ROOM WITH A VIEW (A lovely one at that)
Playing around with zooms is something we had the pleasure of doing today as it allowed us to familiarise ourselves with the types of equipment that we would I assume be using quite often. We learnt about popping noises and cracking noises where to, and not to record and the appropriate levels we should hold the microphone for the clearest and highest quality interview. We also introduced ourselves to the other class mates who we will being working alongside the for the entire studio so it was in my best interest to start off on a good foot and really get to know the girls and guys. To my delight they were all divine and I think I will really enjoy myself working alongside these people for the next semester. What I look forward to is making new connection improving my skillset in radio on and off air, however I have a bigger passion for being on air as I live the thrill of being on air and really enjoy communications.
Today was extremely successful, Kristen and Georgia did a fantastic job hosting a crisp and well executed show and I was on panel. Look, not the easiest thing I have ever done but I think I made minimal mistakes and saw a massive improvement from when I first faced that ever daunting ‘radio keyboard’. I think what I have learnt most today in contrast to last weeks show, where I was hosting, was picking up on the tone that Kristen used and carried throughout the show and his ability not to hype it as I did. Being such a heavy consumer of commercial radio I found it hard not to mimic radio voices that I am so accustomed to. This is why it was important to get in tune with the overall vibe that 3RRR had long before being on air. I did this but I will be honest and admit I could have listened to the station a lot more and a variety of shows rather than just tuning in the time because it was most convenient for me. Looking at a more technical side of things I think the quality of interviews is an area we really needed to work on. Not as in substance, we hit our targets in that department but as in actual sound quality. I’ve realised as important as what the interview is about is where the interview is recorded when dealing with pre-recorded interviews. There is no use having some amazing content, but you can’t either properly hear it or engage with it because the sound is scratchy or the microphone picked up too much background noise. This was our issue in a couple of circumstances and therefore hinder the overall continuity or should I say experience of our show for the listener. A quite, non-echoing small room as we learnt in the early weeks of Room with a View is ideal. Trams in the background are a no-go. UNLESS using as ambience if a show or feature was about Mykis or something….but this was not our case.
If I could spend some time being little bit more critical now of my own self after having listen to others host a show. Radio is the area I want to work in if id ever be so lucky too in the future. I think the most difficult part for me was going into my first experience with a totally different vibe than the radio I have a passion to work with. However, this only did amazing things for me. We as aspiring media makers need to understand that VERY rarly will we be offered work (if ever offered) doing something right up our domain. The industry is huge, broad and flaming and we need to be able to adapt to whatever job comes our way. I appreciate room with a view for the fact that it has really changed my attitude towards new and different styles of an industry. I was never very involved with listening to community radio but I quickly learnt that they have some incredible content with young, bright minds running the show.
The Feature is nearly over. Fortunately, my dad is extremely passionate about speaking out on Alcohol fuelled violence and has witness allot of its damaged first hand- being a doctor. Therefore, we thought him to be a perfect candidate to speak in the feature. The feature is mainly factual with a serious and professional tone. We added sound effects to add ambience as well as keep our listeners engaged with our somewhat heavier point of discussion. So far I am really happy with the content we have accumulated as we cover a range of view points and provide great substance, facts and opinions. Its sad to see Room with a View coming to its closing weeks, since radio is something I am very passionate about it was great to get first hand experience both on the Mics and panelling. Bruce and Sam have been fantastic mentors all the way through the entire experience. Of course being young and full of ego I thought I knew all there was to know about how to confront my first time on radio. Don’t um don’t ah, speak clear and confidently and don’t bore. To my surprise there was oh so much more than this to learn through the guidance of our tutes. From technical elements to production and presentation I feel far more confident on air and am now egger to go out in the big bad world of community radio and have my own show. Another thing I am ever so grateful for RWAV doing for me, is partnering me with what seems to be a life long friendship and potential co-host Kristian G. In the early days of RWAV Kristian and I realised we had very similar ambition and goals and naturally partnered well. I look forward to my hopefully future opportunities working in any type of radio and thank RWAV for all I

