Category Archives: Lectorial/Readings

Mediums in our day and age has expanded upon the static theatre mode of media. The technology that has evolved through recent times has given birth to many mediums. Especially with the internet, almost everything is readily available from your laptop, computer, tablet or anywhere with an internet connection. This has given birth to new mediums or to be given the availability of new mediums, such as foreign movies or TV shows, webisodes, web series etc.

Technologies has given birth to things like Netflix and has made a massive library of movies readily available at the click of a button at any time. There are many other programs like this with a subscription method that has access to a library of movies or TV shows such as Crunchyroll, Stan or Presto etc. The internet is the sole reason for this.

2nd year, 1st semester. Although I’m a first year technically. I remember, this time last year I was in Engineering and my morale was very low during this time, projects were due and exams were looming. I did not enjoy the program at all and it ultimately led me to drop out of Engineering (as most people did). Now it is a new beginning, I decided to chase what I loved doing which was media. Quite a bit anxious what was to come before starting this semester, now after 11 weeks I feel comfortable being here.

I’ve learned a lot over this semester, learnt how to shoot, edit videos, how to record, how to think differently about media or learning in general. I’ve opened my mind to my thinking and to what I can accomplish and this course has accomplished that for me.

So what is to come? Studios, getting to the grit of things in a sense. This semester was all about introductory and learning the theory of being media practicians, next semester onwards it would be about putting this theory into practice. This is exciting and turning over this new leaf this semester has opened up new opportunities and way of thinking in terms of learning and in life.

Different technologies has enabled different mediums. As such media has undergone a drastic evolution in recent years. Brian talked about this today in our lecture where there was a conception when TV was introduced, it was thought that media would always be the same, something that wouldn’t evolve because it is something you just watch. However now, it has evolved into something much much more. Now there are so many mediums and technologies that covers so many different audiences and each medium has a different way to view it or investment attached to it. Even the notion of waiting every week to watch the latest TV episode has only come into popularity recently and as a medium, institutions invest heavily into this.

Providing the beginnings of a professional network, that is what we’re expected/provided to do by the end of this course. Paul Ritchard came to talk to us about this, it was intriguing to hear him talk about what a ‘work attachment’ actually is. In a way it is an internship, work experience or an attachment, or even a combination of those, but also none of those. Paul basically defined it as work as you being supervised by a media professional.

I am excited but also scared to pursue my own work attachment, I am anxious about what I am going to go into and starting to broaden my own network of people for my career. It is going to be a fresh experience as I take on this task in the next two and a half years which makes me have this unique feel towards it.

The interplay between institutions and social media has never been more relevant today than it ever was. Now with platforms such as Facebook, Twitter & YouTube there is a constant stream of social media based on institutions or the work of institutions. Take Game Of Thrones for example. For the past 6 years at around April to about July the entire social media world is engulfed in the TV phenomenon that is Game Of Thrones. Every week the world waits anxiously for the next episode. As the episode airs, the tweets are tweeting, discussions are posted everywhere, videos are created for fan theories and discussion and this endless stream of media flows on and on. This is the power of institutions today, to be able to basically control the lives of others, to make people think about the product of institutions. There are hashtags for everything for institutions and more often than not it is used as a marketing technique such as #GameOfThrones, #BeMoreBulldog, #TVLogies etc.

The social media scene has only taken shape over the past few years, with most of the discussion to be between friends on Facebook as the episode airs, discussions on Reddit for the next week about it, YouTube videos created after the episode airs. This provides some much appreciated publicity for Institutions as they produce their content, it provides feedback they can go on and advertises their product and/or institution.

What defines a Media Institution?

A media institution includes an audience which has different levels of interaction or interplay between persons. Some institutions are more mainstream of others but most if not all of them are a means of communication, mostly creating a community within or integrating a community. Some institutions have different goals or uses, some like Facebook focus on communication with others, others like HBO focus on creating media for the audience to view.

All institutions creates a community either directly or indirectly, directly like Facebook where the whole idea is to interact with your friends and/or acquaintances. Other things like ABC create a report or create media for an audience to view and this indirectly creates a community in which they give an input to feedback to the institution to change its content or to reinforce the institution.

The impact of institutions are different depending on the institution. Some institution show or represent the idea of their view of the world and others create aspects of the world, like communities. Different institutions have different agendas, to show a realistic interpretation of the world, or to bring people together. They differ from different institutions. Some more controversial than others. And if you were to believe their values; it depends on the person.

In our lectorial this week we also talked about Audiences.

We talked about how the idea of an Audience has been conceptualised in recent history, rather than being a part of ‘the masses’. Everyone within the media industry has an investment in the audience. Everyone who is a part of media has to think about the audience, like who would view their material? Who are they trying to attract? etc.

Nowadays, the idea of the audience has moved from this ‘everyone’ mentality to more different groups or categories of different mediums and fans. The investments of these fans can differ from different groups and individuals themselves but the average between someone say, who just watches daytime TV compared to someone who watches weekly their favourite TV show and is a ‘fan’ of it. Today’s companies and institutions adhere to these demands and this change of mentality of the audience. The audience is getting more immersed into media and the idea of audience has changed in this way. They produce their content with the idea of a passive or a an active audience which changes from different institutions, mediums and genres etc.

We as media practitioners or learning practitioners have more a say on what to produce and how we affect it. Someone who is just strictly a fan or viewer does not have much to say in terms of what affects the product, so we as media practitioners have to keep in mind we do have more of a voice than the common audience.

The active audience are more invested in media consumption in that there is a lot of ways to consume media. This way of viewing via Netflix, YouTube, paid services (pay per view) etc. has changed from the normal way we used to view things.

So what has changed from ‘the people formerly known as the audience’ to what we have now. Today we are using the internet more than watching tv, since most of tv shows or movies are online. Everything is online and we have changed into this mode of being online.

The start of our lectorial this week was on Copyright and its application in media today. I was aware of Copyright but more on the basis of ‘do not copy other peoples’ work’. This lectorial we were briefed on the actual laws and how Copyright works in the industry.

Everything we create and post on media sites we claim on Copyright, that is (for us) everything we have produced since we have started this course; all original content. Something else I also learned is that we are able to use copyright material freely under fair use or fair dealing only under the circumstances that it is for research or study, reviewing, reporting the news or parody and satire purposes. This fact opened my eyes on the possibilities on our next assignment, to be able to use footage of film and copyright materials etc. What we produce can only be ‘substantially similar’ to another works between 10%-30%.

Overall learning about the niches of Copyright was interesting and opened our eyes to what we are able and not able to do in this industry in terms of Copyright.