by harrietread

My Take: Uses of Photography Wk 1

Uni is back, and once again not super sure of what I’m doing half the time but that’s life. Got a way bigger focus on photography this semester: studio is Uses of Photography and I’m also in Photojournalism. That, and I’m doing a fair bit of work as a photographer doing parties and headshots for dancer/actor friends.

It’s interested doing photography as a media subject, since I’ve only done it before as an artistic subject. For UoP, it’s linking back into the significance of photos in media (social, etc.) and for Photojournalism theres a lot of focus on journalism and news, which oddly enough will be new for me.

For now, honing my technical skills in both these classes is an important factor for me. But being a media practitioner is the main focus that will be communicated and absorbed over the course of this semester.

by harrietread

Course Reflection Post

My biggest struggle this semester has been organisation. I have been doing alot of things at the last minute, which I will try to improve on next semester. My greatest strength this semester has been technical work and submitting initiative blog posts. I have improved the most in doing group work, because every single class’ assessment piece this semester has been a group assessment. I’m basically a complete expert now.I need the most improvement in my motivation and general initiative to do work. In the grand scheme of things, however, I am in the very complicated process of moving house and also have had to find a new job  in that time and so alot of my energy was sapped during this semester.

This second half of semester has been an arduous one to get through. Completing the PB4 group assessment was more difficult than expected. I felt as though we were thrown into the metaphorical deep end of group work, in the sense that we were given a very large assessment to complete together and that what we were asked to do ultimately was communicated to us in a distinctly vague way. Essentially, we were told to make a video and audio essay on Mediums and Technology, but it took us a while as a group to narrow down what was meant by that prompt until we finally decided to talk about photography, smartphones and Instagram. Next semester, I will make an effort to be more organised in preparing for an assessment.

While I did do the readings on Mediums and Technologies in an earlier week (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/harriet-read/2016/04/30/my-take-on-medium-theory/), looking back I realise that we did little to discuss how communication of a message affected an audience or viewer based on the actual medium that the message was given in.

One of the more interesting lectorials that I recall from this semester has been the one on Copyright (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/harriet-read/2016/05/02/my-take-on-copyright/).

I also was interested in the lectorial on broadcast media culture (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/harriet-read/2016/05/02/my-take-on-broadcast-and-the-post-broadcast-paradigm/) because I am very interested in human psychology and its relevance to media.

I found this half of semester that I was able to make clearer links between my classes, in particular to New Media New Asia with Terry Johaal. In this post (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/harriet-read/2016/05/03/basic-comms-101-by-me/) I highlighted some aspects of this class that interested me and will remain relevant in my core studies.

Finally, I had a look into my stronger suit of cinema studies and made this post about my thoughts on what makes a horror movie a) good and b) scary. (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/harriet-read/2016/05/30/my-take-on-why-good-horror-is-scary/)

by harrietread

My Take on why Good Horror is Scary

What’s the scariest film you’ve ever watched?

If you try to think about any scary movie or story or whatever, what tends to be the scariest thing is the unknown.

Take, for instance, this short film that goes for only 2 and a half minutes. Watch before continuing.

So, what’s the deal with it? It’s creepy. Really creepy. But what’s mostly creepy is that we don’t know what is going on. Not to mention, the director Kris Straub’s use of old news weather report conventions make this eerily realistic as though this is a real thing that happened.

The interpretations you could go on with this little short film are endless. What is going on, What is happening outside, Why are messages being misconstrued and contradicted from the weather channel?

The long and short part that I want to get to about this is that the most terrifying things are the things that we don’t know much about. For example, the iconic Blair Witch Project is a greatly turned to horror film and yet we never see the Blair Witch itself. There is only uncertainty, conflict, paranoia and confusion.

That is what makes the Blair Witch Project so scary: we fear the unknown. The same can be said of Paranormal Activity, which terrified me for so long because you never saw the entity but it was always there. Not seeing, not knowing, being unable to decipher or understand things is the scariest thing and horror film makers, writers and storytellers have been exploiting this whole idea since forever.

by harrietread

My Take on Alternate Realities

When I say alternate realities, I’m not necessarily talking about Narnia, the Matrix, space-time travel or anything like that. I’m talking more about the realities within our minds that are constructed by our experiences and perspectives.

