In this weeks lectorial we listened to some sick beats.

then – we discussed Navas’ remix theory which was also part of this weeks reading

The Activity was then to Write down as many samples we could identify from the “Girl Talk” “This is the Remix”
– ABC
– I Want you back
– Party Up
– Beautiful Girls

Personally one of my favorite mashups is the Pop Danthology series by Daniel Kim

Finally, the Idea put forward by Dan was that no idea is truly original, however, I understand what he means in the sense that everybody gains inspiration from everybody else. Therefore following this logic no idea was ever original, this is due to the concept of understanding. When we understand things we build up a complex network in our mind of cause and effect. For example, if i touch fire i burn, therefore i learn that fire is dangerous. Later i might touch a heater and get burt, thus I learn that heat can be dangerous.

However, even if i was the first man on earth to conclude that heat was dangerous this idea would still not be ‘original’ because its constructed of pre-existing elements (No pun intended). Therefore, the statement that no idea is original is quite ambiguous. It seems to state that there is nothing which hasn’t been invented, where as it should be saying – everything is inspired and has originated from other things.

Narratives and Barratives, most people would tell me, ‘Barrative’ is not a word! but let me tell you something, it is now. In our Week 8 lectorial we were told that Narrative is Basically Cause and Effect. Therefore if i want to change the first letter of Narrative to a B and make it Barrative, isn’t it effectively the cause of me wanting to rhyme effectively creating a new word? We were also showed this video called “We have Decided not to Die” we then were asked to discuss whether or not it was a narrative.  Here is a breakdown of my thoughts

How it is a Narrative:

Each scene follows a similar structure: no movment, crazy movment, deadly stunt. It has titles so that we follow a basic story.

How its not:

It does not seem to have much of a conclusion that ties it all together, this seems to leave it open ended, to me this is what really would have made it a narrative, a proper ending.

The reading for this week also outlined some good points, which might further support the idea that this is not in fact a narrative. For example Robert McKee says that a protagonist must have certain motivations and must use them to follow a certain structure of story or resolve a conflict. We briefly looked at this as well in the lectorial by graphing out the emotional intensity of common films such as Shrek and Frozen.

In this short the protagonist does not necessarily have any motivation, the only thing which might be relevant is that they “Have decided not to die” which is only evident because of the title itself, which is a grey area in terms of if we can rely on that to tell the story. There are brief ideas of conflict or narrative explored in this video, when we see a scene, for example the boy enters the building and takes the lift, but there is not a larger more encompassing narrative to tie the scenes together.

Overall, i believe that the short by Daniel Askill has lots of food for thought, and definitely challenges the grey areas around narrative.

McKee, Robert. (1997). ‘The substance of story.’ In Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York, USA: HarperCollins, pp. 135-154.

Finally! Week 7 Lectorial and it was mentioned@
What was mentioned? Well… I remember writing a scathing blog post earlier about over analysis of texts, looking too deep for meaning. What if it just “IS” what if thats just the way it is? Finally i believe it was Rachel Wilson that mentioned, sometimes we can take this analysis too far. And i totally agree.

However, what did we do in the Lectorial, well, this weeks topic was “texts” this was the focus of the lecture and the readings. Particularly interesting was the  analysis of the photographs that we conducted for example we took a photo of a clothing ad and then we broke it down. for example

1. The meaning its trying to communicate

2. The individual media components. ie. text, images, colours

3. Social codes employed. ie. Status, class, gender, socialised identities, connotations

In the particular billboard we analysed we were able to pick out the different elements and discuss them. I believe that one way in which we can think of ‘texts’ is see them as ‘contexts’. So in summary we analysed the context of the place it is displayed.

I do this lots in my life as a media content creator. I have worked extensively for Townshend International School  creating their Promo Material and helping with their website. We always needed to make sure that the images and ideologies that the school supported were being conveyed and displayed appropriately. For example in the image below it was important that all the uniforms matched, there were both males and females, they were all happy and they were from diverse cultural background. This photo appears on the home page of the Townshend website and needs to appeal to both parents and prospective students.

In this way, analysing texts for a purpose and not just to give them meaning is whats most important to me, and thats the part I have valued learning about this week.