August 2015 archive

Week 6 Summary

This week I endeavored to try and find some props to use for our seminar’s candy bar at a reasonable price, with the main aim to find some popcorn containers. I found a pack of 10 popcorn holders for around $3.50 at a local party shop and took photos to show my team.

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I also found a string of lights that could be included in the design of the candy bar – possibly around a ‘Candy Bar’ sign. I found this at Typo which we could get half price because of Gina’s contact if this is a prop we wanted to include.

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I posted this in our Facebook group to get feedback from those responsible for staging and the team overall.

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I notified Caley and James through our Facebook group about the Steering Committee’s guest contact form so that they were aware that it needs to be filled out as guests are contacted and their responses and I linked them to the document.

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I contacted my group through our Facebook group to see if we could organise to meet before the next seminar so that we could get everyone together before people took off after the seminar. I organised for us to meet at 3:30 in front of the lecture theatre so we could then find a space nearby where we could discuss the progress of our seminar.

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I wrote up a table of the meeting minutes from this week’s meeting in our Google Document, inviting members of my group to add anything that I might have missed which I notified them about through our Facebook page, which is where I also posted the meeting minutes in question. I also asked about the confirmation for our next meeting in terms of time and place to finalise this decision.

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Week 5 Summary

This week our idea for our seminar started to become more clear and the ways in which we could achieve this became more evident. I created a Google Doc in our Google Drive as a place to begin drafting the questions for our seminar as well as the overall structure of the seminar. I wrote questions that are specific to advice for working in the film industry and how to make a career out of your passion. I also wrote them with the idea in mind that all of our guests would be able to answer them, creating a discussion type session rather than interviewing one guest at a time.

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During the social media seminar, I observed how the seminar ran, and thoughts I had on what aspects worked and which in particular didn’t. I then brought these notes to my discussion with my group and raised points such as; having the host of our seminar be seated at the same level as the guests, having a discussion type seminar rather than interviewing one guest at a time so they don’t feel left out, and having a competition and giving away prizes to increase audience participation.During our meeting I also brought up the problem I’ve been facing when it comes to trying to come up with a short and clear social media name and hashtag to use for when we begin our promoting for our seminar. This was something we all discussed and decided we would all think about and readdress it next week. I requested that the team creating the graphics and poster could come up with at least social media graphics so that the social media team can begin promoting the seminar. I compiled the meeting minutes into a table in our Google Drive.

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I then posted these minutes in the Facebook group so all members could view what was discussed and what action will be taken by next week, especially for those who weren’t at the meeting.

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I also created a Google Doc for ideas and suggestions about marketing techniques including competition ideas, and social media names/hashtags. I contributed my own ideas to this document to communicate them to my group, suggesting different ideas for competitions and combining print and social media marketing to attract people from outside of class to our seminar.

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I then also communicated these ideas to my group through our Facebook group and invited them to contribute their own ideas, and comment on the ones I had made.

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Week 4 Summary

This week I lead our group’s discussion on the state of our organisation for our seminar. This included discussing and finalising our top three guests that we would like to invite and allocating specific roles for everyone so everybody could start actively working towards our seminar. I compiled these in a Google Doc on our Google Drive, breaking down the roles into tasks to be completed before the seminar and those to be completed on the day of the seminar, which Dominic then compiled into a table.

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 After allocating roles and deciding on our top three guests, we set tasks to be completed by next week which include having a pitch from those creating the promo video, a pitch from those creating the promo poster, and a pitch from those responsible for organising the structure of the seminar, script and questions for the seminar.

I posted the minutes from the meeting on our ‘Meeting Minutes’ Google Doc in our Google Drive with subsequent tasks to be achieved listed. I also posted this on our Facebook Group to remind everyone of the tasks to be achieved and inform those who couldn’t be in class as to what was discussed and decided upon.

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I also posted the files from Blackboard relevant to our seminar, including the checklists, equipment forms, and media releases that we are required to submit as part of our documentation. I accompanied this with a note that there were a couple of things we overlooked during our discussion so that we members of the group can have a look at everything we must check off and see if the roles we overlooked are something they would like to do, so we can discuss these next week.

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Week 3 Summary

This week I lead the discussion on suggestions for guests to invite to our seminar. I used the Film Victoria Industry Directory as a source to help find guests who have worked in various roles within the Film industry and provided the link on our Facebook group so all members could utilise it to find guests they would like to invite.

