Here is the link to our final project brief 4 artifact.

It’s really low quality, but it gives the general idea.

 

For our focus of “technology” in our Media1 Project Brief 4 assignment, my group (consisting of Bridgette, Sherry and myself), decided to create a narrative short film, which would focus on the topic of social media, and the rolls it plays in modern activism. We were inspired by readings we found on the surprising amount of influence social media had on such modern political events as the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt, and set out to create an artifact that would reflect this influence. Our film revolved around two different characters, Martin Luther, and Gemma Justice. Martin is an old school activist, who first rejects social media in favor of physical activism. However, when this doesn’t work for him, he is forced to adopt social media to achieve success. Contrastingly, Gemma symbolizes a negative repercussion of modern activism. Whilst she constantly uses social media to communicate activist ideals, she only uses it to boost her own self-image, and not actually follow through with any action. The film follows the two until a final protest, where Martin has achieved success due to his integration of both physical action and social media, instead of just one or the other like Gemma.

 

In terms of what I believe were the successful aspects of the project, there are surprisingly a number of things. Firstly, I think the opening sequence we have created, showing a montage of protests with audio of a number of different opinions, sets up the short film well for the audience and allows us to avoid expositional dialogue. Secondly, I think the explanation piece in our dossier, which details a number of references and how they assisted us, was also successful in allowing the audience a second level of understanding when watching the piece. Sherry primarily created this, and overall we are very happy with its outcome and how it’s strengthened the piece as a whole. Furthermore, I think our creation of the project was successful in terms of just how well our group worked together. Everyone was equally invested and involved in the project and it allowed us to work more cooperatively and at a much stronger and faster level. Finally, I believe a successful part of our piece was the use of music. The royalty free piece “Carefree” that I managed to find on a website titled “Incompetech” had an exaggeratingly happy tone that was effective in communicating the proud, positive and overly-confident way in which the character of Gemma viewed herself when is on screen.

 

In terms of what I believe are unsuccessful parts of the project, there once again, are a number of aspects. Firstly, the audio in the beginning and end scenes contains far too much background noise. This was primarily due to our use of an attachable shotgun microphone instead of an external recording device. The result is an overpowering sound of wind that comes close to ruining the dialogue between Martin and his friend. Even after I attempted to reduce the background hum in the editing suite, it is still a major issue with the final piece. Secondly, whilst the short film and opening found-footage montage sequence are successful on their own, they are not effective together. This is due to a severe difference in tone between the two, where, whilst the montage establishes an intense and serious tone, the short film uncomfortably contrasts this in its joyous and lighthearted tone. Furthermore, due to losing a high angle close up shot of Gemma final status, I was forced to write it out in the premiere title software. Whilst it is not too distracting, I believe the video would have been strengthened by the original shot. I also think the video is let down by the lack of extras we had in the final protest. The powerful effect of Martin final achieving success was unfortunately changed to something unintentionally comical. Finally, it’s clear that we as directors should have explained to our actor, Peter that he needed to be louder and more emotional in his actions, as his lines come off as too monotonic in the final piece.

 

I have learnt a number of important lessons from the creation of this project. The first one is that in the future I know I can only edit on one laptop. This became clear to me after I began the project in the RMIT edit suite, only to realize I could not finish it on my personal laptop, and would have to start again. Secondly, I now know that it is crucial to use an external audio recorder in the future, in order to reduce the background noise issues we had in this project. Finally, I have also learnt to plan out locations for filming well in advance, in order to avoid the stress of finding somewhere to film that we experienced in the projects creation.

 

Overall, whilst I do (as always) have some problems with the final piece, I believe our artifact was successful in its goal. My group was a delight to work with, and I had no major problems in the journey of the projects creation. I think aside from the audio, the piece reflects my growing experience in the making of media artifacts, particularly in contrast to earlier project briefs.