Post 1

“Reality” Television; a genre in Australia that’s in popular demand. But how do we as viewers interact with this content? And why has it picked up so much momentum since it first began. It is believed in the article ‘Afterword, Framing The New’ by John Corner that “the name only worked at all in the first instance because it carried out a board definition” This means, unlike other genres, reality has a lot of flexibility and room to explore. Ultimately however, it has changed over time from its traditional honest and factual documentations onto a more commercialised or ‘for profit’ source of entertainment. One of the ugly truths about reality television is its cheap to make and therefore is an ideal option when trying to reach the 55% quota for what is classified to be ‘Australian made TV’ In saying this Reality TV can actually provide a keyhole to analysing popular culture in our current generation. What is constructed as ‘reality’ is the forefront of what our society deems interesting or of value. Audiences are engaging with what they believe is real and happening in the world (whether in a game show or out in life) and fascinated enough to watch it on TV. Reality television can also be described as a form of escapism, or a way in which people can vicariously live the life of others through a program i.e. the celebrity reality format, such as ‘Keeping up with the Kardashian’. These celebrities are viewed as role models and usually leaders in fashion and popular trends. Audiences gage with these celebrities lives in hope to adopt some of there features into their own. What should gain more attention however is the influence these shows have over their viewers, a topic that will be discussed further in a later post. I often put the word ‘reality’ in inverted commas because there truly is no such thing as a ‘real’ program, as every piece of content is heavily constructed by a group, or individual to make the audience feel a type of way. Although most of the scenarios reality TV present to us are clearly fabricated, its how people deal with these moments and how their personality shines through that is perhaps the real source of entertainment. In the article ‘How Real Is Reality TV? Essays on Representation and Truth’ edited by David S. Escoffery, in reference to the show Big Brother they say “ordinary people are valued and scrutinised for playing themselves, [which] pushes for a coincidence between ‘public’ and ‘private’ personae”. So what can we learn from reality TV? or should we take it no further than light entertainment? Shows such as ‘The bachelor’ indicate and actually exemplify core values of society. Blake from The Bachelor is seen as this young, charming and sophisticated man in search of the love of his life. He is stereotyped as the perfect man and ladies are expected to throw themselves at his feet. This is recognised as ‘reality’ yet is one of the most inaccurate and unrealistic depiction of life and love as we experience it. And yet an Australian wide audience will watch and enjoy the program without questioning its absurdity. In what circumstance does a fantasy man have 24 beautiful women fighting for his love, surely not in this generation anyway. From this we can understand that although male dominance is a stigma of the past it is still represented on mainstream television. The techniques seen in ‘The Bachelor’ to make the program seem somewhat authentic, are pauses and moments of silence as if it was happening live and unprepared responses. In addition to this, voice overs from the women’s perspective are used to show personal opinion and judgment so the audience can engage with each individual personality and grow fond of, or grow to dislike each personality. The sequence and selection of shot has a massive impact on how we interpret the show. For example we may see one of the women’s facial expression of joy when a girl gets evicted, but really this shot was taken out of context from a completely different time. The show is manipulated so that we watch it exactly how the producers would like us to watch it, which is the way in which it will make the most money. Reality as genre is a complex and fascinating category which unlike any other, that has the capability to be as honest or as manipulated as pleased.

