Image source: Tim O’Connor

Workshop – Week 9

This week’s workshop had us put into our groups for PB4, I wasn’t in class this week but I am lucky to be able to work with Joanna and Aria!

The workshop also included an ‘Intro to Recording Sound Exercise’ in which we were required to record a range of sounds for either of these topics:

• What I like about RMIT City Campus
• RMIT Library – different spaces and what you can do there
• My favourite place on/near campus to grab a coffee/bite to eat…

The recordings also had to include:

* Interview material: in which one is the interviewer – the other the interviewee

– Conducted in two different styles:

• • • • • • • Informal interview – happening ‘in field’ with the participant/interview interacting with the environment in some way.
            • Formal interview – simulating a studio-based recording as much as possible i.e. with the absolute minimal presence of any other sounds]
• Atmosphere / Background sound
• Spot sounds – special character sounds that will give your piece extra texture

Although I wasn’t able to complete this project, I believe I would have been interested in completing it on the best places on campus to grab a coffee/bite to eat, as by this point in the semester I am quite skilled in this area.

I’d imagine conducting an interview with a barista on campus if they would allow us to interview them, including the background noises of the coffee cart atmosphere/someone using an espresso machine. Alongside this would be a more formal interview with a student in a quiet room, eliminating as much background noise as possible. For spot sounds, I would include a recording of someone frothing milk to add texture and simulate a real coffee drinking experience.

Of course, if I were working in an actual group, all of this would be subject to my team mate’s ideas as well, completely able to change.

Lectorial/Readings – Week 9

Image source: Simon Wild

This week’s lectorial featured a special guest lecturer, Dr Rachel Wilson (current Co-Program Manager of the Bachelor of Communication – Media), giving an important lecture on why collaboration and being able to work as a team is one of the most essential skills to have on your CV.

A somewhat useful lesson to pay attention to due to the fact that Dr Wilson put it simply, almost all jobs in the media industry, an industry I’m sure all of us are at least slightly interested in, are collaborative. Media and communication workers need to know how to work in a team, and thankfully it is something you can learn – not necessarily a skill you need to have been born with.

In the past, I haven’t always had particularly amazing group project success. So, in order to truly want to work in a team these days, I took away some reasons to convince myself why collaboration can actually hugely benefit everyone. Including:

• Increased efficiency – having multiple team members on board allows you to get the work done faster with shared responsibilities, whilst working towards a common goal or set of objectives.
• A learning experience – working in a team means you get to learn from group discussions, gaining inspiration and ideas that may not have resulted from just working alone. Teams also bring people together from different backgrounds and levels of experience which can help in creating optimal solutions.
• Support – having someone to help you along when you are struggling is a definite positive, your team members can help you get back on the track of producing great work.
• Practice good communication – teamwork activities generally require meetings that enhance your written and verbal communication skills, an ability that is worth working on no matter what you do in life.

In order to practice good team work, I also made note of three of what I believe may be the most important collaboration guidelines:

1. Get on the same page – a critical step to begin with, each team member clearly knowing what the goals and objectives are helps keep everyone focused on the same idea.
2. Create a sense of unity – developing an identity within the group and dedicating time to establish communication procedures (e.g social media connections, meeting times, etc) helps everyone feel comfortable and needed.
3. Business insight – each team member should be assigned a role and specific tasks, along with some time management being put in place. Having a schedule to stick to and expected deadlines will give the project some structure in which the team can work together successfully.

This week’s reading, a chapter from Danah Boyd’s book titled ‘It’s Complicated’, discusses the sort of relationship teenagers and privacy share. As the chapter extensively deliberates teenagers’ use of social media, I became additionally interested whilst reading, in how adolescents turn to specific forms of online networks in order to grapple with their privacy.

For example, teens may occasionally use platforms like Facebook and Instagram to share information publicly, knowing that their parents, teachers and friends are able to see it. However, sometimes this variety of social media is used to intentionally provoke drama, due to the fact that some teens post what are seemingly harmless, public statuses not directed at anyone, yet they target specific individuals and raise personal issues online. Unfortunately, for teenagers who may not realise in the moment, this sort of online spectacle can later cause regret when it results in backlash within their real lives.

However, when it comes to more personal interactions online, many teens prefer to adopt modes like Snapchat – arguably because it challenges the notion that anything put on the internet is permanent. When Snapchat originally emerged on the scene in 2011, it differentiated from other modes by impermanent content and messaging, and in 2015, it was even outpacing Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

All media uploaded on Snapchat can only be seen for a certain amount of time that the user sets – the maximum being 10 seconds long. After that, they are auto-deleted and can never be seen again. Users can send silly and embarrassing photos and videos of themselves without having to worry about long term consequences. They also receive a notification when their friends take screenshots of their snaps, tracking those who grab their content.

