As a bit of a history geek, I found this week’s cinema reading particularly interesting. Aptly named The Hollywood Studio System (1930-49) (by Douglas Gomery), it described how in the early years, American cinema production was dominated by eight companies. The big five (Warner Brothers, RKO, 20th Century Fox, Loew’s and Paramount) and, to a lesser extent, the little three (Columbia, Universal and United Artists) held an oligopoly over the film market due to many factors, including their control over channels of distribution and exhibition. Today, we think of the three aspects of the film industry (production, distribution and exhibition) as being relatively separate, but during the reign of the studio system it was the big companies’ ownership of theatres that enabled them to not only gain the biggest audiences for their films but drive out competitors who had nowhere to exhibit their own films.

In the seminar, we furthered this discussion of the history of the studio system and looked at the way it defined our ideas of ‘mass culture’. The studio system, along with the invention of mass-communication systems such as the telegraph, created the idea of a ‘mass audience’; large groups of people could now not only experience the same product, as they had previously with books and newspapers, but in the case of cinema, they could experience it in the same way. As a result, there was a perception that audiences would therefore get the same meaning out of film, and this was an idea we challenged in the seminar. Could it not be true that audience members, with their different contexts and backgrounds, would each experience a film very differently? This, we concluded, is the more popular opinion today, but it’s clear that the debate surrounding mass audience is still very relevant, particularly in relation to popular culture studies. The discussion took me back to year twelve media, when we studied media effects theories such as the Bullet Theory (popular in the time of the studio system) and the more recent Uses and Gratifications Theory. The theories present different hypotheses regarding the effects media has on its audiences and the different ways in which audiences can engage with a text, making them very relevant to our discussion last week.

When you take public transport to and from university, it’s impossible not to notice the amount of people looking at their mobile phones. Whether they’re listening to music, scrolling through social media or taking a call, it certainly makes you wonder what commuters used to do on public transport as little as fifteen years ago.

On my way home from uni on Tuesday night, I happened to be standing behind a young woman – probably about my age – who, like so many of those around her, was using her phone. Glancing at her screen, I noticed that she was flicking through an extensive catalogue of photos. Considering that our reading from Susan Sontag this week was entitled On Photography, I took the opportunity to look at some of these now everyday objects in more detail.

The first thing I noticed was that it was not immediately obvious where these photos were coming from. Rather than appearing on a Facebook or Instagram feed, they took up the whole of the mobile’s screen – leading me to remember last week’s discussion of the importance of a physical frame or lack thereof.

The sequence of the pictures also interested me. The pictures seemed to come in groups, but I couldn’t find any tangential connections from one group to another. Some of the pictures were quite beautiful, reminding me of Sontag’s assertion that photography is becoming like dance and sex in the sense that is a commonplace art form that is not frequently recognised as art. Some of the pictures I assumed were taken by professional photographers, and therefore were likely to have been made with art in mind. However, even some of the pictures that were clearly taken by amateurs for other purposes – holiday snaps to share with friends, selfies to show off a new look – had an artistic quality that couldn’t be denied.

Fashion pictures turned to cartoons turned to screenshots and then came the photos that interested me the most: two or three close-up pictures of some shaky letters scratched into a human wrist. It was obvious for many reasons that this was no stylised professional shot; this was a self-taken photograph of somebody’s (successful) attempt at self-harm.

The woman in question seemed not to be fazed by these pictures that certainly shocked me, and I can’t judge her for that as I have no idea of the context. Perhaps this was a retrospective picture from a friend celebrating a year’s recovery from depression, or my judgement was really off and it was somehow faked. However I must admit finding it an unpleasant surprise how, with only a slight, half-second squint, the woman swiped away the picture as she had the Spongebob cartoon and shots from the latest fashion week.