Post 2

What is deemed ‘good’ television or high end television is not necessarily the type that has the most influence. This is partly the reason I chose to take a closer and more analytical look at ‘cheap’ entertainment in relation to fandom. Although fandom according to ‘Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays Fandom’ was initially applied to sports and theatre, it has developed into small communities across a variety of entertainment formats. Take ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ for instance- its influence is nearly unmeasurable and for a handful of reasons. The way in which fans engage with each others and the show has considerably changed in recent years. In the article Keeping Up the Kardashian Brand: Celebrity, Materialism, and Sexuality
 By Amanda Scheiner McClain expresses “The Kardashians are prevalent not only on television but throughout the media landscape” Social media now more than ever plays a crucial role in staying savvy and up to date with the reality of the shows content. Although the bulk of viewers’ attention comes from viewing the show there is more opportunity for fans to become more obsessive as they follow the sisters every move on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and twitter. Not only can they liaise with the celebrities themselves but also with other like minded fans in both positive ways i.e. agreeing and sharing obsessions, and negative ways i.e. Fighting for their attention over twitter. But with power comes great responsibility. The amount of people that tuned into the Kardashians in a single viewing was 1.7 million, and the sisters have a ridiculous sum of 192 million 900 thousand followers combined on Instagram, and that’s just the Instagram and excluding the rest of the family. Its hard to measure the amount of those that are ‘dedicated’ fans, but judging from the mass following a generous percentage would idolize there every move. Therefore, how these celebrities present themselves to their fans is really important. The show puts importance on materialistic possessions and causes drama by blowing small issues out of proportion. It also sets up unrealistic body expectations as these women have flawless hour glass figures that the average women not matter how hard they tried could not achieve. The dangers of there influence became apparent as fans obsessed over Kylie Jenner’s lips and joined in on a trend called the ‘Kylie Jenner lip challenge’ Where essentially they would stick a cup around their lips and bruise them until they became inflamed and looked fuller as Kylie’s do. Doctors warned fans of the dangerous side effects bruising and inflammation of the lip could cause, but that was yet to stop these fans. So how far is too far for fandom? and are shows such as ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ leading their followers in all the wrong directions? Being too immersed in a celebrity show can actually hinder our reality and warp your priorities in life. Unfortunately to look like these young women you need a lot of money and that just is not realistic, instead we should be promoting natural beauty that come sin all shapes and sizes and allow fans to obsess over that instead. I personally do not have too much attachment to the Kardashians but already feel pressures and expectations from the standard these ladies are setting.

Post 3

To become conscious of what you are doing and why you are doing it is a great skill to have. TV Cultures has helped me analysis my own TV practises and turned me into an active thinker during any program I watch. Regardless of the genre I’m constantly looking at film techniques and examining how that specific technique combined with another builds to create a certain genre. Watching TV will never be the same. For example when I watch ‘Greys Anatomy’ it is a combination of a orchestral slow melodic sound with medium close up shots to capture ripe emotion as well as a heart felt story line that reaches my understanding that I am in fact watching a drama. Applying any theory to your everyday practises is the best way to fully understand the dimensions of that theory. For example, both the ‘Second Screen Theory’ happen simultaneously with ‘Scheduling’ in my own life. my day to day activities are scheduled around ‘The Voice’ as my friends organise and get together to watch this program in unison. Not only that but do we then agree on who we want to vote for which enhance our interactive experience by voting off our mobile phones as we watch the program. As I was logging my own TV practises I realised I don’t sit amongst the average TV viewer. My cycle is random and quite limited. I suppose the TV I watch, aside from ‘The Voice’ isn’t because of the specific program, but rather because I had nothing else to do with that time. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy Television I just don’t have as much of a routine as others. This concept seemed blunt and self explanatory at first but as I thought more and more about it I realised its far more complex. I would consider myself your average teenage girl in the sense that I don’t do anything outside the norm. I got to university, I have a part time job and socialise with friends. At this point I referred to my TV log and analysed which times of the day I was turning on the TV and enjoying a program. Most the of the time it was in the afternoons towards the end of the week and over the weekends. Programs that would be enticing to me or rather my stereotype always seem to conveniently play around the time I would sit down to watch. This demonstrates that a TV schedule is far more detailed than expected. With plenty more effort behind the scenes than I first expected. Another key area of the course that I really engaged with was exploring genre in TV and the role it played. A key reading for this topic was ‘A Cultural approach to Television Genre Theory’ written my Jason Mittell, cinema journal, 40, number 3, pring 2001 pp. 3-24. This article articulates that we can not simply take genre from film apply the same rules for television, or across all media platforms. Different platforms allow different genres or sub genres. “medium distinctions are becoming increasingly blurred with the rise of technologies such as home video and integrated digital media, and we cannot regard “medium” as an absolute fixed category (any more than genre)” I found this idea particularly interesting and relatable as on TV these days we see mediums within mediums i.e. on a celebrity gossip show such as E News, a Snapchat story (an App or platform of media) will play on TV and then be discussed afterwards. Therefore, with new technologies we begin to see platforms within platforms and the lines become blurred.

