The following is my reflection for Project Brief 4

This project was a fun and stressful experience. In all of my educational career I had never encountered a group task that would be so vital to my overall mark. It wasn’t that working with Annie and Sammy was hard, it was the added pressure of doing your part and supporting the other members to the best of my ability. I felt the responsibility and the standard that I had to constantly keep in order to not let down my group, but also achieve that High Distinction we were all hoping for. But all my fretting was in vain since our group dynamics worked really well with each other. One of the key aspects to working in a group is that ideas could be presented that I couldn’t have never thought of, and having another person’s opinion available to help guide and flesh out ideas was crucial in our final decisions on our artefact. We went through a lot of ideas and different ways to complete our project, and especially at the initial stages of the project all three of us had no clue as to what type of product we wanted to produce. But the fact that we were all open to ideas and wanted to try something outside of the box helped the project move on swiftly. I especially believe that our ability to freely communicate to each other comfortably was vital in the execution of the final piece.

Since our topic was ‘Texts’, a very broad topic, we chose to just research as many varied areas as possibly during the annotated bibliography exercise. This part was executed well with all three of us presenting varied topics, but also haring common themes in advertising and audience perception. It was from this that we decided to focus on advertisements as a text, and the way they are represented in many forms of text. The choice to focus on specifically advertisements in the media world allowed us a focal point to channel all our energy into, and helped us all understand what the final product should address. This helped tremendously when I myself felt confused by the lack of boundaries set for the project brief, because since we decided amongst ourselves that it would focus around one area under the ‘Texts’ umbrella I was able to get back on track and avoid branching off into topics that would take too long to express and fully develop. Our initiative to narrow the area we covered in our product allowed for us to develop our understanding of advertisements thoroughly and dedicate more time into presenting a completely comprehensive piece of work.

However there were a few hiccups at the beginning when at first we had intended to embed a video focusing on ads in the real world onto a website that would have more ads surrounding and bombarding the viewer. It was intended to be very Meta and actually depict how in your face advertisements are, and all members had agreed it would be a genius idea if we could pull it off. But as we had split off to do our own individual research we found it was difficult to cover so many areas and also reflect our research into the group video we were planning on creating. It was difficult, but after some consulting with Robbie and peers we decided that an eBook would be a better platform for us to present our research into the different areas of texts and advertisements. We acknowledged that for the timeframe we had to complete the task that it was impossible to create such an ambitious task and complete it to a standard that would satisfy all members. So we divided the workload again, but this time we knew what was manageable and what each member had to complete. This maturity and our ability to adapt to the new plan reflected everyone’s hard work ethic, and this overall was the best experience I gained from working on the project.

In the process of collaborating and creating the final product I learnt that it isn’t necessarily as easy it is to plan out a task and follow through start to finish as smoothly as in structured high school tasks. I did gain a lot of knowledge about audio advertisements, and a better understanding of why radio advertisements work as a whole, but this experience really did help me get a better feel of what to expect in future group tasks and what kind of attitude I should approach a project. Having an open and flexible mind about everything helped solve any possible conflict, and for myself to become a media practitioner in the future I need to be able to adapt and read situations just like I did in this project. I enjoyed the process of working with peers immensely, and believe that next time I will be better equipped to communicate and function as a team better than before.

The robots are coming, and soon all our lives will be obsolete as technology allows us to finally evolve into the Wall-E universe humans. But does technology dictate society right now or are we still in charge? It’s a tough question, what with the millions of people slaving away at computers, tablets and smartphones per day it is a wonder we still have a functioning society. It’s a funny thing when describing the impact technology has on our evolution and thinking about how before we industrialized everything and ruined the Earths natural homeostasis natural disasters and plagues ruled over us. Now we have to decide whether to continue on this path of technological advancement or to reject and find another way of life, because we all know that it is not going to end well if we don’t move things along soon. But there’s the crux in our evolutionary block. Do we determine how we move on from here or will technology do it for us. Are we inventing technology or was it already there to be discovered? It’s like when consider the origins of maths, did it always exist or did we make it up?

I see it as Dan pointed out, as a natural extension of humanity. It has become so fundamental in our lives, and our dependency on it has changed how we approach everything now.

So update on project brief 4 coming to you in 5 parts.

1. It’s coming together very smoothly. There has been developments and we have so many layers to it that it might ass well be an ogre.
2. I see that a lot of ads rely on either one or more of these four things
   • Humour
   • Celebrity Endorsement
   • Being annoying
   • Being frank
3. Radio ads actually work. Like a lot of people consume radio ads willingly, and obviously can’t skip. So due to this they are also 68% more like to do something concerning an ad after hearing it.
4. My group-mates are killer, especially Annie, because right now she’s doing the bulk of the editing in Canva.
5. I have chosen to analyse The National Tiles radio ads and The Blind Factory’s jingle. Both very annoying ads that practically anyone with ears can recite.