It brought me back to what I found the most interesting part of Sontag’s reading, which was her discussion of the ethics of photography. She writes:

“Photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention. Part of the horror of such memorable coups of contemporary photojournalism as the pictures of a Vietnamese bonze reaching for the gasoline can, of a Bengali guerrilla in the act of bayoneting a trussed-up collaborator, comes from the awareness of how plausible it has become, in situations where the photographer has the choice between a photograph and a life, to choose the photograph.” (Sontag, Susan; On Photography; 1973; Penguin (Harmondsworth); p.11-12)

I found this statement to be particularly interesting as although it was written in 1973, I feel it is particularly relevant in this age of citizen journalism. Often I have seen footage on the news of a vicious beating or racial attack, and have wondered why the person behind the camera was not offering to help. As Sontag suggests, there seems to be an ever more popular view that is is acceptable to photograph rather than intervene (the two actions being mutually exclusive in her opinion).

However, in the case of the picture I saw on the tram, we have to look at the ethics a little differently, as the same person taking that picture was the victim. Firstly, I think this brings up the interesting idea of the ‘social media generation’; are we so public with our lives, so constant in our broadcasting of our own cultivated images that we now even post selfies of our attempts at self-harm? Perhaps this is an argument in favour of social media, that we can be open and share our pain, but that depends on the reaction of the viewer.

This brings me to the other side of photography ethics that Sontag refers to: the ethics of the viewer. Sontag writes of the way viewers are distanced from the events of a photograph, suggesting that, “A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it . . . most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter.” (Sontag, Susan; On Photography; 1973; Penguin (Harmondsworth); p.9-10) While Sontag here talks about tourists using photography to make the unfamiliar familiar, I think that her statement can also apply to the desensitisation we have to what we see in photographs. Despite the perception we have that photos are concrete evidence of real events (another of Sontag’s points), the one-dimensional, neat encapsulation of a moment distances us from it’s true consequences.

In constantly seeking to ‘frame’ the world, are we costing ourselves the opportunity to react to real life events both as the photographer and the viewer?

The prompt was to write about a place that fascinates you. Here’s what I came up with (and it’s mostly fictional by the way, so don’t judge me):

It is nearly impossible to describe what drew me to London, only to say that I was driven; it was more than mere impulse, or – that horrible, whimsical term ‘wanderlust’. I’ve never felt that wanderlust accurately describes what goes through a seasoned traveller’s mind; it diminuitively fails to encapsulate the constant longing, the all-consuming hunger for the next trip; the new Jericho. This is how I have always felt about London. Somewhat inexplicably and completely irrationally, it has long been the backdrop to all my aspirations and dreams. I say irrationally, because there is no actual, tangible reason why this has always been the case. Tourists, as distinct from travellers – those casual meanderers of westernised interest points, those who have the dreaded ‘wanderlust’- tourists can usually point to why they want to see a certain place. “Oh, were quite keen to experience the New York lifestyle,” they coo, while lying by the Sofitel pool. By contrast, I could never say for sure what it was about London that so absolutely, convincingly lured me in. I never wanted to see Big Ben; I didn’t want to ride the London Eye. We had politicians and overpriced ferris wheels where I was. But I still wanted to see London.

Like all the best subjects – nay, all the best things in life – On The Frame started with an outing. To begin to understand the significance of framing, Dan sent us to the NGV on Thursday to have a look at some paintings.

The previous Tuesday’s class had been an introduction to the subject (and to each other), and as part of that Dan had asked us to brainstorm any and all terms that came to mind when thinking about the things we’d be learning this semester. This is what we came up with as a class:

You’ll notice that some of the phrases are circled. That’s because Dan asked us to pick four or five of these elements that interested us the most and that we particularly wanted to learn about. In case you can’t read my terrible pig-scratching hand-writing, mine were:

• Mise-en-scene
• Composition
• Angle
• Depth of Field
• Sequence
• Cinematography

Okay, I know that’s six but I thought ‘cinematography’ covered the others.

When we got to the gallery, Dan told us to find three artworks that addressed our four or five elements (I dropped cinematography for this task) and discuss them, including references to the actual, literal frame (or lack thereof).

To be honest, I found the gallery so engrossing that I kind of forgot about the task; with only one picture noted and only a quarter of the exhibits explored I was kindly informed via loudspeaker that the gallery would be shutting in half an hour. Hence why you’ll notice all of my selections come from the medieval European collection.

