Unfortunately I was sick for today’s workshop and completely missed out on showing our rough-cuts to some industry professionals who surely would have had some super useful advice for me and my group. I thought I’d take this opportunity to get out there a little bit of what we’ve done so far!

The Script:

I’m super happy with how it all turned out so far, our rough cut finishes at “Do people even mind their attention is being mislead?”. We’re unclear on whether or not we’re going to go ahead with the interview because we’re already at the 7 minute mark, but I really hope we find a way to incorporate the quote. Can’t wait to get this finished!

The rough cut:

It’s our last lecture of the semester and honestly I’m a little sad about it all being over! I know I’ll see everyone again but every semester is different. We’ve finished off the semester with some useful information and some really friendly advice.

First of all, remember to back up audio work! – Always remember to continuously back up all work-in-progress for the final assessment. We should be saving our work after any major edits and backing them up on a separate drive just in case there’s a worst case scenario.

Questions!

• What and how did you learn that you think was really valuable?

Over the course of this semester I’ve learnt so many different little things about being a media operator that I can barely list them all. There are a few things, though, that were most valuable to me and that I know I won’t forget as I continue through each semester. The first, which really made me think about what sort of media operator I want to become, was something Liam said to us in one of our tutes. He explained that he went through university studying media editing, and he afterwards he got a job as an editor. Rather than what he had imagined doing as a professional editor, he was editing work safe videos that showed how to correctly lift boxes without injuring your back and he said that he completely hated it. It just goes to show that what you like most about media or what area you think you might want to focus on might not necessarily be the one that suits you the most. I took this advice as a way to give myself a break – I don’t need to know exactly what I want to do, and I think the best way for me to figure out what I’d like to pursue the most is to let everything fall into place over time, so I end up doing something that I’m not only good at, but that I actually know I could enjoy.

• What did you find the most challenging about the course?

The most challenging part of the course, and this is a bit of a cliche, was keeping up with the workload. I never had a lot to do at any given time, but the fact that I thought I didn’t have much to do gave way to me procrastinating A LOT. This obviously lead to me having a lot more to do in a much shorter period of time which made the course a lot more challenging and overall my work a lot less detailed. If I gave myself time to write everything down as I went and to finish work straight away, I would have had a lot more time to relax and be able to be more creative with my ideas and possibly do a little bit more media making in my spare time. I could have definitely focused a little bit more on the little things such as readings to make it easier for myself – as I’d constantly be on top of my work load and be able to be a little bit more chill about assessments and due dates.

• What have you discovered about your own creative practice as a media maker?

I’ve discovered that my own creative process definitely needs work. Every time I’ve had to try and come up with a succinct idea for an assessment I’ve had at least 10 different ideas that all didn’t quite fit the brief and none of them that I was completely happy with. This happened over and over. I need to find some sort of system to condense all of my ideas into something I can happily work with. I’m never happy with any ideas, and therefore when I pursue something and start filming/recording and actually making it, I’m putting less effort in because I simply don’t have the passion for my idea that I should. At the end of the day, I can usually fill the gaps in my ideas as I go along, but I definitely need to work on my planning process if I want to create work at a much higher level of quality.

Course objectives! (Good to know)

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

-Analyse and discuss media objects in terms of disciplinary frameworks.

-Analyse and evaluate your own learning styles.

-Explore and use a range of production technologies to make media.

-Reflect upon and explain your creative choices in individual and group contexts.

Things to do over the break

•start an online portfolio

•relax and keep making stuff (because it’s fun)

Don’t forget about studios!

ATTENTION!!!!

Based on the prompt and some very brief brainstorming, we somehow very quickly came to the idea of creating a podcast about Facebook. It’s all what we immediately thought of when discussing attention and the different ways our attention is held by media around us. Such a huge majority of young people use Facebook constantly, and whether or not we are posting or commenting we are all constantly trawling through it and passively consuming a huge amount of information – Facebook is holding our attention and feeding us constant streams of rubbish without us even realising it. Even if you do realise it, we’re powerless to the algorithms of the website and the way it manipulates us to be constantly engaged by not very engaging things such as other people’s holiday photos or memes that our friends are constantly sharing. The algorithm that I mentioned, actually filters things our of your feed that you might not find interesting and allows your own Facebook feed to be a personalised reflection of you, your own values and the things you might like to see. If you choose to hide some things from your feed, Facebook has learnt what you might not be interested in, and if you’re tagged in photos frequently by your friend Tom, Facebook may assume that you and Tom are pretty close friends and show you a lot more of what Tom is posting than, lets say, your weird Uncle that you added 5 years ago. Not many people really think about it, and that’s what most good podcasts present – an idea or a new perspective on something we think we already know about. Diving further into the issue, we decided to focus specifically on fake news, giving us an opportunity to talk about how our attention is more easily captured by entertainment news, left wing news and opinion articles – or generally news that might be funnier and more interesting but not necessarily important (and most shockingly) not always true. Some information we pay attention to on Facebook are right out lies.