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I contributed to the Google Doc that Dominic set up for our group and posted quite a lot of suggestions for Australian industry professionals that we could invite. Along with using the Film Victoria Industry Directory, I also used the website http://www.imdb.com/ to investigate the working history of the people I had in mind.

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During our discussion we realised that a lot of our suggestions were men, and we made a conscious decision to begin researching women and also people of different ages and ethnicities to gauge different perspectives during our seminar.

We also discussed different possibilities for the format of our seminar, and we decided that a talk show style hosted by Jim would be a great way to interact with our guests equally and invite the audience to engage with them as well.

At the end of the meeting, I posted the minutes on our Facebook group and Dominic then posted them on our Google Doc Documentation file. I posted the group’s agreed decision for all members to comment on the Facebook post with their top 3 guests that they would like to invite, so that by next week’s meeting we can all agree on the 3 we would like to approach first. I also reminded all members to see if they can find any catering options through their own connections.

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Week 2 Summary

This week our groups were finalised and I was happy to be in the ‘Film’ group. We discussed our initial ideas of what we would like to do for our seminar and decided that it would be interesting to invite guests who have a background working in different roles within the film industry. This would provide us with interesting questions and insight into pathways to work in the film industry, as well as whether specialised roles are sought after in the industry or if having various skills was more attractive for employers.

During this initial meeting, I set up our Facebook group so that we could all communicate easily and delegate tasks to one another. I also posted in the group to communicate with members who had to leave class early to keep them updated as to what stage the group was at. I let them know about the overall theme of the seminar series, and the deadline to give the title of our seminar to the Steering Committee inviting all members of the group to comment with their suggestions for a title. I also suggested that guest suggestions should be on a separate thread in our Facebook group.

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Post #1: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is a news satire television program which promotes the public sphere by approaching the audience as citizens who are urged to take action on national issues.

The public sphere is a space separate from the state where people of all backgrounds have the opportunity to debate about issues affecting society, thus promoting a democratic society and bringing about political change (Dahlgren cited in Butler 2012).

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is an American news satire television show broadcast on American cable television station HBO on Sundays at 11pm, and is hosted by British comedian John Oliver.

The news satire genre of television parodies the traditional news broadcast by satirizing its formal and aesthetic characteristics to highlight its inconsistencies and exaggerations (Painters & Hodges 2010).

Oliver satirizes the top news stories of the week, followed by unpacking a complex issue that is barely discussed on broadcast news. He spends an extended time explaining the issue in a simplistically yet not condescendingly manner, allowing viewers of any background to understand the issue being discussed, thus promoting a democratic public sphere.

Oliver addresses the audience with inclusive language like “us”, “we”, and “our” to make them feel that they are a part of the nation, urging them to take a stand on the issue. Oliver uses this approach in his segment in Season 2, Episode 23 on the lack of statehood in Washington D.C., saying that amending the Constitution for D.C.’s benefit is something “we could do.” Changing the American flag to include 51 states is something Oliver also suggests “we could do”, pointing to the image of the flag being used throughout his segment and informing viewers that it had been changed the whole time and remained unnoticed.

( Last Week Tonight, Season 2 Episode 23): http://edutv.informit.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/watch-screen.php?videoID=1011655

Oliver uses his “call-to-arms” approach combined with humour to demonstrate the absurdity of the issue (Halmore 2014). The ending musical number in which he sings his own version of the ’50 states’ song including D.C., with children, demonstrates this. It highlights how straightforward the inclusion would be, while urging the audience to demand political change for future generations. Viewers listened and on the 9th of August a demonstration was held at the U.S. Capitol building in which children and parents sung Oliver’s song, with the group promising further action.

(Last Week Tonight, Season 1 Episode 5).

Similarly, after Oliver’s report on net neutrality (Season 1, Episode 5), audiences listened to his guidance and flooded the Federal Communication Commission’s website to express their disapproval of changing laws around net neutrality which would prevent some people from access to high speed internet (Helmore 2014). Despite it being a national issue, it had barely been discussed in broadcast news. Oliver’s discussion on the issue allowed for a democratic public sphere as audiences were given the means to express their views.

