Tag Archives: readings

Media 6; reading 6

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We made it! the final reading, 4 years, 6 semesters and this was it, the last one. fittingly, the reading was about future thinking, as of course now that i’m finishing my degree, i will be thinking about my future.

i found Gardner’s 5 mind theory quite fascinating. the five minds were:

the disciplined mind: mastering a way of thinking or a trade, profession, discipline

the synthesising mind: to be able to pull together multiple ideas, beliefs, opinions and join them together in  way to make sense of them all combined

the creating mind: self explanatory really, creating new ideas, systems, discoveries

the respectful mind: understands others and how they live and may act differently to oneself

the ethical mind: looks at how you act and place yourself within society and the impact your actions may have on the wider world.

now obviously you can’t just be one of these minds, it’s more likely that as a functioning member of society you’re going to have two or three, maybe even all five. i found this quite important when thinking about how i will soon be entering the work force.

in relation to one of the previous readings about the craftsman, the disciplined mind reminded me of the phrase “be so good they can’t ignore you”. to succeed in any kind of professional field, you need to have mastered your chosen discipline, to be so good that you will just keep getting jobs (or stay in the one you are in). but obviously that is not enough to succeed. you can’t just be good, you need to be more. a combination of creative and synthesising, as an entrant to the workforce, you must be able to not just take into account different styles of thinking or working but to then combine them to make your own unique method, to stand out, to get them to hire you.

and of course the last two minds are important as they influence they way you act with others and interact with the world, without understanding how others work or how your own contribution can affect society, you will never be able to further yourself in life because you will only ever see yourself and this will prevent others from seeing you.

 

Media 6; Reading 5

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this wee’s reading was about time, something i have always been fascinated with. Our society is run entirely by time, what time we need to get up, what time we need to be at work, what time we will eat, what time we will relax. And what fascinates me the most is that, time does not exist.

Of course, yes, time does exist, but only because we as humans created it. Animals do not live their life by time, they just live their lives, and are certainly far more relaxed all the time than we are. which is what this article referred to as well, the stress of life, needing to find leisure time amongst our ever growing work hours.

I find this to be something that i am personally a little worried about. As i plan to be a tv producer, i know that my working hours will be, lets just say never-ending. tv has no 9-5, 5 days a week jobs. its seven days a week, 52 weeks a year and working every hour that you can. so where will i find my time, once i do eventually get myself into this industry. it is important to make the differentiation between work and leisure and definitely it is important to just stop working and relax. the world we live in today is just so fast paced, everything needs to be immediate that sometimes even a break or a holiday can seem like work, always being on the move, and still always connected via the internet. you must still always be checking your email and replying to texts and updating your facebook.

maybe the best way to find some time is just to disconnect, if you are not tracking yourself then perhaps you may find you don’t even need time, because you have enough of it.

Media 6; reading 4

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I really enjoyed this weeks reading, found it quite interesting. the author discussed the difference between working as a “craftsman” or working out of “passion”, his argument in favour of the craftsman style.

In general, his idea was that ones work or career will not only be more successful, but more personally satisfying if it is treated as a work of craftsmanship rather than as ones passion. In short, he’s claiming that it doesn’t matter how much you love what you do, true success and happiness will come from just absolutely perfecting what ever it is that you may be doing.

I both agree and disagree to this. Although the author claims that this idea can be applied to any work in any field, both examples used (steve martin and that guitarist i’ve never heard of) are from the entertainment industry. so of course in that industry (which unfortunately is the industry i’ve chosen as my career), it is necessary to be the very best at what you do, otherwise you won’t get noticed and you certainly won’t get hired. but in the entertainment industry, you also really need to love, and truly love, what you do. no one is going to practice guitar for 15+ hours a day, every day, in order to be the best, if they don’t have the passion. no one is going to practice and perfect a stand up comedy routine for ten years with no paid work if they don’t have the passion. in this industry, the passion is needed in order to perfect the craft.

And i do not necessarily believe that this idea of craftsmanship over passion is relevant to every industry. you could be the best accountant in the world, but if you don’t love it, it won’t make you happy and you certainly won’t work to the best of your ability.

i do agree with the author that you cannot just have passion to succeed, that there must also be that element of craftsmanship, a dedication to making your work the best that it cane. but i also believe that passion is necessary, because without passion, there would be no craftsman.

