as how it is something that captures a moment or place, much like what a vlog review does. Hence, we wanted to combine the two very different elements and see how it would play out.
As seen in our sketch, the descriptions that accompanied the pictures were short and straightforward, allowing the pictures and captions to tell the story. We found it rather interesting, how it takes the concept of pictures and text and how it feels personal because it is as if we were taking a peek into somebody’s scrapbook. One of the cons to this, however, is the fact that viewers can’t fully feel or experience the ‘moment’. By that, we mean that the audience is not exposed to any ambient sound or moving visuals.
If we were the pursue this idea in Project Four, we might change things up a little. Instead of using still images, we might want to consider using short clips, but still maintaining the scrapbook idea of having text rather than diegetic sound.
We chose Instagram as one of the tools/services we wanted to explore, seeing as how it is a commonly used social media platform. Although it is constrained to 15 seconds, the caption allows you to make your description as long as you like, and we felt that this might be a good alternative to making a travel vlog review happen.
One thing that we liked most about using Instagram as our means for this sketch would be the usage of hashtags and also how we could tag the location to help Instagram users easily find our video review. It was one of the ways that we could encourage and welcome a larger audience out of our circle of peers.
However, we did think about some other problems as well. Seeing how Instagram is a very visual-based platform, we were not sure if people would take the time to read our description as it could be quite a chunky amount of text. Instagram also does not allow users to pause the video, which may be difficult for those who want to have a closer look at a particular thing. Apart from that, we found it tough to pick which parts we might want to incorporate in the Instagram video, as the whole thing can only be 15 seconds long.
After having done this sketch, we felt like it might not be as feasible for this genre of vlog reviews.
This very interactive platform is one that allows users to make their own decisions. From there, we wanted to put vlog reviews through this platform to see how it would turn out. Rather than us just reviewing a specific location or object, by creating a non-linear structure with Korsakow, we would allow audiences to take part in choosing which options they would want to know more about.
Apart from being an attention-grabbing tool/service in which audiences have to focus on what is being shown as they interact with it, it is also rather time-consuming as people have to go through and experience multiple steps in order to find out about a certain thing. There are pros and cons to this. However, it is something different as it encourages people to take action before something can happen.
If we were to bring this over to Project Four, we might further explore it by giving it a narrative, such that we would make it very personalised. For instance, we might want to try something where users would have to choose between different characters (eg. celebrities) to not only visit and review a particular location with them, but also to see how different characters interact with different things in accordance to their personalities.
With an allowance of up to ten seconds each take, Snapchat users are able to share their moments as a story (much like a status update on Facebook) which would last 24 hours, or to send it directly to a certain set of friends. We wanted to try doing a vlog review with Snapchat for this sketch.
More than just experimenting with a different service/tool, we also decided to play around by giving the vlog review a bit of a narrative structure. We begun by talking about how we were tired from assignments, and eventually came upon the decision to visit a cafe. We wanted to also show how vlog reviews could be done in an impromptu sort of manner, such that no planning was done beforehand and that turning it into a vlog review was simply a spontaneous decision.
With Snapchat, we were able to see the amount of people who viewed our story, and also the specific people who did so. The downside to a vlog review done on Snapchat would have to be the fact that it disappears after 24 hours. However, we were able to download the entire story, which made it really convenient because it shows that it is something that can be re-uploaded to a different platform at any other time.
If we were to bring this into Project Four, we might make use of the constraints of Snapchat’s 24-hour story by trying out a day trip in which we continuously review each place that we visit.
