Monthly Archives: June 2017

PB4 Did Smoking advertisement backfire?

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PB4 Did Smoking advertisement backfire?

This project has been one of the most challenging ones so far. I think the best things about this audio piece is the significance of the audio soundtracks. One of the things I wanted to be clear was the transition of audio be the jingles of past cigarette ads on television and radio. I think the richness of the audio with the interviews makes for an interesting exploration of the way the media influences us and mostly the comparison of the 50’s to today. I think because the tobacco industries have had to adapt to the way the promote their product they have had to find challenging and creative ways to sell their product. One of the concepts that I thought we engaged with was the last readings of the influence advertisement has on individuals. Exploring the way the tobacco companies exploited the political happening of the time to expand the cigarette market was fascinating. One example of this is  how the tobacco industries notices  the women’s movement in the late 1960s and decided to target them in their expanding market, so they started portraying women as smokers in more and more of their ads on tv throughout the 1960’s

There are plenty of things that I think the project really needed to take into account that did not happen because the audio piece was very much about one individual of the group and a lot of the criticisms that other members of the group made were not taken into account. The most challenging thing about this project was communication with members of the groups in being able to explore different concepts and ideas. With this audio project, because it was so abstract it was very hard to not make it literal and try and do it creatively. In comparison with our other projects this one was a collaborative one so it made it very hard to have input in the final way it was edited because only one person was really passionate about the idea and just physically only one person had the edit in their adobe audition program. Overcoming these difficulties was proven to be harder than expected.

I feel like I learnt a lot about how to start creating a sound piece through the different layers and how to involve the audience through it. I think one of the main things I learnt was giving space to the audience in the audio piece. Because with film you can engage people visually sometimes its a lot easier to see the natural pause in the structure and just let them create their own opinion while you still influence them with images and clips without narration on top. Creating these similar spaces in audio I found to be harder because you feel like you always have to give the audience something to think about and listen to. Thinking about podcasts and audio documentaries as layers in a song was super useful I thought about the interview and the narration as guitar solos or drum solos sometimes you just have to allow space for the impact and beauty of what people are saying so that the content sinks in with the audience.

I think this course is giving us the opportunity to explore concepts and ideas so we can become the creatives in different collaborative projects, be it film, radio, literature, etc I think we are being armed with ideas so we can explore more and more and think outside the box and not be afraid of stepping outside the comfort zone.

Alienation vs Capitalism

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Debates around PB4

Our group assignment has been struggling to come to an agreement as to where to take this project. The idea that the media brainwashes you to smoke is a very controversial assumption to make. Ive been thinking a lot about it because as a socialist I have a different perspective of the media as an institution that tries to monopolise information and has control as to what information reaches what layers of society. The statement that the media brainwashes people in my opinion is wrong, although it does contain elements of truth to it. For example it is true that in the 1950’s tobacco companies excelled and grew their market by portraying men smoking on tv ads, making it cool and rebellious, making it a sign of independence. There is a clear direct line of how the media con influence how you think but I think the motive as to why they do it is a very important one. The drive for profit was crucial in creating a bigger pool of smokers so the profits of cigarettes went up. I think the need for profits under our current system is why so many things that are bad for you are still readily accessible. But in terms as to why people smoke its clearly not only the media, its also a perspective in how people view society and how you can feel like nothing is under your control. There is a theory called “the theory of alienation” which talks about why people are so atomised under capitalism. Because capitalism is a system of commodity production everything is geared towards profit. In a society of commodity production human labour becomes a commodity to be traded and sold at a price. When you work you usually have no power of how you produce for example shoes, you don’t have a say as to if whether or not you use recycled material, or where you distribute the shoes, or wether or not it goes to someone who needs it. Because none of these very important things are in ordinary people control people become alienated of their capacity to create things. I think having an eye as to how society works can give you a glimpse into why people smoke. Life is stressful and people have coping mechanisms so they smoke, then you do see cigarette around and that makes  you want to smoke. I also think if you grow up in a poor community its more likely for you to smoke because there is nothing for you to do, your family can’t afford to take you to swimming classes or dance lessons so you see grown up people smoking and you od it too.

This is just my opinion into how I see things I definitely think the media has a massive influence in how we see the world but we must remember who controls the media and with what purpose they pursue certain stories, and who does it benefit?

 

Feed back rough cut

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In todays workshop we had to show our rough cut to Jon who works in the industry and is very well versed in audio pieces. It was a nerve racking situation because I felt our group was really under prepared but mostly to be completely honest I don’t think the entire group is committed to the main idea of the project. Pitching an idea that you don’t agree with was a useful thing to learn and being able to purely focus on what we had been doing in the project.

 

Jons main criticisms were about smoother transition. He said that we should specifically think in ways of allowing the audience to think about what we’ve said and transition into the next idea. He did although say we made sense and that he enjoyed the content of it (I know he is very polite).

Another criticism he had was that during the vox pop we had put an old cigarette commercial with a lot of lyrics and talking behind it so it would be best to keep the tracks instrumental especially when there is a lot happening in the background since they were interviews done in the field.

He gave us tips on how to best makes changes to the background music when someone is speaking and to make sure we were increasing and decreasing the volume of the music as people would speak and as a transition happened.

