This weeks readings focuses on the incorporation of social media into everyday life and media itself, incorporated by institutions to to create greater inter-connectivity between platforms and broaden the reach between a product or text. With the integration of advertising and endorsement of media within social media, the way we access and consume modern media has substantially changed; opting to use social media as the main source of customer interaction and preference for advertisement in a bid to expand their viewing demographic, many broadcasting services have either flourished or greatly diminished in power of the last few years. Partially due to their acceptance of change, their reluctance or even their inability due to legal constraints in blurring the line between social and public commercialization.  Having surpassed this initial awkward phase of integration, media based institutions have seamlessly incorporated themselves into our everyday lives with every like, tweet, favourite or hashtag.

I consider video games to be a huge part of modern media, being a highly immersive text, but regardless of my taste in games or my standpoint on them… THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE A GOOD TRAILER. Despite being short, which likely helped it, this was a fun trailer to watch. It showed a great amount of content without revealing too much of the product and it looked cinematically gorgeous.
Some trailers are made to confuse with mystery, some are made to seem intriguing, some are made to be funny, somber, aggressive, fun. This trailer was made to be exciting. (And it’s always fun to have trailers that are cut in time with their accompanying music, I love that, particularly when the music is purposely MADE fort he trailer.)
It may just be the pretty colours, flashy lights, deep tones and textures which I find subconsciously appealing, like war based Candy Crush, but I’ll be damned if I say that I didn’t enjoy this trailer.

This week’s workshop was interesting to me as that we delved into the exploration of media audience as well as the institution that is media now; going through history back to the inception of the printing press and its effects on both media and audiences alike to how media is consumed today. In this, we further went into how are views are changed by media, looking at the Middle East as an example of how coverage of incidents over there from pro and anti-terrorism outlets can assume the existence of both a passive and active audience.
But what about the Western world? Audience participation in media has long been debated as to what effect it may yield, yet we participate in media more ways than most of us realise: television ratings, social media chatter, internet voting, even complaints/aggregation act as hard evidence now that audience has power over media and how we have the ability to change how it is produced. The reception and production of media has changed as that how we access media has changed.

This weeks readings showed how the definition of the word ‘audience’ has changed over the last few centuries; from ‘to give hearing’, a small group of people to bare witness, to the modern term of a mass group of people whom consume texts in various ways, regardless of presence. It was fascinating to see how the ‘audiences’ have changed in relation to the progression and advancement of media.
This got me thinking a few things; what will define an audience in the future? Or have we already peaked in terms of how we are defined? Can we control what we are an audience to?More and more it seems harder to do this as that we are constantly surrounded texts, consuming it both consciously and subconsciously.  Additionally, if we watch something once do we count as an audience? Technically yes – regardless of how long something is viewed for, whether it be on TV or YouTube (or any other viewing platform) viewings are counted, so will this come into account and add onto how an audience is defined?

Food for thought!

Personally, last weeks’ workshop really helped kick off the study for me. Prior to the workshop I was mostly just rummaging through old notes and coming up with what I already knew to write down and see what ideas and concepts I could create, and whilst that did help, I found that I was becoming limited within my field; needing external resources and information if i wanted to get anywhere with this assignment.
Which is why this workshop helped me, all of us really, so much. By actually allocating time to specifically go out my my way to research others’ notes and studies, I was able to see far more compelling arguments, theories and see concepts within those to base the assessment off.

My head hurts. I need to blog more. Get back on this thinking train and put on my conductors hat to go to the destination where poor wording and bad analogies go to die.

