DOOR QUOTES // POST ONE

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Upon realising that our content was to reflect the idea of “doors,” I was inspired to not follow a certain theme or aesthetic, but be more creative with my captions. Quote accounts are one of the biggest type of accounts created on Instagram as they can inspire, motivate or simply relate to someone’s situation. There are many quotes on doors, hence, I wanted to incorporate quotes about doors. In terms of authoring this particular video, it came to me on a gloomy day. The city was grey and wet, and I believed the sliding door was perfect to feature, as I could open it with ease mid filming. I filmed the video on my iPhone 8, with the inbuilt camera function (facing away). Because video-editing app’s are quite rare to find (in regard to filtering videos), I did limited editing besides popping on the Instagram filter ‘Gingham.” I believed this filter added to the grey and sad feeling behind the video. I also chose to restrict my video to the confinements of the Instagram square, leaving the audio and also not choosing a cover. I kept the audio as one of my pet peeves on Instagram is when people mute their content. Audio can add so much to a video, even if it just muffled wind. Not choosing a cover photo was an editing mistake, however, the cover chosen on my feed is something I am not disappointed with. Quite frankly, though, I’m not pleased with this video. It appears rushed and you can see my mop in the background. However, I am not aiming to adhere to an aesthetic like many Instagram users try to do (myself included on my personal Instagram account). I instead want to create this “amateur” type look to my content. It’s not perfect; the posts won’t come together to look like a grand masterpiece. Instead, I want to examine how this amateur look is received. Are people on Instagram more excited by HD quality content? Or can a lousy video of a sliding door opening out a city view be enticing in this modern age of social media?

How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

Firstly, I published this video with the caption, ““I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to be opened, and I’m not afraid to look behind them.” – Elizabeth Taylor.” I don’t want my quotes to match my content in any way, besides it clearly being about doors. I love the way the quotes look in my caption. I believe it entices viewers to not only view the content but read what’s below. I made the deliberate decision to put my hashtags in the comments rather than the caption, as I knew i wanted my caption to be all about the quote and not look messy. Hiding the hashtags in the comments created a cleaner look to the post. I only ended up choosing six hashtags for this post as in the moment, I couldn’t think of many. However, the video ended up generating attention regardless. I did record two versions of this video, however, the first one I was super shaky and unsteady. The second time around I paced myself so it wasn’t rushed and I could achieve a steady pan of my beautiful city view. I really like the auto-play function on Instagram as it aims at capturing users attention straight away, so I kept it on. It is important to mention that I posted this video at around 1pm. The video only received six likes, meaning this may not be a prime time to post.

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

I distributed my content to two social media platforms: Tumblr and Twitter. I have experience using both networks but never in regard to sharing content from Instagram. With Twitter, I made it so when I posted my video, I turned on the toggle that automatically shared my post to Twitter too. Yet with Tumblr, I was slow to setting up a new account. Thus, I used the link sharing option on Tumblr to share the already posted video. I love how on Twitter, you can see who has seen your post or interacted with it. There has been 23 impressions and 2 engagements with this tweet, which is surprising considering I didn’t put any effort into this tweet besides posting it. I decided on using these platforms and not Facebook as I knew the idea of quotes is huge on Tumblr and Twitter is an easy network to navigate and use. To further my distribution, I added a ‘geo-tag’, or ‘Location’ to the top of my post: Collingwood, Victoria, Australia. This allows my video to not only be seen through the likes of hashtags, but whenever someone searches Collingwood as a location, therefore contributing to it’s ultimate distribution. I found it funny how somehow my Auntie found my account and has since followed it (she followed before my first post). I have not linked this account to my personal one in any way (besides following it and visa versa), or used personal information like my phone number to add onto the account. Hence, she must have seen somehow that I had followed my own account and wanted to show support. Bless.