Category Archives: assignment

Engaging with Media 1 through my Blog

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Since I started this course, I have been encouraged to think in new ways and make connections between everything I do in class and the outside world. I think that one of the reasons that I have learnt so much this semester is that our learning is highly practical and relevant to the current media climate.

I believe the following blog posts best demonstrate my engagement with the course, both inside and outside the classroom.

This post is a reflection on my first project brief:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/emma-armstrong/2015/03/27/self-portrait-what-comes-next/

This post marks a turning point in the way I thought about the editing process, sparked by the course reading “Blood in the Gutter”:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/emma-armstrong/2015/03/23/blood-in-the-gutter/

This post is made up of my notes from a particularly interesting lectorial on “narrative”, presented by Dan. I have also reflected and made comments throughout:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/emma-armstrong/2015/05/04/everything-is-story-story-is-everything-narrative/

In this post, I brought back the concept of “noticing” from one of our early lectorials, and used it to think about all the things I had noticed, at different levels, as I worked on a performance I was involved in this semester:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/emma-armstrong/2015/05/16/remembering-to-notice/

Finally, this post is a brief reflection on Vivid Sydney as a new platform for media and design:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/emma-armstrong/2015/05/30/vivid/

 

And finally, here is my learning graph, which illustrates my development in…

  1. Learning about making media objects
  2. Working independently in unfamiliar ways
  3. Thinking critically and creatively
  4. Thinking about the value of the Media blog (all over the course of this semester)

20150605_113801-1

Final Course Reflection

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I’m not sure what I expected coming into Media 1, but the content covered and the assignments I’ve worked on have definitely surpassed anything I could have predicted. Over the course of semester, I’ve had the chance to develop my skills in a range of areas, working with new technology, learning to engage with the filmmaking process from conceptualisation to the finished product (and all the filming and editing in between), collaborating with others and conducting academic research. This learning experience, punctuated by my work on each of the four project briefs, has been very rewarding, especially in the moments when I finally saw my work coming together.

I experienced a change in thinking when I was editing my work for brief 3. I was watching the half-finished video I had created, and thinking about the different filming techniques and transitions we had discussed in class. I realised the difference this new knowledge made in being able to visualise how I wanted the final video to look and in putting into words the features I wanted to highlight in my work. Since then, I have been noticing these elements in commercials, television shows and movies and reflecting on the effects of each of these stylistic choices.

I have discovered this semester that I learn best by doing. At the start of the semester there were times when I was stuck for ideas, but just by getting started on something, even if it turned out that the something was later scrapped to start again, at least I had something to work from. This is what sparked ideas, and it was an amazing realisation to have about my own way of learning and working.

Given my very limited experience filming and editing, the most challenging aspect of this course was translating my ideas into film. There were times when I knew exactly what I wanted to illustrate on screen, such as the concept of yin & yang as the basis for my self portrait, but I did not yet have the technical skills to edit towards that visual. At times, this was quite frustrating for me, but I managed to work around it to produce a final product I was proud of. I hope that as I grow as a media maker I will be able to find creative solutions to the challenges I face.

In Media 1, I discovered that filmmaking is a very personal activity because I’ve seen my personality come through my work. I also realised that my creative practice involves working towards my original ideas, and weaving in new ideas as they arise. For example, I had a concept for my self portrait, but as I was editing I saw gaps in my work so I thought of new ways to illustrate key aspects of my personality. I believe these “afterthoughts” are the best features of my work, because with them I targeted what was previously missing.

I look forward to learning and overcoming new challenges next semester!

Brief 4 Final Reflection

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On the day that we formed groups and were assigned the task of creating a “Media Artefact” for Project Brief 4, I have to admit I was quite lost. It took me a long time to wrap my head around how we were going to use academic research to produce something that was both creative and meaningful. The media idea “texts” is inherently broad, and while we thought this would serve as an advantage, it actually caused us some confusion. On the bright side, there were also a lot of interesting topics for us to explore that also happen to be incredibly relevant to today’s changing media climate.

At the beginning of the process, we had several ideas floating around and not much direction for any of them. After further research and working to improve and combine these ideas, we finally settled on a topic we were all excited about: textual adaptations. The next challenge was narrowing down the topic area, which was still too broad. We attempted this in several stages, each time taking out some aspect of the work until we whittled away our topic to a core that we could explore in depth. I think that strangely the most successful aspect of the creation process was revealed when someone in the group was having trouble. This prompted us to ask questions to clarify what we were working on, and this not only helped us to come up with new ideas and better approaches to our work, but also highlighted the collaborative strength of our group.

