Tag Archives: integrated media

Media 6 TV Seminar: Week 6

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YES. VICTORY!

Finally, the time for our seminar is done – and what a tremendous relief.

Despite a technically shaky set-up with the audio issues in the room, we came up with a solution and worked around the inability to work as we initially planned – running lapels into a mixer, then the mixer through the lecture theatre sound system and into a H4n Zoom recorder. Regardless, we got it done.

The seminar itself was running exceptionally until we were so rudely interrupted by an errant fire alarm, at approximately 4:20pm, cheers.

Needless to say, the team recovered well and we were mostly happy with how the remainder of the seminar – special thanks to our wonderful guests for sharing their knowledge and experiences, I know I definitely took a lot from hearing their words.

Ultimately, the group banded together really well in order to host a seminar that intrigued and informed a room full of people.

I was very happy with my contributions on the day, particularly the intro video for our host, David – a green-screen project that had me tearing out my hair, but that was a great learning experience.

Now to see how the remaining seminars unfold – looking to see what’s in store, particularly for Film and Documentary.

Goodnight.

Media 6 TV Seminar: Week 5

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WHAT A WEEK

This week marked a long-awaited return to actual media production, as Jenny, Georgia, host – David and I set out to create the Promo video content for Week 6s TV Seminar.

We had booked the Cyclorama for Wednesday morning and head in nice and early, shooting our way through the morning and laughing at David’s brilliant ridiculousness in front of the Green-Screen.

All first timers using Green-Screen, we initially struggled to evenly light the set, but eventually worked it out and made great progress throughout the morning.

Our first edit was directly after and we spent a bunch of time over Wednesday, Wednesday night, Thursday and Friday in the suites trying to pump out the videos.

We consulted YouTube tutorials when we got stuck and ended up taking some footage home to continue editing over the weekend, however, managed to produce 5 short, 15-sec videos for Instagram and Facebook promotion, as well as almost having finished the full video, which will be used for David’s intro at the seminar on the 28th.

Now we have a few days left to knock off the full version and help out in any other possible way for the seminar.

Cheers to beers on Friday night at 6:30pm.

Integrated Media 2: Response to ‘Us Now’ Documentary

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The ‘Us Now’ documentary is centered around the idea of collaboration and power of the people which is being empowered through increasing access to, and understanding of the internet. The film focuses on a number of different perspectives throughout, but is all based on the idea of people coming together to make change and help one another online.

More and more these days, people are taking to the internet and forming groups in order to achieve something which is in mutual interest to members of the group. ‘Us Now’ looks at the power of things like forums and mass-voting sites, as well as a communally managed football team in the UK. Whilst none of these relate directly to the events that we’re hosting for Integrated Media this semester, they represent what our prototypes have the potential to evolve into, post-event, and once the social media side of our project truly takes over. Although my groups’ idea, ‘The CBD Games’ isn’t going to change much in Melbourne in a political sense, it just goes to show that an idea with an online community behind it has the potential to grow rapidly and become something special.

As with real life movements, revolutions, protests and the like, online lobbies form out of mutual interest and often grow rapidly. This tendency of people coming together to achieve something is something that ‘Us Now’ recognises as having happened previously in history, and as finally making a resurgence now, in the digital age. With the aid of the internet, people are more connected than ever and it is easy to exploit this phenomenon to achieve positive change, as the interview subjects in ‘Us Now’ demonstrate. Subsequently, through the power of the internet, people are empowered to get involved, to participate, to help one another and to work towards something that is beneficial, both for them, personally and in a wider sense, communally, nationally or even globally.

Due to the power that the internet provides to regular citizens, people are becoming less reliant on their governmental institutions for change, taking matters into their own hands and using the power of mass-collaboration for good. ‘Us Now’ reflects on the diminishing role of such institutions and recognises that the internet is becoming a tool for society to achieve what they want, even if the government is opposed or unwilling to help. Through this empowerment and the growing tendency for online lobbies to materialise and make a difference in the real world, the role of the internet in society has completely shifted, becoming recognised as a tool for making things happen.

