Just Outside The Zeitgeist

Project Brief 4: Final Reflection

Project Brief 4 – Final Reflection

From the beginning of the semester, the ‘Old’s Cool’ studio provided fascinating insight into the past forms of media. I wanted to be in this class to learn about old media technology. Simply due to the fact that my main interests are all related to the media industry, I have had a basic understand of new media technologies from a young age and so I wanted to learn about the roots of the principles I use today. The internet age we exist in today ensures that children growing up right now are capable with some sort of technology. Most homes in the Western world have some sort of electronic device, usually a computer, tablet or smartphone. This was corroborated in a study undertaken in 2009 by the British Journal of Educational Training in which they found that “every participating family had at least one home computer and broadband access to the Internet. Each had at least one TV set, mobile phone and game console.” (Mcpake et. al, 2013, pg. 421)           Having a society so dependent on technology, I believe it is vital to understand the origins to inform our future experiences.

During classes, as we explored the old media technologies, I always had the urge to share my experiences online. When we experimented with the Lumen Prints, I made sure to take a photo of them so I could share the results on Instagram. I wanted to further explore this urge, which led me to project brief two in which I researched a person’s relationship with media content and the online social media experience. The ease of use and the high level of control combine to make the online experience so inviting to millennial consumers. “We have entered an era of media convergence that allows the flow of content across multiple channels” (Veglis, 2012, pg. 314) and this allows for communities to be created easier than ever before. To foster an online community, users constantly update their profiles, posting pictures and videos to add to the endless stream of information.

During project brief three, I created a video based on the craft of running a dive bar and creating unique alcoholic shots to explore the way humans create a community away from their computer screens. “Society is essentially the network of transactions, exchanges and interactions between individuals and families, and in some contexts, between organizations, groups or institutions” (Sinha, 2014, pg. 50) and most humans thrive when they are a part of a community. My take away from this project was that I wanted to explore how social media has changed the way communities develop as the next step in social growth.

This goal transferred over to project brief four where I joined a group with Adrian and Cody. They presented the idea of creating an 80’s style talk show as a way to explore the aesthetic development of video from old to new media. The television talk show has undergone a lot of changes since its inception in 1951 and “in a sense TV talk shows have been evolving together with technological developments, social changes and moods” (Piotrowicz, 2013, pg. 609). Being a cultural touchstone for many adults, American late-night talk shows follow a similar format; the host’s opening monologue commenting on the day’s events, followed by a few interviews with celebrities promoting their latest wares.

The TV talk show genre is a product of the twentieth century broadcasting, “built up on the tradition of entertainment and news […] that encompasses forms of conversation and communication and evolves around talk” (Piotrowicz, 2013, pg. 610). The continued progression of new media technologies, such as online streaming through websites like YouTube, have granted users the ability to control the content they consume based around their own personal schedule. Due to the current American political climate, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has gained a large surge in popularity due to his politically charged conversations. Yet, with the amount of content available across a variety of platforms, the social discussion continues in online spaces as his monologues and interviews are uploaded online. This allows audiences to watch specific segments at their own leisure with the ability to share the video with whomever they like, furthering the shows reach.

The internet defines the new media generation, supporting the old media principles by giving them a new platform in which it is easier to find a new audience. A clear way to see new media’s effects is to examine how advertisers utilise the technology. Old media marketing considered an audience en masse, grouping their consumers together. “As advertisers see it, traditional mass media bring and sell their audiences to organizations, but in that process they also perform a role of gatekeepers, performing agenda setting, framing, and priming, and agenda building, cutting, and melding” (Zerfass et. al, 2016, pg. 506). New media audiences have the freedom to choose the media they consume and so advertisers treat them as separate customers, targeting individuals with specifically curtailed messages based on information gathered through the user’s online footprint.

I wrote two advertisements for our final video based on a time-traveller from the year 2017 arriving in the eighties in an attempt to explain Facebook to someone with no knowledge of social media. The tone of the ads are in line with the exaggerated lunacy of the rest of the piece but they also explore the changes social media has had on society. Getting in touch with friends is now as easy as pushing a button on a phone, making it easier to grow a community but arguably losing the cohesion face-to-face discussion elicits in a relationship.

Our fourth project brief aims to humorously explore the way in which old media principles have been changed by the emergence of internet culture. The talk show has evolved along with audience desires throughout the decades, changing the way it delivers segments to audiences. The genre is so common that spoof versions of those shows have generated dedicated audiences as well. In addition, “the proliferation of new media has allowed more people to take part in content creation” (Chao-Chen, 2013, pg. 183) and the explosion of social media as the norm for millennials is proof of the impact of these modern principles. As new media continues to remix and adapt old media techniques and principles, it is important to continue to understand the roots of our information society.