This ephemeral aspect of the social media app gives any communications shared upon it a certain aloofness that is generally understood by teenagers. Nothing is taken too seriously, unlike a very public, concrete and sometimes controversial Facebook post.

There’s a reason Snapchat is incredibly popular among youth whilst adults have a difficult time finding similar-aged people who use the app. As discussed by Boyd in the chapter, the general mass of people completely disregard any information suggesting that teenagers do regard their privacy, which is hardly the case, though many choose not to believe it. Many adults may care more obviously about privacy, teenagers just have a different way of caring about theirs and putting it into practice. 

Snapchat, therefore, is one of the ways in which teens attempt to gain some privacy, away from prying parental eyes and the patent, resolute structure of networks like Facebook.

Workshop – Week 5

Image source: unknown

Week 5’s workshop is a bit of a mystery to me as I was unable to be there, however the theme of interviewing still seems to be running strong as I believe we conducted an interview exercise involving the Sony MC50 cameras out and about in RMIT’s campus.

The exercise required filming student interviews with a few different shots, including:

• An establishing/wide shot
• An interviewee in action shot
• Medium and Medium Close-Up shots
• Cutaways
• Reverse/reaction shots of the interviewer

This sort of practice work is obviously very handy to have honing when it comes to actually carrying out our PB3s as it gives us a valuable idea of what an interview should look and feel like in the end.

As I was unable to participate in the exercise myself, I watched some of the other students’ work from the course and I appreciate all of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m38CPPfj8YA&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m38CPPfj8YA&feature=youtu.be

Initiative Post (Week 8)

This week’s discussion of ‘fandoms’ and ‘audiences’ had me constantly coming back to the negative connotations associated with these words. No question about it, sometimes fans can suck.

A good example of this would be the fan drama regarding popular British youtube bloggers, Zoe Sugg and boyfriend, Alfie Deyes.

Back in December of 2015, the pair who have made a career of posting videos of themselves on Youtube, took to Twitter to request privacy from fans who repeatedly turn up at their house.

One Twitter user said: “Welcome to the famous life. Didn’t you see this coming at all?” Sugg replied saying the couple didn’t set out to become famous and “it is also not something we should have to put up with.”

Though this online fandom doesn’t align itself with any sort of tv show, movie, book or any other type of fictional universe, fans of Zoe and Alfie are sometimes on another level, undoubtedly loyal and occasionally extreme, thinking that after the many years of watching them online, they know them personally.

What a lot of people outside of the Youtube world fail to understand, is that its fan culture is unlike almost any other fandom in the world. Young people develop a much deeper bond with the creators they watch, based on a slightly fabricated sense of connection and relatability. Youtubers appear just as ‘ordinary’ people living normal lives, with some added glitz and glamour that seems to be pulled straight from a teenager’s wildest dreams.

Hence, when ‘Zalfie’ followers aren’t able to wait in hour-long lines to meet the Youtube stars themselves, paying them a visit at their own house seems to be the next best option.

It’s a problem that seems to have lessened since the couple posted their grievances on twitter, though it’s hard to imagine it will go away forever, especially with their home address being released to the public since.

One can only hope that the unfavourable significance of the word ‘fan’ does not become increasingly exaggerated due to this sort of incident, an unfortunate misconception of where the line is drawn with celebrity obsession.

Alfie Deyes:

Initiative Post – Week 5

Natalie Portman as “Jackie Kennedy” in JACKIE. Photo by Stephanie Branchu. Photo: Fox Searchlight, LIFE

Jackie, Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s biopic starring Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy astonished audiences and challenged stereotypes after its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2016.

In December, following its release in cinemas, the film generated plenty of Oscar buzz, going on to receive three Academy Awards nominations: Best Actress (Portman), Best Original Score and Best Costume Design.

Primarily following the days after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the film also comprises Portman’s portrayal of Jackie Kennedy during her life as First Lady in the White House, alongside Theodore H. White’s Life magazine interview with the newly widowed woman maintaining great importance throughout the film.

The interview, given a week after her husband’s assassination, gives origin to the phrase “The Camelot Administration”, as dubbed by Jackie Kennedy herself. President Kennedy, she said, was strongly attracted to the Camelot legend because he was an idealist who saw history as something made by heroes like King Arthur. Therefore, the film features the chain-smoking former First Lady spinning falsehoods into the new truths of American history. Her unnamed interviewer (Billy Crudup) is the listening ear, writing furiously, and asking a handful of probing questions. At the end, Jackie takes the pen into her own hands, scratching out and adding in the words she wants the American people to read. The result is the magazine’s 1963 cover story, “For President Kennedy: An Epilogue,” with a final line that declares that “for one brief shining moment there was Camelot.”

The movie makes clear the image of “Camelot” and its glistening vision of the Kennedy years came from Jackie. But it also came from the interviewer. On screen, White appears tough and unbothered, his furrowed brow acting as a lie detector for Jackie’s dreamy fantasies. When the interview is finished, he murmurs a few words assuring Jackie that the story will work out, that her husband will be cast as an American martyr and that the musical metaphor will stick. Crudup says this somewhat begrudgingly, but in real life, White was an equal partner in the Kennedy myth-making.