About a week ago, I made a post about how some of the things that Donald Trump says look good on paper, and that people do have reasons for wanting to support him. I’m going to extend that post a little further, thanks to a recent publication by the Wall Street Journal after they did a study on how social media news feeds can affect who people are more aligned to.

What Wall Street Journal’s Jon Keegan has done is set up two feeds which have real conversations and posts that individuals have posted on Facebook, and aligned them into a red ‘conservative’ feed and a blue ‘liberal’ feed. Users who posted all of these uploads, of which there were up to 10.1 million of them, were anonymised but had their political label analysed.

Based on the study’s findings, and the presentation of conservative vs liberal posts on Facebook, one can logically come to the conclusion that as long as you are receiving media texts from entirely one political standing, you are reinforcing your already existing beliefs. It seems fairly logical and simplistic, but at the same time it’s interesting to consider how different the political situation in the US would be if social media were different to how it currently is. It makes a little more sense in the world in terms of exactly how people align themselves to certain ideas or political figures. The reinforcement theory we learned in high school comes into play, as how we tailor what we prefer to see and choose to omit from our feeds reinforces reality as we perceive it.

by harrietread

Media 2 STUDIOS

Sooo the next 2 and a half years of Media will be studio based. These are project based which is exciting to me because I like having something practical to do. Theory is awesome, but it’s kind of one of those balance things: too much of one without the other, too much oversaturation of either one, is completely exhausting on every level.

It’ll be made up of (technically) 5 assessments, going from PB1 to PB4B, over fourteen weeks. I’m hoping that in comparison to this semester it won’t be as emotionally or psychologically draining. Then again, since it will involve a lot of practical work and group work, it could sap the last drops of life from me.

by harrietread

Recap SEM 1

In semester 1, we have been covering:

  • Practices
  • Professionalism
  • Theory
  • Technical practices

Over this semester, I want in particular to put more practice into the professional aspects of this course. This includes my desire to find work attachments, which could give me opportunities that will contribute to my professional career.

Theoretical studies in communications are something that I am incredibly interested in pursuing further. I want to do more studies involving human psychology and sociology, because the ideas and studies in these subjects  interest me deeply.

by harrietread

My Take on Apple’s IOS Update

Anyone who has updated their Apple product (iPod, iPad or iPhone) can tell you straight up that there’s a few issues. So far, there have been complaints of

  • Straight up crashes
  • Bricking
  • Unresponsive touchscreen
  • Bluetooth issues
  • Wiping out of graphics

Firstly, let’s just say that these kind of issues aren’t received well on a stressful morning for anyone.

Secondly, the release of the IOS 9.3.2 update has given me a taste of [oh, horror of horrors!] a world without my smartphone.

God forbid, I cannot text anyone? I have to use [*gasp*] a landline if I want to get someone’s attention??

It seems unbelievable that bugs like these would even be able to pass tests run by Apple; I’m avoiding using my phone altogether currently. [Why else do you think I’m making a post about this?] But in all seriousness, how could something so incredibly glitchy, buggy and inefficient pass a test run.

Now I won’t lie, I considered throwing my phone at a brick wall and getting a fresh one; maybe that’s their ploy? Probably far-fetched, but I can’t see how anyone at Apple could possibly have thought releasing this update was a good idea nor how it could have possibly masqueraded itself as functioning software.

Tl:Dr:  Apple mucked up its software update release, but let’s be real: we’re all gonna keep getting Apple products anyway

by harrietread

Donald Trump Isn’t So Bad

So today, I got into an internet fight on the social media platform Yik Yak.