I’ve already found some great sources that cleverly explain the many intricacies of fake news on Facebook and it’s effect on the public and even the US election.

Here, here, here, and here.

Can I have your attention please! – A sound exercise

A work that creatively explores the idea of our individual obsession and attachment to personal media devices.

The exercise must include:

• A narrator
• Scripted/unscripted dialogue (2 separate characters with around 3 lines each)
• Atmospheric sound
• Spot sounds
• Music
• Sound FX

Here’s what we accomplished in a little over an hour with the Zoom H2n 🙂

Today we had a guest lecturer from the School of Media and Communication, Dr Ramon Lobato on television, streaming and audience fragmentation.

It was super insightful to actually see the evolution of the TV industry so plainly broken down. Viewers now have almost all control of their own media environment, and have access to their own hyper-personalised version of viewing through subscriptions such as Netflix. Viewers are now immersed in media consumption rather than distracted by broadcasted and scheduled television which isn’t customisable or accessible as Netflix. As a heavy Netflix user I find it really interesting how much the way we consume media has evolved, and how despite the fact that we all think that we’re now choosing what we consume, Netflix still has a way of exposing a huge audience to the same hit Netflix original series through personal recommendations that feel authentic and non-invasive.

Whenever I think of Netflix nowadays, I always end up on the issue of the recent series 13 Reasons Why. The show deals with a fictional death of a teenager named Hannah Baker who commits suicide. Before the act, she records 13 cassette tapes each detailing every moment that added up to her making the decision to take her own life. Although many events in her life were tragic, the way suicide is portrayed in the series is pretty taboo, and the fact that Netflix is so widely accessible for people of all ages who own a laptop or computer is why it’s caused such a stir. The show is accused of normalising and legitimising reasons for committing suicide, which in the case of Hannah Baker are often her friends at her high school treating her badly and talking behind her back – something which many many people may experience as a teenager and which is definitely not a legitimate reason for attempting suicide. The main draw back of it in my opinion is that the show does nothing to suggest that young people in a similar situation should try to seek help nor does it offer any sort of advice for people going through similar things – it merely shows that Hannah ‘didn’t have a choice’ and her ’13 reasons why’ were enough for her to justify such an awful act. The proliferation of this sort of online media and it’s accessibility is a fairly new thing, and has caused many changes in the way we can monitor what kids are able to watch, and what sort of media we readily access. Many schools across Melbourne for instance have sent home letters warning parents of 13 Reasons Why and the damage it could cause through the misrepresentation of suicide for their children who may be experiencing similar anxieties at high school.

Anyway, rant over.

“Radiolab is a show about curiosity. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience.”

If there’s one thing that gives me a huge amount of inspiration for our upcoming assessment it’s Radiolab. I’ve listened to every single one of their episodes and have been keeping up-to-date with everything Radiolab for years now. Obviously, I find their podcasts extremely entertaining – they are informing and engaging and cover such a wide range of different issues such as “worth”, “bliss”, “colours” and they’ve even made really simple breakthroughs in modern science sound incredible – it’s all about the perspective they present on issues and their use of sound to engage the listener. Obviously, I’m going to try to employ every aspect of what makes Radiolab’s podcasts SO good in my own in an attempt to create something super engaging. The best part is that so many of Radiolab’s podcasts seem as if they are so fun to create, because as they are researching topics and speaking to industry experts they are learning and meeting new people whilst piecing it all together. I hope to have a similar experience that will shine through the final piece so that it can also be fun and relatable – too bad I don’t have a charming American accent.

Here are some of the features of their podcasts that I’d love to try and include:

• Expressions of disbelief – “That can’t be true”, “Wow!”, “Now this blew me away..”, “No way” – Their podcasts are always somewhat conversational, and they structure their stories as if one of the hosts is explaining it to the other so that the exclamations of shock and excitement from the host being taught in the podcast ends up being similar to the way that we react to the issue as we’re listening.
• Involvement of expert opinion and industry professionals
• Humor! Even in some of the blandest stories they can always have a laugh about some part of it, the entire thing always feels very down to earth
• Back & forth conversation – again, the episodes are very conversational which is a more engaging way to present information rather than one person simply reading aloud, it gives the opportunity to include more ‘human’ things like humor, emotion and excitement about topics to stimulate interest.
• On field recordings – “Okay, so here we are at Facebook headquarters with Mark Zuckerberg”
• Compilations of recordings such as news readings or people talking, layering of sound
• Build up and music/SFX that create suspense or emotion
• Sound repetition
• Posing questions, and then answering them. “Why are we all so attached to our phones?”

