Category Archives: Miscelleneous

These are posts that are personal or trivial and won’t be assessed.

Spot(ify) the Advertising

I’ve really started getting into listening to music on Spotify. I’ve been a casual music listener for years, but I usually just settled for YouTube to find songs and let Autoplay go. I have to admit though, I never really liked Autoplay (I hated it, who even decides that One Direction should be followed up by Meghan Trainor? And don’t even get me started on dodgy sped up lyric videos…) but I guess I was too lazy to find an alternative. But when I wanted to find a new album that just couldn’t be found anywhere remotely credible without paying $$$ I had no choice! I already had a Spotify account that I’d never really activated, so logging in wasn’t a problem. What I’ve noticed over the past month or so of daily use of this program is MEDIA. Surprise! I bet you were wondering where Uni was coming into this. After every few songs an ad plays and it’s honestly gotten so common to me now that I could probably recite the 3 audio advertisements that they play. One of the advertisements that plays is, and I don’t know if you remember, but the one that I was shown during a Media Research project a few weeks back. The one about voting from the Australian Electoral Commission? Yep! I was among the first to be shown that as an audience feedback thing where I got to give my opinion so that they could make their product ready for the public. So I’ve heard about Ballet Boxes a little too many times for the average teenager, I’d say.

(These are just a few of the advertisements on the program, including a promotional audio for Justin Timberlake)

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I could deal with ads actually, I found it kind of nice to have a break between songs (well, no okay that’s a bit of a stretch, but I could tolerate the ads). Now though – I can’t stand them. Because they’re overplayed! I’ve heard the same three ads about 5 hundred times and I’m sick of it. Spotify does a lot of self promotion on it’s program, one of the ads constantly reminds me that if I just upgraded to Pro I wouldn’t even have to hear the ad telling me to upgrade to Pro. Still, I’m resilient (and broke) and will endure the ads if it means listening to hundreds of different favourite songs and artists for free. That’s a fair deal, I reckon.

 

Media Overload

I was thinking the other day about how much media I actually consume daily, and I thought I’d write a blog post about it. The concept struck me because while I was researching for PB4 I came across some interesting statistics. For example, Facebook has 14 million users in Australia alone – that’s over half the damn population! And Instagram as 5 thousand, which is crazy! I also found some statistics about women, young women like myself, and our interaction with social media. We tend to use websites like Instagram for longer than our male counterparts. Which is pretty easy for me to believe, considering the first thing I checked when I woke up this morning was my social media accounts. I literally just got distracted by my urge to check/update Tumblr and Facebook while mid writing this. How Meta.

But seriously – my generation uses social media a lot. And its kind of insane, actually. Statistics show we use the internet for up to 9 hours a day, but if I’m honest, I use it way more than that on the weekends when I’ve got no homework. On a free day I check my phone as soon as I wake up, get out of bed and go on my laptop and stay there most of the day – and night. And even when I do have Uni work, I’m constantly checking social media or researching for said work. It’s constantly in the background or forefront of my day to day life.

Vlogging As An Artform

One of the things we talked about in the lectorial on Monday was the idea that media is aware that ‘every consumer is a potential creator’. This got me thinking, especially when it was exampled by the concept of ‘vlogs’ – whose very success is relied upon by it’s home video, amateur style of production. Which is interesting, in contrast to the nature of Hollywood and blockbuster films. Of course the revenue produced by vlogs are not on par to that of multimillion dollar budget movies, but the internet sensation that is ‘vlogging’ and Youtube over all is gaining popularity and momentum yearly.

Back in the day, vlogging was just a hobby – as was Youtube as a whole. I should probably explain for whoever has been living under a rock (or maybe just happen to be over the age of 45 and has no idea how to even use Youtube – looking at you mum) what Vlogging actually is. Video + Blogging = Vlogging. Or in other words, a video diary!

Unlike the old days, now people involved can actually get paid for making the unprofessional content. I was never big into Youtube, but I have to say that I really fell in love with the ‘vlog’ genre. I watch a lot of Tanya Burr – especially Christmas Daily Vlogs – in part because I love her as a person, and because I love being immersed in places and with people who I’ve never met. That’s the selling point for vlogging – you can experience a day in the life of someone who has a very different home, family, world even to you. I’m big on travel, so seeing travel vlogs are probably my favourite. I’m going to put one below as an example. I even have a few Vlogs up on my own channel from schoolies and just assorted excursions with friends over the past year. I find the experience of watching the videos and making them yourself just as enjoyable. But perhaps that’s just because I’m a media student and kind of supposed to enjoy filming and editing. I’m not sure. I’ll link one of my own underneath too!