1. The Virgin and Child by Simon Marmion (1425-89)

Picture sourced from http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/4166/

I picked this painting because reading the description and observing it closely I felt it spoke to my elements of mise-en-scene and depth of field. The picture’s description mentioned how the Virgin Mary is pictured here not in a biblical scene but in a contemporary European setting, with blond hair and fine features that were idealised at the time of production. Furthermore, the mise-en-scene of the way Christ is laying in Mary’s arms is supposed to refer to other depictions of ‘La Pieta’, a popular image in medieval times of Christ dying in a weeping Mary’s arms (despite the fact this is never actually described in the bible). Furthermore, I found the depth of field quite sophisticated if only in the sense that it is aesthetically pleasing; there is quite a long expanse behind the foreground – I think I counted six layers. The frame of this small painting (about A4 size, I would guess) was plain brown wood, which I thought served to highlight the vibrant greens and blues worn by Mary.

2. Rest on the Flight Into Egypt With St Catherine and Angels by Paris Bordone, 1527-30

Picture sourced from http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/paris-bordones-rest-on-the-flight-into-egypt/

I found this picture to be quite beautiful, and I think part of the reason for this was its composition (one of my elements). I think the artist uses the concepts of the rule of thirds points of interest to create that quite clear diagonal line from bottom left to top right made up of the subjects’ heads. I think the use of that diagonal to separate the main subjects from the background is somehow very pleasing to the eye. As part of composition I thought this picture also spoke to my element of angle, as the picture seems to be painted from just below straight on (or eye level), adding to the height of the action created by the composition of the diagonal and the placement of the cherubs in the tree.

3. The Crossing of The Red Sea by Nicolas Poussin, 1632-34

Picture sourced from http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/4271/

As we were limited to paintings and drawings rather than sculpture, photography or multi-media, I found sequence the hardest of my elements to find represented in the gallery. I chose this painting because I think it evokes movement the best out of the works I saw in the gallery. The way the clouds and waves are positioned to the right of the frame makes it seem as though they are entering the picture, and I think this effect is added to by the way the subjects are reaching to that side; one man is even in the act of pulling another out of the waves, adding to that sense of movement from right to left. I thought the frame was also significant in adding to this sense of movement. It was a large painting (maybe six or seven feet long by four feet high) and it was bordered by a very thick golden frame, inlaid with an intricate design that I felt combined with the chaotic busyness of the picture to evoke movement.

Question of the day: what is popular cinema?

To answer this question posed by our tutor Tyson Wils, we first had to look at how to define popular culture. For those in the contextual study this may have been an easy question but I had to take a quick look at the readings to help me out. I found Raymond Williams’ definition in A Vocabulary of Culture and Society a particularly interesting one, because it described the word culture‘s origins in the Latin verb colore, meaning inhabit, cultivate, protect or honour with worship. I thought it was fascinating that even going back thousands of years we could see the relevance of this definition to pop culture today: the idea of ‘honouring with worship’ and ‘protecting’ seem to me to be very applicable to the way avid fans today really appreciate and defend their favourite works.

Further breaking down this discussion of pop culture, Williams describes the two parallel definitions of popular, that are ‘of the people’ (linking in with the idea that pop culture such as pop music is inherently opposed to elite or high culture) and ‘well-liked’. But the particularly interesting point Williams raises 9that was emphasised by Tyson as a focus of this subject) was the idea that there is something “calculating”, in Williams’ words, about the term popular; there’s this idea that pop culture is designed to be liked and bought.

Tyson reiterated this point when writing up a prompt for our reflections, referring to films that “try to offer something new/sell themselves as offering something new.” It was with this statement that he asked what films we might then classify as popular cinema. A good starting point for this thought might be the breakdown of pop culture into industrial, cultural and aesthetic factors that Tyson and Williams both referred to. Maybe these are the areas that a film must succeed in to be considered popular cinema? The immediate thought in my mind was the recent superhero films; box-office successes, they have not only individually gained fans but collectively created a fictional world and comic-book-to-film aesthetic that has captured minds. The superhero genre is almost a sub-culture of its own – is that what we call popular cinema, and popular culture?

