Having playing guitar for over a decade I am used to every sound that have to go with them. One particular is my amp which I have had for roughly 6 years. Always makes a distinct sound when I turn it on. This sound still sounds the same as the first day I got my amp, so I’ve grown up with this sound getting used to it. A few more sounds from playing guitar that I love are ‘harmonics’ which are notes that are played by just touching the string and when you pluck the string at the same time you release your slight press on the string. This is in my opinion of the most beautiful sounds that you can make with the guitar. Every harmonic note is the same note but each has a different texture or timbre depending on which guitar you play them on. It depends on the wood of the guitar, how worn the strings/guitar are, the shape of the guitar etc.
Another sound or combination of sounds that has to do with guitars is the set up of a rehearsal or practice session. The tuning of the guitars, setting up of the amps, testing the sound levels and the jamming before any real practice starts. Everyone in the practice session starts jamming on their own and in time everyone will just join in one big jam session before we do any real practice or rehearsal. It brings me back memories of when I was in a band in high school practising every few days or so, it brings me back to the ‘think tank’ room that we used to practice in.
So from my last post I posted my Project Brief 2 and I’m here to explain why I edited in this way. When I was first brainstorming ideas for creating my video an idea that struck me was a POV kind of video. I was thinking along the lines of ‘walks of life’. So I was fixed on the idea of taking POV pictures of me walking as I do in my video. The problem I had first was wondering how to start it. I had ideas of opening a door and walking with the camera pointing down at my feet but it felt a bit forced in my opinion. I felt like I needed something to ‘start off’ my video. So I thought of something that most kids my age do, well my demographic at least. I’m an avid gamer so I thought I would start it with something that would be relate-able to most gamers, which is the sound/process of turning on their Xbox. I had already recorded it from my project brief 1 and decided to use a bit of the clip for my video.
I had inspiration for the part of the video of I had the compilation of my feet in my different pairs of shoes, from the photo in my project brief 1 of my shoes. I was thinking in a way each pair represented an aspect of my life at some point, so this theme of pictures was on the same line as my idea of ‘walks of life’.
Next I wanted to show more detailed aspects of my life, so I took pictures and videos of things in my life. So I took a video of my dogs, the food I made and ate that night, my desk, my lounge area and such to give the viewers ‘a little glimpse into my life’. And for each shot I took I had the idea of shooting in a POV sense. Except for one shot which I attempted to do a bit of comedy. At the end I decided to do an outro like how I did the shot of me walking which I thought would fit the theme, a ‘walk out’.
When I was recording for voice and the backing track I just wanted a simple music backing track. So I just recorded a simple chord progression and looped it, lowered the sound so it wasn’t too overwhelming and I was happy with it. And with the voice, I watched the video a few times and wrote down lines I wanted to say, then I picked a few lines I liked and recorded them using a microphone. It was simple and fit my theme which is what I wanted.
Overall, I liked the idea of my theme and I hope you guys did as well.
In our tutes this week we talked about how media (social media in particular) has evolved in a way that everything has become a lot more public and interactive leaving the old idea of ‘don’t get in the car with strangers’ out of the window.
In reference to Gauntlett’s article/s we discussed how we use social media these days. Most of us, me included, use Facebook for its messenger and discussed how its easier to message and keep in contact with people. With this we talked about how the positives that have come about this new age of media, with its new thought out way of being creative and unique rather than being something that is mass produced, boring and the same. We have to be innovative and creative about the way we approach media, to produce, to communicate, to study. By doing so, we will attract more audiences and more producers of media alike.
Another thing we raised up was this notion that we have changed from avoiding strangers to now embracing them. We used Uber as an example. Now we can go into strangers cars and no one bats an eye about it. Even when we were brought up we were told ‘not to go into cars with strangers’. Now strangers can interact with each other with this Uber app and go into each others cars, this saves a lot of money as opposed to taking a taxi. Most older parents do not like this notion of getting into a strangers car but we argue that it is in fact safer than a taxi because of how Uber is monitored. I personally do not use Uber because I have not gone around to actually downloading the app.
This new conception of thinking about media is better for the future as the newer generations learn about it and we use it. It has evolved into a much better, innovative and creative way of thinking rather than a monetised, capitalised system.
I finally got around to having enough time or the effort to attempt the haiku exercise. It was a learning experience, I already knew how to put a video and music together in a video but I learnt how to edit text into it and edit the text. I had some difficulty in managing the colour of the text as if I went with the white you wouldn’t be able to see it. So I went for a colour that could blend with the video and fits with Haiku I randomly chose.
David Gauntlett’s blog on the change of how media is created and learned and how we can adapt and change the way we think about media as an academic study or a method of relaying information.
It got me thinking, it prompted me to think back to a conversation I had with my uncle this past week. In the conversation we talked about how we feel media has moved to a new age, this meaning that not even a decade ago, we used to only look at media at home through our computers and TVs. The only ‘mobile’ media source we had were books or newspapers but they weren’t really how they are today which is ‘On the fly’. Today we are able to experience media through our phones, tablets or laptops. All these things available through a 3G, 4G or wireless network, which has picked up its effectiveness over the most recent years. We read and watch things more on the fly more than we ever have. Now we can watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead on our phones on the train on the way to school or work. We are also able to stream sports such as Football, Rugby or NBA live through our phones, there was a time where this wasn’t common practice. It is in a change of our thinking, we are able to keep in touch with each other through social media anywhere we go, well anywhere that has an internet connection, now we can watch the latest YouTube videos on our phones when we’re travelling. I remember a time where the only place we got to watch YouTube was actually sitting down at a computer or laptop and actually going on the site.
