Tag Archives: project brief 4

Assessments, Media 1, Workshops

PB4 video essay rough cut and feedback

In today’s Workshop we received some feedback from Louise on our video essay rough cut. As Katrina is doing the first pass edit for our video it was the first chance I got to see what she’d done as well, and I was so happy to see it all coming together. There was still plenty to be done (and our feedback reflected that), but as a draft it was very good and I feel like we are well on the way to a finished essay that comes close to our initial vision.

We wisely decided to cut a whole chunk of content out of the middle of our essay before we even presented the rough cut, because while it was interesting it wasn’t particularly relevant to our thesis. This saved us a lot of editing time and pushed our video down to around six minutes, which is still over the final maximum length but will be easier to cut down than if we’d included that chunk.

Louise’s feedback was that the bones of our essay were good — the structure and argument that we chose was effective and managed to get our point across succinctly. I was happy to hear this because I feel the same way — I think we locked into a good structure early in our discussions as a group and have followed it through to the finished product. She also pointed out that there were several parts that could be trimmed to save time, which we’ve happily done. One of her suggested edits ended up not being possible because later in the essay we refer back to something mentioned in the cut section, so if we wanted to keep one we had to keep both — and we needed to keep the second one. I think this will be a valuable lesson in making sure I have multiple potential “cut points” in my scripts that can be removed depending on how close I am to the desired length. Cutting down a long, stream-of-consciousness script is nearly impossible without losing some coherence.

Like our audio essay feedback this was an incredibly valuable exercise and will result in a much improved final product.

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Assessments, Media 1, Workshops

PB4 audio essay rough cut and feedback

In our Workshop today we presented a rough cut of our PB4 audio essay to our tutor. It was a valuable opportunity to have someone outside our group listen to it and provide unbiased feedback — and I’m glad to say that we seem to be on the right track. However, there are definitely a couple of areas we could improve.

Firstly, the essay is too long. Even without all of the elements we planned to include it was nearly 50% over the maximum length, so we’ll have to do some work to cut that down before submission. I think we can do this without compromising quality or clarity, even though we might have to say goodbye to some “good tape”.

Secondly, we were also advised to include more sound effects and musical cues, to break up the monotony of hearing a single voice talk at length without a break. I completely agree with this note and I’m glad it was brought up at this stage, because we still have plenty of time to search for the right sound effects.

Overall our audio essay is progressing well and we will have the whole thing completed next week. I’m really proud of how it’s turned out and Emily and Kat have been really great to collaborate with — surprisingly, my first group assessment experience has actually been pretty positive!

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Assessments, Media 1

PB4 inspiration

I happened to download this Planet Money episode on class action lawsuits the week we were choosing topics for PB4, so I listened to it with interest hoping to find formal elements we could borrow for use in our own essay. It turned out that Kat and Emily really liked the format too, so we decided that a Hack/Planet Money style podcast would be the perfect format for our PB4 audio essay.

Specifically, the elements we will be using in our audio essay include vox pops, a host providing context and driving the narrative, interviews with expert speakers, and sound effects/musical cues. With such a short production schedule and limited length our essay will necessarily be less in-depth than this Planet Money episode, but I think it’s still a handy model to try to emulate in limited form.

For the video component, Kat brought to the table a fantastic series of essays by PBS called Idea Channel, which “examines the connections between pop culture, technology and art”. There are dozens and dozens of such videos in the Idea Channel stable, and although they have a very particular style and personality (which we won’t be recreating exactly), some of the broader conceptual ideas on which Idea Channel is based will provide excellent reference for our own work.

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Assessments, Media 1

PB4 research

Our initial research into topics we could tackle for PB4 mostly consisted of representations in media:

  • Gender and sexuality
  • Race
    • Comparing the depiction of Aboriginal Australians in media to Maori and First Nation peoples
  • Subcultures
    • Music subcultures, particularly punk and hip hop
    • Skinheads / racists
    • Drug culture
  • Media (i.e. how creators and media technologies have been depicted in media over the history of cinema/television)
  • Technology (i.e. the development of techniques like long takes, jump scares, etc.)
  • Genre / subject matter
    • Musicals and the appearance of musical numbers in non-musical films (e.g. Magnolia, (500) Days of Summer, etc.)
    • Romantic comedy and its reflection of wider societal values
    • Time travel

After this first round of brainstorming we settled on the depiction of drug use and drug users in media, because the subject matter appealed to us and we thought it would be easy to find resources and references in an area that has seen significant research.

The day after we settled on that topic, we discovered an article that discussed the rise of sequels in mainstream American cinema, which appealed to us all as an idea. We decided that we would change the topic of our PB4 essays to non-original narratives, i.e. sequels, prequels and remakes, and trace their rise from basically non-existent in the early days of cinema to practically dominating the box office today.

There is a vast body of research into this area in academia, and there are some incredibly interesting examples and case studies that we could explore. We’ve also already managed to secure interviews with a film journalist, a film producer and a media academic to drive our essays, which will hopefully provide an interesting baseline of opinion to build upon.

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Assessments, Media 1, Workshops

PB4: SWOT analysis

Today we were given Project Brief 4, which is a collaborative portrait of a “media idea”. I’m in a group with Emily and Katrina, and from our first discussion in the Workshop today I can tell I was pretty lucky with the random assignment of group mates because they are both totally switched on. I’m looking forward to seeing what we can achieve.

As part of the group process we’ve been asked to complete a SWOT analysis on ourselves, so here is mine.

SWOT analysis

Strengths: I’m glad we were assigned the Texts & Narrative topic, because I feel like I have a strong working knowledge of media texts (cinema, music, literature, television) and, in particular, the history of film.

Weaknesses: I’m not a super creative person when working alone. I respond best to group brainstorming exercises and feeding off other peoples’ ideas. I also tend to take over if I feel like no one is taking the lead and if I feel strongly about something.

Opportunities: I’d really like to use this project to genuinely collaborate with other people, just to see what the process is like. I’ve seen what I can do if I’m working on my own, so I’m really keen to put our heads together and come up with something that honestly reflects the entire group, rather than just collecting individual contributions and smushing them together.

Threats: I can’t think of any threats in particular. I have a pretty flexible schedule and am happy to travel for meetings and the like, so I hope I’ll be a good group mate logistically.

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