I love Yik Yak because its like Twitter except way more anonymous, and anonymity allows users to share some of their nuttiest, most controversial or spur-of-the-moment thoughts. I decided to post the other morning about a silly little dream I’d had the night before:

‘i dreamed donald trump coached footy and Richmond beat his team, and then all the other coaches told him to get (*censored*) and everyone laughed at his stupid hair’

I was bored, felt like posting a bit of inane silliness, so I did. The thing about Yik Yak is that it only shows posts within your area, and considering I was in a sheltered, very left-wing part of Hawthorn when I posted it, I figured hey, people might get a laugh out of it.

Then along comes a user that we will call Acorn, in consideration of the icon that they were using at the time.

Acorn criticised my post, saying I was only ‘bagging trump because it’s the “cool thing” to do’ and that I essentially ‘wouldn’t know (*expletive*) about American politics except for that Trump is running.’

I was also encouraged to ‘take a look at his policies, the western world genuinely needs some extreme reforms, whether you are willing to accept it or not.’

So I did.

I went onto donaldjtrump.com and had a look at the things that he is advocating for, and despite what I knew of him previously, I was impressed. The website revealed Trump’s plans for affordable healthcare, tax reform that would help fix the wealth distribution in America and better care for war veterans both physically, socially and economically.

These are just a few things that, frankly, could be good things. If I didn’t know anything about Trump, and I say this lightly, I probably would say that I support him except for that thing about the wall: he wasn’t kidding about that.

So I’d like to thank Acorn personally for encouraging me to go and do my research. I learned a valuable lesson from him: an internet fight that winds up in something that’s akin to two people yelling at eachother with their hands covering their ears is not something productive in this world. I was criticised on social media, and instead of screaming bloody murder at my accuser I decided why not get the front foot on this argument and learned far more than I anticipated.

Tl;Dr

Internet fights are good for you and Donald Trump does say he has some good ideas

by harrietread

My Take on Tina Fey

At the encouragement of my sister and parents, I started the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt the other day, and I adore it. To me, it is first and foremost great comedy and writing. Secondly, I think it has a great standing amidst fears of being politically correct humans.

The premise of the series is that Kimmy was one of four women kept locked in a bunker by a religious fanatic for 15 years; she comes into the present day of 2015-16 with absolutely no knowledge of how to be an adult in contemporary America.

One of the things that I love about the series is the writer: Tina Fey. She is possible one of my favourite public figures, comedians and women in the world, partly because her style of comedy is unadulterated and challenging.

She doesn’t shy away from ideas that are challenging in society, writing freely and provocatively about topics including sex and race in a way that makes me laugh at this inherent paranoia of being politically correct. For instance, in the first episode, Kimmy meets her roommate Titus after the landlady, Lillian’s, nonchalant introduction of him as ‘single, but very gay’ and ‘very black.’ Her matter-of-fact delivery is subtly jarring despite its humour.

I think something that draws me to this type of comedy is that it highlights the fact that in reality, being politically correct is something we overthink. Titus’ introduction is a good example of this, because in a formal essay or article he would be described as a ‘homosexual African-American,’ and while there is nothing wrong with this kind of description, it is overcomplicated and borderline pretentious.

If you were to watch another production by Tina Fey, such as Mean Girls or 30 Rock, you’d probably get what I’m trying to say. In Mean Girls, the first time Cady is introduced to her class as an exchange student from Africa, the teacher (played appropriately by Fey) is quick to assume that a black student ‘from Michigan’ is said exchange student. And in 30 Rock, there is an entire episode in which white businessman Jack Donaghy (played by Alec Baldwin) gets black actor and comedian Tracy Jordan (played by Tracy Morgan) to film a Republican campaign video to encourage black Americans to vote Republican; ultimately, Donaghy simply gets Tracy to say ‘Black people, don’t vote!’

My ultimate thoughts on Tina Fey is that in a time where censorship and political correctness is a hotbed of paranoia and anxiety, her humour is relaxed yet provocative. I am always going to have a biased view of her work since I adore her, but frankly I think that there needs to be more appreciation for this woman and the lens she offers us through which we can simply have a chuckle about how unusual, unfair or uptight the world can be sometimes.