Media 6; reading 3

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This weeks reading by Lobato and Thomas discussed the not so attractive world of freelancers and interns in the media industry. an exploration into these two crucial roles revealed a poor state of affairs for those trying to break into the entertainment industries or those who are attempting to make a living of freelancing their work for minimal pay.

the reading discussed how people are hired as interns by companies in an effort to get free (or minimal cost) labor in an industry where people are desperate to get their foot in the door by any means and media entities exploit these people. this extends into the world of freelancers who may have progressed past the point of interning or offering their services for free to gain experience but are still paid next to nothing for what is regarded as professional work.

i found this reading extremely relevant to myself and my future career goals. as a hopeful media practitioner in the television industry, i worry that i will not only be unable to find work but that if i do, i will be grossly underpaid, if at all, while still be expected to work to the capacity of a fully paid employee. and often these positions provide no prospect of full time employment once the internship has concluded. I certainly experienced this while on exchange in the states, every production company around was constantly advertising for unpaid interns to be writing articles, editing videos, maintaining websites, acting as secretaries or performing menial office jobs, all for no pay whatsoever.

there seems to be no near solution to this as the only two apparent ways to enter the industry is either through an unpaid internship in order to gain experience, or to enter into a full time position with 10+ years of industry experience already under your belt in order to be paid.

Media 6; Reading 2

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This weeks reading, “A World of Differences“, looked at the ever changing market in the entertainment and media global industry. The discussion of the rise of digital media and digital consumption was fascinating as it really does feel as though we are heading into a world where everything is online. The emergence of Netflix has begun to shape the way entertainment and media is produced and released with the introduction of on demand personal programming. the reading discusses this as ‘bundles’ in relation to tv, films and primarily music, Apple music and other services which allow users to pick and stream whatever content they want.

The entertainment and media industry is facing a an era of change and companies must be able to adapt in order to stay relevant. People now want to be able to watch what they want, when they want and how they want, be it across multiple platforms or multiple forms of storytelling and media entities must be able to keep up with that.

What I found interesting was the content is king section which discussed how, despite newfound access to global content, it was the local content being produced in countries like Australia, Denmark and China, which still brought in the highest viewers/buyers. I am interested to see how (or if) this changes in the future when technology and digital media becomes even more accessible and prevalent in society.

Media 6; Reading 1

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Megatrends

What are megatrends? I do wish this article had described them a bit better. In all honesty, I found it a little difficult to read. A lot of it was very, not gonna say technical, but more technological than I could really understand. And quite a bit, especially the first few sections, were simply describing various types of technologies and only very briefly discussing their potential impact on the world. What I mostly understood was that megatrends, or in this case the fourth industrial revolution (what were #2 and #3?), is major advancements in technology which will have serious impact on society in the next ten years.

The section I found the most interesting was this table of tipping point predictions.Screen Shot 2016-07-21 at 11.19.30 pm

I was fascinated by the prediction that by 2025, 90% of the population will be using smartphones. Now, I have to assume that this “population” is that of the entire world, as other predictions would specifically state the US and this one didn’t. And I totally get how 90% of people in the US or Australia might have smartphones (although 90% is still an insanely high number), but there area whole lot of people in the world, and most are extremely poor or live in places where they have no access to these kinds of technologies. smartphones and al other kinds of the advanced technologies discussed here seem so, not only prevalent, but necessary, in our every day lives that we cannot imagine life without them. But for millions out there, this is just not a possibility, they may have never even seen a smartphone, and I can’t imagine that changing so drastically in just 9 years (and I can’t really see Apple ever lowering their prices).

On a slightly unrelated note, 10% of people wearing clothes that connect to the internet??? What on earth even is that. why would clothes need to connect to the internet. Unless clothes includes glasses, like google glass or something. but who needs t-shirts that play youtube videos? seriously.

the finale hurdle – week 11

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this is it!!! we’re almost there. 11 weeks down and just a k-film to go. or so i thought. then this reading got thrown at us. it’s our last one. we were all hoping it would be a nice simple one. something enjoyable, easy to read. but of course it couldn’t be like that. oh no. it had to be evil. and by evil, i mean pure evil. devil worthy. mark pellegrino singing stairway to heaven 50 times over kinda evil.

let me begin by telling you that this reading is “concerned with the social praxis of documentary  in the sea of ubiquitous data that is both consequence ad driver of online social mediation”. let me then continue by saying that i have no idea whatsoever what that means. the article discusses the benefits of web 2.0, HTML5, regular documentaries, i-docs (remember i-docs? like back from week 1!), popcorn maker, and pretty much anything else, online, nonlinear or korsakow-y. so, in a sense, yes it is kind of like a conclusion to the theory from the semester. it’s just a very long, very painful one to get through.

