Week 12 tutorial and lecture

This class was heavily influenced on the idea that reflection is important, and because this is our last class of the semester, we have a lot to reflect on! Although I’ve never been one to benefit much from reflection. During this class we also did some course surveys about the teaching styles and approaches of our tutor. We were also asked to answer questions on a graph, and since I haven’t used a pen for this course it felt weird to actually write and draw lines??

I think I was a bit generous with my answers on this graph.

IMG_20150605_0001 2-1

1) How much have I learnt about making media objects/stories?
Because I’ve come from a school that heavily promoted the arts and was really into students creating pieces of work, I already had a lot of experience with actually making media objects but I was never good at actually writing stories, so that is the aspect of making media products that I have learnt about during this course. Most of our project briefs have forced us to dive straight into creating a media object, and this way it doesn’t leave time for me to procrastinate and stress about not being able to create something perfect so this benefited me quite a bit.

2) What is my ability to work independently in unfamiliar ways or with new systems and tools? 
I haven’t really needed to use any new tools except for mediafactory, but I mean that was pretty easy to pick up. As for systems, I don’t even know what this means. I think I’m generally able to pick things up pretty quickly, and I have been able to work independently in unfamiliar ways because I’ve never had a problem with this sort of thing before.

3) How much do I understand and think critically and creatively about what I make?
I think I improved a lot at this, because I was never really good at thinking critically about what I create AFTER it is created, but especially after reflecting over project brief 3 in week 7, I really understand its importance and was able to do so (hence why the graph rose at around week 7).

4) What is my understanding of the role/value of the blog?
In early weeks I thought the blog was a great tool to really get my thoughts out about lectures and tutes, but as the weeks progressed, it seemed to get repetitive and I forgot why it was even needed, so I really dreaded writing them each week. Although, towards the end of the course I thought more positively about them, but not as much as at first.

(I was unable to attend the lecture this week). 

possible placement

So recently I have been contacting employers through the Indigenous Cadetship Support program, for possible work for my placement for this course. For the past few months I have been in contact with a woman who is an adviser for the Indigenous Programs at ABC. Today I actually met with her for the first time to discuss some possible employment opportunities with the ABC which is really exciting even with just the thought of it. She is now currently contacting members of the Film & TV team at the Elsternwick building of ABC, and I will soon find out if there is a place for me. If there is a place for me, I would be working there on my days off uni throughout semester 2. So hopefully this works out, it would be a good kick start to the 80 hours needed to complete this course.

week 11 tutorial

So our rough cut of our media product for project brief 4 was to be submitted this class, which we had done on time. Because we actually did our shoot last weekend, we are able to have time to complete a few rough cuts in order to perfect our final. Between our shoot and our tutorial, Helen wanted to learn more about editing and gain some more experience so we all agreed that Helen should complete our rough cut, which is what she really wanted to do. When we actually shot our footage, we used two cameras and a microphone from school so when the rough cut was completed, the sound used was only from the cameras so the next step will be to sync the recordings from the microphone for each shot. There were also a few of the shots used in the rough cut that were not supposed to have been used, for reasons such as there was a script in the background or continuity issues that we actually reshot on the day, but simple things like this can be changed.

Another assignment we had for my Sound Design elective course was to create a sound environment for a short film or video game sort of thing. I chose to create a sound design for a short film that I would make up. The fake short film that I used was entitled “The Door”. The concept behind the title is that the scene from this short film revolves around this mysterious door that manages to go unnoticed for the first half of the scene. I guess I kind of used this to my advantage because there is no visual, no one knows there is in fact a door there the whole time, so it draws on the idea of “who knows what when” and that the audience knows the least in this scene. This was an interesting task because I’ve never thought about creating a narrative without the use of visual elements (because when I submitted it I had to use a black screen, not a picture of Adam Sandler), but as I started to write the script I realised it wouldn’t be too difficult to create this scene using only sound. I had to note all the sounds that I would use, like dialogue, sound effects, music and atmosphere.