God damn. So it’s 3 in the morning as I write this and I’ve just returned home from seeing the midnight screening of Captain America: Civil War. To not be a total turd and spoil the movie I won’t be talking about the movie itself, but rather the experience of it.
I absolutely loved tonight. Everything about it just felt magical. The buzz in the air as people queued to buy their food, the electric anticipation of the audience as they restlessly seated themselves, even the cheers from the crowd as the lights began to dim. There was so much love and care on either sides of this project, from the millions who adored the film, to those who spent countless hours to see their dreams come to life. It helped remind me of why I chose this course (not that I needed a reminder). I want to further become involved in projects the likes of this in hope that one day I can enter a cinema and pass by people dressed as their favorite characters, eyes glued to the screen in awe, and see how something I created could make someone happy. To be able to look back and say “Hell yeah I made that.” Without intent to sound like a fanboy here, but its one of the reasons I love the Marvel films – they do have their flaws, yes, but they’re dedicated to their audience. They have fun with their films and in turn so do we.
It makes you appreciate the power and the effect that cinema has over people. It can appall us, excite us, influence, drive us, educate us or entertain us. This stuff is nifty. All hail film!… and sleep. Which I’ll try to get now…. took too long to write thisobvlnc.;s.v……

Holly Karass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOd3rxlM5Hkc

I rather enjoyed the found footage musical number at the beginning of your interview, to me it really helped set up the light hearted and happy tone of what was to come.  It was well edited which attributed to the clean flow of the film, having seamless transitions between questions.

Sam Harris 

Sam’s video is humble, neat, and very well composed. I like how you matched the found footage to be relevant to what he was saying, showing images from the given era. The interviewee was well chosen and presented a rich story with a nice moral.

Penelope Amanatidis

To put it simply, this video is inspiring; showing how a change of heart and how taking chances can lead to great things. The care, interest and passion for this video really presented itself, from the connection to the interviewee to the quality of care in this construction of the video itself,  to me, increased its worth and meaning ten fold.

Isobell Roberts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo3sDyLrLQE&feature=youtu.be

It’s always interesting to be presented with a perspective that is seldom seen, and that is exactly what this video does. Speaking for many (not all) students, it’s easy to get caught up in your own world with little thought to similar and yet starkly different lives of your own teachers, so it was nice for this film to explore that.

https://vimeo.com/163537883

Here it is! It took many an hour to upload but it is finally here! I present to you, my PB3!

This project has presented me with a lot of new challenges. Unlike with previous works of mine, both in and out of schooling, I had had near complete control over what was happening before and behind the camera, whereas with this interview, I had found myself without much power. In fact, it wasn’t until I began editing that I realized what little control I had during production. In other works, you have a script, you set times, you have controlled movements, you can give direction to every minute detail as that you know what is to cone as that it’s been planned. With an interview however, it is the interviewee who holds much of the power, ultimately determining the value of the interview, based on what was said, how they said it, and how long it took to say it. Foolishly, I had preconceived answers to my own questions in my head; expecting the answers to be said in a particular way that I could work with effectively. Even after explaining it, I expected short and concise answers, but that was not what I had ended up with. At the time of the interview Jake’s answers had seemed to flow quite well, like a casual and relaxed conversation, though with plenty of energy. It wasn’t until further review of the footage in my editing stage that I found the answers to be rather long and difficult to work with considering I had to cram over two hours of interview footage into just three minutes. Talk about coverage! To make it worse (although ultimately fun to listen to) Jake tended to fuse the answers to other questions together, creating tangents and going on excited rants. As a result, a lot of cutting and difficult rewording was needed during editing to create an almost seamless flow.
A personal problem I’ve always managed to come to during editing for me is managing to cut footage and adhere to a specifically allocated film length. No matter how hard I try, I always end up choosing too much footage and end up blowing the limit by several minutes. As a result I’m forced to compromise several shots, either cutting them down drastically, or cutting them out all together. Only being 3 minutes long, I was rather concerned for this task; worried that if I cut too much then I would miss out on displaying many answers I feel were key to the interview. However, in the end I believe I managed to cut it down to its core, only omitting what was definitely unnecessary. What could have used more work though was working on my sound levels. I found that whilst the quality was great through my headphones, the speakers I owned struggled. Whether it was my mixing or my speakers that was the problem, I’m not quite sure.
Despite these setbacks, hardships and insane amounts of stress levels I faced in its production, making this video was immensely fun and I would gladly do it again. It got me out and about, experience the atmosphere of live band rehearsal, and added to my filming, photography and editing experience. For whatever mistakes were made during this process, I’ll be sure to take them into account and learn from them as to not repeat them. (I’m looking at you, ND filter I had forgotten was on my camera, forcing me to raise my ISO and make the pictures grain city)