we hear about the “industrial revolution of data” that is coming our way. everything we know about online information is changing and we can only imagine what it will look like in a number of years from now because you can guarantee that it won’t be the same. a big part of this article was the difference between “on the web” and “of the web”, the latter being the direction this revolution is taking us and our data. Dovey and Rose discuss the new ways that video can be seen and uploaded online, integrated within the page and consisting of links inwards and outwards rather than being situated separately within their own player. everything is joining together and becoming one with each other, forming an all mighty ‘online’ that pretty much has everything. the program called popcorn maker is mentioned which, like our lovely korsakow, allows users and creators to view and make interactive documentaries where films link into and out of each other or even to anywhere else on the web that may be relevant. as i’m sure we are supposed to be believing, this is the future the internet but also just of media and communication itself. korsakow again here. everything is connected by associations. link make the world go round. linear narrative doesn’t.

database narrative – week 10

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a different kind of reading this week. this one didn’t go on for ever and make no sense. although, i can’t really say i understood this one much, it kinda seemed to ramble and be a little incoherent at times. but at least they were kind enough to break it up into 8 relatively short pages with pretty pictures on the side.

so, what did i learn from this reading. to be brutally honest, not much. but i’m still here so i shall soldier on! it was about databases…. i think. i never really got what it was actually about. but the heading of the thing said databases so i kinda assumed that that is what every point was talking about. below are some of the interesting points and quotes that i took from the reading

“While plot provides important tags (hero, villain), schemas (goals, obstacles) and navigation instructions (genre), it is ultimately the cognitive and emotional investment of the receiver of plot – the subjective associations, desires, visualizations, decodings and fast searches – that transforms a mere series of selected details into a story network that is always more than the sum of its parts.

 

“Paradigm, the multiple relational aspects of story elements, becomes visible in a database; and syntagm, narrative sequence, is suppressed.

 

“Interface design, like production design in movies, is an art to primarily guide attention as it flows through and around multiple elements on a screen.

 

“graphic devices are integral to reading and understanding all narrative texts. One begins a book by looking over the table of contents, assessing the length and count of chapters and sub-chapters

 

“Before social media, friends shared photo prints and videos, but they often did so as ritualistic forms of linear storytelling: narrators addressing an attentive audience. Now, online friends post tagged sets of travel photos to social networks, often as events happen, and hope for conversations to start. While both methods speak of the desire to shape and communicate experience, the former uses media as illustration (and mnemonic device) for linear storytelling and the latter presents media as an interface to the unfolding “story” of experience itself.

a collage about collages – week 9

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this week’s reading was interesting and for once, understandable!!! (maybe i’m a little to sceptical about all these readings.  but they’re just so tiresome and continuous.) shields provides us with a series of i guess i’ll call them dot points. all about collage and fiction and stuff. like adrian said on the subject blog, this “Could have been written for this subject”. and if it wasn’t, then i reckon this entire subject might have been written around this reading.

the reading itself, as i mentioned above, is comprised of various dot point like sentences (and sometimes paragraphs), making it thankfully very easy to read. it’s generally about collage vs the normal conventional fiction narrative. and you can tell Shields is a major collage supporter. he loves the idea of the many fractured parts coming together to form one whole. as he says, “collage is the many becoming one”, it “connect bits that don’t seem to belong together” and creates something new with them. remind you of anything? here we go again, korsakow!!! yay!!! i guess if this article didn’t relate in some way to korsakow then it wouldn’t really be here, considering korsakow is this entire subject.

shields describes the collage as representing the mind which he describes as “chaotic and opaque rather than unified and transparent” but likens this also to the journey and experience of life itself, saying that “fiction teaches that life is coherent, can be neatly tied up. but life flies at us in bright splinters”, in other words, a mosaic. “story says everything happens for a reason.” but it does not, and collages and k-films mirror this. and with a lack of reason there can sometimes tend to be a lack of plot. but Shields doesn’t say that that is a bad thing, rather that the “absence of plot leaver the reader room to think about other things”. although, i thought he may have gone a bit overboard when he said “plots are for dead people”. like… what does that even mean? calm down Shields. lets not get too over the top here.

moving on we see where Adrian got his favourite ideals, that of “collage as an evolution beyond narrative”. how many lectures has adrian been telling us that we need to get over narrative? the k-films and nonlinear is the way of the future. Shields knows where its at.

