No comments

Chill… this time with feeling.

  By Matthew Duong • May 9, 2016 ,

Music has always been a part of my life for as long as I remember. First learning how to play the piano by ear (which I have lost most of my ability for now) then taking up guitar which I have been playing for something like 8 years. Being a musician makes me feel like I can enjoy any type of music and this song (or remix) of this song Kiiara – Feels.

This song brings out the emotion which is quite hard to describe, it is chilling but also activating, it is inspiring yet also a bit melancholy. The song puts me in a state in which I feel like I’m floating and grounded. It is something I listen to now to fall asleep or to pump at the gym. The sheer contrast of the situations to listen to this song speaks volumes of how inspiring and enthralling it is to me.

IF you have a chance, listen to this song. This type of genre of music I have recently gotten more and more into over past two years. What really enticed me with this genre (Chillstep) is its ability to make me feel both relaxed and excited at the same time.

No comments

PB4 | Creativity

  By Matthew Duong • May 9, 2016 ,

This ‘essay’ is different this time around. Rather than being about visualising or audio-lising a conventional essay Brain told us to be more creative with our response for our next project brief.

We need to tell a story, rather than just throwing information at the screen. Have a conversation, rather than just talking about something. Our project brief needs to be thought provoking and we need to have a different approach to our creativity.

Rather than the PECEAL approach I thought I needed to be more creative. Creating a script, which is something I do in my spare time here and there as a hobby (as an aspiring screen writer/director). This connects the ‘essay content’ and translating it to a moving story, similar to a popular YouTube video.

No comments

Media Institutions

  By Matthew Duong • May 9, 2016

What defines a Media Institution?

A media institution includes an audience which has different levels of interaction or interplay between persons. Some institutions are more mainstream of others but most if not all of them are a means of communication, mostly creating a community within or integrating a community. Some institutions have different goals or uses, some like Facebook focus on communication with others, others like HBO focus on creating media for the audience to view.

All institutions creates a community either directly or indirectly, directly like Facebook where the whole idea is to interact with your friends and/or acquaintances. Other things like ABC create a report or create media for an audience to view and this indirectly creates a community in which they give an input to feedback to the institution to change its content or to reinforce the institution.

The impact of institutions are different depending on the institution. Some institution show or represent the idea of their view of the world and others create aspects of the world, like communities. Different institutions have different agendas, to show a realistic interpretation of the world, or to bring people together. They differ from different institutions. Some more controversial than others. And if you were to believe their values; it depends on the person.

 

 

No comments

Captain America: Civil War Review (No Spoilers)

  By Matthew Duong • May 9, 2016

Over the past week I got the time to watch ‘Captain America: Civil War’ which is the 3rd instalment of the Captain America series. This Captain America is based on the ideal clash between Iron Man and Captain America. Cap thinks the Avengers do not need to be bound by rules and Iron Man thinks the Avengers needs rules because there have been too many people caught in the crossfire. So the characters are split into two sides: ‘Team Cap’ and ‘Team Iron Man’. The movie does a terrific job at displaying this ideology clash between Cap and Iron Man.

I’d say all the characters in the film played their roles brilliantly, stand-outs in my opinion are Black-Widow and Black Panther who were superb in their roles. Also probably the highlights of the movie are the characters of Spider-Man and Ant Man who when introduced were hilarious and enticing for us. The interaction between Spider-Man and Iron Man was a class act to watch, Spider-Man wasn’t this ‘superhero’ kind of character, more like a massive fanboy of the Avengers. This made his performance much more likeable and in my opinion the best comic book to screen spider man to date.