Although ‘Us Now’ definitely focuses on the idea of mass-collaboration, it is all made possible by peoples’ willingness to participate. This notion can be applied to the events that we’re holding for IM2 this semester. Sure, we can have a great idea, with a great plan and put in all the time we want, but it’s not going to go anywhere or be successful unless properly promoted through social media, recognised by a number of people and responded to on the day of the event, whilst also being followed up in the days after on social media.

 

IM2: Response to ‘Generation Like’

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This Four Corners documentary was really interesting. Reflecting on social media in a way that not many of us do, it presented a hugely informative and critical viewpoint from which social media can be understood.

In terms of the 3 major points we were given to respond to, ‘Generation Like’ was really helpful and it isn’t hard to see the connection between social media and the future ahead of us as prospective media graduates.

How does this documentary alter your understanding of the way you use social media?
My understanding of the use of social media has always been relatively sceptical, never having really accepted it as a true showing of a persons substance, but more as their own idea of their ‘perfect self’. ‘Generation Like’ reflected briefly on this stance during the sequences with the high school kids as they sought to out-perform one another in the quantity of likes they receive on their pictures. I see this as a form of worthless self-promotion with far too much importance perceived by our generation. Sure, it’s nice to get likes – but they mean nothing in comparison to receiving a compliment in real life from an actual human, not just their online persona through the internet.

The idea of likes as a ‘social currency’ was a term that really stood out to me and it’s quite clear that certain people do go out of their way to achieve higher numbers of likes and to feel accepted. Whilst the need and desire for attention and social validation has always existed, ‘Generation Like’ recognises a change in the stage through which these are achieved, whereby individuals promote themselves online and bask in the glory of their likes.

‘Generation Like’ also makes an interesting observation and likens the world of social media to an ‘arena of likes’. This metaphor perfectly sums up my understanding of social media, whereby those with the largest numbers of likes, followers, shares and retweets are winning… or so they think.

What connections can you make with the role of a Social Media Producer?
Where this documentary proved most informative to me was in bringing light to the role of the social media producer. Social networks, initially intended to be used by friends to keep in touch, have become one of the largest advertising platforms available for corporations today. Unparalleled audience numbers can be reached because of ‘sharing’ and ‘hash-tagging’, allowing companies to be hugely efficient with their marketing strategies and even now using their consumers as a form of marketing in their own right. Because audiences have now changed from relatively passive couch potatoes into active couch potatoes, with computers, companies are able to sit back and watch the numbers grow as their audiences like, share and spread advertising material without even realising it.

With the uprise of YouTube and some organisations catching on to the potential exposure of the network, product placement and corporate sponsorship has become a truly enormous venture. YouTube vloggers who attract large numbers of views can receive what might equal another persons’ salary through the commission of the advertisements that play before their videos, giving them the cash, equipment and clothes to wear in order to keep making videos and expanding the reach of said organisations, and it’s a frightening prospect that advertising like this actually works.

The importance of ‘transparency’ in the advertising that takes place online is another aspect covered by ‘Generation Like’, proposing that the effectiveness of such techniques is due to ads not feeling like ads (through carefully considered planning and ‘drip feeding’ strategies) resulting in audiences thoughtlessly spreading the ‘fire’ that is online hype.

What ideas does this documentary raise in regards to the event your group is planning and the task of achieving participatory engagement?
Lastly, there were a few parallels that could be drawn between what is raised by ‘Generation Like’ and the events that our IM2 groups are going to host this semester. The importance of hash-tagging and connecting content (even across different platforms) to reach the largest possible number of audience members cannot be overlooked, as exposure leads to attention. Similarly, the importance of promotion through one online presence supporting another (and both benefitting, as stated in the documentary) could be applied to our project.

Evidently, social media is a hugely powerful tool in the world of media, and its’ benefits are there for the taking, it’s just a matter of the right approach, the right strategy and the right connections.

 

Integrated Media: Participation Self-Assessment

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What I did well:

  • I feel as though I’ve done a reasonable job of keeping up to date with readings and required blog posts, despite my absences from class and the unlectures.
  • I was pleased with what I achieved in terms of the essay assessment and sketch k-film.

