Monthly Archives: March 2016

The reading of this week is about some bits from making media studies, and I saw the video that made by David Gauntlet from the post of Professor Brian Morris. Media is a subject characteristic of practice so normal people would think that there is no theory of media. Although there is theory of media, it is useless. According to David, the media study is mainly about connect lots of things to media. Almost all the people know that media is useful and powerful, also in daily life we can see media everywhere. Based on the power and function of media, David suggests that we ought to consider about what good things we can do with media.

In media study, people will learn about and with media, moving forward and understanding of look backward.

The computer that questions David for a long time asks David about the relation between creativity and media. David answers that it is not all about creativity, it is a kind of refreshing. Actually, I cannot understand any differences between refreshing and creativity. Simply, those two words are all about somethings new that come out. Maybe I will understand when I study in media.

Thanks

Yolanda

To be honest, it is not difficult to take picture, in other words, it was so fun. The hard part is clipping video, because I did not know how to use that related software such as premiere and After effect. Fortunately, I have a friend who study in animation helped me a lot.

In this assignment, I learned that the style of the background music needs to be similar with the style of the video. In a video, the story that a video want to present is the most important part, especially the meaning in the story. Because the meaning in story is presented indirectly, the background music ought to be served as a foil to the story.

In my video, the subject of my video is me, talking about my daily life. Well, I think it a good way to let others know who am I. I have study piano for almost 12 years so I have a great taste in music. The background music I made on myself so I did not put reference at the end of my video.

And also, I have study how to make the music fades out and in. I knew how to use the After effect to make the title more interesting.

At the end, I found out the fun of making video and I interest in that now.

Look down, look down

People with high self-esteems

Look down, look down

Hang your exalted head down

Those little life need to be cared

The collocation between background music and content of video is very important because the background music can affect audience’s emotion when they are watching video. And also, background music can affect the overall feeling of the video so be careful when you choose background music for your video.

Focusing on the photo I post, it took by me, and just look at this photo, guessing the time I took this. Is it morning or toward evening? Well, let us add background music. The first music is active, lively, going with a swing. Almost all the people would think this photo was taken at dawn. The second music is heavy, horrible and playing in slow speed. And also, almost all the people would think this photo took in toward evening.

In fact, I took this photo in toward evening.

Except video, audio is the most powerful thing can affect the overall feeling of audience when they are watching video.

This week we did not have a lecture because of the public holiday so I am going to type something about a video I saw in the workshop of my contextual major that is modern Asia.  This video was talking around a topic, modernity and modernization, and the content of this is an obvious single of modernization, the urbanization.

This documentary was taken in 2006 to 2007, almost 10 years ago, and the main village in this is located in the middle of China, a poor and undeveloped village. This documentary shows a process of urbanization of the village named White Horse Village, and the argument between villager and the local government.

From this documentary, I suddenly found out a point that all the things we see from video are what the producer wants us to know. It means almost all the documentary that seems like real is actually mixed with fake.

Just take the video I mentioned before as an example, the main subject is villager, and they had lots of interviews with villagers. A great part of villagers think the local government destroy their old and historical home, they want to be rich, having a better life, but they do not want to change lots of thing. I can easily felt that this documentary spends too much time on villager but government official. Negatively thinking, the BBC chose White Horse Village from thousands of villages in China, and this White Horse Village had argument with the local government, a strong argument. In fact, in many villages, the villagers listened to the local government, no strong arguments happened. So I cannot control myself to think something wrong and bad to our national benefits. Is it possible that the BBC wants to bring shame on Chinese government? Let lots of audience who never been to China may misunderstand Chinese developed degree and Chinese government.

In the end, we need to question the videos we will see and saw, do not always believe something in media.

The third time of my workshop is coming, and I come to used to the class that full of English. I was so excited with the coming public holiday for six days, but before that we have lots of assignments need to be submitted.

Above all, Professor Louise asked us a cool question that is what is the dream job. I still remember that when I was a young child, parents and other adults liked to ask you what your dream? What do you want to be when you grow up? Actually, they were the same question that what your dream job? In many opinions from our students, travel video, natural historical documentary producer, and YouTube editor are dream jobs. Well, for me, I would like to be a pianist or a journalist when I was a child. And now, I have a dream that I can have my own media and cultural company, changing the world via little things. To be honest, I do not like to sit in the office for a whole day, and I like to go outside, it would be better if I can work outside.

I have to admit that I did not finish the Haiku when I had the workshop, and lots of students have done their own assignment, that makes me felt so awkward. One reason for me did not finish the Haiku is that I do not know how to use the premier and not exactly understand the requirement of the Haiku. Professor Louise played some videos that made by my classmates, that helps me a lot.

Then, they talked about the famous social media such as facebook, Instagram, twitter and napchat. I remember that they said that twitter is dead, and I was confused about that because I use these social media for less time. However, I can talk about two famous social media that are wechat and microblog. And also, there was one thing that I agree with is that these social media has become a platform for user to do business and advertising. This situation not only happens in the Chinese social media but also happens in internationally social media. At first, the user use social media such as facebook for connecting friends and family members, but now they see lots of advertising in the social media. We ought to keep some individual areas for our friends.

