Tag Archives: media 1

Marriage as an institution

In the lecture yesterday Brian pulled up a photograph of a man and a woman, clearly on their wedding day and posed the question of Marriage as an institution. We then had a discussion with our peers about what marriage means to us, or what it generically symbolises. I thought this was an interesting idea, because the way media portrays the concept of marriage and the way it is reduced to things like a white dress and a black suit is often quite fair from the actual ‘sanctity’ of it. But I digress.

By talking about what marriage symbolises, especially with the rest of the class, helped get a sense of peoples’ perspectives. I think most people were pretty cynical, myself included and my friend even said “50 percent of marriages end in divorce” which sort of summed up the mood.

I wrote a few dot points down about what I was saying and what others were too. The most obvious is that it symbolises a union, a legal contract and monogamy. It has generations worth of rituals – like hen’s night and the rings and depending on the religion of the two individuals in question, a church. I think mostly though, it represents a very outdated social expectation and as someone said we are socialized to aspire to marriage as the ultimate relationship achievement. Whereas for many, marriage is just a legal contract and doesn’t consider things like gender and sexuality – rather it reinforces a gender conforming ideal of wife and husband. Don’t even get me started on the fact that Australia, among 174 other countries haven’t even legalized gay marriage yet.

Memes? Memes.

The guest speaker, Anne Lennox, spoke to us about copyright. One of the things she said that got me (and quite a fair few other students) laughing was ‘there’s not much we can do about memes’, in reference to copyrighting laws. She made a good point though – starting initially by explaining that the gif feature in Facebook messenger is breaching laws. When we got onto the internet phenomenon that is ‘memes’, I couldn’t help but relate it to my own life. I admit it – I’m not ashamed – I love memes. All kinds. From Pepe the frog to personal inside jokes with my friends. And it’s actually pretty funny to think of something so, well, kind of stupid and ridiculous in a context so official and serious such as copyrighting laws.

I was actually a meme once, technically still am – when I posted a photo of myself last year that my dad had taken years ago, on my 9th birthday surrounding a barbie laptop with my 4 other best friends. I had always found the photo kind of funny, because our expressions were ridiculously uh – bitchy, I guess is the word. The picture went pretty viral – currently it has over 260,000 notes on the website I originally posted it on and countless other hits and likes and comments on Facebook, Instagram and the iFunny app (I only know this because people kept sending me links with the photo edited with different hilarious captions), reposted endlessly to the point that I can’t even keep up.

But the funniest part of it, and what relates back to what Anne Lennox was telling us about copyright, is that my dad is a professional photographer and now one of his works was an internet sensation. He was a little confused by it (memes aren’t exactly his generation’s thing) and especially frustrated with how quickly people repost and re-blog a photo without crediting the artist (even if it was a private at home photo rather than one of his official works). That’s the thing with the internet and copyright, sources are very easily lost in the feed.

What is copyright?

We had a guest speaker come in yesterday and talk to us about Copyright. I found it all very interesting, and I can tell I’m going to be caught up in it as I go through my degree. It’s all very confusing. First off, copyright is automatic, it is law – Commonwealth Law to be exact. In other words, as soon as you create content, you don’t need to add any ã for it to be copyrighted, nor are there any registration requirements in Australia. However, facts and ideas aren’t protected by copyright – so you can’t have an idea for say, I don’t know, a boy wizard with a lightning scar and expect that you will win a law suit against J.K. Rowling for writing the Harry Potter series (though I’ve seen a few idiots attempt it).

Ideas can only be protected if you mark with a statement like ‘the information in this folder is confidential and must not be used without first obtaining (name) written consent’.

Why do we need audiences?

 

Audiences are pretty important, but why? Who actually cares? Advertisers, commercial broadcasters, Cable networks, production houses, individual program makers, government policy makers, social scientists/psychologists and cultural theorists – that’s who!

Essentially, if we didn’t have audiences, we wouldn’t have media to begin with. Because what’s pushing creators to produce media that people aren’t going to view/watch/consume? Audiences help generate income and product value – fans of bands increase their net worth, ratings of TV shows decide whether they get a second season, and so on. Like a sort of domino affect – audiences exist to consume media, and media exists to be consumed by audiences.

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!