SCENE START

Microwave door open
Mug placed inside
Microwave door close
Buttons pressed
Microwave on
Microwave finish beep
Microwave door open
Mug taken out
Microwave door close
Spoon stirs and touches cup
Spoon placed on table
Sips drink
Swallow
Knock at the door
Mug placed on table
Walking
Light switch turned on
Turn doorknob
Open door
ATMOS: birds chirping and suburban noises

Person 2: Hey, what’s up?
Person 1:
Hey, did we plan to do something today?
Person 2:
I mean TECHNICALLY no but isn’t it nice to be spontaneous sometimes? Like what is the point of living each day in a routinely fashion and doing the same thing day in and day out and getting almost nothing in return?
Person 1:
Is it necessary to give the same speech every time you come over? Just come inside.

Shuffling footsteps over the front door step
ATMOS fades out
Door closes
Door locks

Person 2: I brought Ginger Snaps 2.
Person 1:
Wait, there’s a second one??
Person 2:
Yeah, its like set in this mental hospital and it’s the same chick from the first movie but its not Ginger so it should be called like “Brigitte Snaps”, but I guess if they called it that then no one would watch it because who would watch a movie called “Brigitte Snaps”??? Exactly right, no one would. Actually, I’m not sure anyone would even watch a movie called Ginger Snaps 2 but here we are.
Person 1:
How come you always get to pick the movie?
Person 2: Because the last time you had that responsibility you picked Grown Ups 2. I mean I know you have a thing for Adam Sandler but you need to be reasonable, it is NOT the mid 90s anymore and you really need to get over it.
Person 1: Are you actually joking? Adam’s prime years extended to AT LEAST 1999, I mean have you not seen Big Daddy? It was a complete cinematic masterpiece of its time. Although, I don’t think it was appreciated very highly by film critics and stuff but my argument is that they simply did not understand it. 

Person 2: Wait a sec; has that door always been there?
Person 1: What door?
Person 2: That red door that says, “do not open”. Why have I never seen this before? Is it new? Have I just completely disregarded the fact that this door exists because I hate the colour red? But if that IS the case, then how can I see it right now?
Person 1: No, I am 90% sure that door has never been here before.
Person 2: Well, should we see what’s inside?
Person 1: It’s probably not safe. Anything could be behind that door. But we must. I guess.

Footsteps slowly approach the door
Creep suspenseful music plays
Doorknob turns
Door creaks open slowly

Person 2: Mum?
Other: (In deep voice) I’m not your mum

Screaming and growls

week 11 lecture

The lecture started off with some background music and the words “There is no such thing as an original”, which was an appropriate start to a lecture on remixes. Dan played the song “This is the Remix” by Girl Talk, and we were instructed to listen and write down as many samples as you recognise, in partners. My partner and I couldn’t actually find that many, they were going so fast so we only managed to get the name of bands/artists: Jackson 5, DMX, Lil Jon, B.O.B., INXS, The Notorious B.I.G., Simon & Garfunkel, U2, Beastie Boys, Busta Rhymes, Lil’ Kim and NWA.

I have never really considered mashups to be remixes, I’ve always considered them their own genre, but I guess it makes sense. We also discussed Navas remix theory, and the quote ‘a recombination of content and form that opens the space for remix to become a specific discourse intimately linked with new media culture’ from Navas, Regressive and reflexive mashups in sampling culture, p.3 ‘, was used. With all this remix/mashup talk, I was reminded of my year 7 days when I’m pretty sure everyone was obsessed with the following song:

Project brief 4 shoot

So yesterday our group filmed what could either be a draft shoot or our final shoot, depending on how things work out in editing. We assembled at 9am at our location and had three actors to work with. Our script wasn’t completely finished, but we did the best with what we had at the time. Jack and I both did the camera work, and Helen was working with the audio recording. We wanted to use two cameras so that it would take a shorter amount of time to film as we could have more of a variety of shots. Although, we did go through parts of the scripts a significant amount of times to perfect it and have lots of different angles and shots. Because we were shooting three subjects, with three crew members, in a small dorm room, it proved difficult to move around and feel comfortable during the whole shoot. I soon forgot about how little room there was because I honestly just wanted to get everything we needed to create our media artefact. There weren’t many changes made to the script during the shoot, which I thought was pretty strange, but I guess because we needed to have a fair amount of research in the script, there wasn’t much improvisation we could do and improvements on the spot. After the shoot we were all pretty exhausted but I’m sure we were all confident in what we had shot and probably all eager to get a start on editing.

week 10 tutorial

During this past week our group have had a few meetings to discuss what our final video will consist of. We decided that we would focus on 3 students in their dorm room discussing films, video games and the Australian classification system, because the Reservoir Dogs video game is banned in Australia, and we don’t understand why so we think this would be interesting to explore in our script and video.