He understood we still didn’t know where exactly the project was going because he was able to notice some of our own internal tensions within our group as to how best to talk about the subject. He said we needed to have longer discussions as to how best conclude the story.

 

This was super useful in going forward with our assessment because it made us really focus more on the editing and less in the ideas. Even though we still have a bit of a way to go in terms of concluding what we want to say it was a good task to do because it is always super useful to have someone look at your work with a pair of fresh eyes…. or ears in this case.

Learning graph

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Tech Skills: I feel like this year full of new challenges on the technology front. I had only done little film on iMovie so moving from that to premier pro was a bit of a challenge. I started the year not knowing anything about it to watching way too many tutorials on youtube and becoming competent in it. I still think there is a lot more to be dissuader out of my technical competence to create short films. In the course survey I suggested a bit more education around the questions of editing. OF course everyone learns in different ways but that was one of my suggestions.

Concept Theory: This was one of my favourite components of the course, from the lectures to the tutorials I thought the critical thinking component of the course was quite sharp. I really enjoyed watching the documentary about how all of these new social media platforms sell our data to companies so they can better advertise themselves in out fb pages, email, etc. I think this was a crucial aspect of the course when you are engaging people because I remember in my high school art class the teacher would always stress that there were enough paintings in the world or movies so how were we justifying creating this new piece into a world that is already plagued with enough commodities. Being able to interject into a discussion or debate is important, sometimes you don’t have to be completely innovative but have a particular angle but I feel like this course is meant to expand our creative-critical thinking in order to create new things.

Working and Learning- Feedback. I think feedback is critical to creating and bettering our projects. I think being able to give constructive criticism is so important to build up your confidence in assessing something but also being able to accept when you are not fully able to express your ideas through the projects we created. I work as a lighting technician so I constantly work with people I also worked for Top Chef in the USA as a lighting assistant and working with people has never been an issue but I found PB4 extremely challenging to work in a group. Its been super difficult to be able to come to agreements and explore the criticism that the teachers gave us throughout the creative process. This is definitely an area I need to improve in.

Practice: Be it going out and shooting an interview or recording how young people interact with each other now that phones and other technologies are constantly at arms reach has been great. I think having these practice tests before our major projects has been crucial in experimenting with different techniques and ways of organising materials. I think my favourite aspect of the practical element of this course was filming I hate being infant of the camera but love being the cinematographer. I love photography and composition so this was an aspect that I really enjoyed.

There is so much to keep learning and this taste of what the course is has left me with a big appetite to keep learning next semester.

Netflix Guest Lecture Ramon Lobato

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I find it amazing the way the entertainment industry has growing. Through Lobatos’ slides you can see how much the industry has changed.  He talked about how approximately 2.5-3% of all broadcast TV viewing is either time-shifted or takes place on connected devices.

Australians spend on average 1 hour and 35 minutes (1:35) per month watching time-shifted TV between 8 and 28 days after broadcast; 48 minutes of that is in prime time.

I think netflix is completely changing the game of broadcasting and distribution. I like that the viewer has a bit more control as to what they decide to watch and that they can watch it in their own time. I wanted to explore the quote on one of Lobato’s slides that said “they see the death of hit driven culture, and the birth of cultural democracy that is no longer dominated by commercial interests” Now this is very interesting especially when you compare two video platform like say youtube and netflix. Youtube has completely sold their viewer to the advertisement companies, before you could choose to skip and ad and they weren’t always on every video you clicked on. Today there are certain mandatory ads that you can’t skip and it is a given that you will at some stage have to endure a commercial. If you compare that to netflix, there are no ads other than other netflix original series or other content for you to watch. I think the main difference if free videos vs paid videos in this sense. In a way we do have more control over what we watch and how we decide how to best entertain ourselves but the question of are we paying for un interrupted entertainment or a free service remains the question.

 

The Workshop

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The workshop

I have a new deep respect for sound. I think we can take for granted crisp audio pieces. The exercise was about going out recording an interview and being able to put it together. I think I thought sound would be way easier than filming but I think I was wrong. Even when you do film what makes or breaks a good shot (or at least one where they are speaking) is good audio. It was kinda difficult to work in our group because two of us have very strong opinions on how this should work.

Editing- I think I got the hang on how to create different textures with the different background sounds. It was good to identify how to change the volume of each clip and be able to change the loudness as you needed to create certain effects of transitions. This was super useful in terms of understanding how to put things together in the mix and be able to have full control and understanding how to piece it together.

I thin what I need to practice more is identifying when you need to record in mono or when to use the other mics on the zoom recorder. We had lots of cool ideas as to what was the way to best integrate all of the electronic sounds we had recorded but ended up not using them because we didn’t have enough time.

 

Sound and Colour

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Ive been thinking about layers. Its winter in Melbourne so we put a shirt, a sweater, and a jacket. Ive been thinking about music layers. Drums, bass, guitar, vocals, synths, etc.  Ive been thinking about audio layers, background noise, special effects, interview, narrator.

I went to the education rally and found myself in the midst of the protest trying to figure out the audio layers if you were to do a sound piece on it. The background layer would be the trams passing by behind the protest, the could be a middle layer of the protesters chanting “no cuts no fees, no corporate universities” Then there could be a focus on the person on the platform chanting and giving speeches.  You could have the chanting become louder and louder as a transition then go to an interview with a student. So manny infinite possibilities.