So everyone is trying to understand how the NBN can continue to be such a huge cockup and conveniently, there’s this article about it and seeing as though it’s related to institutions, I’ll give you the low-down. Labor introduced a plan to basically just put all the best technology in 95 percept of households, everyone would have fibre all the way from the root to the premises, happy days, and two years ago we were all supposed to have gigabit internet connections, of course, being Australia that didn’t happen because there was an election and parties don’t ever agree on anything ever, so the liberal government basically said a tenth of that speed is enough let’s not waste money, this is though, it sounds bad, a reasonably good idea, but their main reason for doing this was to save time, not money and they haven’t saved any time at all and the cost also hasn’t changed that much, and in the end, we still end up with an old, dated network, still controlled by the big ISPs.

The reading on the NBN says that in contrast to other countries in the world, speed is not marketed here, in fact really the only thing that’s advertised as the difference between ISPs is data allowance. I personally find this really annoying and it permeates through almost every form of technology. Walk into JB Hifi and ask someone what Graphics Chip is in any one of their computers and then wait five minutes while the staff member goes out and checks because it isn’t written on any of the promotional paraphernalia for the product or on it’s tag, instead the Graphics memory is written there, which of course is totally irrelevant without knowing what the card is, but the majority of people buying a computer won’t know that, they see GB and know more is better. They wouldn’t know a megahert if it hit them in the face. And this is the very same thing with the NBN customers understand gigabytes, physical data, size is better but ask them about speed, they don’t know a thing and this, this lack of education is why we’re 60th in the world for internet speed. When Turnbull says “Most australians have no need for gigabit internet” he’s right, because most australians don’t know what a gigabit is.

Today in class, I played the voice track for our audio essay, which I recorded in more of a sort of persuasive online style, the sort of thing you would associate with a massive click-bait title. I wanted to come at it from the perspective of trying to stir up Australians to agree that something needs to be done about our media industry and the rapid descension into total filth that seems to be occurring particularly in television and cinema.

When playing the essay for the class I received some very polarising feedback in terms of people being really positive and really negative. Some people in the class really loved the fast, aggressive pace of it, saying that it kept them engaged, others felt it was too much. I have listed some of the feedback/suggestions I got below:

– Use sound bites to break it up – For example sound effects of Channels switching a lot

– Ask your question up front – set it up faster and more efficiently

– Start cynical – maybe on the back foot before you call your audience to action

– Propose or argue rather than state certain things to be factual

– “This isn’t just my idea, people have been saying this for ages” – back up your idea

– Build to anger, don’t be a bull at a gate

– Slow down!!!!!!!

– Be a little less dense – use “Game of Thrones” almost like a case study, not just as evidence of a problem.

– Balance – Dynamic

 

– Structurally be a little more structured – watch for flow

– Who is your audience

– Diversity of voices – be a little bit more conversational

I really like this feedback I think it give us a lot of direction going forward as we try to make the essay be a little be more factual. Seth suggested I should just go for it. Make a viral YouTube essay and follow it all the way, don’t half commit but totally commit. I think I will take this on board and simplify my argument but keep the tone relatively similar, though maybe just toning down the start a little.

The audio essay for Project Brief 4 is one of the two major outcomes for the assignment. I began writing it today and trie to stay away from a very opinionated piece, however, that wasn’t very fun so I started writing a piece about why and how the media in Australia is becoming worse and worse over time and what should be done about it. A key problem with my argument is that it fails to address the problem of money. Companies can make content that’s the easy part, they can market that content, also easy but the problem is getting people to watch who haven’t watched television in months. The sort of people who live between Netflix and Pirate Bay. The Australian institutions are putting all their ideas straight on free to air, which isn’t helping them at all and you know when the ABC is producing probably the exciting TV, there’s a huge problem! So How do you go about fixing that? I think the key is getting Australian content on Netflix as well. Get it in the same places as the overseas content and make it god enough to hold its own.

The problem then exists, how to fund such a project from the limited resources the commercial television networks in Australia have at their disposal. I think the solution lies in the content itself. I think good quality writing is cheap, you just have to find the people to do it. This is where young talent is important. There’s no reason you can’t find a young screenwriter willing to work cheap. The hard part is then turning that into an achievable idea. I think that this needs to happen especially in the screen department. One of the issues we have is that the best Australian films are made by Americans and American money and the money goes straight back there when a film or television show is successful. Take the series Gallipoli. Biggest budget Australian Television for as long as I can remember and no one even watched it. Cause I just didn’t care enough and to be honest after the first ten minutes it was boring. It was painting a picture of the war not focussing on individuals and stories that I wanted. So many mistakes are made by the out of touch media makers in the country, yet those people who have great things to say rarely actually say it.

Group Work. Ah. Here come the issues. The group chat is like a ghost town. People ask questions and it takes days for people to reply. DAYS. I am spending the majority of my life at my grandfathers bed side at the moment, in hospital and having warned my group that I might be unresponsive, there continues to be radio silence and complete lack of communication on a few people’s behalf and unfortunately I feel a lot of responsibility for it. I the being caught in the middle of family issues and uni. And I hate the fact that my group have to just deal with that. There’s no special consideration for them so the expectation is that I will just keep working even when there is a massive problem with communication.

Glancing at the Collaborative contract, I’ve noticed that all of our skills are different and a lot of my contributions are meant to be in the editing phase, so at this point, I feel like I’m not needed but because all of us are so busy, I wish I could facilitate some work because I know it’s essential that we start working on this assignment now.

One of the things that concerns me is that not even the research portion of the assignment has been done and that counts for quite a substantial part of the writing of the essay. The annotated bibliography is a required document and is due on Thursday. Not excited about the total lack of research so I’m gonna try get a little done now. Cheerio.