Everything considered, and our the prompt of Project Brief 4 being ‘attention’ – this podcast is a great example of the different ways our attention is manipulated by the staff of Facebook, or as Radiolab describes them – the Trust Engineers.

In today’s workshop we listened to ‘My Lobotomy’: Howard Dully’s Journey

By far the best part of this workshop was watching Liam squirm every time they explained the process of an ice-pick going through someone’s eye. But to be fair, it was pretty confronting. I actually never legitimately gave faith to the fact that people were really lobotomised, that it was legal, and basically just how f*ing messed up it is. For those reading, a transorbital lobotomy (the kind of lobotomy that they’re discussing in the podcast) was a practice done in the middle 20th century. It was a form of brain surgery, where an ice-pick was forced through the eye socket to pierce the frontal lobe. This practice basically “mixed around” brain tissue, changing the person’s personality traits and brain chemistry (Sort of like Phineas Gage’s case) and was done to treat people with mental illness. It’s absolutely crazy.

This podcast was some what meloncholic, and displayed a lot of grief from people involved in Walter Freeman’s experiments but eventually ended with Howard seeking closure and forgiving his father for ever allowing his lobotomy to take place. The entire thing was very wholesome and somewhat satisfying despite how gross the idea of lobotomy actually is.

Immediately though, while listening to the podcast I could only think of a movie I’ve seen a hundred times; Shutter Island.

This was the first real representation of lobotomy I’ve ever seen in media, and it happens to be set in the 1950s precisely when these sort of experiments were taking place. To make matters worse, the lobotomies in the movie were experiments done in secret on mental patients at an abandoned lighthouse on an island that was a large-scale jail for the criminally insane. Scary stuff.

The movie plays on the entire idea of lobotomy – the fact that those who have undergone a lobotomy often don’t remember the procedure suggests that the main protagonist has just had mind-altering surgery and has in fact been crazy all along. And the fact that mentally stable people may be forced into insane asylums, or into having a lobotomy despite being completely sane – the act of lobotomy then alters their mind to a point where they may in fact be insane afterwards. Therefore, anyone’s crazy in the lobotomy game – it’s merely a tool to control people which is exactly what is demonstrated as Freeman’s main motive as a ‘crazy scientist’ in My Lobotomy.

Writing in sound~

Today we listened to an extremely intriguing piece of audio based on the act of calling 000 and the Victorian ambulance service. The description for this piece stating that Les Dougan (A 000 call taker) – “guides us through this world and explores its unique perspective on the city of Melbourne and the ceaseless chaos of life and death.”

Immediately – just from this simple summary you can already imagine that this podcast is going to be really confronting. How are we “guided” by sound? How can we be shown a new perspective through sound? And how can sounds be used to demonstrate something as emotive as “the ceaseless chaos of life and death?”

This is going to be great for ideas.

• It begins with, “Most people have never called 000” – drawing in the audience and creating suspense
• The narrators voice is incredibly emotive as she talks about how hard it would be “to find your best friend not breathing”
• Intense and confronting
• Takes us “Down the wires and across the airwaves”
• Extremely emotive – use of sad music, the extended hang up sound effect after calls invokes a lot of emotion and really puts you in the call receivers shoes – especially if they hung up before giving an address etc.
• Lots of use of repetition and sound effects
• Real “on-field” recordings and calls – makes the whole thing feel very real
• Everyday there are almost 800 emergency events in Melbourne alone – interesting facts
• Amazing use of sound to demonstrate the stress of working as an ambulance call receiver

I loved the way when Les Dougan was speaking, they have muffled chatter in the background. It creates a strong visual for the listener as he’s been pulled away briefly from his hectic job to have a quick word to the interviewer – and suggests that the calls never stop. It makes him seem like he is in an extremely busy office yet he’s talking very calmly. Similarly, the constant repetition of receivers asking “Ambulance, where’s your emergency?” edited together and overlapping makes the space feel like an extremely intense call centre and again creates a strong visual – demonstrating the “ceaseless chaos of life”.

