Narrative

  • Experience of having stories read to us as children.
  • Narrative relates to everything
  • What seperates us from animals.
  • Story is a way structuring existance, and chosing bits.
  • Narratvie is anything that is a retelling of events, casuality.

Cause and effect (cant fly from Perth to Broome without being in Perth)

3 key elements

  • Character development (takes time, present audience with number of situations in which they can respond to, so that audiance can learn how the work)
  • plot (skeleton of the story, usually written briefly with simple sentences)
  • resoltuion (dictated by the events that take place during the plot, as well as character development and how different people reacted to plot)

“The stuff of story is alive but intangible”

everything is story _ Story is everyithing

 

 

 

 

Second Meeting minutes

Minutes

 

  • Progress report on annotated bibliography
  1. Sandy – a bit behind because I was sick, but will be done by tomorrows class.
  2. Kristian – done
  3. Ali – done
  • Spitballed ideas for brief, including a mockumentory about video games as a medium, looking at GTA and how it incorportates many mediums, as well as looking at Red Dead Redemtion and L.A Noire as games reviving “dead” genres in a new medium.

 

Our definitions of “Medium”

  • Sandy: The different formats that artists can use to convey their message.
  • Kristian: A channel of common intercommunication across avenues such as print, visuals and sound
  • Ali: Communication tools that can change the perspective of the masses.
  • Talked about the general summary of our bibliography

 

We will further discuss what our artifact will be tomorrow in class with Racheal for advice.

 

End of meeting.

Collaboration

This weeks topic was collaboration, I have traditionally disliked collaborating because I have had bad experiences with group projects in the past. However I do see the potential value in collaboration when working on a media artifact.

Collaboration can be used to insert multiple ideas, as well as gather criticism and feedback internally from a source other than the eventual audiance.

Fandoms

In this weeks media lectorial, the topic was “audiences”. This brought up many interesting topics, such as the concept of “The Masses” and how the methods audiences receive media is changing with time.

One section which stood out for me personally was the concept of Fandoms, or groups of extreme fans of a particular media entity (for example a TV or Movie series or a particular Band).

What is interesting is that being part of a fandom can become a large part of someones identity, for example:

  • Trekkies
  • Whovians
  • Potter Heads (this one makes me laugh everytime I hear it)
  • Bronies
  • etc….

These groups usually operate via online forums dedicated to their collective interest, sometimes it can be a dedicated standalone forum or it can also be a part of a larger online community (for example a Sub-Reddit, or a Tumblr, or a Facebook page). Or in many cases a plethora of forums across the internet, with standalone and setting up groups on many major social network platforms.

Being part of a fandom has traditionally been associated with negative connotations. However, attitudes towards people expressing their love of particular media has grown more positive in recent years, likely due to the rapid rise in social media.

There are also fans who dipise the assocaited fandoms, “I love xxxxx, but I cant stand xxxxx fanss” is a common phrase to hear across social media landscapes, as people grow frustrated and ostracised from Fan groups because of differing opinons on acceptable behaviour to the majority, or being well outside the age bracket that makes up most of the fandom.

Noticing aspect ratios being changed to fit screens – Mad Max 2

Continuing from my previous post, I have continued to take extra notice of how non-standard aspect ratios are converted to fit onto TV.

This particular noticing involved George Millers 1981 film Mad Max 2 (also known as The Road Warrior, or Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior). In excitement for the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road I decided to re-watch the originals over the weekend on Blu-ray.

I noticed it was also on TV Sunday night, and I compared the differences.

On Blu-ray the film is in 2.40:1 letter box aspect ratio, while the version broadcast on television was full screen at 16:9. This meant that the edges of the screen were missing.

While nothing super important was cut off the side of the screen, it still messed up a few shots: Near the beginning of the film, on Blu-ray you can read the signpost, but on TV it was almost entirely off-screen.

Another example was in an overhead shot which had Max walking across the screen to investigate the parked Gyrocopter, the copter is half off-screen, whereas it was fully onscreen in the original aspect ratio.

In the final chase sequence multiple cars which were fully in view on Blu-ray were partially obscured on TV.

I personally found it very disappointing, and I wish TV broadcasters would show content as the creator intended. It also raised another question: Why do 4:3 programs get black (or blurred copy’s of the image) to fill excess space, but anything wider than 16:9 is cropped to fit

Week 8 Tutorial – Hopes and dreams destroyed :(

In week 8s tutorial, we brainstormed ideas for Project Brief 4.