So what does this mean and how does it relate to us as Media students? Well everything we make now must be accessible via mobile devices in terms of media. If we create a video, it better be available to view on YouTube. If we’re streaming it better be available to watch on a phone or tablet app.
And how is it going to be taught? Gauntlett touched on this with his blog posts about his book ‘Making media studies’ saying that media has evolved to what it is now from its roots as a very small, bare-bones profession. Now jobs and institutions exist that wouldn’t have a few decades ago or at least would be very rare. We have to change the way we think about media, we have to make it ‘both a subject, and a method’. To create new media we have to be creative in the way we go about making new media, we can’t rehash ideas that have been used over and over again. We have to adapt to this growing profession. Not only we have to be creative but we have to know our audiences’.
I’ll use E-Sports as an example. Over the past half of a decade E-Sports has grown exponentially with games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends having people compete for prizes of millions of dollars. The style that was introduced when E-Sports was first introduced some years ago was very laid back and edgy. There were jokes in the broadcast that wouldn’t get past censorship screens on TV, but that was what audience liked. The audience being fans of the video games: Gamers. Understandably the E-Sports scene had players competing for millions of dollars and the organisers felt it was proper to be more professional, so they had the hosting panels wear suits and conduct interviews very much like they do in sports and the community did not like this.
As to quote Pyrion Flax (a Dota 2 personality) in an interview (I’ll post the link after this) ‘We got here by not being like that (professional Sports) we got here by being different’
Ultimately, we should change the way we think about media and how we are to be more creative in producing more media as it is evolving and I think Pyrion Flax put it beautifully ‘we got here by being different’.
With a bit of thought I decided to base my PB2 on something along the lines of the following pictures, I was thinking something along the lines of ‘walks of life’ kind of thing and thought it would be really cool I would do something like this for a ‘one minute glimpse of my life’
Disclaimer: I found my draft for this a few days after I actually wanted to post this
So we presented our first project briefs in week 2’s tutorial and a few things that surfaced from the presentation in groups.
Everyone in my group had an interest or hobby in playing or creating music and musical instruments. It was a refreshing exercise getting to know others in the class and I found that most of us are very similar in our interests and hobbies. Most of the footage we saw or heard were just elements of our daily lives or ambience. Some of us capturing videos of the ambience outside, some of us filmed a routine in their daily lives, out of all of us we showed pretty much the same things but they were each different and unique because each and every single one of us are unique and different. We all showed footage of our daily lives but what each element that was shown was very much different to the last and for were recorded for different reasons. For example I took a picture of a cake I happened to be eating at the time to symbolise my sweet tooth and someone else might’ve done the same but just because they were eating cake, no ulterior motive at all.
All in all the exercise was refreshing getting to know several others and their reasoning for taking the various videos, pictures or sound clips of their daily lives.
So this weekend I’ve started playing around in Premiere, upon opening it up in the tutorial I was overwhelmed with the interfaces that were on the screen but after playing with them I became accustomed to them. After getting used to the interface, I went on Lynda.com to learn how to use the program.
The instructional videos were very helpful, one of the main points that I found was getting used to the keyboard shortcuts. Using ‘I’ and ‘O’ to mark your starting and end points of a piece, using ‘shift ‘+ ‘1’,’2′,’3′ or ‘4’ to switch between the interface panels saves a decent amount of time. Using ‘comma’ or ‘fullstop’ to insert or overwrite in the edit definitely is more preferable than selecting, deselecting, reselecting, drag-drop etc. The only problem is committing these functions to muscle memory. Having used other programs in the past (iMovie, windows movie maker) it was more of a click on the screen rather than the use of keyboard short commands. Even things like autoCAD when I was learning how to use it in engineering they never really emphasised the use of keyboard shortcuts, more like a ‘find your own way of doing things’ kind of thing and this ultimately wastes a lot of time for students. That was a bit of ramble, anyway using Premiere like this makes me feel more professional, in the sense that the actions I’m doing are easy and seamless but from the outside what I’m doing looks rather complex from someone who wouldn’t have a lot of knowledge of editing.
So how far am I up to in project brief 2? Well I really like a shot that I used from project brief 1 of me turning on my Xbox, I want to use a couple of shots from that. I’ve only done one shot however of me turning my Xbox on and fading out, which I imagine would be the start of the video and would transition into stills accompanied with a voice-over. What I want in my next project brief, stills accompanied by a voice-over by me, maybe a video of me playing guitar, reactions of me playing games or watching TV/sports something like that. As for the voice-over, I think I’ll just go over things like ‘this is me, this is my life’, sounds corny but all the videos from last year I’ve watched so far have been something along this nature. Maybe I’ll come up with something new, who knows.
Anyways I’m out for now, thanks for reading if you’ve stuck with this post for that long. Until next time.
