How did you author the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?

This video was taken on and edited on the Instagram app on my iPhone 6S using the rear facing camera. The featured door of this video is the elevator near the back entrance of Building 9 at RMIT and I edited this video by removing the sound and adding a black and white filter, sticking with my video theme of ‘silent black and white videos of automated doors’ (catchy).

The story of how this video was authored is rather amusing.

I filmed a ‘first draft’ of this video in Week 10, during our tutorial’s allocated Instagram time. At first, I wanted to film opening the elevator doors from the outside, then closing them from the inside, using Instagram’s start-stop feature.

Unfortunately, that draft somehow disappeared from my Instagram’s draft section. And that’s why I couldn’t post the video last week because, in all the three days I was at uni, I forgot to film a second version of that video.

So come today, Week 12, and I have to film again. Having done a draft, this video feels much more staged and less spontaneous than any other Instagram post I’ve done.

I call the elevator, take my video, one hand on the phone, the other on the buttons, when suddenly, as I’m choosing a thumbnail in the closed, empty elevator, someone calls the lift up to Level 4.

So there I was just awkwardly riding the elevator up and down with a random teacher.

How did you publish the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?

The publishing process for this video was the rockiest it has ever been.

First, I accidentally filmed and posted this video to my personal Instagram instead of my student one (no big deal, I rarely use my personal one anyway). Thank god for the fact that Instagram saves a copy of your photos and videos to your phone because by the time I was posting the video, I was halfway down the Pakenham line, the elevator at RMIT far, far behind me.

Speaking of the Pakenham line, there are several dead spots of internet along that line, most notably between South Yarra – Caulfield and Dandenong – Hallam.

When I was publishing this video, I fell into one of these dead spots and hence, when I tried to correct my mistake, I was stuck with long loading screens, especially when trying to geotag.

It showed me something I had taken for granted:

Instagram is only as spontaneous as your internet is fast.

The internet itself, your access and your speed, is a constraint as well as an affordance.

Additionally, when I reposted this video to my student Instagram, I forgot to chnge the thumbnail so now it just looks like a black screen. (I don’t take a video for one week and suddenly I’m a noob.)

How did you distribute the video you published on Instagram to other social media services?

This answer has been pretty repetitive over the last five posts. However, today is a little different.

Because I was signed into the wrong account, when I tried to flick those handy little switches to cross post to Facebook and Twitter, it took me to the respective sites and asked me to sign in.

NBD, I thought. Maybe it just automatically signs you out every few weeks for security reasons.

I should’ve realised something was wrong.

I struggled with these external sites and bad internet for no reason, because soon enough, I was reposting the video on my correct account, where the switches worked just fine.

This brought to my attention the struggle of distributing across multiple platforms. I had to go to my Facebook and Twitter and delete the cross-posts because otherwise, I would’ve had two identical videos crossposted from separate Instagram accounts, which would’ve raised a couple of eyebrows.

However, after all that struggle setting up cross-posting on my personal account, I figured, why not actually post something for real on that account? (As opposed to these student posts as a door aficionado).

That’s when the centralisation of the network really hit me.

My Twitter account is largely connected to my Goodreads account. It has the same profile pic as my Goodreads account (a purple eye) and I used to use this Twitter account to follow authors, post links to my reviews and get writing advice.

My Facebook account is just a polished image of me, somewhere to send new acquaintances that want to contact me.

My personal Instagram has one photo of pasta and advertises myself as a Mercy main.

My student Instagram doesn’t even have my name, it has my student number, and bunch of doors.