Category: Triweekly posts

Week 12 Workshop

In this week’s workshop we received feedback from experts in the field on the draft minute of our PB4. Here I’ll share my understanding of the advice, and how our group has implemented it.

Firstly, we were advised to lengthen our sections of exhibitions of ambient sound. This will make our podcast more varied and interesting, as well as artistic. This will not be hard to do, and it will actually make the entire project a bit easier, as we were struggling to get up to the required time.

Secondly, we were warned that the voice of the narrator in our piece was too disconnected from reality, too much of a “voice of god”. We were told that we could have the narrator interact with the sounds he is talking about, or to give them a kind of story. Perhaps at the start they come across as very composed, but as a result of all of the noise, they become disorientated and frustrated.

This piece of advice did not quite fit into our project exactly as described, but we we understood the message. We should add variety by creating some voices that come from different perspectives, different social distances from the audience. To achieve this, we plan integrating a simple ‘everyday’ character’s narration of the original narration into the piece. They may start off by saying that they don’t believe what is being said is of any importance, or is true at all, but by the end of the piece realise that background sounds do in fact have a big impact on us through media.

We had great fun creating and recording these characters when we recorded the bulk of our script. Hopefully it will add to the texture of the piece, but it is possible that it will simply not work. I’m sure that James, our group’s editor, will be able to test all the options and make that call.

June 2, 2017 Add Comment

Week 12 Initiative

Seeing as this is the last initiative post of Media 1, I’m going to write about my plan for the future in the media industry, and use that to map out how I want to approach the rest of this course.

I want to work for a big thinking, modern company like Netflix. Making a service that perfectly matches up what people want with what the technology allows. That would be exciting. I’d also like to be able to use Chinese in my career, because I see the emergence of China as a global power as very similar to the evolution of Technology – facilitating a great change in the way the world works, and in that providing many new and exciting opportunities.

On one hand, I’d like to pick Studies that I enjoy, or that I’m already good at. On the other hand, I’d like to pick ones that I don’t know much about so I can learn about them. But I think ultimately, I should pick whatever gets me closer to that goal.

So I’d like to pick something that has something to do with online video. I’d really like to learn how to work as a producer, so I’ll keep an eye out for a studio where that seems to be an option. Something internationally themed would be great, and I expect RMIT to be pushing this kind of thing. I’ll try to say away from radio, because I don’t expect to have much of a future there. I would enjoy working on a fictional piece like a drama, because I haven’t had many opportunities to do so in a professional environment, so I’d like to try that out.

Whatever choice I make, I know I’ll get the most out of it, and worst comes to worst, there will be a few more studios.

June 2, 2017 Add Comment

Week 12 Lectorial

It looks like the purpose of this lectorial post is to review Media 1. I’m happy to do that.

Technical skills:

It was great that we got to use equipment in our workshops, which I wouldn’t expect to see happen in more theoretical courses. My biggest complaint here is that we didn’t get to do more!

Conceptual/theoretical skills:

I loved learning about the concepts surrounding media theory. Like the practical elements, I would have been happy if we focused on this even more – learned more theories, and went into each of them more deeply.

Ways of working and learning:

I like to figure out ways of working and learning myself, as it is a very personal thing, and it best achieved through experimentation. I feel that we often spent too much time talking about ways of working in learning in Lectorials (like this one), when I would have preferred to have been learning about media theories. I understand that ways of working and learning are a very important skill to learn, but it’s not what I want to be spending my valuable Lectorial/worhsop time at Uni learning about.

A sense of your media practice:

I was happy to get a feel for a few different modes of communication, in particular podcasts, as we listened to a few of these. It would be interesting if our briefs specified where the finished work might (theoretically) end up (TV, Netflix, itunes, etc), as this is very important in the industry and will influence many decisions made throughout the creative process.

June 2, 2017 Add Comment

Week 11 Workshop

In this workshop, Joey and I recorded a radio show taking place in a nuclear bunker hundreds of years in the future, after civilization had fallen apart following hackers exploiting how addicted the world was to their personal devices. It was a good bit of fun, and here’s a reflection:

What I learned about the Audio Editing Process:

I learned how to manipulate audio for certain effects. In particular, I played around with the EQ, changing the levels of each pitch. It was incredible how much of a difference on the sound this had. For the “old radio” effect, a tutorial on YouTube showed me how to take away all of the bass.

I got some good practice using the zoom mic, including experimenting with the direction from which sounds come from.

What worked:

Using the EQ to make the audio sound like it was playing on a radio sounds great.

The recording quality of our voices, before I added in background sound to simulate that of an underground bunker, was incredibly clean and we got the levels right between -12db and -6db.

What didn’t work:

At one point, we accidentally recorded the inverse of what we wanted – when we thought we pressed record, we were actually stopping the recording, and vice versa. I will be careful not to make that mistake again.

We did not record enough background and spot sounds. Sometimes we found something that sounded cool but didn’t get around to recording it. I think we should have recorded everything, just in case we decided to use it.

