Instead of continues exploring the charactersitics that we chose in the 1st project. We selected two alternative characteristics and a new platform to conduct our 2nd project. Those two characteristics that we chose for this project are portable and multimedia.
As the platform of this project is Instagram, an social app, which could be used either on computer or mobile phone, but mobile phone mainly. Hence, it is considered that the project will be as portable as mobile phone due to the fact that it can be easily access whenever and wherever via phones. Every posts and Instagram story highlights in our project can be viewed freely without restraints.
Also, because of the multiple media features, we tried to combine different types of art works into our project, such as photographs, videos and sound. Thus, our project is defined as a conceptual thriller project consists of a series of images, sounds and clips.
For example, there is a post that a piece of sound is heard at first followed up with a short video that tells the uncompleted story related to the sound. Finally, the full version of story is released with a longer video.
There are some things that I learned from the practise of this project.
In terms of the online screen characteristics, the existence of modularity and multimedia in our project are apparent.
To be specific, in regarded to modularity, parts remain parts. Every post tells an independent story, but they can also form a mood or even a narrative. This can be seen in our project as every post has its own meaning, however, they also form a mysterious thriller mood together.
It is found that online screen project contains more than 2 online characteristics, which is also applied to our project. Also, because of these characteristics, the creation, distribution and exhibition of media will be more easier. Owing to it is more simple and convenient to create and display media. For example, it is not necessary to create a narrative or storyline in online media as everything remain fragments. There is more freedom and lower budget to be creative, experimental, and produce unrelated contents. Media prodcution becomes more accessible and affordable.
However, there is a shortcoming in relation to our platform, Instagram, in online media, which is transcoding.
After we using Instagram as our platform, we found out there is bug for this app related to the uploading of multimedia works. We tried to upload the a piece of sound, a picture and some videos on a same post, nevertheless, it is found out that the size/frame of picture is not the same whit video. If we tried to upload a video after a photo, the video will be automatically enlarge, which is annoying as it interrupts the origin orders of elements in our posts. Hence, we had to divided our post into photo post and video post. What is more, the quality of our work, especially video, is reduced. This has been discussed at the class. Owing to the online environment, the quality of media cannot be asked to be the same as traditional screen media. The media practitioners have to compromise the reduction in quality. It is also can be noticeable in our project. The videos that uploaded on Instagram was compressed, hence the quality of video is not as good as we saw on computer.
We attempts to be creative and combine as many art forms as we can as some posts or examples online, however, it does not work out very well in some extent.
Firstly, because of the Instagram bug, we are unable to combine our images and videos on a same post.
Secondly, the combinations of still image, video, still image and video form is not effective. Because I attempted to intercut my video with images. Nevertheless, it brought no extra meanings to our project. It was not as effective as I thought.
Lastly, I failed to experiment the silent mode with subtitles as our project is thriller concept. It will be bleak if there is no sound effect.
After conducting our project, there are some questions remained:
- Will the limitation of image/video quality change in online screen in the future ?
- Will the projects of online and traditional screen media combined together in the future ?