Tag Archives: media

I HEREBY DENOUNCE THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

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It’s only Monday and ‘Murica has already delivered the goods.

The highlight of the news today is the Southern mom shooting up her children’s iPhones with a rifle, denouncing ‘the effects social media’ as the cause of her children’s disobedience and disrespect. The whole incident was filmed, on what I can only assume is another iPhone, and ironically posted on social media. Naturally, as a blossoming media practitioner I found this interesting on a variety of levels.

Firstly, the mother’s overwhelmingly negative view of social media is noteworthy, as it highlights a distinct discord between her (the older generation) and her children (the younger generation). This generational divide is quite common, not only in regards to 21st century emerging media, but also throughout history. When the printing press became easily accessible, older generations were concerned that children would spend all day reading and never go outside; when radio was introduced, similar concerns were expressed. Fear of change, especially fear of changing, emerging media, is cyclical; change is almost always met with a negative reaction.

DailyMail author Anneta Konstantinides writes that as the children watch their phones be destroyed, “the only outlet they’ve ever known to a social life disappears.” This reinforces the generational bias I discussed earlier, suggesting that the author believes that children no longer know how to socialise outside of social media. One could certainly argue that social media is a large part of how 21st century kids socialise, but is difficult to substantiate the argument that it is the only way they know how to socialise. It’s not my place to comment, but one could suggest that the mother’s reaction is more a reflection on her method of parenting than the presence of social media in her children’s lives.

Moreover, the incident is an interesting case study in terms of the saturation of the media in our lives, and the speed with which news travels.

 

 

Week 6 – Lectorial

Part of today’s Lectorial was about story and narrative. Story is important in constructing media texts, as it can frame our experience of the world. It is essential to how we communicate as human beings, helping us to make sense of our lives and the world around us. This point reminded me of an experiment by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel called ‘An experimental study of Apparent Behaviour,’ conducted in 1944.  Subjects were asked to view a short video which featured a bunch of geometrical shapes moving around at varying speeds, and were then asked to interpret what had happened. Most of the subjects assigned personalities to the shapes, creating a narrative out of simple moving geometric forms. I think this relates to Brian’s point that human beings have a convulsion to make narrative sense of our lives, and how our brains are hard wired towards narrative and story.

Story telling conventions can help us to structure our own stories. Generally, all stories have a protagonist, who drives the action in the narrative, and is central to the narrative’s turning points, as well as an antagonist, who causes change and in trouble for the protagonist. Other conventions, such as the three act structure, are almost ubiquitous, particularly in Hollywood cinema. However, narrative conventions are not limited only to the cinematic medium.

Joseph Campbell’s theory on the monomyth of the ‘Hero with a Thousand faces’ (1949) is also interesting. The TED Talk by Matthew Winkler embedded above is a helpful illustration of this idea. Campbell proposes that most protagonists, or heroes, in narratives throughout history follow the same pattern of events. This mono myth exists in all human cultures, and relates back to the first point that story is essential to us as human beings, as a way of reflecting on our own lives through symbolic stories.

The Art of the Interview – Masterchef Style

In the spirit of Louise’s lecture on ‘the art of the interview,’ I decided to focus this post on the function of this ‘art’ in one of my favourite guilty pleasures – you guessed it, Masterchef.

The interviews in this show, as with most reality TV shows, are interesting because they are recorded after the action has occurred. It’s always a bit strange to see a contestant talking how much they want to win a challenge, when you already know that they already know if they won or not. It’s a prime example of interviewers asking the right questions to get the response that they want. Moreover, they have already been assured to be ‘good talent’ because the casting directors for the show have made sure that the contestants work well in front of the camera, and the other contestants.

Masterchef is the only reality TV show I can watch because of the high production quality, which also extends to the settings of the interviews. They are recorded in a controlled studio environment, where the lighting and sound is manipulated carefully, and the backdrop relates to the show (usually cooking utensils or something else relevant).

Of course, this type of interview is different from, say, interviews for a documentary, but it is still an interesting example to look at.

Sony MC50 Camera Exercise

As you can see in the finished result of this exercise embedded above, we faced a few challenges. When we struggled to even set up the tripod properly, we knew we were in for a fun ride (we did figure it out eventually!). It was hard to find a suitable place to conduct the interviews that was quiet enough, had an interesting background, and decent lighting, we ended up having to compromise on all three of those points.

Upon viewing the final footage, I realised that some of the shots weren’t properly focused on the interviewee, so this is something I will have to make sure of in the future, as this really affected the quality of the shot. It was also hard to make the reverse shots of the interviewer look consistent as we didn’t have control of the lighting and were inexperienced at setting the white balance of the camera. It did help us to realise that framing the interviewer and the interviewee properly had a significant effect on the consistency of the interview.

I think the establishing/wide shots were the most successful, as it was easy to get a shots that reflected RMIT life in and around building 80 due to the interesting architecture and large numbers of students.