There is no such thing as an original idea ;( There really is no hope for the next generation is there? but we still persist.

This week we discussed mass culture and mass communication, and the notion that notions can be expressed around the world. It was highly entertaining and exciting to see how we are influenced by things even if we aren’t purposely going out to steal, but there are also people who use reproduction as an art form. Dan asked whether remixing something changes what the original message and whether is can be justified as a their own original content.

He brought up Girl Talk’s “This is the Remix” and in all honesty I could only recognize 3 artists and just 1 song. Luckily among the approximately 100 of us we did recognise a fair few of the songs in the remix.

• DMX
• Cecilia
• INXS
• Lil’ Jon
• Salt n Pepa
• Lady Gaga
• Ace of Base
• Busta Rhymes
• The Clash
• Rick Ross
• B.O.B.
• U2

Before this class I had never encountered a remix so complex and intricate. It sounded like a completely original song, and that may have been because I knew none of the originals, but it still sounded great as its own entity. The art of DJ-ing is just amazing because they aren’t just playing songs back to back they create a collaboration between artists that probably never be able to physically work together, and these days DJ’s are a part of consumer culture.

This week we discussed Institutions & Systems, specifically media institutions and tried to critically analyse what we understand about them. It was slightly confusing trying to decompose an idea that had been established as something completely separate to the process of film-making, but once you break it down it’s understandable how much institutions factor into regular media practice.

As an example we broke down marriage as an institution:

• Expectations
  • values associated with marriage
  • e.g Monogamy
• Law
  • legal framework
  • regulatory
  • Births, Deaths & Marriages
• Meta-institutional
• Widespread
  • Accepted by dominant societies
  • practiced daily by millions worldwide
• Cultural rules
• Rituals & Symbols
• Historical
  • Carry tradition
• Community recognition
  • Society
  • Legally
• Commercial Industry

Then we split up into smaller groups and analysed different institutions that we could be familiar with. My group did Community Media and below is our poster of ideas about it.

So today we had an awakening. We realised that our idea for project brief 4 was going to take too much time and effort to be completed at the exceptional standard that we wanted for ourselves. We also found that it would definitely be tedious to create individual projects and a main video on the side. We bit off more than we could chew and now we have decided it’s time to move past and create something a little simpler but definitely doable. We are changing towards creating an eBook that encompasses the research that each member has conducted on their advertising area, and case studies of ads in those areas. This way we could accomplish the criteria but also not put our hard work on annotated bibliographies to waste. We still like the idea to reconstructing advertisements to sell “nothing” items but it hasn’t been decided whether or not that would be included in the final product. It’s a rocky process, but so far for my audio radio research I found many ads to study. There has also been a handy website that has an amazing number of examples of ads that is pretty similar to what I was initially planning on creating. This website has so many examples of different forms of ads that I have been listening to for years. If you visit the site, click on listen to ads and they explain what the ad type is, in the form of an ad. It’s incredible. Of course I don’t have the production capabilities as this company, but its still possible for me to do something very similar.

This week we explored what an audience is and why audiences are important.

We discussed who audiences could benefit, so the stakeholders:

• Advertisers
• Commercial Broadcast
• Cable Networks
• Production Houses
• Program makers
• Government Policy Makers
• Social Scientists & Psychologists
• Cultural Theorists & Media Scholars

We then learnt about the difference between traditional broadcast media and post-broadcast era, finding out that the post-broadcast era is only still very young being around for 10 years. The major difference between the two is the way they approach audiences when sending messages or producing content. For the early broadcast era they didn’t see consumers as individuals, but as a mass to be advertised to and not communicated with. Post-broadcast has come to a place where they break down their audience and understand that they aren’t the ones in control. Digitization has blurred the lines between who is a media creator and who is a consumer. To become a producer you no longer require a contract with television networks and corporations. All you need is a camera and an internet connection, and because of the internet audiences are able to pick and choose what they want to see. This new digital post-broadcast era has exemplified the Uses and Gratifications theory of media consumption, with audience being in charge of what they are exposed to. The individual audience member now is seen as independent, unique and an individual. They interpolate and interpret media however they please, and we as media practitioners have to adjust.

So today we presented our idea of creating a video about advertising bombardment and how we were going to host it on a site filled with ads. The idea was that Annie would create side-bar ads (these annoying gifs that loop continuously and take up unnecessary space), Sammy would make a pre-roll ad that would be played before the main video, and I would create a radio station and ads for the main video. It was a big project but it was so complex and exciting that most people were on board. The only problem we faced was how we were going to incorporate the research component. We decided that in our ads we would advertise “nothing” as to highlight the techniques we researched.

This project is starting to form now, I have just gotta make sure to pull my weight and finish the task ahead of me. Here’s hoping that I don’t fall off a train or something and get amnesia.