Referencing:

Corner, J 2004, Afterword, Framing The New’, Understanding reality Televison pp. 290-300
Escoffery, D. S, ‘How Real Is Reality TV?: Essays on Representation and Truth’, 2006
Hellekson, K & Busse, K, ‘Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays Fandom’ 2006
Mittell, J, 2001, ‘A Cultural approach to Television Genre Theory’ Cinema Journal, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 3-24.

In my short 3 minute piece; All that glitters isn’t Gold, I wanted to focus on how a site can be both place and non-place. Researching the history of our chosen site, upper Victoria Markets I was soon to discover the dark and grime history of its area. With a history of shootings and it once being a cemetery it was clear to see that although during the day the site wore a particular up beat and happy face once it was slowly pulled apart and we began to see a less- pleasant reality. I wanted to translate this through film and photography and sound by having a clear and distinct difference between day footage and when it was closing or pack up time. The workers work hard and long hours, you can see it in their weary and long faces. I took this as symbolic of the tired ghosts that still walk the hallways of the Market place.
I wanted to represent non-place and place through its temporary nature. When it’s a market it is always in the one place but then in a matter of hours it turns from a bustling live and colourful environment into a dark bleak space of emptiness. Filled simply with metal portable boxes. In a sense the place and its physical boundaries are permanent but its substance, qualities and features are temporary. Thus being my take on place vs. non place
I wanted use photography to capture still moments that still spoke as loud as the videos. As the photos continue rolling they become more and more deteriorated and exposing the less beautiful parts of the mark place. I guess in a sense I wanted to disturb the reality that we have and how we perceive the Market place. And as an audience we may not recognise the deterioration of the area. Which is something only really noticeable when the environment is bare and all that glitters has been put away.
Food in my project represents growth and health, which is what many people use the market for these days. In contrast it used to be a place of death and decay. There is a nice contrast when you put this Market places history back to back with how it is utilized in this day and age.
The sounds I used slowly shifted from the upbeat busker noises that played through the walls and halls of the market into the eerie and unwelcoming sounds of the market place physically being detached and pulled apart. I always layered the eerie sounds of workers trying to sell their goods. I used this sound to really drive the hardship that is still evident it the everyday struggle to make ends meat. Much like the history of the markets where there was a killing that took place after a disagreement of goods and service back in the early 1900’s.

Photos

During renovations some of my house was rebuilt and refurnished. In my opinion, although rebuilding can be necessary when your house is near ruins, it also feels like you commit to knocking down the memories you have grown with and worn into the house. Yes it may not look the prettiest, but every scratch and hole, every chip and flicker adds character, life and story to the houses we live in. Therefore I found certain sadness in searching for memories that used to be evident with the walls floors and ceilings of the house, but no longer existed. Instead were only those conventional forms of memories such as photos and souvenirs and other collected items.
Certain rooms however do bring me confront in the house, since they are the ones that have been unaltered. Two of these include my bedroom and the garage. The garage is a nostalgic place for me to visit as it stores all the bits and bobs from our childhood or what my father never got round to throwing out during renovations. Old and worn boogie boards to boxes and boxes of things such as jewellery made out of pasta from when I was only tiny.
I wanted to capture the sterile nature of the house and how empty it can often feel in some of its open and cold spaces. I also wanted to look at how, because it is a newish house it has several modern appliances that run throughout the day. So although the house can be very quiet it is not uncommon to hear mechanical type noises, which aren’t super comforting or warm sounding.
What I realised during this assignment is that mess adds life, and that a bit of mess now and then isn’t bad because it shows that people are actively living in the house. As someone said in class its not so much where you live but who you live with, and its nice coming home to a bit of a mess to let you your mum or dad was only just there.
I took 2 photos of the kitchen- one with evidence of cooking and one spotless and stainless. Comparing the two really drove my idea that a house is for living in. one other thing brings comfort in my somewhat foreign house, is its sunlight. The sun fills our house creating all kids of shadows and patterns. To me this is symbolic of life itself and almost another family member, just as we come and go, the sunrays do too.

