In this article, the author, a researcher in psychology discusses and analysis five different ways of thinking.
The first way – disciplined
Disciplined way of thinking refers to training to perfect a skill. For instance, when you start doing something, don’t just do it, taking down notes while you are doing it. In this way you can look at and learn from your notes after. There will be a big room for you to improve next time. After few times’ practice, you will become more skilled and confident in whatever you are doing. Practice makes the perfect.
The second way – synthesizing
Imaging that you are making a collage, you take whatever you need from somewhere else to make a whole new thing. It works the same way in business. For a manager, his/her job is to call for synthesis. First of all, the manager needs to know what to be done, then they distribute them to various workers to finish. Also they look back and try to carry out the best future missions.
The third way – creating
It is born from the synthesis of disciplinary perspectives. Creative breakthrough usually happens more on young generation, leaders, creative industry like media, fashion and etc.
The fourth and fifth way – respectful and ethical
When it comes to respect, it refers avoiding stereotyping and caricaturing. Try to understand others from their perspectives additionally. What’s more, learn to trust others and at the same time, earn their trust. When it comes to ethical, identify yourself.
In this article, how to allocate your time in a more wise way to be more effective is addressed.
Reformulating Working Time
We can use some tools to help us manage our time effectively. For instance, the smartphone application, it can track what you have been doing throughout the entire day. According to this, you can make some improvement on your effectiveness. Reducing working hours is the most easy way to get out of time pressure. According to Keynes, the hours of work have been fallen rapidly from 1870 to 1930, and the falling will be continuing.
Work-Life Articulation
With the arriving of digital time, the boundary between work and life is becoming blurry. ‘The traditional time/space of the week and weekend and their characteristic social relations are now porous as people increasingly work, play, consume and interact anywhere, anytime’.
Slow Living in Modern Times
As time going by, the appealing for slow life is gaining. Slow living like cooking and sharing, growing vegetables, riding a bike and walking is fading away from our life. Instead we choose the way of fast living, eat outside, buy fast food, driving and so on.
New Technologies for Emergent Times
The digital world is like a big magic box filled with society, people’s imagination, representation of people themselves on social media. People expresses and represents themselves in new technology, but it is the same narrative.
Nowadays, people feel more stressed than before from time to time. However the feeling of getting rushed sometime can become creative tension. It is the time to take control of more our time out of time.
Reference: Judy Wajcman, 2015, ‘Finding Time in a Digital Age’ in Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, ch.7.
In this week’s reading, it addressed a lot about mindset. Based on my own experience, mindset is essential, it affects you a lot, and it leads you into different results.
I remember when I first arrive in Australia, two and half years ago from now, I was confused, scared and don’t know what to do at the airport after landing. But now, when I look back, I saw how much I’ve grown. When I choose this major at the first place, I just though it would be interesting, that’s the reason. Now I find it really fine, I’m fine to work in this area after graduation. So I think everyone doesn’t really know who they are, what they want, life is not always like the same you planned. However once you pick something, for me, I agree with the craft man mindset which is to be so good, they can’t ignore you. To do that, you need to devote your time, energy and passion.
Craft man mindset
I’ve been preparing for a dance performance for almost two months, and it is coming soon which is in two days. I can’t believe how much I devoted myself into, how many times I practiced. After so much hard work, it finally paying off. everything is connected, if you apply the same mindset to your work, your hard work will pay off.
Time and quality
Time is another important issue. When I’m doing multiple tasks, uni, internship, dance and part time job, I need a detailed schedule to help me to finish more work in shorter time. Remember time doesn’t equal to quality.
The tape doesn’t lie
Look back your life from time to time. In this way, you can make progresses from you pervious mistakes and you will be surprised about how much you’ve grown.
The passion mindset
Try to think the other way around, what’s your life is bring to you. There are so many things you can be thankful to. But always remember, you need to earn it and the process won’t be essay
Reference: Cal Newport, 2012, ‘The Clarity of the Craftsman’ in So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work, NY Business Plus, ch.4.
In this week’s reading, it mainly addressed the borderland between formal and informal media work. It highlights the disadvantage of informal media work, for instance, it can be very insecure, overload and low pay. This is especially common in freelancer and some other media workers who are at the bottom of food chain. The flexibility and exploitation exist at the same time, sometimes the boundaries between these two elements can be very leaky. Based on the experience of an old freelancer named Muise, he suggests that ‘give nothing for free, and discipline yourself to making some system- any system- work for you’ It is very common for media companies to hire professional media workers. In comparison, non-professional workers become contributors. There are no minimum payment standard for them. This low-pay model of freelance writing industry has caused criticism.
