Author Archives: fanzhang

Network drama, becoming popular with the development of Internet, is a little different with teleplay. Actually, I find out there are two different points, comparing with the teleplay.

The first different point is medium. As we all know, teleplay is played on television, since television born out. Day by day, cinema comes out, and the movie has a special place to be played. Now, internet has become the third medium to play drama, living with television and cinema in the communication area. The network drama is only played on Internet, but the teleplay can be played on both of the television and Internet. For the reason why network drama can be only played on Internet, we can turn to the second point.

The second point is content; one of the factors that decide the network drama can be only played on the Internet. Teleplay has a longer development history than network drama, has more audience than that too. So it is no doubt that there is a more mature and completed management system for organizing the order in television area. For example, in China, the government stipulates that all the teleplay need to be censored by a special department, and each TV station can only play the teleplay that has passed the censorship system. Internet is a free platform for each user, and the system for organizing the rules is not completed. So there are less rules and powerful organization to manage the Internet. Therefore, some dramas that do not pass the television censorship would be played on Internet, facing to everyone; especially some dramas have the plot of salacity, violence and drug taking. Moreover, for drama producer, it is saving time and money to put drama on the Internet because it economizes a list of process.

Network drama will become more popular, and has more audience. The value of network drama would become bigger and important.

The two articles for this week are quiet longer than before, and all of them are theoretical knowledge, that makes me spend lots of time to read these. Lots of information in these two articles so I will talk about some ideas that I think are interesting and worthy to be discussed.

To approach media text, there are two methods, semiotic and content analysis. In the explore 1.1, I do remember and agree with a sentence that is narrative text is a weaving together of different strands and processes. Normally, most stories use the format that is narrative. An attractive story has lots of factors to attract reader, making a good impression to readers. For example, the cartoon movie named zootopia narrates a typical story. A rabbit from village to city is for her dream that is to be a police, but lots of challenges is on the way to make the dream come true. Completed the task, rabbit has became a police, and fallen into a love with a fox who helped her during the time for task. It is a simple and small story, actually, but this film earns numerous amount of money.  This success not only because the best developed technology but also the meaning that weave in the story. The racism is the main topic across the whole movie, making audience to feel the deep meaning in this small story.

Because I am still not understand the content analysis, the only topic I could discuss there is semiotics. Saussure thinks that sign is combined with physical signifier and immaterial signified, and sign is a social product. Indeed, all the signs we use in life now are based on the society, which means culture creates sign. To be more concrete, sign is a cultural creation. In the long history, human experience their life and different record different experience, in this way, numerous signs come out.

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/2016-media-one/files/2016/04/2016-Week-5_Textual-Analysis_Brian-210tzhu.pdf

This week, we turn to the textual analysis and interview, a new and important element of media. Before we start the new topic, Professor Louise Turley was talking about the interview which is connected with sound.

For interviewing, there are five W’s can help interviewing. First of all, is who. As a interviewer, we need to choose good interviewees when we are going to interview someone. Consider who has stories to say. The next one is what, what questions we need to ask them. For the questions, there are many skills in it. The question interviewee asks need to be open ended, leading interviewee to tell more information and stories that interview want to know and record. Then, the location for interviewing is very important. Good and quiet surroundings for interviewing can make audio, sound and video better, making sure that audience can hear the recording voice and understand the emotion of interviewee. In the end, interviewer needs to ask themselves for finding what can be improved next time.

Turn to Professor Brian Morris, he mainly presented the textual analysis. I remember that the reason for textual analysis is to find out what were and what the reasonable sense-making practices of cultures are rather than just repeating our own interpretations and calling it reality. I think this is right because people would not understand why someone would like to research and find out the meaning and emotions in the words, most people think that only the author knows the meaning and emotion that they put in the article. All the explanations that readers get from the book is affected by the reader themselves. Indeed, someone says that One thousand people read Shakespeare will have one thousand Shakespeare. However, who’s understanding that is the most right one is not necessary, but the ways for reader to understand.

This Sunday, I have seen the movie that is superman vs. batman. This is a famous film and lots of people look forward to see it before it plays. However, many people who have seen this film think that it is not quite good as their expecting. Firstly, this film is quite long, 151 minutes totally. Secondly, the storyline for foreshadowing the climax is too long and complex, that makes people think it is a little boring. In my opinion, the technology of making film is developed and fantastic and the story need to be more perfect.

This story talks about that superman fight with batman because of some misunderstanding caused by an evil man, finally they forgive each other, and cooperate with each other to defeat the horrible monster.

Indeed, the story that hero fight with hero is very attractive, but it seems like that people just looks forward to the fighting visual not why they tussle. I can understand why the director chose to spend a great part of time to speak story for foreshadowing, because the political issue is the main topic the director want to express.