Sounds

My sounds are isolated and have minimum background noise running through them, other then the appliance itself. This is because in my house people are constantly coming and leaving and usually there isn’t more then 2 people in the house at once. So as you can imagine it isn’t the loudest household ever existing. Because my overall theme or feel for the project was to convey a sort of empty, man-made feel I chose to record modern appliances that are very artificial. I want to stress that I am not trying to represent an artificial family but rather an unnatural house hold since it is new and still new memories to be made within its walls. I like to look at it like a pair of shoes you aren’t comfy in them until you’ve worn them in.

Film

I found the film the most difficult section, or at least the section that least fit with the overall feel of my project. This was because I had the audio for sound representation and photos for the visual. Therefore I didn’t necessarily need more visuals to illustrate my over idea. Nevertheless I drew my focus towards bleak and colourless footage, or to capture the sterile or emptiness of my house.

questions (incase you can’t read my writing, and chances are you can’t, because not even I can)
How much have I learnt about making media objects/stories?
What is my ability to work independently in unfamiliar ways or with new systems and tools?
How much do I understand and think critically and creatively about what I make?
What is my understanding of the role/value of the blog?

Looks like I had a fairly steady increase in my learnings across the weeks which is a positive

Text- RM Daily

project by Emily and Sarah

Firstly I would like to explore our concept and how we wanted to represent text as a whole. Obviously text can be extremely broad- a text can be any symbol on a page that we as an audience interpret. But why are texts constructed in the first place? Emily and I discovered that texts were constructed for an aptitude of reasons but the most prominent was to influence. Influence we thought could be broken up into a couple of categories, one being to educate in a positive way, another was advertising products and a third was propaganda for a certain way of thinking. We chose to explore the idea of propaganda in a way that was similar to the Hypodermic Needle theory founded in the 1930’s in The Frankfurt School. This suggested that the media had a direct affect on the audiences thinking, attitude and behaviour; the consumer is therefore completely passive and helpless to disagree or question the consumer’s message. We found a link between this and how text is used for Propaganda. From there we decided to take this idea and use it to explore Text as a newspaper and the influence it can have over our thinking.
We expressed these ideas through an actual online newspaper that we created called the RM Daily (Rupert Murdoch Daily). We branched off Murdoch as the stump for our ideas since he is the mediator or gateway of the information the general public can access through News Corp. When the newspaper first comes up the audience is bombarded by subliminal messages built in or incorporated into ‘everyday news stories’ since some of our overall message are ‘are you reading between the lines?’ and ‘what are you really reading?’ we thought it would be cool to put double meanings up against these news stories. Some examples from the text are ‘community snowed-in’ which shows a pictured of a snowed in community but is really playing off the idea of Edward Snowden who is an American computer professional who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) to the mainstream media, starting in June 2013. Another example was Murder-Dock explaining how there was a murder out side dock St. really this is playing on the notion of Murdoch.