In real life, Jackie needed a journalist who was on her side, and White turned out to be one. He complied with the Camelot metaphor, hence many people remember JFK’s era just as Jackie conceived them to.

This gives light to the kind of power an interview can wield, both through the actions of the interviewee and the one conducting it. White’s Life article told an important story, one that lasted decades with a tragic ending. However, how much of it was fabricated makes one question just how many interviews are similar in this regard.

This week’s workshop consisted of viewing rough cuts of PB3, followed by a shooting exercise inspired by the White Gloves film festival. Contestants who entered this festival had to produce a film in black and white, edited completely in camera – meaning no post-production editing of the film. And while the films we created this week didn’t have to be shot in black and white, the in-camera edit aspect was compulsory.

After a short brainstorm to form a simple story line and only a few minutes of shooting, the following film is what we came up with. 

https://vimeo.com/217284348

Week 8 Workshop

Week 8’s workshop was mainly led by a discussion on recently visited topics, such as: fandoms, audiences, post broadcasting era, and the Week 7 reading, ‘Why Look at Animals?’ by John Berger.

Our group focused on ‘Fandoms’, and specifically the reading by Henry Jenkins – ‘The Night Of a Thousand Wizards’. We zeroed in on a quote featured in Jenkin’s post that we thought directly expressed what we were trying to grasp in regards to fandoms.

“But just as often the fans are talking about how it “feels right,” how it achieves a kind of emotional integrity, which fits their impressions of the world where one of their favourite stories is set. This is where the postmodernists get it wrong. They start with a basic contempt for the content of the stories represented in the theme park and so they do not invest themselves deeply enough in the experience. For them, it is about surfaces and empty signifiers. There’s nothing empty here — all of the details matter here and are meaningful in relation to the books and the fantasies they inspire.” – Jenkins, 2010

A lot of our discussion was based around the idea of fans’ over-emphasis on trivial aspects of, say, book to movie adaptations, and this quote by Jenkins fittingly puts into words how fans can be extreme critics and the smallest details matter more to them much more than content creators could sometimes imagine.

This theme also connects to the ‘audiences’ topic due to the fact that, these days, audiences are much more active and empowered with the rise of social media, so TV show producers take into account the kinds of reactions fans have to their show. Therefore, if changes are made, it can be used for marketing purposes as a selling point – they are giving the people what they want.

Week 5 Lectorial

This week’s lectorial featured a guest lecture by Louise Turley (ABC TV – producer of Back Roads) on the art of interviewing (also referred to by Louise as the art of the ‘noddy’). Of course, as soon as she mentioned this, I immediately pictured myself so clearly sitting in an interview situation making “mmm” and “ahh” sounds. Mental note was made then and there to remind myself to not do that.

Louise began to cover ‘The WHO’ of interviewing, including things like: if they have something to say? Are they credible? Can they deliver on camera and are they good ‘talent? etc, and once again, I began to imagine myself conducting the worst possible interview with a subject that would make the least possible appropriate interviewee. For example, Ellen interviewing Kanye West in this edited parody video that makes one question how some people spend their free time.

However, the overall intention of the lecture was incredible helpful and necessary, in my opinion. From this I believe I have much better idea of what kind of questions I would like to pose and how to do so in a way that will hopefully produce an interesting, open-ended and thought provoking answer, and therefore successful interview.

They say that you are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with. I’ve always seemed to believe this going throughout life, so when asked to describe myself, I usually come up with qualities and aspects of my personality that could also be used to accurately describe some of my closest friends and family members. The people I love matter a great deal to me, and I believe that I am a reflection of them, just as they are a reflection of me. Therefore, when producing material for this Project Brief, I thought I would simply include videos that encapsulate what it is like to be apart of my life, surrounded by people I love and the things that remind me of them.

Moving to a new city at the beginning of this year and living in college means I am not able to see my family or old friends as much as I would love to, though I have made some incredible new ones since living here and I couldn’t ask for a greater bunch of people to be surrounded with. I thought I was able to represent this effectively enough with the varying shots of my environment and friends at college, layered with the sound of a phone call to my mum back home.

Creating this Project Brief wasn’t a simple task, and I think that is evident in some parts of the video. Although I’m pleased with the shots I created and the slight purple/nostalgic tinge I added in the editing phase, I wish the theme flowed slightly more throughout the entire video. For example, I believe that the opening title and photos used throughout could have tied in more with the overall mood of the film that was portrayed more in the still shots. However, I am pleased with how the Project Brief had a solid start and ending, with the same shot being used twice, though a more blue /melancholic tinge was incorporated in the final shot, as well as the sound of me saying ‘goodbye’ to my mum.