Author Archives: fanzhang

The topic that my classmates Hannah Tepoorten and Reza Sulaeman chose with me is initiative, and this week I started to search some articles and news about this topic. The first article I searched is Media and Society, which is edited by James Curren.

This book explores the relationships between media and society, and there are three main parts in this book. In the first part that is media and society, this part includes six small elements that mainly explain lots of relations between social phenomenon such as feminism, and media. In the second part named media production, there are six elements that explore some academic areas such as media industry studies and media production studies. Also, globalization, Hollywood and political economy are deeply discussed. Finally, the last part, mediation, argues that media is a very necessary role in society as a mediation. Some social issues such as democracy, Islamic fundamentalism and the politics of reality TV are discussed.

This book provides a very comprehensive and multi level understanding and explanation on media and society, especially the relations between them. As the famous film industry, Hollywood is analyzed and discussed deeply and lucidly, with many professional data. To explain and explore the relations between society and media, author discusses almost every area that includes politics, economy, social phenomenon and academic researches. It helps people to understand the indispensable role that the media is playing.

Globalization is based on a sustainable developing society, actually, globalization is a kind of social phenomenon, and its main part is the society it is based on. A great part of information from this book is discussed for explaining and outlining the importance of media. The influences of media refer to almost every aspect so nothing can replace the necessary position of media.

This article is very interesting, and it talks about many things of culture that I like to focus.

This week, we do not have the lecture because Monday is public holiday. Finally, I spent this Monday to visit my friends who live in Bundora. On the way to Bundoora, sitting on the tram, I still thought about the topic I chose with my group mates, that is the institution.

This topic seems like easy but actually it is not simple. It is about the institution of media or the relations between media and institution. There is no doubt that there are rules in every area so that everything in that area can work without too many problems. Also, in media this area, there is an issue that appear in this century, will the new media replace the traditional media? According to the description of Google, ‘most technologies described as “new media” are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, and interactive. Some examples may be the Internet, websites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROMS, and DVDs.’ And then, also from the Google, ‘Traditional Media – television, radio, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, tax press and other print publications.’ The development of new media is fast and large-scale; more than 3 billion people are now using the Internet, according to the United Nations agency that oversees international communications. By the way, the number is keeping increasing. Comparing to people who burn in 20^ty century, those young people who burn in 21^st century are more familiar with new media.

So someone thinks it is possible that the new media can replace the traditional media.

In my opinion, I do not want to see a situation that the traditional media will disappear because of the new media. Moreover, I do not believe that the new media will replace the traditional media, and the coming situation may be that the traditional media would live with the new media. For example, in the history, the function of painting is similar with modern photography, recording people and events. However, the painting does not replaced by photography, they living together.

This week, I read some interesting and useful articles that talk about how to arrange the function of characters in script. Role is usually charged with multiple functions, the role possible is a lover, catalytic event and close friend. However, mostly, different roles have different functions because if there are couples of roles have the same function, the effect of each role would be reduced.

So we can classify five kinds of function of role: protagonist, supporting role, thematic role, the role that increase the hierarchy.

This article just focuses on the protagonist who is responsible to promote the development of storyline. Protagonist is the centre of their story, and protagonist should be attractive so that the audience could spend couples of hours on the protagonist.

Usually, protagonist has positive attitude, like a hero. They are powerful, such as James Bond and Jason Bourne. In spite of this, it doesn’t mean the protagonist is a perfect person who doesn’t have weakness. Probably the protagonist has some features that audiences do not like, and also protagonist would make some decisions that audience do not like. However, protagonist is so captivating and attractive, catching attention of audience. Moreover, if the protagonist is created in wonderful way, in the long time, audience would like to see movie only for the protagonist. For example, Captain America, Iron man, the hulk and other characters in a list of movie of Marvel.

Occasionally, the protagonist is a negative character, such as the protagonist in the movie named Gone with the wind. The weakness of this kind of protagonist is very obvious. In this case, it is hard for audience to have sympathy for protagonist, in the contrast, we can understand and consider about the story from the point of view of protagonist.

For villain, it is very necessary in every story because the dramatic conflicts would be formed. As everyone knows that villain often is an evil character who always wants to prevent the protagonist to finish his mission. However, there is a common mistake that people always make, the villain cannot be always characterized as a negative person but a positive character. The villain only needs to stand on the opposite side of the protagonist. For example, in the movie named Mozart, Salieri is the protagonist and Mozart is the villain. According to audience, they prefer Mozart more than Salieri. I think we can call this method that protagonist and villain is competitor of each other as the duet between protagonist and villain.