We then explored this idea of Propaganda Pete, which was a take of a character called Pete Campbell, an advertising guy for an advert company in Mad Men. That idea was sort of more of an inside joke than anything but propaganda Pete became a hacker in our news story and hacked his way into our newspaper himself. We like this idea because it almost brought the words of our virtual paper to life and happening in the moment. This was represented through a propaganda video, which was constructed using a range of sound effects, and manipulated found footage from Archive.org. This hacker video starts off with a TV static sound effect and the Text message sound effect. The text message was just playing off the idea of ‘text’ as our overall topic. It then plays eerie old fashioned styled paperboy call footage which I added suspense music and echoing effects to. I layered the footage with newspapering ruffling effects as well as type writing effects. The rest of the propaganda video is a montage of news anchors cut, edited and manipulated to explore the main ideas and incentives of filtering text. So for example one of the key ideas is money, Emily and I thought money was a huge incentive for newspaper companies to print papers and they print what they think will sell. The next idea I explored with the propaganda video was how controlled these anchors are within the media. So they may present to us the news but they are told what to say and when to say it and given an exact script. This ties into the idea that there is always someone who filters and has more control over what we read and how we think. The videos then ends with what are we reading? And do we believe everything we do? It is a dark video and outlook over text but we thought it to be extremely effective as by the end of the video we have influence our audience to believe a certain point of view as well. This shows that in the small space of 3 and half minutes or even in the video alone with goes for about 1 and a bit, we have altered the way our audience thinks. To top off the creepiness we put a photo of Murdoch at the end layered with an extremely eerie evil laugh and a blood smear across his eyes. Since Murdoch has a lot of control over the media he controls a lot of what he wants and doesn’t want people to see, which can include himself. Overall I really enjoyed doing this project with Em she was a fantastic partner to work with and we work really well together.

Quiet life of crazy

Quiet Life of CRazy.

Basically I chose this post because I think it marks the start of a very creative learning process and journey that I believe improves over time. This was the first marked piece of work that I made. In the reflection I talk about how, as young adult life is crazy. But there is a beauty in that craziness which some only recognise when they are older looking back. I tried to capture it, In some ways I failed in other ways I succeeded, but the most important spark it created was to get me back into thinking like a media maker and how to pursuit my creative side again as I had taken a gap year from VCE and hadn’t really exercised my skills in a while.

Breaking borders

Breaking Borders

Why I chose this post? It pushed my limits. Though I wasn’t my own subject and I was referring to the borders of another being broken- it broke my borders as well. It was hard for me to cover a subject that is quiet personal and I was extremely nervous when it came to presentation day and had to show this video to the class. But what did I gain out of it? It made me stronger and more confident in my work and myself no matter how personal or controversial or alienated the topic is, a film is a film and it deserves to be shown. I realised that if I am nervous to show people my work because of the subject matter that is all more the reason why people deserve to see it- food for thought, exploring something they may not be familiar with and therefore I should not shy away from expressing ideas no matter how personal.

“It’s not what you like, it’s what you’re like”- Emily Mitrevski

“It’s not what you like, it’s what you’re like”- Emily Mitrevski

This was a light bulb moment for me not just because it changed my way of thinking for that project but it actually changed my way of thinking for every project and whenever I needed to be creative. Because it made me realise that if I think hard and long enough there is always another way I can look at the task and come from a completely different creative light. Having some say something so simple but have such an impact of me was awesome it really helped me understand that just because I’m not thinking that way doesn’t mean its not there I just have to dig deeper and question harder for a more whole and complete outcome.

RMDaily

RMDaily

This was an important assessment and blog for me because we learnt about collaboration which is easy enough to talk about but the importance of that lecture really kicked in when I had to put this idea to practice. Working with someone else on a film was a great experience… surprisingly enough I hadn’t done it all that much… I think once when I was a lot younger for a film contest but that was about it. Honestly this was a huge stepping stone for me in terms of learning skills that I will take out into the industry because unless I become a very very independent film maker the reality is that collaboration which become a huge part of my everyday work, so learning how to do it now and well is pretty crucial for me.

Sound

Sound

Another light bulb moment for me as realised that there was oh so much technical stuff I just didn’t know when It came down to the media making. Sound was one of them. Of course I knew the basic that a boom is used and it’s usually held above the actor but I never knew why. In the week we explored sound I came out of it feeling much more techno-savvy and ready to take on the world of sound (bit by bit) these are the exact reasons why I wanted to do this course for that feeling of improvement and to walk out the best kind of media maker I can be.