 

Bibliography

Chao-Chen, Lin (2013) ‘Convergence of new and old media: New media representation in traditional news’, Chines Journal of Communication, pp. 1 – 19

Mcpake, Joanna; Plowman, Lydia; Stephen, Christine (2013) ‘Pre-school children creating and communicating with digital technologies in the home’, British Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 44(3), pp. 421 – 431

Piotrowicz, Magdalena (2013) ‘American TV Talk Shows as Sicko Circuses of the 21st Century, International Journal of Arts & Sciences, vol. 6(3), pp. 609-625

Sinha, Sitabhra (2014) ‘The Importance of Community Studies’ Microeconomics, vol. 2(1), pp.49-61

Veglis, Andreas (2012) ‘From Cross Media to Transmedia: Reporting in Newspaper Articles’ Publishing Research Quarterly, vol. 28(4), pp.313-324

Zerfass, A.; Verčič, D.; Wiesenberg, M. (2016) ‘The dawn of a new golden age for media relations?: How PR professionals interact with the mass media and use new collaboration practices: How PR professionals interact with the mass media and use new collaboration practices’, Public Relations Review, vol. 42(4), pp. 499 – 508

 

 

 

Old’s Cool – Project Brief 4: Work in Progress Report #2

Adrian, Cody and I have set out to create a series of comedic satirical videos in the vein of Adult Swim content. I have just gotten over a cold which placed us behind schedule but I have just written a couple of mock advertisements which we will film within the next couple of days. The two ads I wrote centre on a time traveller coming from the year 2017 all the way to the 1980’s to tell a random citizen about the “wonders of the internet and world’s most popular social media website, Facebook”. Playing up the 80’s C-Grade late night television spots, the ad is purposely undercooked with bad editing and a half-baked idea. The premise for the skit does not hold up under much scrutiny, which will make it funnier to the viewer and satirise the 80’s aesthetic.

The centre-piece of our video are the talk show segments which will highly exaggerate motifs and premises common in the era. In aiming for funny content, the crux of these scenes hone in on nonsensical antics to highlight the evolution of the talk show and television as a whole. “Since 1951, when the first TV talk show was aired on American WJZ-TV, this cultural phenomenon has gained an astronomic number of supporters and probably an equally large number of opponents all over the globe” (Piotrowicz, 2013, pg. 609). Beginning as discussion panels focused on the debate over crucial points concerning every facet of American life, it has evolved considerable since then. The genre is so familiar to people from the Western world that the sub-genre of satiric talk shows has taken on a life of its own through programs such as The Eric Andre Show and Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, both of these particular spoof shows aired on Adult Swim. This is just a microcosm of the genre’s evolution as a programming block that only airs once Cartoon Network’s target audience of children between the ages of seven and fifteen have gone to sleep, hosts programs with dedicated audiences based on a premise which is making fun of another genre.

Audiences have evolved from the mindset established by old media principles. I explored this development during Project Brief 2 as I researched how media has narrowed its focus to examine its audience as individuals instead of a single minded mass of consumers. This is why we wanted to include a segment of our project focusing on how the past would view the concept of online social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter. One of the most intriguing elements of an interactive social media application “is the degree to which such environments allow individual user feedback to affect and be incorporated into the stream of presented information” (Southwell & Lee, 2004, pg. 645). With our final project, Adrian, Cody and I have written sketches that will explore these ideas, while also being entirely ridiculous.

 

Bibliography

Piotrowicz, Magdalena (2013) ‘American TV Talk Shows as Sicko Circuses of the 21st Century, International Journal of Arts & Sciences, vol. 6(3), pp. 609-625

Southwell, Brian & Lee, Mira (2004) ‘A Pitfall of New Media? User Controls Exacerbate Editing Effects on Memory’, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 81(3), pp. 643 – 656

 

Project Brief 2: The Social Role of Family Portraiture – Post 1

Family photography is for the people whom are not in the pictures.

Memory does not provide perfect recall and since the necessary technology was developed, humans have been documenting their lives in an attempt to record their own history. It is the consensus of a society that defines the past and this can be seen even on the micro-scale of personal videography and photography. “The temporal shifting that occurs during filmmaking includes the filmmaker’s projection of how future generations and perhaps anonymous viewers will see and judge the contents of the film” (Bevan, 2012, pg. 549). An example that is explored in Bevan’s article is the family film and its role in the television show Mad Men. The video piece I created attempts to explore the position family portraiture and photography has in a social context.

