Month: April 2015

Earlier this week Rose and I met at the Library to discuss the assignment and see how many of the 24 steps we could get through. As it turned out, we became even more confused leaving than when we entered. While we were able to find am area to focus on (social media and its influence on younger generations) that coincides with our topic of “audience”, we were still unclear on a lot of aspects that we supposed to complete within the first few weeks, like the annotative bibliography.

In the workshop, we were, thankfully, given further explanation as to some of the aspects. For the annotative bibliography, we were given an exercise due next week that required us find 5 separate sources relating to our topic and focus and effectively evaluate them. We needed to evaluate those 5 sources with an overall word count of 1200 words (approx. 240 words per source). This seems to me to be pointless and overwhelming to the students (like myself) who have already found the assignment itself confusing and also have other assignments to complete as well.

In the lectorial we watched the first scene from the “Princess Bride”. The reason for this was to showcase “narrative”. Narrative and stories surrounds us, and puts us through infancy all the way to being old. Stories are everything, and everything is a story. “Narrative is any kind of re-telling of events”. The cause and effect in everything is needed for all story-telling, in character development, plot, and resolution.

Character development takes time – having them just suddenly show up won’t get the audience to know or appreciate them. Frank Underwood in “House of Cards”, gets snubbed for Secretary of State, which is what motivates him for his quest to power. Television is an amazing and interesting way to see how characters develop over an entire season or series. Causality helps a character emerge from the blank canvas and become fully formed.

The Plot is a chronological sequence of an event in the narrative – it is the skeleton of the story, usually relates around action. A person carries out actions and those actions force a character or characters to do things, and eventually we get a….Resolution. This is the natural ending to the plot and narrative. In “Hamlet”, the resolution is made by plot and character reactions (greed, ambition, revenge, etc).

“The stuff of story is alive but intangible” – Robert McKee, “Story”, p. 135. Aristotle’s poetics was the first known attempt at critiquing and analyzing plays, breaking them down into themes and plots. Eventually, we all discovered that all tales and narratives and stories all come from the same root 7 stories.

We then split into pairs to discuss a story we both knew and to map the story according to emotional highs/lows, and another map according to character prominence. We chose “Star Wars”. We noticed how many films seemed to follow a general format and we often expect basic things from most movies e.g. war film if someone pulls out a picture of a loved one(s) then they will die. Some films like to play directly with these expectations by doing something different, but still, no story is truly original.

A non-narrative (no story at all) is debated as to even its existence. One film is just 45 minutes of zooms, and another film is just 8 hours of slow-motion footage of the empire state building. The character “Don Quixote” within his own book doesn’t like the narrative he was given by the author and tries to make his own. We were then shown a short film called “We have decided not to die”, which is several clips of people dying, then reversing their deaths, and then avoiding them. We were then split into pairs to talk about parts that would make us think its a narrative and parts that make us think its a non-narrative.

Narrative:

• Broken up into different parts and they were clearly labled
• It seemed that they were different stories of preventing/avoiding death
• Has a sequential process

Non-Narrative:

• Repetition
• Fast-forwardness
• Lack of cohesion
• Slow motion

This lectorial was interesting, yet I am still worried that they are still not explaining the complicated assignment.

In the Workshop, we watched the videos that we handed in for project brief 3. This was the first video that I uploaded via vimeo, which takes a good 45 minutes to do. Thankfully, it was viewable. People seemed to like it, judging by the clapping, but there were no Q&A sessions between videos like last time, so everyone clapped for everyone.

Much like with the last project brief, the significant majority of people had very deep and depressing pieces focusing on friends and relatives with serious issues. They were very well done, but after so many depressing videos I felt incredibly numbed by the end. A few funny (or at least non-depressing) videos were there, but I was still completely numbed.

We then split into groups of 4 to discuss each others videos. Alana said that she liked the found footage of cartoon animals to represent her work in the RSPCA. Georgia really liked the footage of the maps and Sonika’s journey, and enjoyed the ambiguity of not seeing her face in close-ups. Samantha liked how the voice-overs were incorporated with the found footage and the original footage because it made it seem more natural, its her, creating a nice ambiance. Mr. Rowlands would have preferred more footage of Sonika, and he didn’t like the found footage of an older India. Other than that, he liked it.

We were then randomly sent into other groups of two (I was placed with Rose Ng) so that we can work on our final project of the semester. project Brief 4 is a collaborative video project. Each group is focusing on specific “media idea”, which for us is audiences. Our objective in this assignment is to creatively engage with the debates and theories that have informed Media as an academic discipline. We are not to provide a summary of our “media idea”, but instead we have to communicated a researched, informed, and creative response. A provocative “intervention” in to those debates and ways of thinking about media. This assignment sounds especially challenging as it also requires a lot of information and minutes of meetings with Rose and drafts and annotated bibliographies.

In the lectorial, we were given a lecture about what a “text” is by Brian Morris.He said that text isn’t just in writing, but also in terms of film and radio, communications, images, policy documents, social practices, and even institutions. Textual Analysis tradition comes from two concerns; “effects” tradition in communication studies, and post WW2/mid 20th century turn against a particular idea of culture.

Media can influence what people do (ie the Bobo dolls experiment, where children were shown videos of people hitting dolls with a bat, then put into a room with a bobo doll and a bat, to which most hit the dolls with the bat). There are different audiences, so media can be interpreted/influence different people in different ways.

Morris went on to say that texts are the material traces that are left of the practice of the sense-making – the only empirical evidence we have of how other people make sense of the world. Textual analysis is an educated guess at some of the most likely interpretations that might be made of a text.