What I’ve learnt to do better:

  • I learnt how to use Korsakow, got a bit more into the use of things like Vine and Vimeo and felt as though I gained skills in integrating these things with one another, through the platform of my blog.

What I could have learnt to do better:

  • I feel as though I could’ve and should’ve attended more classes and made more of an effort to get to the unlectures as it would’ve helped my understanding of the course in a broader sense and helped me to apply a bit more knowledge as we progressed through different readings and concepts each week.

Integrated Media: Reading 04 RYAN

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Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.


This article by Marie-Laure Ryan is based upon the definition of what makes up a narrative – which Ryan briefly discuses and then summarises in list form. It is accepted by Adrian that lists are a very useful method to ‘approach making, and reading, Korsakow films’.

Ryan summarises that narrative is the textual realisation of story and story is narrative in virtual form. This interesting perspective allows us to think more effectively about the relationship between the two and how narrative is different from other text types because of its ability to ‘evoke stories to the mind’.

After finalising her arguments, Ryan raises the point that we ‘can never be sure’ that the text is read in the exact way that the writer intended.

Integrated Media: Reading 03

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Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 2013.

Having read this before, I decided to briefly address the points made by Adrian that were:
– Define what a narrative actually is, and;
– Think about what experimental practices can teach us to better see the role of multi linearity, both in general and for also specifically for our Korsakow films.

As this was quite a dense thing to read, I’ve really tried to condense my summary and also the responses to the questions raised by Adrian.

Bordwell and Thompson define a narrative as ‘a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space’. This simple definition is then expanded on when Bordwell and Thompson state that a narrative begins with a particular event, to which the characters and environment of the narrative respond and the cause-effect relation of the narrative begins to take place.

According to this reading and based on my own understanding:
– an event is an occurrence that effects the characters in a narrative in a profound way
– a cause-effect relationship with when one event causes a response, which causes another event and so on, so forth
– time is the progression of the narrative, whether it is chronological or not
– space is the world of the film, specifically the places in which the narrative unfolds

I think that this definition is perfectly legitimate for the purposes of our understanding in Integrated Media. Whilst Bordwell and Thompson continue in great depth to explain the notion of narrative, it makes no sense at this point for me to keept babbling about what a narrative essentially is, as it is put so eloquently by Bordwell and Thompson.

In terms of experimental practice in narrative, Bordwell and Thompson define experimental films as ‘those that are made with the intention of challenging the traditional idea of what a film is, what it shows and how it shows it’. Experimental films are simply created in a non-conformist manner and are seen by many as the testing grounds in which many filmmakers explore their own ideas about what is possible in the medium of film. I feel as though this definition provides an adequate coverage of experimental film as a whole and about what we’ll be doing this semester with our Korsakow films.

In terms of the ‘type’ of experimental film we’ll be making, I feel as though our films will best fit into the associational category, whereby the material we’re creating is truly trying to have meaning and communicate something, rather than be a nonsensical abstract film. I think it is important for a our interactive documentaries to have meaning, to capture the imagination of our ‘readers’ and to provoke thought or carry some kind of message. Whether or not this is achieved will depend mostly on the type of audience and how deeply they think upon the links that we will attempt to create between our Korsakow films.

In terms of multi linearity in our films. I feel as though Korsakow films haveto be non-linear because of the fact that the audience is free to interact with them and decide how they want to watch them. This means that several interpretations will be possible and that we actually have very little control over how they’re read – we only determine the content and how it’s displayed. Not how it’s ordered, not how it’s viewed.

Integrated Media: Unlecture No. 1

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Coming into the 1st lecture for Integrated media, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Although, as soon as I walked into the theatre and saw Adrian, I knew I’d be exposed to some sort of alternative structure and assessment, like the one which I enjoyed last year in Networked Media. I was interested to see what Adrian had in store for us this semester and I’m pleased to say I’m really looking forward to the video sketch tasks and also seeing the K-fims that everyone will have created by semester’s end.