- In what ways do you hope your screenings/exhibited/screened work (whether individual or group produced) engaged its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio?
The digital media platform Tools For Change came from a desire to create content about mental issues and share it through the social media platform Instagram. The message we wanted to spread is that it is completely normal not being in your best mental state, it is important to look after yourself and understand that never, before in history, we have been receiving so much information in a short period of time, and sometimes we need to slow down and take a break to take care of our own emotions and feelings. I hope we could engage our audience with the topics we covered such as self-care, self-awareness, family issues, and international students.
- Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it into a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why?
If I was keep working on the mental health platform, I would expand for Facebook and podcast digital platforms. Podcast is a great media source to talk about sensitive topics in a casual way. Many of the information that I search comes through podcast episodes about interviewing experts in area and sharing people’s own experiences and perspectives. We are all here to learn and I believe the best way to learn is listening to people’s own experience.
- Fromyour studio, reflect on an aspect of two other students/group’s media work on the website in terms of specific insights they produced about a key idea addressed by the studio?
Influencers Illuminate, their purpose is investigating Social Media Influencer Culture and Personal Branding, focusing how much an influencer can influence their audience, what society think about influencers, and how they got such a position. Their methodology was creating one Instagram account to report their insights and the other one to explore their knowledge from their research. Honestly, I think it was a brilliant idea because we could follow statistically how they interacted with other social medias based on which target audience they aimed to reach.
Looking at the posts and questions posed by Unfiltered Insta, incited me into reflect on how much we submit ourselves to an online social standard. Editing photos, even if is only adjusting lighting so that the photo looks more authentic, only meets my criteria on how quality pictures should look, or that I’ve been influenced to believe, through the content I consume, or through the social networks, traditional media or by my social circle.
Both projects showed me that social media works in both pathways, whether I influence, but also be influenced, and that these decisions are based on what are my interests online, I can follow a hashtag and based on that I will receive this specific content on my social media, being influenced indirectly. Or I can follow people that will influence more directly on my social behaviour.
- For theother studio website you engaged with, describe a key idea that you think the finished media/studio work communicated with reference to a specific example (i.e. a particular individual/group work)
In a society where men still dominate the film scene, it’s hard to stand out in the industry because of gender-based obstacles. The studio Women beside the screen works to share the successes and struggles of women in the film industry, encourage and support more women to enter the workforce and change the statistics, making this media industry more accessible and accepted.
The project Looking for Changes walk through Gabrielle Stanway thought about how many young women feel anxious about not fitting in a dominant male market and not being accepted for being a female, as her being one of them. She uses statistics to express why does she feel anxious, but she found her way out once she finds a tape of the director and filmmaker Sue brooks, who shares her journey through filmmaking industry and how she overcame the idea of being a woman in a male dominant industry to think as sharing her ideas and inspirations through what she liked to do, filmmaking.
I personally perpetuate with Sue mindset based on my own working experience in different areas.
I work behind the bar, which still is considered a male dominant job, especially in my country, and having the experience and knowledge let me understand that my experience working in the field for the past couple years made me get confident enough to understand that will have many guys that comes to the bar and think they would do my job better just because they are a man and living in a patriarchal society will give them privileges, however, is in my mindset to believe that they would portray better or not, and this what Sue explains in her ‘videotape’ interview regarding the film industry. In the end, your vision and experience will make you fit in the industry.