Once we had a solid idea of the work we wanted to include, it was a little problematic deciding how we wanted everything to be presented. We were concerned that we would not be able to efficiently present our learning through a video or audio, so we eventually decided on a website. I think our final work is strong and demonstrative of the hard work we have put in over the semester. The only area I think we could have improved upon is the overall cohesiveness of the final website. There are three core branches we focused our work on: texts, leading into adaptations with a focus on Romeo and Juliet adaptations into a range of mediums, but we could have tied everything together more clearly.

I think the major success of our final artefact is one of the things I was most concerned about at the beginning of the process; the effective integration and application of references into our work. This element of the work fell into place as we watched the different Romeo and Juliet adaptations, and thought analytically about these works. The sources we used provided a highly relevant framework upon which we were able to substantiate our ideas.

As a group, I think Lucas, Rob and I all worked really well together, supporting and expanding on each others’ ideas and ensuring everyone was tasked with something that they had a personal interest in. I also learnt a lot from working with these two talented up-and-coming media practitioners, especially in terms of thinking about and following through with creative ideas. I especially respect the work Lucas and Rob did in filming and editing the adaptations interview with professional dancer Maddie.

At the same time, I was also able to showcase my strength in research and use this to improve the academic rigour of our artefact. Working on this assignment taught me a lot about the characteristics of positive collaboration, and how this can create a platform for elevating individuals’ ideas and highlighting everyone’s best abilities.

During the weeks I spent working on this assignment, I was able to refine my research skills, in particular learning how to use the RMIT library resources. I also developed my ability to perform meaningful analysis on media texts, learning to recognise conventions and techniques in particular works to expand my understanding of media as an area of study. Finally, I discovered a lot about intricacies in the field of media adaptations.

I think that everything I learnt and the skills I developed during the brainstorming, researching, creating and editing stages of this brief will help to inform my future work and studies in media. I believe this is significant because texts are constantly evolving in the fast-paced media industry, and to have a solid understanding of this strand of media is invaluable.

Institutions/Audiences/Texts/Mediums/Technologies

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In our tutorial yesterday, we looked at each group’s second draft for project brief 4. It was great to finally see what everyone else had been working on after being so caught up in our own work. A couple of the artefacts that really stood out to me were the following:

Elise and Jack

  • Institutions
  • Gave a clear explanation of what an institution was, then honed in on their topic of classification (connecting to the classification board of Australia)
  • Presented their work as a short 10 minute film explaining the intricacies of the classification system
    • How it works
    • What the different ratings are
    • Challenges facing film-makers today
  • I thought this was a very well executed media artefact that did well integrating academic information, whilst also being creative and interesting

Maggie, Jac and Dusty

  • Audiences
  • Focused on how audiences now interact with the content they watch, and the effect this then has on the media content produced
  • Presented their work in the form of a website, but also created Youtube videos to demonstrate linking to other sources and created an app to view the website easily from a mobile device
    • I thought these ideas were particularly creative because they were highly relevant to their content
    • Teaching about interactivity by creating something interactive

I also liked Gloria, Patrick and Bianca’s work. They created a sound recording with information and interviews with experts in their topic. It was the first assignment presented as a sound recording, and it really changed the way we experienced the artefact, requiring more attention because there was no visual component. Though this work still needed to be edited, I thought it was a really interesting response to the brief.

Advice on Brief 4

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Last week, Rachel made some suggestions for how we could best progress with our final project brief.

  • Make sure that everyone is asking the same questions of the texts they are analysing (this prompted us to create a list of 3 questions to focus our work)
  • Keep the focus narrow so you can increase the depth of the work
    • Take out side ideas – remixing, Space Odyssey
    • Left with: Texts > Adaptations > Romeo & Juliet
  • Extra ideas for looking at Romeo & Juliet
    • Look at soundtracks separately from the films as this is a whole different medium
      • E.g. original soundtrack composed for West Side Story
    • Book of West Side Story

This advice was helpful for us as it gave us a better idea of the direction we needed to go in for our brief and helped us clarify in our heads the work we still needed to complete.

The coming week…

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The next week will be busy in terms of working towards completing a polished draft of our media artefact. There are a number of things that still need to be done, which include:

  1. Watching each of the films and productions I will be analysing
  2. Researching academic interpretations and critiques of these texts to cement my own analyses in theory with a sound understanding of the context of each
  3. Answering in depth the three standard questions we are asking of each text
  4. Working on editing the aesthetics of the blog
  5. Adding to the “texts” page of the blog using information from further research
  6. Keeping track of new sources and write brief annotations for each

Aside from the project, I also need to write some more blog posts!