Howdy all (she says, assuming that someone is reading this),

Image sourced from https://therfexperiment.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/the-r-f-expermiment-the-emperors-new-face-part-1/

It’s semester two and I’m back at uni. In second semester, media runs a little differently: instead of all going through to a ‘media two’ subject, we students in our second semester get to choose a ‘studio’ that we’ll be enrolled in. We’re mixed in with kids from media four as well and end up in specialised classes of about 25. I was fortunate enough to get my first preference, which is the On The Frame with Dan Binns. As the name would suggest, it’s all about looking at the importance of the cinematic frame within the wider world of media production, and I’m keen to have a look at some great films and make more of my own media.

I’m continuing on with my literature contextual study this semester with the subject Reading Space and Place. While last semester’s Textual Crossings tied in really well with media, this subject is much more literature-based, which I’m actually quite excited about as a dedicated bookworm. I’m the only media student in the class, which excites me as well because I’m just waiting for some talent from my creative-writing-major classmates to rub off on me.

Finally, my elective for this semester is Popular Cinema, part of both the popular culture and cinema studies contextual strands. I think this will tie in really nicely with my studies in On The Frame, so I’m looking forward to really getting into the nitty gritty of what makes a film a pop culture success.

Technically, I don’t actually have to blog on this site anymore. On The Frame’s weekly post will go onto a Blackboard blog, and there’s nothing from the other two subjects that needs to go on here. However, I think I’m going to keep on keeping on anyway. I’ve grown quite fond of this blog, as it’s a good way for me to pool all my learning and work in one spot. So, I’ll be aiming for three posts a week: a copy of my On The Frame weekly reflective posts to Blackboard, a copy of my in-class weekly seminar summaries from Popular Cinema, and (if there is one) the writing exercise from Reading Space and Place (often a creative piece).

Because after all, I do it for the fans. 🙂

So media one is over. It was one hell of a journey, from the highs to the lows, but I feel like I really learned a lot and I wouldn’t take it back for one second. (Okay, I totally ripped that off MasterChef.)

Seriously, though, I did learn a lot – so much that I put it in a graph! (One day I will escape maths.) It’s a great launching pad from which I can explain my learning process throughout the semester.

Let’s start with prompt one, which rises relatively steadily over the weeks. The plateaus are the weeks in between our assessments, because I found the moments I learnt the most about creating media objects were when I was practically doing it. The feedback process as well as my own investigation into new film-making techniques allowed me to learn about the media-making process. However, it’s important to note that it wasn’t just the practical elements that helped me learn about the media-making process. When we had guest lecturer Adrian Miles come and talk to us, he mentioned that what separated us as uni students from others in more hands-on courses was our understanding of the theory behind the practice. Thus, I’ve decided to link in this blog I did about Lost in La Mancha. While it’s about something from my textual crossings course, I reflected upon our lectorial on collaboration and thus media-making practice.

As for prompt two, there is a big spike at the start of the semester because that was when I was coming to grips with the key theoretical concepts of the course. It was a steep learning curve for me to rethink my definition of ‘media’ and look at it in a whole new light. So for this section, I’ll link in one of my earliest posts, media girl in a media world. Based on an in-lectorial exercise, this made me think a lot about the importance of media in the world around me.

Thirdly, we have creative and critical thinking about my own media work. This increased evenly throughout the semester, as I found that not only did the feedback from the assessments help me think about my own work, but I could also apply just about every theoretical concept I learnt in the lectorials to my work as well. That’s why for this section I’ve decided to link in my last post, the reflection on our group assessment. I could have chosen an earlier assessment, but I feel this last post, being so late in the semester, reflects a wider variety of the skills I have learnt when it comes to assessing my own work.