Kyla Brettle’s advice on putting an audio piece together (Super helpful advice)

• Don’t try to run with one leg – ensure you have AT LEAST two textures to work with.

• Forget everything you thought you were going to do with the story – instead, work with the material you have. Use the ‘Kyla Brettle’ method of laying your rushes out on the timeline, familiarlising yourself with the content and selecting the ‘juice’.

• Identify the two most powerful bits of content you have – it might be a spoken description or idea, a bit of audio trash, a moment in an exchange that feels somehow charged, a sound that makes your hair stand on end… ideally you want to put your second best bit of content at or up close to the front of the piece and your best bit at the climax which is close to or at the very end of a short piece … listen to it – this reveals what what your program is ‘about’ – your next task is to then plot the best path between ‘a’ and ‘b’

• In your first draft don’t bother with any exposition (unless it comes to you unbidden and slots in easily) – don’t tell us their name or age or where they live – cut straight to the action and the most interesting content you have… generally, we go into stories thinking we need more exposition and background and set up than is actually required – you always want to keep content like this to a minimum and only tell when it is needed. Listening to exposition can be a bit like waiting for a bus.

• Your task is essentially to break the content up into chunks – a chunk might be a scene – or it might be a single point or idea – if a chunk starts getting too complex with too many ideas it usually means the chunk needs to be split… a chunk must pull it’s weight – if it doesn’t add enough to the whole – cut it – pieces usually get better rather than worse when they are ‘pruned hard’

• When working the soundscape of a piece – try to think of ideas other than putting in the sound of a train when someone mentions a train – try to be more subtle than that – introduce the train sound earlier so that we anticipate it in the text and it sticks out more … try to be creative with associations and collections of sound

• Music is an important part of radio features – but it is just as important when we don’t hear to when we do – and there are MANY different ways to use music

• Save drafts – don’t rely on back up drafts. When you feel like you have reached the end of a ‘stage’ in the edit – ‘save as’

• Leave time at the end to ‘clean it up’ – softening the transition from one voice to another – and do a mix ensuring the levels are more or less the same. Check the track after you have transferred it and before you deliver.

Zoooooom

Learning how to use new equipment is always a bit daunting, I feel like so many times I’ve learnt the basics of programs and camera equipment that we’ve used so far but never developed an in-depth understanding of them or their different features that I could have used to make my work perhaps, slightly better. I’m giving learning Audition a hard crack, so why not try and become a pro at the initial recording too. Today I decided I would really focus and try to grasp the best way we could use the Zoom microphone for our podcast to capture super crisp sound. Here goes nothing.

This are some notes on our little in class tutorial on how to use the mic. I was hearing a lot of terms I didn’t recognise, but all in all got a pretty good idea of the different features that will be important when we’re recording.

Also! Super handy – the Dummy’s guide to the Zoom Handy Recorder H2n posted on the Media 1 blog.

The things I really want to focus on before we get started creating our next assessment are:

1. Learning how to reduce background noise from the microphone in Audition
2. Learning how to reformat the microphone (deleting everything after use)
3. Getting a little better at editing audio in general in Audition and changing volume (fade ins/outs, overlapping audio and different volume levels such as background music etc. – this is all stuff we’ll surely include in our podcast)

Collaboration with others can be tricky – you have to try and forge a sense of group identity and flesh out what you actually want to achieve. For every subject I’m doing we’re doing group projects that are due in the next couple of weeks, so planning will be extremely important to make sure that I can manage my work load with those that I’m working with.

It’s easiest to break down project management into 5 steps:

1. Initiating
2. Planning
3. Executing
4. Monitoring
5. Closing

Each person in a group should also be managing each of the following aspects for effective collaboration:

• Timelines & Deadlines
  • Someone should be creating a calendar like timeline, organising when each group member should get certain things done to make sure everyone is doing their part and everyone feels comfortable with the amount of time they have to complete certain aspects of the project.
• Research & data collection
  • Someone should be investigating useful articles/readings and finding useful information for the group.
• Readings and note taking
  • Someone should be in charge of finding and breaking down readings for use in the project and referencing
• Storytelling, structure and script
  • Someone should be in charge of structuring the project, having many people in a group can make collaborative work seem disjointed – this person allocates what each person is doing to make sure there is no repetition, and the script of the work to ensure it’s entertaining and involves some sort of narrative.
• Putting together slides (if needed)
  • Someone should be creating visuals etc. if needed.
• Intergroup communication
  • Someone should set up an open chat (Facebook) and be actively communicating with everyone to make sure that everyone knows their place and does their part. This would typically involve a collaborative Google doc or similar.