According to Toby Miller, labour is the power of all, it produces media and then culture and then humanity. The common and typical labour issue in media industry is unpredictable and insecure aspects of work. The ground-level workers suffer even more. Firm culture workers are not as good as they look like, they are not ‘stars’, rich or successful. In fact, they work for their company to get the basic payment. Sometimes they don’t get credit for their contribution. In the end, we can see a range of ideas developing, conflicting and connecting. Both of inevitability and contingency exist in the capitalist knowledge economies world. So take the chances, there is a liberation for flexibility and informal employment after all.
Reference: Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas, 2015, ‘Work’ in The Informal Media Economy, Polity Press, Cambridge UK, ch.3.
Global media like E&M landscape is in the form of multi-shifting. ‘At a global level, one of the most significant shifts evident is a reordering of the industry’s sectors’ (Lederer & Brownlow). There are generally five broad groups, Internet, video entertainment, publishing, music, and video games. In overall picture, it is steadily shifting from publish business to video and internet business
Shift 1. Demography: Youth Will Be Served
Younger consumers’ startling ability of multitasks in different media platform has become the biggest selling advantage for E&M markets around the world. Their behaviour helps promote the products in a rapid speed.
Shift 2. Competition: Content Is Still King
with the appearance of new technology and communication platforms, contented was once outdated, becoming a backseat. This makes lots of world’s traditional media suffer, especially the ones based in U.S and Europe. However in an essential overlooked shift, content still is considered to be the dominate factor, ‘content is king’, it will distinguish and expand globally.
Shift 3. Consumption: The Joy of Bundles
To keep a good and steadily increasing media diet is essential. Connecting and selling everything together is the best way to achieve that. For instance, the increase of subscription content in streaming services in E&M market has become a major feature. However it starts with a very low base.
Shift 4. Geography: Growth Markets
Company usually has different strategies and expectations for different developed market. Nevertheless, in a wider picture, company wants to achieve the rapid growth dynamically.
Shift 5. Business Models: Transforming with Trust
The rapid growth of technology and digitisation creates powerful centrifugal force. As a result, it gives opportunity of development in smaller specialist and area. In fact, this potentially promotes the appearance of new business, even new industry.
Reference: Chris Lederer & Megan Brownlow, ‘’A World of Differences’: Special Report: Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2016-2020’. Price Waterhouse Cooper.
All of the development and technologies have been invented through industrial revolution have always been relying on the power of digitisation and information technology. Three clusters are addressed in this process, physical, digital and biological. These three clusters based on and get support from each other in order to make progress.
physical
In physical branch, there are four main streams, they are autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, advanced robotics and new materials. Autonomous vehicles dominates the information without a driver. They are developing into more strong function of transferring messages in the environment. 3D printing is also called additive manufacturing. It produces subjects layer upon layer based on model or drawing. Roberts are used in automotive environment for the most of situation. New material is being created based not he principles of lighter, stronger, recyclable and adaptive way.
digital
The key connection between physical and digital branch is the Internet. Internet provides platforms, products, services, places, etc. People is walking through these paths between technologies and platforms. Digital platforms save people a lot of transaction and friction cost. Individuals are sharing the same asset.
Biological
After long time researching and huge cost has been spending on it, biological realm has arrived a new level. On the other hand, computing power has been helping scientists go on the right trial.
Internet has been playing an essential role in the industry. It connects everything, it makes the communication faster, easier and more effective. It save money and space.
The reason I decide to shoot this scene is because all of other scenes I made this semester are all focus more on specific events than the environment and atmosphere. So I made this scene to show audience around my apartment. Again I focused on small things, and the frames are tight. However they are just still images of my apartment without people in it. Some of them are stilled related to events.
I shoot this with my Canon 700D and edit it with imovie. During shooting, I was trying to use tripod to get some shots to reduce the shaking, however because my shots are mostly close ups, I found very inconvenient to use the tripod. So I just carried my camera around finally. When I showed it to Paul, He suggested it’s better to use a tripod because it looks shaky. What I should do is to make it stable or shaky enough. But too shaky doesn’t really work for this scene. I shot the same objects in different angles and from different position like the wardrobe shots, the washing machine tube shots, the wall and desk shots. I was trying to show audience different perspectives by doing so. Also, I tried changing focus out during the shower nozzle shot. First audience can see a clear image of the shower nozzle, then the focus starts changing, followed by the filthy shower window. The slight changing is perfectly associated with the big still image, and it feels so real!! Another thing I kept paying attention to during the shooting the depth of field. I found a point and pulled focus to create depth of field in every shot.
