Following the final media lecture, I decided that I would like to do some research on what comes under the umbrella of “Media”. To give me some ideas of what I’d like to work on in the studios in the future.

Print Media

Print media has been around a long time, originally predominantly in regards to Newspapers, magazines, books etc. But nowadays print media is now more widespread and accessible easily online.

Television Media

Television media is different to media like movies. It refers to not only television channels and shows, but now also the television media that’s streamed on the internet.

Movie Media 

Media in terms of films and motion picture technology are often studied as a separate subject all together due to how huge the category of cinematography is, and how much can be conveyed using the correct film techniques. Once again the services for viewing movies have been largely extended with the internet.

Video Game Media

Yes, Video games is regarded as a form of media. Gaming Consoles, as old as the original Atari are regarded as an interactive form of media. With the huge development in gaming graphics, stories and interaction over the course of the last 30 years, video games are likely to become a more respected and renown form of Media and Communications.

Media overall is a very broad term that is assigned information and ideas shared through a means of mass communication. eg the internet, television radio etc.

This makes media a great subject for me specifically, because in the future, my ideal career path will ideally surround communication, without being tied down to a specific topic or idea.

Kristin Lieb starts her speech by talking about a documentary that “Completely changed her life” it was called Killing us Softly” by Jean Kilbourne. Which reveals the way that women are represented in ads designed to “keep women in their place”. Kristin is a Marketing media student, who began working as a professor in her early 40’s.

The terms “sex sells” is a term that people often overlook, but it really has a rough meaning. She also talks about the fact that upon showing her students the documentary, they responded with contrasting responses. One student said that the advertisements shown in the documentary must be extreme examples, Another student said that it could explain why young teenage woman are so self conscious about their appearance. Kristin examines the idea of how long it takes for teenage girls to feel ready to go out, in terms of putting on makeup and trying their best to built up their confidence enough to enter the real world.

Kristin then talks about how pop stars and sexuality is represented in popular culture. She talks about the types of popular female musicians fit in to the music industry, with the few examples mentioned:

• The “good girl”: Sweet and kind (most artists stay there) which leads to…
• a “Temptress” The pop star moves now represent themselves as more sexually desirable, “clothes begin to fall off”
• a “Diva” is a female pop star that’s regarded for her talent and accomplishments as an artist rather than their looks and their actions. An example is Adele.
• the “Hot Mess” is often an artist who undergoes something like addiction and falls to the pressure of being a pop star. An example is Amy Winehouse or Whitney Houston

What these categories have in common is the fact that they’re based on a shallow judgement of looks and the way that the artists are viewed as a person, rather than their achievements. They also are temporary positions to be in.

Kristin Lieb pushes the idea in her classroom that any of her students can talk about anything, and there should be no restriction of freedom of speech. Upon being asked on the opinion of Beyonce, the students mostly agree that she’s great without referring to much about her as a musician. A boy in the class says that a reason Beyonce is so powerful is because “Everybody wants to fuck her”. Kristin saw that at the core, that’s not necessarily incorrect.

A band called Colliapy Jones a 14-16 year old trio competed in a competition called “The battle of the Bands” and came 3rd place, and the advice that the director or judge of the competition gave to them was that they should “play up the sultry in the act to reign in the audience.” Which was sexist because not only were they very young but they would be told that if they were men. This blew up on the internet and on Facebook. They got covered in Billboard, MTV and other media coverage for it.

High Fidelity refers to the reproduction of sound with little distortion, giving a result very similar to the original. I wanted to look at high fidelity and low fidelity in terms of music. From what I can hear, music with high fidelity (as well as being some Jack Black movie) seems to have a lot of treble and high pitched sharp noises.

For example:

But it seems that Low Fidelity or “Lofi” music also has a very large fan base. Lofi music is very easy listening, and the lack of sharp pitched noise makes the sound quite relaxing.

For example:

This is interesting, because it means that I can use the different fidelity in the future to create a more diverse soundscape, and either create a peaceful and calm vibe or a sharp and intense one depending on the scene that I’m trying to create.

https://hilo.hawaii.edu/academics/hohonu/documents/Vol08x16EffectsofAdvertisingonSociety.pdf

by Goldie Hayko

This text examines the emotional and psychological effects that advertising has on a person. It also briefly touches on the history of advertising, dating all the way back to the 3000s BC, and 1472 in English culture.