Last Week Tonight has pushed the news satire genre from just commenting on current political issues, to treating viewers as citizens who want to make political change and know how to go about it with Oliver’s guidance (Helmore 2014).


Works Cited:

Butler, JG 2012, Television: Critical Methods and Applications, 4th edn, Routledge, New York, viewed 11 August 2015, EBSCOhost Database.

Helmore, E 2014, ‘How John Oliver Started a Revolution in US TV’s Political Satire’, The Guardian, 15 June, viewed 7 August 2015, <http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/15/john-oliver-started-a-revolution-in-us-tv-political-satire&gt;.

Painter, C & H, L 2010, ‘Mocking the News: How The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Holds Traditional Broadcast News Accountable’, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 257-274, viewed 7 August 2015, EBSCOhost Database.

 

Post #2: Scheduling & Family Feud

Broadcast scheduling and its influence on audience behaviour, demonstrated by Family Feud.

Family Feud is an Australian game show broadcast on free-to-air Network Ten at 6pm weeknights and Sunday nights. Teams comprised of families compete in answering questions that have been surveyed by 100 average Australians.

Scheduling is the broadcaster’s decision as to when a TV show will be aired; scheduling certain TV programs at specific times of the day to fit with the patterns of everyday life (Ellis 2000).

Audiences today in the post-broadcast era are more fragmented and dispersed across different televisual platforms (Curtain 2009). Consequently, broadcasters increasingly use scheduling as flow to control audience behaviour and create channel loyalty (Fiske 2011).

Family Feud is scheduled at 6pm weeknights and Sunday nights to coincide with the time that most families have dinner. Being scheduled to follow the news infers the activities of the traditional family, in which the father who has arrived home from work and mother who prepares dinner for the family, can be flowed from watching the news onto Family Feud as the family eats dinner together (Ellis cited in Fiske 2011). The scheduled flow of serious news to light-hearted family fun allows viewers to consider the serious events occurring in the world and then offer them a distraction from what they have witnessed. Following Family Feud is The Project; a program that combines humour and serious editorials to discusses the news of the day, allowing viewers who may have missed the earlier news broadcast to still be informed of the events of the day.

The 6pm time-slot has traditionally been filled by the broadcast news as a scheduling tactic based on traditional gender roles (Ellis cited in Fiske 2011). This is based on the traditional family unit of the working father, stay-at-home mum, and kids, in which the scheduling of the news would coincide with the father’s arrival home from work (Ellis cited in Fiske 2011). The 6-6:30pm time-slot has long been important for broadcasters in flowing viewers into prime-time programs (Fiske 2011). Network Ten’s strategic decision to broadcast an alternative to the news at the 6pm time-slot has been a risk that has ultimately paid off, with its 6-6:30pm ratings being at its highest since 2009 (Manning 2015). By engaging families when they are all together and encouraging viewers to “play along with the family”, it influences audience behaviour to remain loyal and flow onto The Project. The success of Family Feud has achieved higher amounts of viewers flowing onto The Project and subsequent prime-time programs (Manning 2015).

Strategic scheduling of commercial breaks is important for broadcast networks as they largely rely on advertisers for financing (Ellis 2000). Family Feud host Grant Denyer, often poses a survey question to the audience with the answer being revealed immediately following the commercial break. This controls audience behaviour by encouraging viewers to remain loyal so they don’t miss the answer, compelling them to watch the advertisements during the commercial break.

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By fitting scheduling with the patterns of everyday life, broadcasters can control audience behaviour (Ellis 2000).


Works Cited:

  •  Ellis, J 2000, ‘Scheduling: The Last Creative Act in Television?’, Media Culture Society, vol. 22, no. 1, viewed 11 August 2015, Sage Journals Database.
  • Fiske, J 2011, Television Culture, 2nd Edition, Routledge, London, UK, viewed 12 August 2015, EBSCOhost database.
  • Manning, J 2015, Family Feud Celebrates First Birthday, Mediaweek, viewed 12 August 2015, <http://www.mediaweek.com.au/family-feud-celebrates-first-birthday/&gt;.
  • Curtain, M 2009, ‘Matrix Media’, in G Turner & J Tay (eds), Television Studies After TV, Taylor & Francis, London, UK, pp. 9-19, viewed 7 August 2015, EBL: Ebook Library database.