This reading is a caricature not a passage so it is easy to understand what the whole caricature wants to teach and explain.

At the beginning, the boy who is the subject of the caricature, like a teacher to explain what is closure. Closure is a abstract concept, that based on our experience of our senses, and the boy mentions that our perception of reality is based on faith and act as faith. In daily life, the closure helps us to complete the world we live in. in photograph, film, electronic media and television, people use the closure unconsciously. People have imagination to combine the agent of change, skipping time and changing motion, and the closure is the base of imagination.

After explaining the closure, six panel-to-panel transitions are mentioned and interpreted. Firstly, moment-to-moment transition requires very little closure because the changing thing in the frame is less. Secondly, action-to-action transition be used in a special situation that there is only one subject in a moment and frame. Then, the subject-to-subject transition be used in a situation that the frame stay within a scene or idea, in order to note the reader necessary thing happening. Moreover, scene-to-scene transition is used to transport reader and audience across significant distances of time and space. Next, aspect-to-aspect transition is used to set a wondering eyes on different aspects of places idea and mood, passing time for the most part. And the last one is non-sequitur, the most special one, because there is no logical relationship between panels.

In the next part, boy talks about the different cultures between traditional western art and eastern art. Western art do not worry about the whole but focus on the goal-oriented culture while the eastern art is cyclical and labyrinthine. Due to the difference, western artist and eastern artist are used to use different transition methods.

Well, at the end, boy emphasizes that we must to find out balance between too much and too little when we are doing video or caricature.

Talking about the media, I have to say it is a truth that media is a powerful and argumentative platform in the world. Obviously, you can see media that is full of everywhere, especially in the modern areas such as New York, Beijing, London and Melbourne. Well, I live in 21 century, and I can feel the great power of the media. And in this passage, I would like to talk about a important thing point that the ideology and the world view of media producer.

Just take the Hollywood in the United States as an example, lots of movies and TV shows made by Hollywood are spread to almost everywhere in the world. Many movies have obvious American style such as individualistic heroism, and those American culture and style affect lots of audience. Day by day, the American movies affect almost everyone in the world, especially those who like to see the movies made by Hollywood.

So I want to say that we need to care about the quality of the video we made, the quality include the meaning, ideology, philosophy, world view and the sense of value. Do not make video only for money and wealth. As a video producer, our ideology needs to be right and positive first. Indeed, it is hard to evaluate what is right, but there is one thing that have to be mentioned and remembered is that the video ought to contribute the society. Different societies and nations have their own values so it is impossible to make everyone in the world to accept our opinion. Just try your best to change the little thing in the society.

And also, we need to respect other video producer even they have different opinions to you, the world need to be colorful and multiple.

That all, thank you.

At first, professor Louise Turley showed us the photos we took last week, the topic is Melbourne Moment. Lots of great photos took by us students, one is about a cup of coffee because Melbourne is famous for the coffee, and many citizens call Melbourne as the city of coffee. One is about the basketball court of our university, it was very great, looking like a fantastic picture painted by an artist. I have to say that photo is the best one, even better than mine.

Next part of this workshop was so fun, all the students were allocated in some small groups, and in my group there were four students, Sylvia, James, Isobel and me. Each student stood for a different color, and the color I stood for is red which mean the positive and creative points. In this cooperation, we need to see the assignments of each member, and evaluate that. I saw the audio of piano that played by Sylvia and her boyfriends, the whoop of James when he was running. Isobel stood for black which mean the negative points, in my opinion that is the hardest one in our four colors.

At the end, we were told the project brief 2, and took some videos outside. It seems like we need to do more things.

Thank you professor Louise and my classmates.

It is the second week for me in the school, we talked about What is media.

Well, at the begining of the lecture, Brian Morris showed us a slide about the assessment of this semester, and I feel a little nervous because lots of assignments would be assessed in short time.

Then, Jeremy Bowtell explained the editing in four defferent points, and the creative meaning. Indeed I have to say that I the editing one is so fun because I don’t konw the editing can be discribed as holes, juxtaposition, a process of fixing and breaking, and evident. For the creative meaning, I prefer the explaination that tendentious (argumentative) selection and juxtaposition, influencing audience in the desired direction. It means the media has the power to control and change something like the mind of audience. After that we saw a historical vedio named Man With The Movie Camera, published in 1929. Edward Dmytryk said that never make a cut without a positive reason, this one leaves me a deep impresstion. Before we make films, documentary and others, we need to make sure that the things we made need to be good for the society. According to Walter Murch, the three vital points is emotion, story and rhythm. Well, of course, the topic that the cut we made need to be arounded by emotion, story and rhythm.

Back to the Brian Morris’s part, we were asked to write down five things when we hear the word that media. Lots of ideas from students are great such as information transfer, bridge between the maker and audiencem, the power to change the world. The five things I thought over are power to control and change the world, an argumentative area, a world connect real and fake, a commen thing, and the platform almost everyone relay on.

In the next part Brian showed us lots of photoes he took when he traveled in Japan. It is easy to find out that the in everywhere, we can see the media. In one photo, the Eastern culture and Western culture get together, making it look so fun.

Now i come to know more about the media.