For audio, I chose a slow and a bit sad piano royalty free music. I was trying to bring out the loneliness, sadness and the feeling of real through the scene. The music perfectly matched. when video finished, I made the audio go on for few more seconds with the black screen. I don’t know why, just feel like right.
This scene is divided into three parts, putting on make up, putting on accessories and removing make up. I started with three still image shots of bath room counter full of make ups and accessories, tooth brush, bottles of face cream, cleanser, etc. Again to show the environment. Before shooting, I did some staging, I put make ups, accessories and all these stuff to create a little bit messy looking. In my presentation before I said I will try not to show the face of the character, but a blurry one is fine. So I showed the blurry face with make up on at the end of the first part. The second part is made up by a series of montage shots, These shots are all close-ups and stylized. The third part is just a simple event, removing make up.
During the shooting, the lighting is tricky. We shot in the bathroom, I found it’s necessary to shut the bathroom door, otherwise there will be a slight influence on lighting. Also after you do the white balance, do not take the camera out of the place because the lighting will change immediately, then you will do white balance again. That’s why there are some slight differences among the first three shots in the scene. I used the color corrector later to fix that. another thing I learned is to mark the position of camera if it’s necessary. This works better for continuity. Or you can choose keep rolling and shoot to edit. What’s more, get familiar with the location. When shooting, I felt like not comfortable with all kinds of angles and camera movements. The reasons are firstly it is difficult to shoot in a narrow area with a big film camera, secondly I’m not familiar enough with the location, at least I didn’t check it and rehearsal in advance. If I did so, it will be better. What’s more, I learned one more thing about premiere, how to copy and paste the effect from one clip to another, right click copy on the clip, then right clip paste attribution on another clip.
For the audio, exercise ‘making tea’ reminds me of sound from radio in distance. Then I ask myself what I usually do when putting on make ups. I usually leave the tv show playing on my laptop while putting on make ups, and I can still listen to it. So I get the idea for audio. Again I used the microphone in the edit suit to record the sound of a Chinese tv show I usually watch and used it as the audio for this one.
When I showed it Paul, he suggested to cut down a bit more to around 40 secs. There are some time problems in it. For the shots that shoW Phoebe’s face, I should cut it like one longer than the other. Between the shots of she put on lipsticks and the shots show her face, there should be more shots of her choosing make ups.
In this week’s class, we screened our work we’ve made so far and went through some editing techniques. After watching other’s work, I feel that it is not about quantity, it’s about quality. If you just focus on one scene, and keep working on it, it will be better and better. For example, Aidan’s night landscape is really great, I liked it a lot. He worked a lot on the audio, some of them are really creative and real, like the typing sound on iphone, the sound of people walking by, etc. Also Corey’s research is really interesting, and there is indeed big difference when there is background sound and there is not. The lighting and depth of field are all great in his shots. Kenton’s scene of making tea, the framing and angles are great, the lighting is also wonderful. Fabiana’s shots of the place look so filmic and beautiful.
For my screen, I showed the purse one. Paul said the depth of field in mine is really good, also it is very well stylized and cut. Also it is funny at the end.
I realized that my problem is too many scenes. What I should do in the future is to be more focusing. work on one specific scene and make it better and better, consider all of the elements, mise-en-scene, location, lighting, color, camera movements, editing. To make a scene filmic is hard to achieve.
In this week’s class, we screened the work we’ve made this semester. There is lots of great works. For example, I really liked the Kenton’s clips on different numbers. The idea is brilliant. The color, shot construction and camera movements are all good. Also he captured lots of city landscapes during the shooting as well. Ella’s scene is very filmic, it perfectly creates the horror atmosphere through those close up shots and dark lighting and color. The locations are also well chosen. Especially the door. Sam’s dream scene is awesome. The mise-en-scene is great, I really like the red sheet just hanging on the car window, it looks like nonsense, but it is in a dream, so it totally fits. Also the lighting and depth of field is great. the music matches as well.