PB3 – Capturing Life

I found this project perhaps the most challenging of all three. When we were given the brief, it definitely excited me. I brainstormed some ideas about who I wanted to interview pretty much straight away, so that process was very easy. However, as it got closer to the due date and the actual filming and editing process, it was a lot harder. I think this is probably to do with my limited experience in this kind of movie making. I did watch a few examples and the ones on the media blog helped put things into perspective. I was very stressed though, if I am honest and I was having one of those messy thoughts kind of feeling about the whole thing (which I only get when I’m really confused and doubtful about my abilities). I think most of my anxiety about this though, was just the overwhelming workload I suddenly had piled up. This wasn’t because I’d been lazy or anything, I had been sick and suddenly I had all these assignments to do. I had fun looking for found footage and I actually got in contact with the National Film and Sound Archive Australia to get permission to use some of their stock footage.

Once I actually got stuck into the filming though, I felt more at ease. I obviously was comfortable around my own dad, who was the subject of my interview, so that was fun. We got all the interview part down in about an hour. He just answered the questions naturally, I got a few different angles and that was that. Some of the ‘action shots’ is what I call them, took a bit more time just because I did a few takes, but even that was very straight forward.

I talked to Seth, my tut and organized to borrow a lapel mic and a regular rode mic for the interview. I wanted to have a back up rode mic for all the ‘action shots’ and use the lapel, as it captured sound better, for the interview part. I used my own DSLR for the filming.

Overall, I think the project went well, considering it was my first attempt at documentary style film making. I think I was not very good planning everything, I had a very brief list of shots I wanted and a list of questions as listed here:

Questions

  1. Name and profession / brief introduction
  2. How did you first get into photography?
  3. What do you love most about it?
  4. Tell us about the Northcote Hysterical Society
  5. What Camera do you use?
  6. What process do you go through post-production?
  7. Tell us about your current project?

Shots

  1. Found Footage (to go along with whatever relates to his topic, especially when talking about photographing houses and things in the 70s)
  2. Front on traditional interview (in front of studio backdrop)
  3. Close up, profile angle interview
  4. Action shot #1: sorting through film/photographs
  5. Action shot #2: Taking photos, in the street, getting ready etc.
  6. Footage of the studio (establishing, interior, him on the computer)
  7. ATMOSPHERE RECORDING AUDIO

I was very happy with the filming process overall and sorting through the footage didn’t take long either. The actual editing part, though, was my weakest. It took me a lot time to wrap my head around how I wanted it to start (the introduction etc.) and I didn’t even have a title until today. I’m still not convinced the ending transitions well, but I think I did my best. In the future I would allocate more time to planning and maybe consider doing some more research on the film and editing techniques that work with the project brief.

Capturing Life from Lucy Wadelton on Vimeo.

‘Capturing Life’ Teaser

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‘Capturing Life’ is a short interview piece with celebrated photographer and painter, David Wadelton. The interview focuses on his photographic career, most notably the establishment of ‘The Northcote Hysterical Society’ – an online archive of Melbourne’s northern suburbs during the 70’s as captured in the eyes of the artist. Mr. Wadelton also discusses the process of capturing ordinary life that other people may normally overlook and photographing them in a way that revitalises the mundane.

I Will Survive

Anybody love a good 70’s classic? Gloria Gaynor? Anyone?

I’ve spent a lot of my week at home. Scratch that – a lot of my week in bed. Whenever anyone empathises with me I just say ‘I WILL SURVIVE’. I actually haven’t been to Uni since Monday, which sounds crazy, except I only have 3 days in a week anyway. I was weirdly nauseas on Tuesday, recovering Wednesday and then my chronic illness decided to knock on my door Thursday morning – or rather – knock on my train carriage as I was mid-commute to my 9:30am Workshop. And then to top it all off, Friday my body thought a cold would be a really good addition to an already stressed out Lucy. So it’s really been fun! (I really hope you can sense the sarcasm).

While all that has been going on, I’ve been trying my hardest to manage the workload that’s all due next week. I’ve done a very rough draft of PB3, almost finished by Cinema Studies essay and slowly been working on blog posts. I churned out 4 in one go on Monday, but then was hit with illness for the rest of the week, so those 4 weren’t so impressive anymore, just the bare minimum for the week.

One thing I did do through the week was attend a Top Secret Research Program. Basically I got paid to analyze and critique advertisement and media that hasn’t been released to the public yet. I obviously cannot tell you anything about it aside from that, but I thought it related to my course in some distant way. It was really interesting looking at media that way, it reminded me of year 12 and when we used to analyze elements of media campaigns. Things like codes and conventions in order to attract target audiences. An enormous amount of effort and talent goes into things that we just ignore or not give a second thought. Even things like pop up animated ads (which we were shown at the research place) which usually I’d not even see because of adblock. Made me actually appreciate the work that goes into these things, but won’t change my opinion on clicking next whenever I see one!