a really good point that i liked from the reading was bringing up the kuleshov effect, which we talked about quite a bit last year too. shields says that” meaning and emotion were created not by the content of the individual images but by the relationship of the images to one another” which is again what adrian tells us. in our k-films, it doesn’t matter what the clips themselves are, meaning only comes from how they are linked into and out from the other clips in the film. “meaning is a matter of adjacent data. everything is collage”. the most relevant point Shields made IMO to korsakow is – “you’ve found some interesting material, how do you go about arranging it?”. because that’s what korsakow is, arranging footage to create different meanings, unique meanings, that could never be achieved using simple linear narrative storytelling.

the only issue with all of this, which is something a lot of us have been asking ourselves have only been newly introduced to this new form of communication and story telling, is “how long will the reader stay engaged?”. because collage and korsakow is not for everyone, and a lot of people may not understand it. but as shield says “art exists to make one feel things” so as long as we can let our audience experience something, give them some form of emotion, then isn’t that all we can really ask for?

 

how many lists can you list in a list? – week 8

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this weeks reading introduces the idea of “lists”. we learn about connections and montages and even Adrian himself gets a mention.

now, when i think of lists, i think of a shopping list. or a list of school books. or a list of names of all the 194 episodes of supernatural. but this is different. this is lists in regards to documentaries. and narratives. and montages. it was a little confusing. below i’ve got some points taken from the reading so i can try and understand it a little better.

“the use of structures that effectively de-form familiar story shapes can provide the means for a poetic approach to documentary to respond to conditions of complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and ambivalence”

“the list is an approach that permits a sense of cohesion at the same time as it increases the gap between project elements.”

so from these i’m gathering that the list is a kind of anti-narrative. it goes against the formal conventions, stripping a narrative down to it’s components, then using those components by themselves to tell a story by allowing the viewer to form the links that would normally just be presented in a given narrative.

“the list as a structuring device in creative screen based documentary is a formal approach that also speaks of the infinite possibilities in combining and making connections across a networked field of elements. Components are gathered and assembled according to a logic that may be thematic, topical, place based or conceptual (to name just a few possibilities) but the relationship between parts is kept loose.”

“idea of the etcetera of the list whereby the elements included refer outwards to other possible inclusions. It is the incapacity of the list to be definitive that allows it to reference the range of potential elements.”

“Here we see indication that in the spaces between and around list elements there is room (perhaps even a requirement) for the audience to augment what is given.”

hmmmm, these three points seem to remind me of something. something very familiar. something we may or may not have spent 8 weeks discussing. ah yes, that’s it, korsakow! korsakow and the k-films we made are in the process of making again are all about the space in the gaps between the content. we don’t want anything to be set in stone, the audience creates the meanings and connections for themselves. k-films are limitless in this sense, they can never be specifically defined because every person views them differently, both from each other and between different viewings. and so, like k-films, Frankham is discussing the infinite possibilities of lists to portray anything, they are left to the viewer’s imagination, both in creating relationships and meaning between items which are on the list and in forming connections and associations to those which aren’t on the list. pretty nifty.

“There are thematic and structural relations generally established amongst the parts of the list but narrative links tend not to be strongly formed. Nonetheless, the potential may exist for narrative links to be activated or imagined.”

“Often structured around unifying themes or existing categories and classifications, the list can also inspire thought that follows the structure of memory, impulse and flashes of association.”

are we talking about korsakow or lists here? is korsakow just a tool for making awesome, interactive lists? are our k-films lists? reading this i’m beginning to think so. even when a k-film has no distinct theme or pattern (even though most of them tend to), the viewer will still create some form of connections between the content. it’s human nature to do so. we understand by association. with no narrative present, our brains strive to see one. to form connections using the content given. k-films, like lists, generally don’t have a strong narrative presence, and yet links between them still exist.

“connecting together material from disparate places through our use of the internet and in our fragmented daily life.”

why this is all possible (or even discussed at all), the internet. where would we be without it? probably reading some book and learning. but the internet is fragmented. it is made up of infinite links leading in and out of everywhere. just like a, you guessed it, k-film!! so, is the internet a list? i guess you could consider it that. it contains pretty much everything there is, a list of all the information we know. and yet it is infinite, like a list, because it is constantly expanding, not just by gaining new information and items to add to the list, but as each individual contributes their interpretations and connections and associations, it grows, forms more links. perhaps we are all just one big, never-ending list.