I’ve chosen to read this text to learn more about the effects of advertising, particularly because I didn’t really agree with Tim Wu’s argument in the text “Attention Merchants”

The study of advertisements and the effects they have on a person mentally have been studied since the late 1800’s. Some psychologists believe that people are “subliminally stimulated” which can causes people to think in a way that is almost controlled by the media, though people in the market business believe they are simply trying to attract customers. Goldie brings up the example of the author Richard Pollay’s metaphor of “brain surgery” when he talks about the influence that advertising has on the human mind, they influence people in the most intimate of spaces, our own homes. Advertisements are designed “to attract attention, change attitudes and command our behavior”. Advertisements send messages in a very easy to absorb way, and we take in concepts and ways of thinking without even knowing it.

“Commercials manipulate people’s strongest desires and greatest fears to convince them to buy the preferred products.” -Allen Kanner and Renee Soule. Goldie gathers various sources and materials to draw the following negative effects that advertising has.

• advertising often promotes products that are harmful to us, like alcohol and fast food, which essentially leads to an unhealthy lifestyle.
• Advertising upholds stereotypes regarding class, race and gender, leading to an inadequacy amongst people, and allowing prejudice to thrive
• “Advertising projects an unrealistic standard of the female body and thinness”, leading to woman, and particularly in young girls to feel like purchasing the advertised product in order to look identify more with the advertised model.

The author Dinyar Godrej regards the effects of advertising initially quite non existent, though long after viewing the advertisement “the effects will show up”

Advertising often targets a young audience, and because young people are easily influenced, they become more easily ingrained with a warm connection with a brand or company or “nostalgic childhood memories of a brand” -Schlosser

“Studies are now showing an effect in young men as well, with an increase in awareness of and concerns about their bodies and thus increase in body dissatisfaction” -Lavine, Sweeny, Wagner.

On an contrasting note, John E Calfee describes how advertising could have positive effects. In the 1970s, studies had been done to show that fiber could help prevent cancer, which led companies like Kellogg’s creating cereal’s that were rich with fiber, backing up their advertisements by saying that it would lead to a healthier lifestyle and prevent the risk of cancer. This greatly increased the consumers consumption of fiber rich foods.

After reading this text, I can say that I’ve learnt more about the long term effect of advertising, and it went more into depth with legitimate examples.

As a final assignment for Media 1 at the end of the first semester, My group, consisting of Matthew James and Qiming Zhang set out to create an Audio Essay which talked about Authenticity in Pop Music, the negative publicity that artists like Rebecca Black receive, and looking for what kind of artistic expression receives the most audience attention.

Initially we faced difficulties in how to structure the recording. Matt wanted to structure it like a kind of talk radio game show, and I wanted to structure it as practically a written essay read out loud. We came to a great middle ground which keep the audio interesting and full of captivating soundscapes and interesting formal and informal language, whilst also keeping the audio text academic and relating to a topic with references to peer reviewed journal articles. We initially started recording the first things that came to mind regarding the subject. Shortly after, we decided to gather the opinions of a local audience in the form of a vox pop, and create responses to the comments they made and the opinions they had. Looking back, I would’ve liked to have conducted a larger vox pop, so that we could’ve had a larger sample size to work with, hopefully with many people saying similar things to create a stronger argument.

We related it to what we’d learnt in class about attention as much as we could, we talked about the different forms of Hyper and Deep attention with pop music requiring hyper attention and art music requiring deep, but we didn’t want to reference it so blatantly in the final copy.

Qiming sometimes had trouble communicating his ideas to us, due to his lack of confidence with English, so we did everything we could to include him within the audio recordings, and gave him the topic of talking about the contrast between eastern and western pop music, which he delivered within the audio recording.

We communicated on a Google Docs page as well as Facebook, having every thought and idea quickly written down and suggested as an option to add to our audio essay. Often we’d each take turns creating edits of the essay, and then combining the best of both versions. Shortly after we’d created a poor quality draft, we gathered feedback from the media professional who came to see the class workshop. Her name was Catherine, and she instructed that we should redo the recording to make our arguments key ideas more precise, and  play on the interesting group dynamic. Matt wanted to keep the feel of a casual talk show, and so Catherine suggested we record some of our audio from within a car while driving, to add a more casual connotation and more interesting soundscape. We inserted this idea into the recording implying we were freely talking on our way to and from the vox pop.

We ended up with many recordings, many of them often not including very academic material, and had to be left out. The end product was a result of sifting through many recordings, and picking the best parts from each.

Some of the things I found difficult were.

• Editing the recordings to have the same background noise, eg white noise and indicators of the car
• Keeping track of the huge number of recordings that were made
• Keeping up with the edits that were constantly changing throughout the group.

With the audio essay now completed, I’m happy with how it turned out. Personally, I would’ve preferred it if we had used more scripted material, to keep the audio more compact and precise, but I can appreciate the casual delivery, as it makes the audience more calm and interested. I can safely say that I could apply the experience to future projects, and create a more solid and well planned out audio documentary in the future.