The 3 characters in this video will be A, B and C, because we haven’t figured out names, or if they are even important.
A: International Student who does not understand the australian classification system because he does not believe that desensitisation is a thing.
B: Australian student who believes intention is more impactful than depiction, bases his theory off of fiction/novels/stories causing violence. Believes that the current classification system is not enough, as acts of violence are referenced to/take place off screen, yet still happen.
C: Believes depiction is more influential than intention, bases his theory off of the idea that being able to form a strong connection to the characters performing the acts enhances the experience and therefore the desensitisation. Believes current classification system is ok as the acts are what’s censored.

So in our script and video, we will be using our research of the Australian Classification system, media effects and desensitisation caused by violence portrayed in the media. Jack has started writing a draft script and Helen and I have been giving input on ways we can progress the scene and ways it can be improved. At this stage we don’t know 100% when our first shoot will be, but it could be this weekend or next.

Week 10 lecture

Before this lecture, I don’t think I really understood what media institutions were, but some examples are:

•ABC •The News •Journalism •Newscorp •Cinema •Broadcast Television •Community Radio •Public Service Broadcasting •RRR.

Media Institutions – Some ways of thinking about this term term from sociology concern with organising structures of society Social, cultural, political, economic relations Principles, values, rules that underly these. Individuals can struggle under constraints imposed by institutions. Types of institutions include police education, government. Marriage (social institution): cultural Expectations Forms a part of a cultural narrative. Institutions have historical continuities. Ie The Church.

Even after this lecture I still don’t really understand what media institutions are.

 

 

week 9 tutorial

At the start of this class we were all still pretty confused about what we were going to do for our final product, because we still hadn’t even figured out what ideas we were going to be working with. We asked Dan for advice on how we should connect all three of our separate ideas for content into one artefact, and he suggested that we focus more on one idea. We all kind of looked at each other and thought “oh shit”, because that was our next challenge … whose idea are we going to pick? After about 20 awkward minutes of us sitting there each wondering what we were going to do, we started to discuss the possibilities everyones ideas had, and which had more promise. We started to focus more on desensitisation at this point, and the effects media technologies have on audiences.

We came across this: http://www.playgunman.com/. We thought this would be good to talk about in our script.

We thought one character could talk about how this sort of thing is an exact product of how desensitised our society is. This is a game for your phone that uses your camera as a gun, and you can use it to shoot your friends and just random people on the street. In the video HE SHOOTS AN OLD MAN WALKING DOWN THE STREET. This video is actively encouraging aggression towards people who aren’t even playing the game. We will have to look further into media effects, but this sort of thing could possibly even promote violence not just in general, but associating violence with everyday life, because you are actually experiencing it through your camera.

another sound design thing

So this week I learnt a very important lesson, and that is to always have a plan B. Last week we recorded dialogue for our next sound design project, and when it came to finishing the dialogue and putting the final product together, one of the voice actors was not there, which resulted in the final product because very confusing and not as good as it could have been. The assignment was to dub our own voices for the “Say What Again” scene in Pulp Fiction, in groups. We worked well together, but unfortunately we also worked at a slower pace than everyone, which meant we didn’t get it all recorded in one week, so we had to use recordings from other groups, which wasn’t ideal. Other than the negative aspects of this assignment, I thoroughly enjoyed doing this assignment. It is actually relevant to some things we may need to do in the future of the Media course, because I may get to the post production stage in a project, unable to do a reshoot, but needing to dub over a piece of dialogue. I now know how to actually do that and techniques that make it not seem dubbed over, so I am very happy that I got to work with this sort of thing.