The ideology clash between ‘Team Cap’ & ‘Team Iron Man’ was a different approach to the typical superhero movie. Rather than the beat the big bad boss scenario we are given this ideology clash between heroes. This scenario in itself was both suspenseful and unpredictable to watch. Unpredictable in that we aren’t expecting the heroes to overcome the big baddie, but we are seeing heroes going head to head and the outcome is ambiguous until the end. It is ambiguous because we can see both sides of the story, Team Cap believes the Avengers need to be free because it covers all bases, he believes they (The Avengers) have an agenda to serve the people and do the right thing and being bound by rules and restrictions may impede with this. Team Iron Man believes there are too many casualties and the Avengers need to be put in check to minimise casualties because he believes at times the Avengers can be too dangerous even though their goal is to save lives. We see the inevitable clash between ideals and personalities with some of the best action sequences in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with the introduction of some new characters breeding a new wave of life into the superhero genre.

Overall, Captain America Civil War was a gripping and enthralling watch because it is not your typical beat the bad guy superhero movie; it is an ideology clash between heroes with twists and turns that keeps us on the edge of our seats the whole time. The runtime of this movie is quite long but very rarely does it feel dragged on and the movie does an amazing job with editing so it does not feel too long.

Best movie of the year so far for mine. Now for the wait till X-men.

No comments

PB4 – Research | Game Of Thrones Case Study

  By Matthew Duong • May 5, 2016 ,

Rick Kissel 2016, ‘Game of Thrones’ Premiere Draws 8 Million TV Viewers — Just Shy of Series High, Variety, viewed 5 May 2016, <http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/game-of-thrones-premiere-ratings-season-6-1201759863/>

This brief article gives the statistics and discusses the popularity of extremely popular HBO series ‘Game Of Thrones’. It gives statistics about the rise of viewership as seasons progress and also the rise of it during a season of Game Of Thrones giving possible reasons why the viewership has skyrocketed over this period. It also ranked Game of Thrones in regards to popularity with other all-time TV shows to illustrate the popularity of the show.

The article may be questioned given the website is a ‘popular news’ website that almost exclusively rides the popularity of popular media. The referencing and quoting of statistics and review quoting also is not referenced anywhere on the site, however the statistics are easily obtainable from a newspaper due to the shows popularity.

The article can be useful in our project in that if we are going to talk about the audience, this would be a decent statistic to illustrate how globalised media has become over recent years, the popularity of a single show in such a genre has not been done like this before and it can be a good reference point for a case study within Western Cinema media.

No comments

PB4 – Research | Modern Era of Cinema: Australian Attendance rate

  By Matthew Duong • May 4, 2016 ,

Screen Australia 2014, Cinema Audience Patterns, Val Morgan & Co, viewed 4 May 2016, <https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/audiences/attendance-patterns>

This web article basically only shows the percentage of Australians who have been to the cinema in the last 12 months and their frequency during that time from 1974 – 2014. The article also briefly explains the trends of the rise and fall of percentages during different periods such as a rise in 2004 and a fall in 1986.

The article says in fine print that this survey was taken over a three month period every year so there would be a sizeable sample to work with.

The article may be relevant in that we reference the rise of cinema goers along with the rise in age of cinema at around 1974, when films such as Star Wars came out.

No comments

PB4 – Research | The Modern Audience

  By Matthew Duong • May 4, 2016 ,

Balnaves, M, & Ebooks, C 2011, Rating The Audience : The Business Of Media, London: Bloomsbury Academic, eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost, viewed 4 May 2016.

The chapter ‘audiences’ deals with the consumption of media, mainly how people consume it. It explores the current age of media how they discuss surveys taken to discover how much time (on average) does a person spend consuming media, whether that be TV, internet, radio etc. It talks about the Modern audience in how it has accustomed itself to various ways of consumption and how much time is invested in this. It also explores the difference now to before in that there wasn’t much exposure of this and it discusses how there were massively less TV’s per household compared to now.

The chapter generally uses statistics from surveys to relay its information and sometimes uses quotes and references to back up their claims. Often discussing the ‘general audience’ and also briefly mentioning that there are outliers to the statistics they discuss. This creates a very realistic approach to the topic and gives us a practical theory on how we consume media today.

