Tag Archives: media

Vivid

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Last weekend I went to Sydney to visit some friends, and while I was there I went into the city to see Vivid. It was the first time I had ever been to see the lights show, and I stood and watched in awe, thinking about all the work that must have gone into creating something so imaginative and beautiful.

“Vivid” is a perfect example of taking media elements and placing them in a new context. We see animations everywhere; on television, in movies, video games, electronic billboards… and now the iconic Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge. The projections really liven up the city for tourists and locals alike. It is hard not to appreciate the beauty of the Opera House lit up with funky colours, patterns and characters, and all the work that must have gone into creating the graphics.

This is where I draw back to Media. Firstly, one really cool think about Vivid is that its main stage is the Opera House, which has such a distinct and recognisable shape, that it poses a new challenge and something a little bit different for the designers of the animations.

Vivid as a concept takes design and animation to a new audience, making it a very public affair. Animation is no longer just something you watch passively on your television screen at home or notice from your car driving through the city, but something that people can gather to see and admire. Their is also enormous hype around Vivid, which means that its reaching more people and creating more of an impact.

And besides, who doesn’t like to take their mind of the world for a while to watch something bright and mesmerising?

Institutions

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Institutions are organising structures of society that deal with social, cultural, political and economic relations, as well as the principles, values and rules that underly these relations. They cannot simply be ideas; they need to have a form (or a currency of some sort). Examples include the police, city council local government, education and journalism.

Marriage as a Social Institution:

  • Expectations
    • Values (e.g. monogamy)
    • Rituals – exchanging vows
    • Symbols – rings
    • Rights
    • Superstitions – unlucky to see the bride in her dress before the wedding
  • Legal framework/regulatory
  • Meta-institutional frame
  • Widely accepted practice
  • Cultural ‘rules’
  • Social recognition

Media institutions:

  • are enduring
  • regulate and structure activities
  • are ‘collectivist’
  • develop working practices
  • employees and people associated are expected to share values
    • e.g. sports journalist fired for his comments on ANZAC day
    • professionalisation and accreditation
    • qualifications that are necessary to be regarded in a profession
  • public is aware of the status

Institutional Characteristics:

  • Facebook
    • Way of life
    • Ubiquity/Interconnectedness – other apps will ask if you want to “share”
      • Raises the question of privacy
    • Advertisements from other things you have looked at on the internet show up on Facebook
    • Privately-owned
    • Differentiation between real life and the life people see on Facebook
      • Present a certain portrayal of yourself
  • Newscorp
    • POWER
      • Almost a monopoly
      • Channels
    • Status
    • Fair? Balanced?
      • Still needs to adhere to the standards of journalism
    • Vertically and horizontally integrated
    • Journalistic conventions
    • Code of ethics on their website – question the extent to which this is adhered to
    • Agenda-setting/framing
  • Google
    • Innovation
    • Social conscience
      • Do no evil
    • Mission: Organise the world’s information and make it useable and useful
    • Accessibility – global reach
    • Contemporariness
    • Google as…
      • a culture
      • a verb
        • brand connected to a way of doing things
      • googol – a number with 100 zeros
  • Community Media
    • Not-for-profit
    • Lo-fi filming
    • Lack of advertising – commercial aspect much smaller, if it exists at all
    • Content
      • Local focus
      • Passion-driven
      • Experimentation – taking risks
    • Diversity
    • Governance/regulation (or lack thereof)

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.