Finally, we come to the blog. There is a big spike at the start of the semester, because I felt the blog helped me process the initial big concepts to which I was being introduced. The second spike at the end of the semester was when I started to really get a handle on some of the concepts I was learning and started to really enjoy exploring the complex ideas in all my classes. So, my two final blog posts are both ones I enjoyed writing, because I was able to connect ideas learnt in media to other topics. In Pretty in Pink, I was able to discuss the concept of semiotics within the context of my own life and beliefs. In Remix, I was able to link one of Daniel Binns’ lectures to some work I’d found really interesting in textual crossings.

Well that, as they say, is all, folks. Have a great break (or winter, if you’re not a bludgy uni student like me but an actual working stiff). See you next semester!

So it’s d-day (due day) for our group project and the final assessment for semester one. As of five o’clock this afternoon, I will no longer be a media one student (cries quietly). But enough of the mushy stuff, I’ll save that for my final blog post. For now, I want to do a reflection on my group assessment. For those of you who haven’t been following it, our project was inspired by the topic ‘audiences’, and we chose to explore the interactivity of the modern audience through a multimedia webpage that you can find here: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/2015-media1-projects-participationgeneration/

Overall, I’m quite proud of it. The first thing that I think worked really well was the way in which we used vlogs throughout the site. Technically, they were not particularly hi-fi, but that was the idea; we wanted to replicate the style of online vloggers as we thought they were a good example of media creators who value audience input. This theme of replicating interactive media in our own site continued through our use of an app, a Twitter feed, hashtag and embed button, and a Facebook like button. Although we did not have a wide audience and thus these elements were not particularly well-used, I thought our incorporation of them was a really clever way to demonstrate the points we were making regarding the way modern technology allows for greater audience interactivity. I was also really pleased with the variety of media we used. We had print, video, image, app and social media all embedded in our site, and I think this aligned well with our topic because we found that interactive audiences are not just limited to online or social media but can be found across a range of media forms. I am very proud of my two team-members; I thought Dusty put in a lot of effort finding good people to interview and taking the time to do so, and Jac’s use of a projector in his photoshoot added a level of creativity to our project.

However, with any project, there are always going to be things that you would have done differently. One thing I think we could have done better was create more links to external sites. We wanted to incorporate audience interactivity into our own site, and so allowed our audience to navigate through the site at their own pace with a multitude of different internal links. However, to heighten their level of control over the content I would have included more external links. I tried in my article to link in most of my sources, but if I had been more organised I could have done more. I also think that while I liked that we all went in different directions with the project, it made it a little bit difficult to come to a conclusion. We did make a collaborative conclusion that somewhat solved this problem, but I think that our conclusions needed to be a bit more comprehensive and alike. Our organisation on the whole probably could have been better; we did not struggle to finish on time however I think it would have helped the process if we’d had more of a chance to see each other’s products earlier on and give some feedback or incorporate their findings into our own final products.

Obviously there are some key lessons to be learned here about collaboration. One thing I thought worked really well in our group was the process of delegation. By segmenting the work clearly into three sections, we each had set tasks to complete and there was no confusion over who should be doing what and everything got completed. Our team meetings also worked really well. Although sometimes we would be late or have to miss one, by just having that check-in time we were able to assess our progress and really just give each of us individually peace of mind that we were on the right track. I also learnt the importance of getting on socially with your team members. We were probably quite lucky in that we were three people that just happened to get on, but we did go out together at least once and in the future I think this would be a good technique to adopt to ensure that all team members can interact positively and successfully. I also learnt that you have to have trust when working collaboratively; not everyone is going to work in the same manner as you but that’s ok, you just have to trust that they are capable and will do what they need to do.

Just wanted to do a quick post about the importance of the opening titles to TV shows.