“We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants”

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According to Everything is a Remix: Part 2…

  • 74/100 films are remakes, adaptations, sequels of existing films
  • We as a society like the familiar
  • “The old into the new is Hollywood’s greatest talent”
  • Films are based on theme park rides, blogs, books and more
    • Films are also built on other films
    • Then told, retold, subverted, referenced
  • “Original” films are not really original
    • Most are genre films with standard templates
    • They also fit into sub-genres that have even more specific elements
  • Certain films reshape pop culture, but that still doesn’t make them original
    • e.g. Star Wars is very imaginative but most of the individual elements are sampled from elsewhere
  • “Creation requires influence”
    • e.g. influence from our lives and the lives of others

This short analytical film was one of our “readings” for week 11 of this course. Not only that, but it is highly relevant to the work my group is doing for our fourth project brief. Our focus is on adaptations and the concept that nothing is original changes the way we look at particular films, as well as other adaptations in other mediums. Our focus is on Romeo and Juliet, one of the most commonly adapted stories of all time. Everything is a Remix encouraged me to think about the differences between relying on an “original” as a source for the plot, characters and thematic elements of a story, as opposed to sampling specific sequences or features from a number of works for a particular purpose or effect. I think that the difference between a remix and an adaptation is that an adaptation more closely relies on its original as a template, whereas remixes tend to take more chances, experimenting with how different elements could be manipulated and to what effect.

Brief 4: New Ideas (& Annotated Bibliographies)

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Today, we each came to class with our annotated bibliographies and a much fuller understanding of where we wanted to go with the project. Our research made it much easier to think about the topic in more concrete terms, and our ideas flowed from there.

Here are our team meeting minutes from today to illustrate the progress we made on our project today and where we are now.

07/05/2015

    • Met up before media tutorial
    • Spoke about our research findings
      • Rob: remixing, copyright in relation to parodies, semiotics
      • Lucas: evolution of audiences and interpretation of meaning, semiotics
      • Emma: adaptations (literary works to films), semiotics
    • Discussed with Rachel how to narrow down topic
      • Texts > Adaptations > Literary to Film OR specific author
    • Further discussion of this within our group led to the decision to focus on the works of William Shakespeare
      • Modern adaptations
      • Twelfth Night – She’s the Man (film)
      • Romeo & Juliet
        • Shakespeare Play > Modern Plays > Movies > West Side Story Film and Plays
    • 2 separate parts
      • Basics of adaptations and remixes (Rob – interviews)
      • Romeo & Juliet – linked to West Side Story (focused on the differences between adaptations and the effect this has)

For next week, our task is to have something concrete to show for our research. For our group, this will be footage from the interviews Rob has set up, and a set structure for the website we will create, with the following:

  • Introduction to our group and the subject of ‘texts’, also introducing ‘adaptations’
  • Sections of the website
  • Planned content (which media we will use and who will work on which aspects)

Every week, as I get a better idea of where this project is heading, I am more and more excited to see the final product (artefact) our research will culminate in.

Brief 3 Screening

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In Thursday’s Tutorial, we had a mini screening of everyone’s portraits. Once again I was taken aback by how different everyone’s work was even though we were all given the same brief. I think that says a lot about the range of creative people and ideas in our class.

The following are the notes I made on the portraits created by my group-members.

Ali:

  • Yellow: loved the opening and closing titles with the casual conversation and subtitles (looping back tied it all together too), 
  • Red: subtitles a signature for Ali’s work
  • Black: I didn’t always understand the connection to found footage (bright-coloured cartoon towards the end)

Gloria:

  • Yellow: Comedic, interesting connections between animals and subject (creative take on the concept of a portrait), subject’s actions and the filters on the shots matched up well with found footage clips
  • Red: felt a little sci-fi mixed with the wild
  • Green: could lower the opacity to see the shot of the animal and your friend at the same time
  • Black: the planes seemed out of place amongst everything else (have subject mention this in the interview/voiceover to make it clear)

Jack:

  • Yellow: there was a great integration of original and found footage, pacing was good
  • Red: the black and white film created a very personal atmosphere, felt closeness to the subject
  • Black: music volume was a bit too high, so sometimes it was hard to hear the speaking

I’m also really thankful to my group for the feedback I received, both good and bad, because it gave me a clearer look at how my work was received, which I could then compare to my goals for the project.

  • Yellow: found images focused on what the subject was talking about, sled footage was dark (symbolically representative of the traumatic experience), colour balance was good (not too harsh or cold), sound levels edited well, subject looked natural in the shots (not like she was trying hard to avoid looking at the camera), cuts between handheld and tripod cameras worked well
  • Green: show more about subject’s interests and hobbies (mixed opinions: another group member said they liked how everything was cut down and stripped away to something bare – ons story)

On a final note, I also particularly enjoyed Daniel’s portrait of his younger brother. The vibe of the video was very aspirational and the closeness between Daniel and his subject was evident in his brother’s demeanour, which is so important. The content was interesting listening to his brother talking about his dreams of becoming a music producer, and the video was edited together well.