At the beginning of this workshop, we have seen all the films of students. We all enjoyed it; unfortunately, my film had some mistake that it was not completed. Finally, I found out the solution. After we saw the films, we discussed lots of films that belong to us. Professor Louis suggested us that we can discuss four parts about the films we made. These four parts are that apprise the films are technical or aesthetic in visual style; is the structure narrative; how is the controlling idea of the story; and how are each elements of a film. I still remember that the film of Sylvia is about her boyfriend who is a graphic designer. The title of her film is as a designer, it is very obvious and concrete, which can let audience know who is the protagonist of this film. At the beginning of her film, the element is about his daily life, playing piano, painting and walking along the Yarra River. In his peaceful life, he is not always happy. He would be confused when he cannot have some good ideas to design.

In the rest of this class, we continued the topic that have mentioned in the lecture on Monday, the collaboration. In collaboration, we all agree that media industry is more important creative, and the creative type is more necessary than characteristics. Indeed, in a group, each member has one more responsibility that is contribute to your team.

For better collaboration, we all gave lots of suggestions of what we should do in collaboration.

For example, a concrete goal is necessary in teamwork because it can gather everyone to do the same things, enhancing the power of teamwork. Moreover, each group member has equal position so we cannot vote somebody only for the reason that he or she is my good friend.

Wish everyone will have a good collaboration for project brief 4.

Feedback of PB3:

When I received the feedback and scours of the PB3, my heart seems like to jump out of my body. This time I got 67, Credit. Better than the last time so to some extent I was happy to see my progress. According to the feedback, my PB3 Video Portrait was very good. ‘The variety of vision you used and your editing was highly commendable. Well done.’ However, my vision was overexposed and the audio quality was poor. So next time I will develop and take more care of this area.

This reading is from a book named Documentary, experimental and animated films, chapter 10. This chapter is mainly about types of form in documentary films. Mostly, documentaries are organized as narratives, like fiction films. However, there are still many non-narrative types of documentary form. There are four basic modes of non-narrative formal system: categorical, rhetorical, abstract and associational. And then in this chapter, only categorical and rhetorical are discussed so I will focus on these two modes.

Categorical films organize their subjects via a process of classification, groupings, and categorization. Taking travelogue as an example, categorical films often start by identifying the subject, and their patterns of development are limited and simple.

For rhetorical films, their elements would be organized as the presentation of a persuasive argument. Also, there is an example that The Thin Blue Line, 60 Minutes. For the rhetorical films, I think we can conclude in 6 points. Firstly, their goal is that persuade audience to accept an opinion about the subject matter. Then, they would attempt to make an explicit argument. Next, their viewer would be addressed directly. Moreover, sometimes the subject would be a matter of opinion or attitude, not an issue of scientific truth. The next one is that the film will usually appeal to emotion once its conclusions cannot be made scientifically, or beyond questions. Finally, frequently presents arguments as if they were observation.

Although I read and conclude the chapter, I still cannot understand exactly what the rhetorical and categorical mean. I think I should better see more documentaries.

Prepare for the project brief 4, this time; the topic of the lecture is collaboration. Rachel Wilson gave a speaking of the collaboration, and before she spoke, there was a video about the collaboration for us students. The video showed a terrible situation that some group members come late and other members have to wait for the late one. During the discussion, someone is talking about other topic, their daily life experience. So finally, the communication and discussion failed, leaving the leader along in the room.

To avoid this kind of situation, the following speaking and teaching is necessary, although we have hear about it since we are young. Now, for many employers, teamwork is still the most important element they take seriously. Because a company is a team, people gather together to work, earn money and other things else. Just like what the Rachel said, group work can give you opportunity to participate in complex project, learn more effectively and remain knowledge，and develop your professional skills.

Before I came to Australia, I have been in China for almost 18 years. In Chinese school, teacher and the traditional education culture stress that student should study by themselves without group. However, they support students do activity and other things together. In contrast, western education culture stress students study in group.

Now, there is a question: In collaboration, it is good that students have similar ideas and opinions?

As everyone knows, people like to play with those who have similar ideas and opinions, concretely the philosophy, sense of worth and weltanschauung. Because they will feel comfortable to talk, work and do lots of things. In my opinion, there would have a problem that it is difficult to communicate with people who have different weltanschauung, day by day, more gaps would appear in our community and society.