Instagram Update: Yay or Nay?

It was right after Thursday’s workshop when myself and some friends were having lunch and realised Instagram had updated their app – in a big way. We got to comparing the old interface and app icon with the new one (which looks like this by the way):

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The whole thing really struck me as good thing to post about, because like me and my friends from Workshop, the whole internet seemed to combust at the update. We definitely didn’t like the update – mostly the icon is what threw me. Instagram has never updated their application icon before – not in the 5 years since the app first launched. So as you can imagine, this was a deal breaker for many that the theme layout update just doesn’t compare to. With the internet being the way it is it became a kind of meme on several platforms. It reminded me a lot of the interaction of Audiences with a media product, especially social media, which we’ve discussed in Lectorials before. The controversy surrounding this has even gone to the extent of there being ‘hacks’ to get the old interface back!

This article at Forbes was quick to address that Instagram is simply trying to get with the times – and that the old icon has looked out of place with the regular IPhone updates for a long time now.

Media Characteristics

In the lectorial yesterday we got to talking about different media platforms – or institutions – like Facebook, ABC and things like community media. So what characterises these mediums into institutional? Facebook’s main values are to connect people. It’s personalised and focuses on communication with friends and family, sharing, community and the entire thing is very inclusive. Someone even pointed out the fact that even it’s emails use inclusive and informal language with sentences like ‘we’ve missed you’.

ABC on the other hand, is much more formal. They’re neutral politically and culturally – and although they’re funded by the government they tend not to favour one political side over the other.

I don’t know much about community media – but from what I know it talks mostly about non-for-profit radio and magazines. It’s less hierarchal than normal radio and doesn’t have an agenda. It tends to capture a wider range of voices and is less driven by commercial interests. It’s also somewhat of a training ground for newcomers.

So after going through everyone’s ‘strong’ points in the group, I’ve pretty much been assigned to make the video, which I’ve mentioned earlier. I started on it pretty apprehensively, mostly because it’s hard to have that kind of responsibility to make something that the rest of your group will like. We all decided on a song – ‘Piece of Me’ by Britney Spears, as the soundtrack. Mia and Bronte have started helping me source clips from all over YouTube and I’ve downloaded all of those, and started putting them into Premiere Pro. I have a 40 second introductory clip of Victoria Secret models and… well I don’t want to spoil it. But if you hadn’t already guessed, our project, themed Audience, is focusing on Beauty standards by Media and its impact on individuals consuming it. So you can imagine many of the clips sourced are relating to the beauty industry – fashion, make up, dieting, etc. With those clips I’ve also got professionals giving their opinions on the impact and giving statistics – all of which I’m cutting down and editing to what we need so that when I start putting it together, the process will be a lot smoother.

Fandomonium!

In today’s lecture we got to touch on audience a little, which was good for me and my PB4 group because that’s the topic assigned to us. It was toward the end of the lecture, so we didn’t spend a whole lot of time on it, but what Brian did say was quite useful. First off, we talked about what audiences are – active audiences being participants of media consumption, from fans and fandoms to ‘mass’ audience (though Brian assures us that term is a little outdated now).

I think the element of that demographic that stuck out for me the most was fans and fandoms – which I would be lying if I said I didn’t consider myself a fan of at least one Media platform (I am a teenage girl after all).

Fandoms interest me a lot, when I consider them from the outside rather than as just a subjective participant in one. There’s a lot of elements of fandoms that are like a sub-culture – a group of people with one common interest, who band together to create something unique and special to them. Fandoms host hoards of talent – from writers (fan-fictions) to artists (fan-art). Fandoms grow and develop together, from the very beginning of something – say a show pilot – to the very end. Some fandoms go on for years after something has become dormant, this is most true in the Harry Potter fandom, which continues to be a major online platform for millions of different people around the world.

Fandomania (puns, puns, puns!) is something that has struck probably everybody my age – you’d have to be truly embarrassed to say you don’t belong to a fandom. Because really, fandoms are everywhere – think about the 60’s and the Beatles – that was its own fandom minus the internet component. There are different levels of intensity of course, like, my mum watches Escape to the Country but that doesn’t mean she goes on her laptop to an online community to discuss the latest cottage shown on the show. No, the very depths of fandoms tend to be reserved for content aimed at teenagers and young adults – things like bands, One direction for example, and movie series’ like Marvel and DC.

I think Fandom culture is something very new and should be explored, especially in relation to media producers and audiences in this day and age.

What is Audience?