The idea came to me as I was watching last Sunday’s episode of Poldark (don’t judge). A typical BBC period drama shown on ABC1 8.30 Sundays, it follows the life of almost-nobleman Ross Poldark as he navigates his way through the troubles of Cornish mining life in the late 1700s. I was inspired to write this brief post because I am always struck by the power of the opening credits. I absolutely love the piece of music, and I don’t quite know why; I just think it’s a moving work that really sums up the themes of the show. Have a look:

I think the evolution of TV credits is an interesting one. Back in the 60s or 70s, it seemed common for TV credits to be up to a minute in length, but then in the 21st century economy of time was valued and credits were minimised. Take the example of Modern Family‘s 11-second title sequence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhylCcN52nk

But I think the opening title is having a resurgence, and it’s becoming more of an art form again. Global company Imaginary Forces is devoted almost entirely to opening credits, having been responsible for the titles of South Park, Nurse Jackie and even the classic Mad Men:

I find the process of making opening credits fascinating; how do you capture the essence of a show in just a few seconds? It was something I had the pleasure of trying myself when I made my short film for year twelve media in the style of a murder mystery show (a la Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries or Nancy Drew), and accordingly had to use Adobe After Effects to create a stylised theme. I had to incorporate an introduction of the characters, a set-up of the show’s concept and a snapshot of the show’s light-hearted, self-parodying tone into about 30 seconds, and it wasn’t easy but I enjoyed the process, and hope it’s something I’ll get the chance to do again in the future.

https://youtu.be/mynk0e8iPug

Yesterday was the last chance we had to show the rest of our class our assessment drafts before the final product is due in next week. It was a bit nerve-wracking, knowing we only had one week left and everyone else’s looked so good!

We seemed to get mostly positive feedback. The class seemed to understand the idea of using a vlog-style opening video to emulate the interactive nature of the media we are studying. They liked the three different avenues that Dusty, Jac and I have explored, and Rachel’s previous concern that the three different elements didn’t gel well together seemed to be assuaged by our suggestion that we would create a collaborative conclusive video to summarise all that we have done.

I personally still have a few concerns for my own section; I’d like to expand my article to be able to look with more depth into social media and TV, and I’d like to incorporate some more sources. I’d also like to enhance the interactivity of our site by trying to incorporate a twitter feed, blog roll and other types of social media into the site itself. I also have yet to create my video introduction, but I’m confident that I can do that quite quickly. I also have confidence in the rest of my group to excel in their areas to create a polished and unique finished product.

It was also really interesting in the tute yesterday to have a look at some of the other directions that the students in our class are taking with this assignment. Kristian, Ali and Sandy were exploring the topic of texts, and chose to focus on video games by creating a Good Game-style video game review show. This is a copy of their rough cut, which aside from a few sound issues I think looks pretty slick:

https://youtu.be/R7-2SDgaidg

Bianca, Gloria and Patrick had the topic of institutions, so looked at the history of recorded sound. They’ve created a really neat audio documentary, with a mix of found audio and interviews they’ve conducted. It’s quite long at this stage, but obviously it’s not finished and I think the opening is really great.

Lucas, Emma and Rob also had texts, so they looked at the idea of adaptations and texts changing form. They’ve done a similar thing to our group in that they’ve used a website so that they can explore a range of ideas in different formats. They haven’t uploaded everything yet but I can see from what they do have that it will be good when they’re finished.

Elise and Jack (Connor) also had institutions, so decided to look at the classification board of Australia. They’ve produced a short video educational doco-style, in which Jack pretends to be a snubbed film-maker and Elise, the presenter, explains to him the process of film classification. This is only a short snapshot of what they’ve got, but it shows how professional their video looks.

https://vimeo.com/128329150

Ariff and Daniel used a webpage as well, looking at institutions through the lens of comparing Western media to media in Malaysia, Ariff’s home country. I can’t find a link to it as yet but will post it here as soon as they’re finished.

Haylee and Elle looked at piracy through a short video that was a mixture of found footage explaining piracy laws and vox pop interviews they had conducted themselves. Theirs is still unfinished, and a little on the short side, but they’ve got some good content so far so I look forward to seeing the final product.

Sandy, Tim and Zoe’s footage is still very raw, but I think it’s a really interesting concept; they’re doing a filmed debate on whether social media is making is more or less social. Sandy is presenting and Tim and Zoe will each present a side. Should prove an interesting watch.

Now, I just know I will have forgotten someone but I’ve already filled six hundred word up with other people’s work so I think I’d better get back to my assignment!

PS I’m too lazy to link in everyone’s blogs here, but if you want to read any of my classmate’s work check out the Media Factory site and click on the links down the side.