 

Because our topic is Medium, we thought it would be a good idea to present our artefact should be presented in a multi-medium form.

 

We listed every different medium we could think of, and thought of different ways we could present our Project. We unanimously agreed that the best way to showcase a multidude of mediums was a website.

The idea was to have a website with multiple Tabs each focusing on a different medium. On each tab there would be several embedded artefacts, such as videos, images, sound-clips, etc….

 

Each “thing” would display what embodies that particular medium in a creative and interesting way. Some ideas we through around were: a short (2-3 minutes) film that showcases what makes cinema different from other mediums. Another idea was a different video showcasing the medium of television: it would be different to the cinema by being a different aspect ratio, and shot in a newscast style and break to advertisements to showcase Televisons uniqueness as a medium.

Other ideas included recording a 2 minute audio clip that was a fake radio show to showcase Radio as a medium, and having a photo gallery showing off that medium.

We also listed down the main types of medium, and dot-pointed the main points about each one.

We were very enthusiastic, and everything seemed to be going well and our ideas looked to be shaping into a tremendous Project Brief.

But alas, tragedy struck:

When we eagerly showed our mind-map of ideas to Rachel, we expected a resounding complements and encourage meant to pursue our ambitions. However instead we were greeted with “em, maybe not…….”

We discussed with Rachel and she was of the opinion that our Project Idea was too broad, and too big for the time allotted. That we should narrow down and focus on either how different mediums could be used to show a single Media text or an in depth analysis of a single Medium.

This was quite disheartening, but we managed to get some new (and simpler) ideas that we will research and discuss on our Weekly meeting next Monday.

Until then: Back to the drawing board.

First meeting Minutes

Project Brief 4 minutes

 

MEETING ONE

  •      Idea for doing a website. (Because unique, and can incorporate multiple mediums into it).
  •      Annotated bibliography, doing 2 types of medium each.
  •      Sandy – Video Games and Cinema
  •      Kristian – Radio and Social Media
  •      Ali – mobile phones and TV
  •      Filled out Collaborative Contract.

Decided what we are all going to have completed by the next meeting.

Sandy-edit and refine the collaborative contract ready for submission.

Kristian-research methods of hosting a website for the final Media artifact.

Ali-Draft some creative ideas of how to present the information/ideas in a website format.

In addition: everyone will find 6 references in their chosen 2 mediums, as well as each coming up with a definition of Medium.

-end of first meeting.

Feedback for Project Brief 3

People said it was mostly well done. Everyone enjoyed the humorous bits and suggested that I make the video more humorous throughout. The only technical criticism people had was sometimes the audio was inconsistant and the effects made it hard to hear in some bits.

 

Here is the rest of my groups Projects

Daniel

Tim

Jac

Haylee

All the Project briefs were very different, and all offered something to add to my own.

 

 

 

Project Brief 3

This is my Media Portrait.

Written Reflection for Project_Brief_3


My Media Portrait was of Georgie Kemshal-Bell, a friend of mine. I asked her to be the subject of my assignment because I thought she was interesting and had a personality suitable for making an interesting video (I will also admit, partly because she is one of the few people I know in Melbourne).

 

I am fairly happy with the final product, although there are a few issues that I wish could have been improved. Producing the Media Portrait was troublesome, mostly due to scheduling conflicts which limited the amount of time I could spend with Georgie. This meant it was not really a true “interview” but rather quite scripted and filmed over roughly a week. Although in my opinion, this “artificialness” doesn’t negatively impact the finished product, everything in the video is still Georgie’s opinion, except that the wording was timed and structured around fitting it with the footage already recorded. I am happy with how the finished product turned out, as during editing it was a series of completely isolated clips, one technical flaw is in order to have footage match narration, I had to leave un-cut video run and I am visible turning off the camera.

 

My biggest regret is the lack of Found Footage, I found it incredibly hard to find anything that matched our narrative, so almost everything was shot specifically for this video. The Found Footage I did use, was various music clips, and some rain. The “Dance music” was needed for the scene, and the other audio clip gave an ominous vibe which was intended for the at night shot, but I felt it worked well enough to continue to the end of video. The Rain was in-actuality me desperately trying to find anything that fit in order to add more to meet requirements.

 

I also became quite frustrated with the limited editing software of iMOVIE, having to abandon much of my initial ideas of editing. I will attempt to acquire a more advanced program soon.

 

Bibliography:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A%D0%94%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B9%D0%BD%D0%BE_%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C.ogg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFL_Studio_loop.ogg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A20141103Regen.ogv