https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx7aFY0gE4m/

1. How did you author (the video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

Before preparing to author my video, I decided to focus on a theme that would guide how I approached the Donald Norman quote. For my creative work I will be looking at hidden doors, which gives me the opportunity to seek out doors in a creative way. I also hope to structure my feed in a cohesive and structured way, possibly by alternating photo and video posts in each row. For this reason I posted a photo from the same location before this post to even out the row of 3.

I authored my video for this week using the Instagram video tool on my iPhone 6s plus, using the rear-facing camera and no flash. It was filmed in one continuous shot, so I simply pressed and held down to record the footage. This method of recording video within Instagram is interesting, as usually I just press the button once on my iPhone camera to record. Therefore it wasn’t something I was used to, but it wasn’t necessarily difficult. My rationale for using one shot was that I wanted to pan across to contrast the two doors to show the full view of the building. In future videos I upload, I would also like to explore the ‘start-stop’ touch feature to record multiple shots. I decided to keep the audio from the original video so as to capture some of the atmosphere in the street. Instagram’s square camera made it somewhat tricky to record video, as it obstructed part of my view of the environment. While this acted as a constraint it encouraged me to be more creative in finding the best angle to frame and record my environment. As part of my authoring process I also chose a ‘cover’ frame as the preview picture for my video, which was the ‘Open’ sign of the store. I found that Instagram doesn’t afford as many adjustments to video as it does photos in terms of filters, however I was able to achieve the look I wanted by adjusting the Gingham filter slider so that it wasn’t too intense. Overall the authoring process was quite different from how I would usually record video, as I had to consider the framing and staging of my shots more carefully.

2. How did you publish (the video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

While preparing to publish the video to my Instagram account, I typed a caption that detailed my thoughts upon coming across this location. I also included a block of hashtags to be included in the caption of my upload. For example, I included basic descriptors like #door, #graffiti, #urban that were specific to the video, as well as groups and locations like #doorstagram, #melbourne and #iphone6s that would attract viewers interested in content to do with Melbourne, doors or IPhone videography. To publish the video, I simply continued with the video I shot within the app and posted this with the caption and hashtags I provided. The video also plays automatically as the default, which I find works well as the it loops between the two doors shown.

3. How did you distribute (the video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?

To distribute my Instagram posts to two other social media services, I linked my account to both Twitter and Tumblr. I also customized these pages with a link to redirect and boost traffic to my Instagram account. I found that while I could cross-post to Twitter with every Instagram upload, I had to upload the post manually to my Tumblr blog, as the blog I’m using is a side blog. This wasn’t too difficult as I’m able to upload links through Tumblr to direct users to my Instagram account. On Tumblr, I also copied across the tags from my original Instagram post to its tags section. The hashtags in my caption on Instagram also helped to distribute my post to a larger audience, so I was surprised at how quickly I started getting likes from different accounts.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexanxraz

Tumblr: http://hidden-doorway.tumblr.com