DOOR QUOTES // POST THREE

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

Venturing out into the city during class time, I found inspiration within this beautiful RMIT building. I knew immediately that this would fit perfectly on my Instagram page as it fits the vision of creating content in the moment; no planning required. The amateur Instagram user way. I took this video on my iPhone 8 once again, with the rear facing camera. I knew the beauty of this building would not be showcased as nicely within the square Instagram frame, especially because I pan down towards the door at the end. However, I hope with the rest of my content I experiment with the Instagram camera itself, to test how differently my videos could become or be received. I’ve noticed that my content has become intertwined with two of Manovich’s “themes” that he researched. One is clearly focused on the “ordinary” Instagram photos, content which is fixated on not being professional but rather personal to the user. The second I tried not to conform to as much, but have in the sense that I have focused on editing and the composition of my content more heavily than an amateur may. This is Manovich’s investigation of “professional” content where authors create “classic aesthetics.” (Manovich, 2016, pg. N/A). I knew I wanted to experiment with video filters which were not on the Instagram app. The affordances in regard to correcting the video’s brightness or contrast on the software itself are constraining. There aren’t any. In fact, you only have the option to choose a filter or trim the video. Hence, I found the application “Chromic,” which although only lets me choose a filter out of seven options and change the brightness, it was enough to satisfy. I chose the filter ‘FMO’ which makes the video appear as if it has been shot on “film.” This was a choice I wanted to make to link back to previous weeks where we discussed in the lecture how we can create “analogue” looking content without it actually being analogue. Once again this video was a one-shot recording. I loved how the cover picture looked originally so I didn’t feel it was to be changed. I left the video unmuted.

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

I ended up recording this video two times. The first time I panned down in a wonky way which resulted in the door not being centred and somewhat symmetrical in the middle of the frame. Once again, I took more consideration into the composition of this video than an “ordinary” user probably would. The caption of this post goes as follows: ““The doors of wisdom are never shut.” – Benjamin Franklin.” Although I previously said that I don’t want to put pressure upon myself by finding quotes that match the visual of the post, this one was just too good not to share (the building being part of RMIT University). Benjamin Franklin being a famous name meant that my use of hashtags would cater for that. I ended up using 10 hashtags for this video. When selecting hashtags, I don’t have a process which helps me pick out the best ones in order to achieve more traffic. Instead I think of them on the spot, and make sure they fit what is being shown rather than using popular hashtags like “love” and “like.” The video plays automatically on the app, but for some reason doesn’t on the Instagram website. I posted this video around the same time I posted my first one (1-2pm) and for some reason, this video did much better than my first. It gained more attention, however, not as many views. This could be due to the first post obviously being published the week prior and having more time to be seen. Yet, this shows how people who search through tags on Instagram may be interested more in “liking” than viewing, with the hopes that other users will give them “attention” back (this stemming from the ‘like4like’ culture Instagram has.)

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

As I will continue to do so with the rest of my posts, I added the geo-tag location at the top of my video. Labelled as “Carlton, Victoria, Australia,” this helped distribute this video to this locations hashtag. I then also shared this post through my Twitter and Tumblr accounts. On Twitter, this post only got 10 impressions. However, I never used any tags due to the fact that on this platform, the words themselves in the post can become tags. For example, if you were to search the key words of my caption such as “doors” or “wisdom,” my post may appear somewhere. On Tumblr I decided to add hashtags to the post itself, as well as add a description on the post. I could only do this because I didn’t use the toggle bar and rather shared the link itself.