June 2, 2017 Add Comment

Week 11 Initiative

This week’s reading reminded me of an idea I had as I was drifting off to sleep one day.

The idea was for a casual place for people to hang out in the city. Like Fed Square but indoors and more comfortable. A place to “go” if you don’t feel like going to each other’s houses. Maybe there would be video games around, maybe board games. It would be perfect for making new friends. Oh, and it would be free.

The idea is that it would be funded by advertisers – so almost exactly like the Twin Rivers school of The Attention Merchants. But in the end I realized that there’s probably no way the advertisers would be interested enough, because the people who used the space would not pay enough attention to the advertisements.

Let’s say this social space did exist though. How would people react to it? Would they be disgusted and repelled by the advertising, or would they not mind and be very happy that the place is free? Could the advertising actually have enough of an impression on them that the advertisers would be interested?

If it was done really well, they’d enjoy it. I could make a parallel here between an advertiser sponsored social space and… Disneyland. You go there, and you are totally immersed in what could easily be considered advertising, but it’s awesome. You enjoy it. If the advertisers do enough of a service to you, you’re happy to overlook the fact that they are advertisers.

I am also reminded of a Pokemon themed plane I read about once. It was completely decorated in art of Pokemon, and on the inside, you would receive Pokemon themed toiletries for the long flights, and be served by flight attendants dressed up like the characters of the cartoon. Apparently it was awesome. People were desperate to get onto that plane and it was very well received – people didn’t complain because their flight was full of advertisements. I know I wouldn’t.

If advertisers advertise well, we are MORE than happy to give them our attention.

June 1, 2017 Add Comment

Week 11 Lectorial and Reading

This week’s reading was about how our attention is bought and sold by advertisers. I thought it was a fascinating read. I found the first example given to be the most striking: a school which allows advertisers to advertise within the school, in exchange for the money for the kids’ education which would not have been possible otherwise. As negative as advertising can be, especially when we’re talking about young kinds, the difference between a child having an education and not having an education is enormous.

Linking to the Lectorial which was focused on TV and Netflix, I find it incredible that Netflix has no ads, considering paid TV services of the past did. Not even small ones on the main page. It’s a very “pure” experience, which I believe adds to it’s popularity.

I really had a good think during the Lectorial about the topics discussed, and there was a lot to think about. The main idea was that mass broadcast media like TV had to create one thing that appealed to everyone – and it still does. Cooking shows, renovation shows and pawn store shows seem to be so universally accepted (by my family at least), as they’re so all-inclusive. But if you were just on your iPad and could watch anything, there’s no way you’d choose to watch them. Netflix and other members of the “Online TV Ecology” have created the ability for niche genres to pop up to cater to what certain audiences like.

In the past it was like if 75% of people like cartoons and 25% of people like dramas, cartoons would play on TV. Now, there can very easily be plenty of cartoons and plenty of dramas, because Netflix is not bound by the 24 hours of the day – it’s all just there. Even if only 1% of people like something, or 0.1%, web-based video services are able to provide that content because they are capable of reaching that market. I think this is how things like video game playthroughs have become so popular on Youtube and twitch. They appeal to that niche audience, but that niche audience will spend a lot of time watching that content, and will watch a lot of ads to do so.

June 1, 2017 Add Comment

Week 10 Initiative

I have been listening to a lot of podcasts recently, so I’m going to discuss how they achieve what they achieve through the power of sound.

One, from gamer comedy group Mega64, is very informal. It is in the form of an hour chat between the group of usually around 4 members, and the recording (as well as video) is broadcast live on the streaming platform Twitch, before being uploaded to itunes. The fact that their primary audience, the ones watching them live, can see them, there sometimes refer to visual things that I can’t understand because I am only listening to them. For this reason, it is clearly important to keep your medium in mind when making media products.

The Mega64 podcast has a live producer who will occasionally play sounds to compliment what the group is saying. One of these is a jingle called “is it racist?” played whenever someone says something which could be perceived as slightly racist. It’s hilarious. A huge part of this hilarity is that the music plays directly into the audio of the podcast, unlike the rest of the podcast which you can clearly tell is in a room, from it’s echoes and not-quite-perfect voice quality. So while listening to the podcast you feel like you’re in the room, because the field sounds and the qualities of the figure sounds put you there. And then when you suddenly hear this jingle, it is god-like and pulls you right out of that space. The hilarity comes from this huge disconnect.

Finally, I recently listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History series of podcasts. They’re educational, looking into something in the past that was “forgotten or misunderstood”. Sometimes the episodes felt drawn out, but they generally followed a path that Gladwell slowly took you down, until he reached his final point. The interesting thing about the podcast mode of communication is that, unlike text, the audience doesn’t get to decide how fast they consume it. So on one hand you have to be sure to keep the audience’s attention, but on the other hand, you can keep them listening something which may at first seems irrelevant and uninteresting (but later is a piece in a greater puzzle) because it’s difficult to skim over parts in a podcast – you basically always have your audience’s attention.