Group is as a small community, if the members in a group have same and similar opinions and ideas, the collaboration would be processed smoothly. However, their opinions would possible be limited.

First of all, I really appreciate Billy, the actor of this video, to take part in my video. When I know I the content of project brief three, the first question came to my mind was who is most fun and attractive guy around me. Then, Billy, a young fashion designer student jumped into my mind.

He was my classmate when we studied in REW together. Now, after graduated from REW, we have become good friend.

For me, fashion design is a new area that I never get into, and I think most people around us would prefer to see that how fashion clothes we can see everyone be designed and made. That is why I choose this as my topic.

Review the controlling idea that Professor Louise had mentioned in the workshop on Wednesday, I think the controlling idea of mine is that introduce the process of designing clothes and Billy’s understanding of fashion.

There are three scenes in the video, one is Billy walked on the street in Brunswick in order to find out some materials for making clothes, one is he sited in the studio and talked something, and the other one is the process he made clothes.

Because I think it is so troublesome to download a music via asking the permission, since the first video I made in this semester, all the music is made by me with a software named Garage band.

This time, I hope this video can be marked higher score.

This week, an amazing new attracts almost the net friends, to be concrete, is almost all the users of a social media called Weibo. The amazing new is that the Stephen Hawking has his own account in the biggest social platform, chatting with Chinese net friends with both of Chinese and English. Almost everyone knows Stephen Hawking, a famous physical and cosmology scientist from the UK, was putting forward a theory that is the universe may have no region and boundaries. Hs is disabled, however it does not destroy him, he kept learning and researching for several years. His inspirational story and experience impressed numerous, he has become the idol in some people’s heart.

Because he is English and disabled, Chinese never think about he would have a Chinese account.

This week, Professor Brian Morris gave us four articles as reading. I know that these readings are very helpful for our professional skills, however, there are lots of pages of each reading, and I could not spend too much time so I chose the hyper attention.

For this post, I chose the article named Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intersexual Collage to post my critical reflection. Author Umberto Eco allocates this passage in five parts that are cult, the making of “Casablanca”, stop by stop, the archetypes hold a reunion and cult culture. Honestly, I never see this movie before, even never hear it, after the reading, I will find it out on the Internet and enjoy it. .

According to Umberto, Casablanca is an example of cinematic discourse, a palimpsest for the future students of twenty centuries religiosity, and a paramount laboratory for the semiotic research in textual strategies. The Casablanca likes a cult movie, and many people would ask how to transfer a book or movie into a cult object. Author Umberto gave us three ways, the work must be loved, and there is a completely furnished. The third one should build on the other two ways, which is becoming catalyzer of collective memories. This is talking about the story/structure, and for the text, the text need to attractive and impressive although the text is unhinged, broke out and took in a part.

Then, Umberto presents a special point that different from other movies, which is about the archetypes. Every story plays upon one or more archetypes, on the contrast, the Casablanca uses all of them. Regarding to this situation, Umberto argues that a best deconstructive reading should be made upon unhinged text.

This is a very professional article, and I support you guys go to read this attentively.

Since last week, I was waiting for the result of the project brief two, and I almost could not get that because of some problems of the enrollment. Thanks to Sylvia told me about the result, I found out the problem and solved this after class with Professor Louise. I have to say that I felt really nervous when I check the result, all in all, this is the first assessment I got in the university. According to critique from Professor Rachel, my blog post and video are not bad. Actually, I am not satisfied with this result, however, I know this academic score is worthy to the works I have done.

Now, in this blog post, I will talk about almost all the deficiency of my blog and video, in order to improve them next time.

At first, it is about the video that is the self-profile. Reviewing my video, I do think this is rubbish, it is really awful. No concrete story, no structure, almost all the footages were recorded in my apartment. Comparing with other video that made by my classmates, my video is more official, like a resume. A good self-profile should not be impressed as a self-profile, but a film about someone. For example, the video I made should be a film, and I am the protagonist without any antagonist. If I have a chance, I will compile a story for introducing myself. My idea is that I am a student who wants to take part in an organization, and I am going to have a interview with the manager of the organization. I would start to add a long video about who I am while the manager asks me to introduce myself. At the end, I would switch the scene back to the interview, ending with a word that is that is me.

Now, in this post, I do appreciate to the professional dedication of Louise and Rachel. I feel so lucky because all the professors in media one are kind and nice, they all have the sense of personality.

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