Studio prompt: How far can you go and how far can you reach with an Instagram documentary?
Title of report: Instagram Documentary of Musician Mark Chan
Introduction
In this report we propose that applying the concept of Instagram documentary constructed by multiple 15 seconds videos onto online video practice results in limited audience feedback to the Instagram Documentary of Musician Mark Chan.
This report is about the background, process of prototype and the making of the Instagram video practice. A short evaluation is also included.
Background
The process of the research/experiment of Project Four was in a few stages. At the beginning I was put into a group with another student and we were thinking of doing car reviews which are frequently seen on YouTube and TV shows, after we were advised that this is not so much of an online video practice we figured that we would choose Instagram as the experiment platform and then we would see what to do. However, the student left the project, leaving myself to proceed on this project alone.
Inspired by the Instagram of a popular Japanese fashion model Roroko RORORUKO, as well as a short video “Instagram is a short documentary of real life”, I decided to use my Instagram account set up for the project to document buskers around Melbourne CBD. I have noticed there are lots and lots of accounts that are particularly set up for sharing cafes, brunch and good food in Melbourne, yet most of them are photos only. While Instagram is designed to be handy, fast spreading with little storage (as in small images and videos that don’t take up lots of space), an account gains high popularity with account interface design and strategically use of hashtags, such as celebrity
Evidence/What?
Working individually I have chosen Instagram celebrity profiles (videos) within the online video practice that we have named “Instagram Documentary of Musician Mark Chan”.
My understanding of this online video practice is that Instagram an instant and efficient way to promote a specific account with its content either in a narrated or non-narrated structure.
After a number of phases of sketching and reframing of a probe to lead this research inquiry came up with the following probe to guide to prototype process:
- A buskers’ collection, a narrated documentary (and on-going documentary that does not necessarily comes to an end). Each sequence is make up with 6 videos and these videos are uploaded in a sorted order. Each video continues the content from the previous videos;
- However, the project failed at this stage, as I was not able to get chosen buskers to have copies of Personal Release Form sent to me other than Mark Chan and Castiel Cheng. Then Cheng resigned from the project due to production work timeframe;
- Due to the time that I had for the project and artists available, I decided to change the prototype to musician instead of multiple artists.
My idea is to arrange the interface with designed images and videos, each of them are uploaded in a sorted order.
The content of images and videos are mainly about Mark’s performance. Since some of the personal life contents are often seen on celebrity social accounts, videos of Mark practicing at home and other life contents are also planned to be published. However personal content are kept to minimum as Mark has his own personal Instagram account. With the posts that allow me to tag, his account would be tagged on them. He does have a Facebook fan page Mark Chan Sings which specifically remediates his performance, therefore it is link on the Instagram fan profile as well.
Each song Mark performs would be cut into 2-3 of a 15 seconds Instagram video. These videos are published in an order: if a viewer plays it according to the order of time videos are published, highlighted parts of a performance is viewed. A session is distinguished by either the same coulor filter, the thumbnail according to the source video itself. The sequences are bordered with still images.
His photos are cut into 2-3 612x612px Instagram images, editing is done with Photoshop and their sized are adjusted according to the original images and the design of the layout on the interface.
Keywords with hash tags are used under every image and video so all posts will be shown on the “EXPLORE” page on Instagram, this is the way to make sure all posts published are being shown to the user public, receive “likes” and gain more followers.
Evaluation
In this studio, I worked on an online video narrative form that focuses on the popular social media video practice. My aim was to see how far I can go with promoting an account and get as much popularity as possible making most out of Instagram.
In reference to Paul Tellefsen “Instagram Is…”, I planned to proceed this online video experiment as a supposed-to-be on going documentary of Mark Chan’s journey in busking around Melbourne. It was structured as a whole production that contains videos and images of him practicing, performing and a small amount of records of his personal life in Melbourne, with elements such as voice over and interviews, however due to limited time caused by tenancy and legal issue I was involved in, I was not able to produce the piece as perfect as I wished it to be.
Conclusion
As restrained by the limitations of this word count and the expectations of this report, I suggest that our ideas raised on the Instagram Documentary of Musician Mark Chan, hybrid online video narrative, has reached a certain level of my expectations but is yet to be result in satisfaction at this point. Beyond the scope of this project we would need to do more research on documentary genres, production methods and online documentary video practices.
Reference List
“Instagram Is…” by Paul Tellefsen, https://vimeo.com/66938184
Roruko’s Instagram profile, https://instagram.com/rororuko/