This week’s workshop was cancelled, which is a shame, but my group took the time to discuss and research for the upcoming project anyway. We’re doing audience, and if I’m honest we’re all a little collectively confused by the brief. There’s still a lot of time until it’s due, but we wanted to start brainstorming now because we don’t want the time to run away with us. Everyone did a little research on what audio/video essays actually are, which I didn’t know about at all before this brief. I found some really helpful video explanations of things. We also did some research just on Audience – our topic – which I feel slightly more confident with. I actually did quite a bit of audience related work in Year 12 Media, so I wrote a list of some things I could remember just off the top of my head. Here it is!

Audience is an individual or collective group of people who consume media texts. This consumption can be categorised in a variety of ways. Over the years, many theories have been developed in order to ascribe types of media consumption and media influence from the perspective of said audiences.

Some well known theories are the Hypodermic Needle Theory – the theory that suggest audiences are entirely dictated by the media they consume, the Agenda-Setting Function theory – which believes media cannot decide what people think but can ascribe what to think about.

Audiences can be radio listeners, television viewers and movie goers. Audiences occur whenever there is media to consume – from advertisement to novels.

Terms like ‘target audiences’ exist in order to create media specific to a type of individual which the media creator wants to view their product. For example, the movie Frozen has a target audience age of children, and possibly even of gender. Target audiences are also important when it comes to rating the appropriateness of a film, novel or TV show. That’s when ratings from G – General, to R18+ are used to tell people what media is consumable for them. Target audiences (and audiences overall) help categorise media and make it profitable. Without audiences, media cannot make money or even be produced in the first place, as there would be nobody to consume it.
There are several types of audiences, ranging from impressionable to sceptical when it comes to the level of influence media has on them.

Film Festival!

Last week we sat down for a ‘film festival’ screening of everyone’s interview shorts. This would have been terrifying enough for me, only we were divided into groups and allocated ‘thinking hats’ (green, red, yellow, black) in which we’d have to talk to the class about what we thought. I have a huge fear of public speaking, even in such a laid back setting. As a result, I got a little nervous and stumbled on my words a few times when directly addressed, but I’ll live.

My group went first.

We watched Luka’s film “Filthy Rat Bag” – the name alone was intriguing to me. I really liked the relevancy of this topic – social media and art are elements I really enjoyed. I liked the informality of it, too and just everything that the girl was talking about made me think which was good! I would have liked to have seen some more footage of the actual interviewee, personally.

Second was Alec’s “Head Trauma”, which was about a man who experienced memory loss. I really enjoyed the experimental art-house feel of this one, and the eerie quality of the music and footage accompanying his explanation of what it felt like to have head trauma. One thing to change might be not to have the audio still running while the credits roll.

Then Anna’s – “Olivia” – which was probably my favourite, though I really loved everyone else’s. I think the subject matter attracted me the most, because I have always been very passionate about LGBT+ issues and the concepts, especially about gender expression and perception of femineity and what makes someone a woman, were very interesting. If I had to say anything negative, it’d be that some shots seemed a little overused/repetitive.

Lastly in the group (before myself) was Jasmine’s “Healthy Clean Times” – which was really uplifting. I enjoyed the use of animated found footage – which hadn’t really been used by anyone else. The only downside to this was the unusual backdrop to the actual interview – old bookcase – which didn’t seem to fit the atmosphere of the whole project.

After our group a number of people showed theirs too – we got around to almost everyone and I was really delighted and interested in every film shown! Well done class!

Enemy of the State

I’m a little behind when it comes to talking about the movies we’ve been watching. A few weeks ago we watched Enemy of the State. I was sick that day (as I was most of the week), so I attempted to watch it from home – on Netflix – between bouts of feeling ill.

I’ve always been a fan of action films, especially the post-apocalyptic kind, but this was an exception for me. Maybe it was my short attention span that particular day, but I found the film dull and repetitive and I barely finished it.

I also happened to still be sick the following day, during which we apparently discussed editing in relation to the film. I’m going to have to just try and think about this with what small amount of editing we learnt in year 12 Media.

In a lot of scenes quick cuts back and forth are used to heighten the pace of the film and to add tension. This is done several times in The Enemy of the State, particularly chase scenes and fight scenes. Cutting back and forth helps create a sense of urgency, where the audience have little time to settle on a shot/angle before it changes to the next.

The film also utilised establishing shots to demonstrate the surveillance of Will Smith’s character throughout. By using these long shots we’re privy to the POV of the people trying to catch Smith’s character. Even though I personally didn’t enjoy the film, I thought these two uses of editing were really integral.