Tag Archives: reflection

“Audience”

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Personally, when I am working I sometimes get so caught up in what I’m creating that I forget that others will eventually see and (hopefully) enjoy my work. In my final two years of school particularly, I learnt the importance of keeping the audience at the forefront. At the end of the day, my ideas and intentions for my work mean nothing if I fail to clearly convey that to the receiver, or “audience”.

Who cares about audiences?

  • Advertisers
  • Commercial broadcasters, cable networks, etc.
  • Government policy makers – licensing accountability, censorship
  • Social scientists/psychologists, cultural theorists/media scholars – how media affects people in their daily lives

The target audience may completely change the content, the medium and the platforms used by advertising companies to sell a product.

Changing conceptions of audiences and consumers:

  • Broadcast to post-broadcast age
    • Characteristics of a post-broadcast era – changes in aesthetic sensibilities, audience practices, television institutions, technologies of production, distribution and consumption (and how to use them)
    • Rise in network culture
    • How we consume media – all around us, inescapable in the modern world
  • From citizens to consumers

“There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses… a way of seeing people which has become characteristic of our kind of society… [a way of seeing that] has been capitalised for the purse of cultural or political exploitation.” 

We need to be conscious of how we position ourselves – cannot simply say, “I am better than you” because we all fall under the category of “the masses”.

Theorising the ‘active audience’:

  • Audience’s intelligence recognised by creators
  • Fans and engagement – they contribute in some way
    • Binge-watching television shows (becomes an obsession)
    • Creation of fandoms – keep up with every action of a particular person/band
    • Giving yourself over to the text by immersing yourself in another world and forming connections with characters
  • Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model (1980)
    • Communication is a gamble
    • Make short film – code mise en scene, characters etc. hoping audience will understand meaning – hoping they will interpret the same way as it was intended
    • Audience has to recognise, make sense of (by assembling) – happens subconsciously

Interpellation: the process by which individuals/readers are “hailed” (prompted by a text to recognise themselves as being a subject that belongs in a role) – Louis Althusser

Components of the Broadcast ratings convention

  • Exposure is the key element – how many people see an advertisement (challenge)
  • Can’t measure engagement after seeing advertising (limitation)
  • Accuracy of measuring – intensified in recent years but this is not a new issue (challenge)

Taste

  • “We are seduced by our own preferences; our likes and dislikes”
  • Different people like and dislike different things – broad range
  • Not inherent (not born with taste) – it is a result of what we grow up with

Without an audience, a work cannot be recognised and will not spark the action it intends to. Research into a target audience is also increasingly important, as we now live in such a world that the consumer decides what they want and companies deliver, as opposed to the other way around.

Semiotics!

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This week’s lectorial was all about semiotics, which I find fascinating. I think idea that every action or utterance holds a particular significance is so clever, and I have great respect for those who manage to infuse numerous layers of encoded meaning into their work. I can view these works over and over and continue to find new ways to interpret them, which I really appreciate.

Semiotics is a system made up of signs, signifiers and the associated signified. The main purpose is to encourage people to think about how particular elements work together to produce a whole, and this starts even from the smallest of creative decisions. Essentially, semiotics is a method of analysis that delves into the creative decisions encoded in specific works and how these decisions deliver (or fail to deliver) intended meanings (sometimes a number of meanings).

Brian explained in the lectorial that to study semiotics, we need to understand the following terms:

  • Sign: a core element of the text/creation
  • Signifier: a mark of this element (e.g. words, sound, etc.)
  • Signified: (subconscious) reactions and connections to signifier
  • Denotation: first order meaning (objective, simply what is there)
  • Connotation: second order meaning (subjective, connections we make (varies from person to person and may be affected by culture, experience, etc.)

Acclaimed semiotician Roland Barthes was incredibly influential in this field, even developing his own terminologies for breaking down creative works – the studium (that which is constructed with technical skill to generate audiences’ interest) and the punctum (the inexpressible quality that certain media works possess; the element that strikes the viewer immediately and captivates him or her). To me, this concept puts into words something that I had experienced but never understood when I interacted with different media. In particular, I find it a very useful ideological construct for explaining why some advertisements affect me, why certain photographs stay ingrained in my mind and why some media pieces just make me want to pay attention.

Semiotic deconstruction is applicable to all media everywhere we look, at some level. I know that I will be walking around with these ideas in the back of my head for a long time to come.

Note: this lecture’s focus on textual analysis formed part of the basis for my group’s work on Project Brief 4

Backpacking and Other Traumas – Project Brief 3

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I chose my best friend Lucy as my subject for this brief and I knew immediately that I wanted to focus on her sense of humour. After brainstorming ideas, I decided to interview her about our recent backpacking trip because I knew that not only would it provide funny material, but it was an important experience for Lucy (and myself) in becoming independent. I believe the most successful aspect of this portrait is that I was able to capture and produce a snapshot of Lucy as she is now.

I attempted to change the colour balance in each of the clips so that they all matched. I think this is one of the problematic aspects of the work, as there was only so much altering I could do with my limited editing experience. If I could redo the project, I would also film a wider range of shots of Lucy in her surroundings, as this would have given me more to work with as I was editing.

I learnt a lot during both the filming and editing processes, from how to operate a Sony MC50 camera to working with multiple devices simultaneously, asking questions to gain useable responses and incorporating appropriate found footage. The most useful discovery I made in terms of producing a media portrait is that an anecdote can provide deep insight into a subject’s personality, not only through the story they tell but also the way they tell it, their body language and the spin they put on different situations. More importantly, it’s my job to tease that story out. This was how I managed to portray Lucy’s humour, and it was a particularly useful approach for working within the strict time constraints of the brief.