From my point of view, this time, this film is more oppressive. It is not a simple, heroism, the public that superman save can hurt and defeat superman. This story is end by the death of superman, and also public understand superman until the hero die. It is quite cynical.

Moreover, the music is another good point that needs to be mentioned.

For the reading in this week, to be honest, the theoretical knowledge of sound is a little boring. And I did spend lots of time to understand and receive all the knowledge, but I still feel it is hard to remember all the knowledge, especially the part of microphone. Too many types of microphone need to be identified, and various functions of each microphone need to be known. Finally, I found out that it is not necessary to remember all the microphone types, and also it is difficult to remember without real goods.

After reading this article, I did know lots of new and interesting knowledge of sound. Firstly, it is the importance of sound. Except visual, sound is another good way to help imaging. Sound helps people to understand what they see with eyes, helping them to make sure are there any other meaning behind visual. For example, environmental sound can help people to find out the location of sound source. When people hear the sound of running water, they will know the sound source is near the river, sea or lake. Now, I remember the reading and lecture last week, deaf people cannot hear, but they still can fill sound and beat. Actually, sound is not simple, and a good audio can be felt by everyone.

The next part is about the definition of sound. Because sound is created by physical vibration, all the knowledge in this part is physics knowledge, a little boring. When a sound is made, the molecules in the air surrounding it are displaced and then pull back slightly, creating a pressure followed by release. That is the wave of sound. Wavelength, frequency, pitch, amplitude and velocity are proper noun of sound. The shorter the wavelength is, the higher the frequency. The larger vibration is represented by a taller sound wave.

About recording sound, the reading discusses the differences between analog recording and digital recording, and the advantages and disadvantages of analog recording and digital recording.

In this workshop, the most interesting part is recording exercise. Using the H2N zoom, Sylvia and me chose the first question to do exercise. And also, in this class, Professor Louise gave us a suggestion for sound editing. Once the sound editor editing audio, it would be better to put the sound appear before the appearance of the character. In this way, people would feel more comfortable to see the video, accepting video.

To record sound, it is difficult for recorder to avoid noise so people need to record sound in quiet space. If recorder needs ambient sound, it needs to be recorded as another audio, and then combine all the audio together. By this method, the main audio that is the sound of interviewee can be placed on foreground.

Sound, to be more concrete, it should be Media Affordances, which is the topic of this lecture. Rachel Wilson showed us a PowerPoint of the topic, and that PowerPoint has almost 70 sides, that amazed me. To be honest, I download that when I back to home, reviewing the lesson. Too many knowledge need to be knew and remembered. Indeed, I have spent a lot of time to read that PowerPoint although some people told me that is not worthy.

In this PowerPoint, there are seven parts to introducing the Media Affordances (Sound). There are Listening VS. Hearing, What is Sound, Components of Sound, Types of Sounds, Sound perspective, Recording Sound and Microphones etc.

For the first part, listening and hearing, these two quiet similar words are actually different. According to the PowerPoint from Professor Rachel, Hearing is an ability of perceiving sound, and Listening almost depends on attention. It can be easy to understand by listened to the music made by John Cage who was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. The most famous music is 4’33’’ but this music makes many musicians angry, because there is no traditional melody in that music. Also, for me, I cannot understand what he wanted to express when I listened 4’33’’ firstly. However, I do think that his music is one of the best examples that can help people to understand the difference between listening and hearing. It makes me remember the video called the beat I was born without.

This video talks about a experience of a woman who is deaf. She cannot hear everything since she came to this world so she cannot normally communicate with normal people, that makes she feels very lonely. Travelling to Holland, she found out a community that lots of deaf people gather together, enjoying dancing and listening in clubs. Not only this woman, almost every deaf people here express that they can listen to the music, dancing with the beat.

So, to be honest, everyone can listen to music if they focus.

It was the first time that I recorded sound with professional machine that is the zoom H2n. At the beginning, Sylvia and I spent some time to make sure how to use the recording machine, indeed, that was very attractive. The first problem we met is that how to find out the files that belongs to us, and we finally solved that. Then we chose a special space in level 11 in building 80, just the level up on our classroom. Then the next question come to our mind was that who is the interviewer and who is the interviewee, but we didn’t spend lots of time on that. After discussion, Sylvia became the interviewee because she has a better voice. Although the special space is empty and Sylvia still felt shy, the results are good.

To make a audio, recording is the first step. Now turn to the next step that is editing. This time, I used two softwares that are premier and audition. Firstly, I used premier to cut the sound in order to connect each main recording, making it more fluently. Next I found out there are some noise in the ambient sound so I used the audition to dislodge that noise. Moreover, to protrude the main recording that is the voice of Sylvia, I used premier making the loudness of that sound more loudly.

At the end, I think it would be better for me to edit sound with premier and audition together.