June 1, 2017 Add Comment

Week 10 Workshop

In this week’s workshop, we started by discussing Figure, Ground and Field sounds, picking up from the reading. We looked at some photos, and categories the sounds one would hear in those situations into the three categories. What we ended up realising is that… it really depends. Most importantly, in media products such as podcasts, which sounds go into which layers can be easily manipulated by the media practitioner to guide the attention of the listener. A conversation could be the figure, or the announcements, or the sound of the train, each resulting in totally different effects – a conversation you are engaged in being totally muffled by the sound of a train arriving could be disorientating and terrifying.

We went on to listen to a podcast about lobotomies. I found it engaging and interesting. I enjoyed the pacing – words were being said so consistently that seemed like pauses were being taken out, and the pacing remained incredibly consistent throughout the piece. With regards to the structure, I found it very engaging that the effect of the lobotomy on the narrator was not revealed for so long – I felt like I needed to know this to understand the story, and I expected it early on. After hearing horror stories, I was quite confused as to how the narrator seemed to be so well functioning. Only at the end did he give an answer to this question, in the form of saying something was “always missing” and that he was “always suffering”. I found this unsatisfying from a narrative point of view as it was so vague, but it had the effect of conveying that the narrator himself did not fully understand it – he only understood bits and pieces that he had picked up through his research.

June 1, 2017 Add Comment

Week 10 Lectorial and Reading

The reading for this week was very interesting and thorough, and was a great inspiration for my group’s project brief 4. The first chunk of it was regarding how sound creates perspective, including how the social distance between a voice (or any sound) and the one hearing it is established by qualities of the voice (or sound). In general, the louder you get, the greater the social distance (towards public distance), and the softer you get, the lower the social distance (towards intimate distance). I found this interesting because it is counter intuitive – when I’m talking to someone, they’re much louder than the cars driving by behind them, so I have a closer social distance to them than the cars. However, I think the key element here is that the sound or voice in question is always the figure sound – the sound in the foreground, that we are paying attention to. When we hear softer voices, our minds are aware of the fact that we are one of very few people to whom this sound is addressed to, we are one of few people who have this sound in our “figure”. When we hear louder sounds, we know that many more people could have this sound in their figure, so it becomes less intimate.

For this week’s Lectorial, we had the privilege of hosting guest speaker Kyla Brettle. She was very proud of her editing workflow which involved taking all of the footage, moving the usable stuff from that down into a second track, and moving the best stuff from that down into a third track. This is a good idea which has allowed me to better sort out my projects.

In terms of the content of the Lectorial, we listened to podcasts/radio shows Kyla had worked on. They were very engaging, aided by the use of interesting spot sounds, background sounds and effects. After listening to one of them, about adoption, we were asked to list all of the different “perspectives” that we were put into – there were about six of them. Like suggested in the reading, the soundscape and qualities of the sounds themselves enabled us to immediately make connections regarding the meaning of the audio, and also were great for mixing things up, rather than keeping everything one simple voice talking.

Finally, Kyla talked about the recording of night in Kabul that she was able to record, which she has since used in many of her projects. This inspired me to make my own collection of great sounds that I come across, as you really only need a handful of really good bits that you can use over and over.

June 1, 2017 Add Comment

Week 9 Initiative

I have thought a lot lately about the philosophy of ethics and bias in the news (as many have been in the wake of Trump winning). I was pleasantly surprised to find that the reading this week introduced new and fascinating ideas to me about the topic.

First off, it is widely acknowledged that no media product or news source is without bias. Does this make them less trustworthy, less “true”? Potentially. It is also worthwhile to note that people’s understanding of the things they see is very dependant on their past experiences and understanding of the world.

As a bit of a leftie myself, when I read right-wing news and articles, I generally consider them to be untrustworthy, manipulative, and unintelligent. When I read left-swaying news, I am generally more receptive to it and trust it more. I have friends who are strongly on both sides of the political spectrum who feel this effect stronger than I (whether or not they acknowledge it). When Malcolm Turnbull went on a rant about Bill Shorten calling him a “simpering sycophant” among other things, my two opposite learning friends had completely different understandings of the same situation as a result of the different news sources they got their information from.

My capitalism loving friend Matt saw it as Bill Shorten being destroyed and Turnbull being established as a dominant force in Australian Politics. My communism loving friend Jesse understood that the right wing media was making a fool out of themselves by making a big deal about a substanceless hissy fit from Turnbull.

Situations like these, and finding out that my highly intelligent Modern Asia lecturer who I respect greatly is right-leaning, has lead me to re-evaluate my understanding of the world, and do it by researching from as diverse and as respectable sources as I can. My understanding of the world shouldn’t come as the wafting of ideas from buzzfeed onto my newsfeed.

As exciting as this journey to create my own worldview from scratch and without bias has been, I am pretty sure most of the world is not interested or not capable of doing this. It feels like the world is doomed to become more and more polarised and extreme as we all read extremely different news and see the world in completely different lenses (brexit, trump, le pen….).

However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Turnbull’s 2017 budget will be refreshingly left wing, and that the coalition is appealing to more than people like my jokingly self proclaimed fascist friend Matt.

May 11, 2017 Add Comment