In relation to broader applications of my discoveries, I think I’ve taken steps in the right direction developing my editing skills. With every brief, I discover new tools, such as overlapping two videos and adjusting opacity. Watching other people’s work also gives me inspiration for different skills I could learn and then apply, in a different context, to my own work.

The Things I’ve Yet to Learn

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Playing my self portrait for the class today was very intimidating for me. I love receiving feedback on my work but always get nervous presenting to people, and especially in this instance because the work was very personal. On the other hand, I was proud of my work and it was great to hear what other people thought about it and interpreted it to be. I also loved watching other people’s self portraits because every aspect of the work said a lot about the person and there was so much variation from video to video.

There were a few portraits that really stood out to me and sparked ideas for my future work as well as making me think about new skills that I could work on developing.

Lucas:

  • Filming and editing were thoughtful and seamless
  • Told a story – clips gradually grew shorter and shorter, then snapped back to slower cuts to create a sense of calm after the ‘chaos’
  • Contrast between black & white and colour using split-screen – put a lot into 60 seconds
  • Words jumped around on the screen and changed fonts – almost looked animated

Screen Shot 2015-04-20 at 1.55.57 pm

Patrick:

  • Editing – I want to learn how to have a black screen that reveals a video behind as words show up on the screen
  • Layered two videos over each other (filters and semi-transparent)

Screen Shot 2015-04-20 at 1.53.04 pm

Rob:

  • Interesting use of colours, blur, layering
  • Managed the switches in aspect-ratio well
  • Use of repetition tied everything together well (e.g. video > photo > back to different segment of same video)
  • Red hat: dark, mysterious

 

This is Me: An Edited Self Portrait

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The concept behind my self portrait was to demonstrate the different environments, people and experiences that have shaped who I am. I wanted to illuminate numerous aspects of my personality by creating a juxtaposition representative of how people may perceive me on the surface and how I see myself. During the editing stage I realised that a couple of my media creations didn’t portray ‘me’ in an effective way, so the process itself fuelled my creativity.

Each of my images is connected, as they all give me a sense of “home” when I look at them. My sound recordings are quite varied – city noises representing my adjustment to Melbourne culture, me singing an original song both because I love to sing and because the lyrics resonate with where I am in my life now, and nature sounds because being outside and closing your eyes, you can feel at home anywhere in the world.

My first video shows where I have come from (Shanghai) and where I am now (college in Melbourne). The video of my sister sitting in my Grandma’s dining room writing a Chinese character brings together my family and my life experience. In the walking video I am on my way to college so this is symbolic of my new life. The reversed video of me drawing over my scars is supposed to illustrate that I like to be creative and have fun, but that when this is stripped away I am also strong (I think this video in particular is the most successful part of my work).

Editing these elements together gave me a sense of piecing together different parts of ‘me’. I wanted to create an abstract representation completely undefined in terms of time, so I mostly used blur and cross dissolves to build seamless transitions and create a fluid effect throughout the video. I think the least successful part of my work is the opening title, as it doesn’t completely connect with the rest of the elements in my video. For future projects I also want to work on my soundtrack layering skills.

“Blood in the Gutter”

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“All of us perceive the world as a whole through the experience of our senses, yet our senses can only reveal a world that is fragmented and incomplete.”

I found the whole concept behind this reading, as well as its presentation as a comic, incredibly creative and thought-provoking. I had never thought about the associations that form subconsciously in audience’s minds when they view edited media or read comics. I’d simply thought about the stories told and the techniques I could see. I think the most interesting part about “Blood in the Gutter” was the theme that “elements omitted from a work of art are as much a part of that work as those included.” As was explained in the reading, in comics, this was the space between the frames, and in edited media it was in the cuts and in thinking about everything that was happening outside the view of the camera. This is especially important in thinking about what to show in edited media (visible), and what to imply (invisible), because both aspects play a key role in the interpretation of meaning by audiences.

Some other techniques mentioned in the reading – particularly fragmentation and rhythm – made me think about my own editing and how the consideration and incorporation of these techniques into my work could be the factor that draws a project together or gives it a particular charm. Finally, this reading taught me that the “phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name; closure.”

I find the whole idea of gaining meaning from ” the gutter,” or the space between the panels to be such an incredible process. I’m excited to learn more about how specific editing choices produce certain effects, particularly through my own editing successes and failures throughout the course.

Introduction to Media One

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Introduction (Class One)

Dear Future Self…

The following are 10 things I want to be able to do/be better at/know by the end of my Bachelor of Communication (Media) degree.

1. The standout qualities employers are looking for in the field of media

2. The best way (for me personally) to spark ideas that develop into creative approaches to project briefs

3. Working well in groups

4. Communicating effectively with classmates and lecturers/tutors

5. Effectively getting ideas onto paper/developed into a final product

6. Create a network to open up job prospects

7. Understand the context of classroom learning and how this can be applied to jobs internationally

8. How to effectively utilise technology to work on varied media project briefs

9. Figure out my postgraduate/career pathway

10. Gain practical experience working with a range of media platforms

During this first lectorial, I also had time to reflect on how I learn and I will keep this in mind as I progress through the course. It has been almost one year since I was in a classroom environment, so my first step will be to refocus academically.

I know from previous experience that I work best when I write by hand and specifically when I create mind maps to clarify the ideas and questions I have. I then find it helpful to discuss topics with others to gain insight from different perspectives and interpretations. I also know I work best in short bursts of focused work, broken up by short breaks during which I make sure information is sinking into my mind. I find it helpful to keep my laptop closed – if possible – when working, to avoid distractions. I also prefer to work with hard copies for reading and annotating tasks.

I believe the most challenging aspect of the course for me will be sparking creative ideas for project briefs and developing them into clear plans in my mind.