Reflection

 

While creating these two projects, there were several changes made between the development and the final product. In relation to my audio piece, I had quite a strong vision in my mind of what this was going to sound like overall and for these reasons, it didn’t differ from my development plan very much at all. The only element from my plan which I didn’t include in this piece was the use of TV static sound. This was because it didn’t fit in well with the various clips and the audio was much smoother if it transitioned straight into television rather than an irritating static noise. As for the second piece, most of my original plan was carried throughout production. However, an element I didn’t dive into as I originally planned, was exploring female confidence issues. I had recorded some footage of the woman in my piece analysing various Instagram models, and becoming quite anxious and self-conscious about her own appearance. However, I felt as if all though this was connected to social media addiction and self-appreciation issues, I wanted to focus solely on the phone use rather than getting distracted with anything else.

 

During the making of these two projects, I noticed several affordances associated with the means of media I was using to convey my ideas. Some of the positive affordances from my audio piece relate to how the audience gets to create their own scene. Rather than being assisted with a visual aid, the audience is able to establish their own scene and use the audio to create their own unique world. This was beneficial in my case as the audio begins quite tame yet becomes intense as the piece continues, thus even without visuals the viewer can completely establish the tone of the piece. A negative however is that audio requires people to concentrate and they will need to focus very closely, as they might interpret the noises as a completely different scenario to the one intended. As for video, the immediate positive is that the audience doesn’t need to come to their own conclusion, everything they need is literally right in front of their eyes. However, a negative from video is that without any audio, it can get very boring. Video on its own can be very bland unless you are creating a very interesting topic, whereas audio does not fall into this category at all.

 

Throughout the development of these projects, there were both elements in which I thoroughly liked, and several in which I wasn’t overly happy with. An element of my first project in which I thought worked well in relation to what I was trying to communicate was the progressive, dramatic and eerie closing audio. I was happy with this choice as I felt it successfully communicated the impact that violence around the world is having on people and how these violent acts are not declining any time soon. However, an element I wasn’t incredibly happy with was the repetitiveness of the news reports, I felt as if they dragged on for longer than they should have. As for the second assignment, a feature I liked was the use of black and white, as a light symbol to show the bleakness and darkness of a life being controlled by technology and not living in the real world. Something I wasn’t entirely happy with was the pacing. Although I was trying to communicate a phone addiction, I felt that I could’ve taken a different more immersive approach rather than simply footage of a woman on her phone. For my next assignment I would definitely want to make more detailed draft shot lists and several timelines to see if the topic held up on screen.

 

Areas of entanglement in which I would like to further study are in relation to the use of different objects and items to portray said items rather than themselves. I would like to explore a subject where I could form my own contention and show this to an audience through the entanglement of production elements and story elements, similarly to TED’s video  “Dead stuff: The secret ingredient in our food chain”. I would also like to broaden my view on entanglement and expand my ideas of interconnectedness to analyse how everything we do is interconnected in some way and explore various means of media to demonstrate this.