The chapter is relevant in that it provides good recent statistics in that it supports the fact that the consumption of media has changed for audiences over time. The approach towards cinema and media in general is different to history and is readily available.

No comments

PB4 – Research | Case Study: Audiences of Harry Potter

  By Matthew Duong • May 3, 2016 ,

Geraghty, L 2015, Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences & Paratexts, Portsmouth, UK. pp. 206-226

The chapter explores the “Harry Potter Alliance” as a case study in which it explores how Harry Potter has influenced a generation of young people to be social and political activists. It also explores how the Harry Potter franchise has taught a generation of young people the key values of life through the themes of the book, themes like friendship, family, media interpretation and human rights. It details certain events that have happened where author J.K Rowling empowers an entire generation of youths with the knowledge taught through this franchise. The chapter also touched on the history of fan activism, where it was very passive at first but now with the ‘Harry Potter Alliance’ (HPA) fans are changing to be more active. The overall theme of the chapter was exploring how the Harry Potter has influenced a generation into being activists.

The chapter uses many embedded quotes and references to many sources, ranging from articles to books and it uses other movies as examples generally well. The films it references include Doctor Who, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and references how they are similar to Harry Potter in influencing people to be activists. The chapter also briefly uses stats to back up their credibility of the HPA in how they have become activists.

This chapter can be quite helpful in a case study, in which we can talk about this certain case in how a film/book franchise has influenced a generational audience to be activists. Discussing the change between what an audience would generally do to what the HPA do, from being passive viewers into social and political activists helping in many different countries with statistics and reference articles to back it up.

 

No comments

PB4 – Researching on Audiences

  By Matthew Duong • May 2, 2016 ,

Napoli, PM 2010, Audience Evolution – New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences, New York, NY, United States, pp. 25-30

The article explains how with the introduction of change of technologies how the audience and media has changed with this. From a passive audience, we were introduced with new technologies such as television and internet have come to play into the change in audiences. It talks about how the industry reacted to this, some changing their way of thinking and others going as far as to ‘banning the VCR’.

The article makes claims about how media and its audiences has changed and reacted to the coming of new technologies often referencing and backing up his claims with other references. He uses a variety of references in abundance so it suggests there is a lot of credibility and backing to his claims.

The research here is relevant to audiences because the article explores the reaction to the change in technologies has had to different mediums and their audiences. It also explores different reactions it had on different mediums such as newspapers, tv and radio.

No comments

Audiences in our Lectorial

  By Matthew Duong • May 2, 2016

In our lectorial this week we also talked about Audiences.

We talked about how the idea of an Audience has been conceptualised in recent history, rather than being a part of ‘the masses’. Everyone within the media industry has an investment in the audience. Everyone who is a part of media has to think about the audience, like who would view their material? Who are they trying to attract? etc.

Nowadays, the idea of the audience has moved from this ‘everyone’ mentality to more different groups or categories of different mediums and fans. The investments of these fans can differ from different groups and individuals themselves but the average between someone say, who just watches daytime TV compared to someone who watches weekly their favourite TV show and is a ‘fan’ of it. Today’s companies and institutions adhere to these demands and this change of mentality of the audience. The audience is getting more immersed into media and the idea of audience has changed in this way. They produce their content with the idea of a passive or a an active audience which changes from different institutions, mediums and genres etc.

We as media practitioners or learning practitioners have more a say on what to produce and how we affect it. Someone who is just strictly a fan or viewer does not have much to say in terms of what affects the product, so we as media practitioners have to keep in mind we do have more of a voice than the common audience.

The active audience are more invested in media consumption in that there is a lot of ways to consume media. This way of viewing via Netflix, YouTube, paid services (pay per view) etc. has changed from the normal way we used to view things.

So what has changed from ‘the people formerly known as the audience’ to what we have now. Today we are using the internet more than watching tv, since most of tv shows or movies are online. Everything is online and we have changed into this mode of being online.