Old media generations placed a prestige on photography as it granted visual proof of past moments and allowed for the people who did not experience the events to understand what they missed. The long-established cultural practice of family photographs has changed as it entered the post-modern world. With the introduction of the internet and social media, family photos have pivoted from merely being “framed and displayed in the home, kept in wallets or presented as a series of pictures in photo albums” (Pauwels, 2008, pg. 34). The social media injection into photography is one of instant sharing, posting online for everyone to see. The link between the old and new media approach to personal photography is the desire to share these images with other friends and family, whether it be in a photo album or on Facebook. The image provides a conversational springboard to inform the outside viewer of the story behind the photo. “The notion of family time as rare and special has its roots in the late nineteenth century when the sort of ritualized family moments that have come to be called ‘quality family time’ became common among the growing middle class of Europe and North America” (Hallman & Benbow, 2007, pg. 873). The stature given to family portraits has created a sanctity around them, leading to a main goal of demonstrating the family’s nature through the image. “One of the most accepted notions about early photographic portraits is that their subjects either conformed to bourgeois ideals of materialistic display and “family values,” or they aspired to do so.” (Hudgins, 2010, pg. 560)

Instead of telling someone about the story behind the pictures shown in the video above, I thought to simply record the audio of the photoshoot to pull back the curtain in a unique way. I did not want to use video because it provides too much information and the visual element would turn into a more public artefact. By forcing the audience to imagine what the scene looks like, they must draw upon their memories of taking similar photos and the long process they have gone through to end up with a perfect family portrait.

Bibliography

Bevan, Alex (2012) ‘Nostalgia For Pre-Digital Media in Mad Men’ Television & New Media, vol. 14(6), pp. 546 – 559

Hallman, Bonnie & Benbow, S. Mary (2007) ‘Family Leisure, Family Photography and Zoos: Exploring the Emotional Geographies of Famillies’, Social and Cultural Geography, vol. 8(6), pp. 871 – 888

Hudgins, Nicole (2010) ‘A Historical Approach to Family Photography: Class and Individuality in Manchester and Lille, 1850-1914’ Journal of Social History, vol. 43(3), pp. 559 – 586

Pauwels, Luc (2008) ‘A Private Visual Practice Going Public? Social Functions and Sociological Research Opportunities of Web-based Family Photography’, Visual Studies, vol. 23(1), pp. 34 – 49

Project Brief 2: More Control Over New Media – Post 2

New media allows the creator to have more control over their content.

The establishment of social media changed the way individuals shared, published and edited their original content. Film photography gave people the ability to capture a moment in time and view it later on after the developing process. Digital cameras introduced instant gratification by displaying the picture on the device seconds after it was taken. This allowed photographers, casual or professional, to adjust their pictures on the fly. Memory cards were upgraded to store more images, allowing creators to take countless shots to ensure a plethora of choices for a favourite photo to emerge.

Enter camera phones, the device easily carried everywhere that can be used by anyone. A whole new generation of archivists, witnessing and recording their lives through a handheld device to share online for others to see. There is a social climate that suggests that someone must digitally save a moment for it to be believed, that others will only accept your story if you have visual proof of its existence. One new element introduced by interactive social media environments “is the degree to which such environments allow individual user feedback to affect and be incorporated into the stream of presented information” (Southwell & Lee, 2004, pg. 645).

I created the video above to showcase how an individual well-versed in social media creates content. My roommate Joshua and I constantly take photos or videos and spend hours editing and discussing them so I began to see the differences in how we each approached the task. I would open my phone’s camera application while Joshua would go straight to Snapchat, posting the picture there while I would post mine to Instagram later on. Joshua’s process is one focused on entertaining others in quick bursts as he keeps other people in mind when he uses Snapchat. If he finds something that is funny or he takes an appealing photograph, he will post it to his story which allows anyone to see it if they choose do to so. Other he curtails to specific people, using in-jokes and a shared interests to create a picture or video targeted for one person.

Joshua’s thought process in the above video reveals the desire people have to control as much of the new media sharing experience as possible. In a study undertaken for the Centre for the Study of Behaviour Change and Influence at the University of the West of England, it was shown that “Snapchat was mainly used to communicate with a single person rather than a group of people, and this person mainly includes close friends, partners and family members” (Piwek & Joinson, 2015, pg. 364). Users want diverse options when it comes to producing content for sharing online.

New media and the internet have given creators an overabundance of tools to edit and perfect the artefacts they create while also providing numerous avenues to share their work. New advances in established media forms, such as photography and videography, allowed creators to use “some of the formal and stable arrangements within the field [of photography], and these subtle changes are capable of transforming the entire configuration of the practice itself and therefore the field as a whole” (Cornelio & Cruz, 2014, pg. 10).

The sharing and creation of visual mediums is being consistently updated in response to the demand of the users. Social media applications such as Faceboook, Instagram and Snapchat are always being modified with new features and tools to give more control to the user as to how they shape their personal online experience.

 

Bibliography

Cornelio, G & Gomez, E (2014) ‘Co-creation and Participation as a Means of Innovation in New Media: An Analysis of Creativity in the Photographic Field’, International Journey of Communication, vol. 8, pp. 1 – 20

Piwek, Lukasz & Joinson, Adam (2016) ‘“What do they Snapchat About?” Patterns of Use in Time-Limited Instant Messaging Service’, Computers in Human Behaviour, vol. 54, pp. 358 – 367

Southwell, Brian & Lee, Mira (2004) ‘A Pitfall of New Media? User Controls Exacerbate Editing Effects on Memory’, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 81(3), pp. 643 – 656