Our group decided last week that we are going to base our video essay off a lecture style video, with Grace being the lecturer. We are going to have cut aways of examples of different reality tv shows and soapies and contrast and evaluate their effects. It is getting harder and harder to blog now as I have so much work to do! Today, Grace and I are finishing our script for the video and tomorrow we have planned to film it.

After a few mix ups with booking the editing suites, we managed to get into one (as they were almost all taken) and complete the audio part of our essays. After we exported the clip onto our Google Drive, we began brainstorming and recording our video essay which decided to do in a lecture format. We thought this style would be great to explore ideas and texts in depth with reference to sources. We used the white board to brainstorm some ideas of what we wanted to focus on.  Excuse the crappy writing…

Today’s lectorial was the last one for this semester, which is exciting but also kind of scary that we won’t have this style of lecture in the future, but instead studios. I am keen to see what the studios are because I think it will be interesting to focus on a specific area for a semester rather than the broader topic of just ‘Media’. After looking at the powerpoint of what we have done in the past 12 weeks, I felt a sense of achievement as I can now step back and look at all of the work that I have created this semester and I can only look forward to the work I am going to produce in the next few years.

Last week I was unable to make the workshop, but my group discussed via Facebook message that we needed more content in our audio essay. We struggled to try and come up with a way to incorporate more substantial ideas into our ‘radio show’ but we are going to brain storm ideas this afternoon after our lecture in the editing suites. We are also planning our video essay and how we are going to capture the ideas and feel we would like.

In the reading by José van Dijck and Thomas Poell, they highlight the impact social media has had on public service broadcasting, looking at the social and public levels. One thing they focus on is how an institution such as public television maintains its values and integrity whilst building a larger audience through social media. I think this is really interesting as lately I have noticed that many news channels have opted to sharing their news stories online, normally with a link to an article or a clip from the news. This technique allows the public who are perhaps not near a TV to receive the same news at the same time it is aired, if not before. This broadens the audience that these news channels can target as it is no longer the people at home on their couches, but train goers, office workers and uni students who can have access to these news stories. However I believe that some of the news’ values have lowered due to this sharing technique as many times, the news channels compete with other news channels to get their story out first. There have been numerous occasions were I have read an article with incorrect information that was later changed or ‘fixed’ to the correct information. Some news channels have lost the value of correct information for the public in an attempt to out do their competitors with speed of their communication.

The reading by Jay Rosen, said that “The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another”. When I think about this idea, I agree to it to an extent. Back in the day, people used to huddle around one radio, tuning into the latest news update or new song, but now we are the people who can share news from our laptops and create music ourselves to be heard by others with the click of a button. However, I believe that not as many people are listening to these new media creators as they were many years ago. This is because everyone nowadays has the power to create a piece of media and share it online. For something to become ‘viral’, it needs to have an enhanced amount of viewers or likes and be somewhat different to anything else out there on the web. I think some of the excitement has been lost in regards to new media due to the huge amount there is online at the moment. The amount of times I have scrolled past videos on Facebook and Instagram purely because I’ve seen something like it. 

Yesterday after our lectorial, Jenny, Grace and I went and recorded and edited some of our audio essay in the editing booths in Building 9. We used the H2 Zoom with a large foam wind shield on the top to record our audio. We then transferred the footage to the computer and began editing on Audition. However after beginning the editing process and after playing back some of our footage, we realised we only had the left hand side gain on the microphone switched on, so we deleted all of our recordings and started from the start with the surround gain on (this was frustrating but a lesson for next time to always check the mic before recording). We then edited the good footage and began to add in sound effects/intros/music. We struggled with the saving process as we couldn’t figure out how to save the session to our hard drive, but we managed to find the setting in Audition and upload it to our Google Drive.

In last weeks workshop, Jenny, Grace and I managed to form part of an AV script for our audio essay. Our format is based on that of a radio show with each caller represented a new point of view or depth on the topic. Today we are going to try and record our script using the HD Zooms after the lectorial.

In today’s lectorial, we looked at the term institution and how they act in organising structures in society. We did an exercise of looking at marriage as a social institution and the symbolic, social, economic, legal and cultural that come along with it. One good point that was made was the fact that we have been ‘socialised to aspire to marry’, discussing the idea that we as a society believe marriage is a must in order for a relationship to progress. Personally, I believe that marriage is very subjective and as a society we should be more open to interpretations of that. I know many couples that have been together for a long time and had kids, who are happier within their relationship then some of the married couples I know. For some reason, our society thinks that marriage is just the answer for every relationship and it is difficult not to get swept up in the whole marriage propaganda as everywhere you look there are wedding cakes for sale, bridal hair and makeup pictures, wedding gifts and cards, honeymoon packages and bridal gown fashion shows.

So last Friday night, I went to a concert at Festival Hall to watch RUFUS, a band from Sydney play. As I was listening to their songs, I realised how much effort would have gone into every single piece of audio equipment to make it sound as good as possible. I really liked the arc of speakers set up which let out such a strong crisp sound straight into the audience. After playing around with audio in class, I now have a new respect for the people behind concerts like these as everything needs to be in the right tune, and have the right gain and volume in order for the audience will not be satisfied.  After researching on how concerts work, I learnt that there is a “mixing engineer” who sits in a small booth controlling and mixing all the sounds coming from the stage through a mixing board. The mixing board is where “the engineer has all the instruments laid out on separate tracks. The 12 microphones placed around the drum kit, for instance, might use tracks 1 through 12 on the mixing board. Once all the instruments are mapped to a track, the engineer can then meticulously mix a live sound that is perfect for the venue.” extract from http://www.pcworld.com/article/2000192/how-rock-concerts-work.html  Here’s a little clip.