A “sign” can be visual, linguistic, aural, combination, etc. They have two parts, the signifier (e.g. the word and sound of “Dog”), and the signified (e.g. the mental perceptions of the dog, the mental concept, an image of a dog, the sounds we think of, etc.).

A lot of what Morris said was based on this weeks reading by Alan McKee, cited in Branston and Stafford.

We were then handed a worksheet for a class exercise. We looked at photographs and answered media-related questions. It got very deep and very confusing as Brian Morris seemed to see things that we didn’t see in the “signs”.

We were then spoken to by a different person, and she talked about media having different capabilities and the affordances of them from people reading the texts. Different modes allow to you to do different things. She also said that sound has a lot of influence, as it is pretty much everywhere and is difficult to self-regulate (at least with sight we can just close our eyes). Sound is pervasive, multi-directional, complexly layered, and prioritized by the ear. Some early 20th-century artists loved working with lots of different sounds.

Sound is also very intimate. A film can use sound to surround us and immerse us and feel close to us as our own thoughts.

Aural semiotics

• semiotic codes of sound place the listener in a mediated/imagined relationship with the subject of representation
• two crucial codes – perspective and social perspective

“The only difference between perspective and social distance is the that social distance applies to single sounds while perspective applies to simultaneous sounds” – Theo Van Leeuwen’s “Perspective”

Sound scape – it is a representation of a place or environment that can be heard rather than what can be seen.

She then showed us a picture of a village in Vietnam being destroyed by agent orange and napalm and people running away from it. We were to jot down what we thought we might hear, such as screams, soldiers, explosions, footsteps, wind, and piano music (if it were in a documentary).

Afterwards we were given an audio file of a girls music audition, to which we were to think about the focus of the story (the girl, Sophie, who talks the most, and her instructor), and the sound itself can provide a lot of intimacy to the audiences. We could hear the distance them, as well as the music.

 

Video:

Reflection:

Perhaps the most successful parts of the video were the original shots that I took. I believe that I chose the best areas and angles for them, and although I didn’t use some of them in the final cut, I think the ones I did use helped the video a lot. I also believe I chose a person of great interest for this project. Sonika Lakhani is a 25-year-old international student from India studying laboratory medicine at RMIT while also volunteering at the RSPCA.

 

Unfortunately, the parts of the video that worked against me was the editing. I think it was fine, but perhaps the cuts I used could have been better placed, as sometimes the transition between shots became either repetitive or awkward (sometimes both). The ripple shot transitions may make it look as if we are diving into the subconscious of Sonika’s mid, but they still look rather silly.

 

I am also unsure of my choices in found footage. While the cartoon animals feel appropriate for when she talks about her work in the RSPCA, the old footage of a poison-education video to match Sonika’s studies in laboratory medicine seemed a bit insensitive. I also should have re-thought the old India documentary footage that matches her Indian origins.

 

When I used garage band to produce the voiceovers, I found that the natural echo that occurred gave the clip a grander feeling than if I just used the voiceover function. The echoes in the voice made the clip seem more contained within the segment and thus more of a presentation of Sonika’s identity (i.e. a portrait). This technique I hope to use in any future portraits.

 

One major thing I learnt when making this that will definitely be relevant in the future is the fact that my cast may not be free while I am free. Sonika was only free to film at certain times during the week (as was I), so we had very few points in time where our schedules matched. While I was able to get the film I needed, it was still an effort to actually get everything ready for filming.

 

 

 

For the workshop we first looked at the project briefs of people that hadn’t been watched yet. We also said who we were doing for the project brief 2 and sent stills and basic summaries of what we’ll be talking about to Mr. Rowlands. I received from him his feedback of my project, quoted here:

“Well done Oliver with the self portrait. I felt you had an idea for this work set pretty early on that you stuck ridged to. It’s clear and defined with a great sense of your humour but I don’t feel it reaches over and above. I don’t feel you entered into unknown murky territory, testing the boundaries of your capabilities. I feel you achieved primarily what you set out to achieve and no more surprises. This is not a bad quality as for many they set out with no real aim. Possibly if you know the direction you want to go, keep an awareness of what’s at the peripheral to this.

70% Distinction”

This is a good mark, but despite this it is clear that I need to work a bit harder on my project brief 2. Hopefully my use of the found footage will be the kick that my project needs.

In the lectorial, we had a guest speaker called Amy Saunder, from the Library. She took us through an introduction about research strategies. One way is to use the “ask a librarian” section of the Library/myRMIT website, or to find the library guide part to target what sort of book we may want (not a specific book, but perhaps a book in the media/communication area).

Online sources for Media and Communication through RMIT include:

• Kanopy
• Lynda.com
• TVnews
• EduTV

We were also shown the way to search for specific books within the RMIT Library’s possession, and how to borrow a book from a library.

We were told what a scholarly source (essentially something that’s from an article or book or even certain websites, and that has been peer reviewed by experts in the field). We can limit our Library searches to peer reviewed works only (which are usually scholarly).

In media and communication (both in-class and in the job market) we will have to collaborate with people and groups. We should also assume that not everyone knows how to collaborate (although I do because I have worked in many groups in the past).

Some of the good experiences I have had working in groups include:

• Some people have great ideas and can contribute greatly
• Many hands often make light work
• I have bonded with group members in the past and made friends

Bad experiences include:

• Sometimes there are people who don’t do any work at all and I am forced to do everything
• Sometimes people don’t say anything then once the project is almost completed they voice lots of concerns about every single aspect of the project
• Fights can occur that stop everything
• One person literally just left the project half-way without telling anyone that he was transferring to another school. Even the teacher had no idea he was transferring and had no intention of helping to complete the project

I have done dozens of groups in the past so at this point its pretty second-nature for me. That being said, the tips Amy Saunders gave were useful.