Posted on June 12, 2019
Festival Experience Studio || Assignment 3
Final Reflection on staging the 1st MIYFF
Blog post #9: Panel Session with Rohan Spong and Erin Rosenburg
Blog post #10: The Final Countdown
Running a film festival was a task I never thought I was capable of being a part of. Yet, here I am, at the end of my semester, proud to say that I have helped in the collaborative staging of the first Melbourne International Youth Film Festival. Before this studio, I had never been to a film festival before so, I didn’t really know what to expect from one and I definitely did not think about the possibilities of running one. This studio has been a huge learning experience through the hard work of organizing the MIYFF, and although we felt like we were thrown in the deep end having to vaguely figure things out ourselves, it was a different type of learning experience that brought out unique lessons and many new and valuable skills.
Particular aspects I didn’t realize took up so much emphasis was the complications of programming work. The programming team had the huge responsibility of sifting through hundreds of films (I believe the total went up to around 600 films), green-lighting the films for our festival and organizing the running sheet. It’s no surprise that they went a little bit insane. Hearing stories from their process of working out the program seemed like a really intense journey, and I am not at all jealous for not being a part of that team. Though from hearing them discuss and talk about the challenges they come across has given me second-hand lessons on how to overcome such obstacles, and I have huge respect for all their hard work. A particular lesson that I believe we all unanimously wished we knew about before, was putting a fee for each submission. We were all quite insecure and unsure if we would get any submissions at all for a beginner, student-run festival, so we didn’t think a submission fee was necessary. But when it reached the point of hundreds of submissions with films that were unfortunately not of the best quality either, it was time to put a $5 submission fee and that really helped take some time off the programming team. It definitely came as a shock to us the abundance of young filmmakers submitting their films, and our guest lecture Mia Falstein-Rush confirmed with us that submission fees really help with the filtering of films that are worth seeing, and the ones that people are just throwing out there. It’s difficult to say if we would have never seen some of our chosen films if we put up a submission fee from the start, but I believe that if a filmmaker truly believes in their work, a submission fee is just a small price, in the long run, to get your film watched and noticed by others. From this, I think a big lesson learned from the programming team is being on the other side of the festival. Before, a lot of us were the ones submitting the films and buying the tickets, and now that we’re on the other side coordinating the festival, it’s a very different perspective receiving so many short film submissions and figuring out which films represent our festival and what the audiences want to see. So once again, my deepest appreciation for the programming team and their hard work put into making this core part of our festival successful.
Despite not working on the programming team for MIYFF, it’s great that I still learned so much from my classmates, and I think this is a product of the collaborative environment that we set up for ourselves. So while about half of the class worked on the programming and overall organization of the festival, I wanted to contribute in an area where my strengths lie, which was production and design work. One could say that I would not be challenging myself by working on a team where I am most comfortable, but in fact, design and production work is such a vast field and I had never done this type of work for a film festival before. So, there were definitely huge challenges and obstacles that have taught me some awesome skills that have benefitted my craft overall. Assessing how much I’ve grown from this studio, I think my learnings have been very well-rounded from practical skill levels, as well as skills with collaboration and working as a leader.
12 weeks was a very short time for us to make this festival work, so a lot of the work required quick-thinking and fast problem solving to get our work ready for the other teams to publish. Collaboration and group work definitely started off rocky in the first several weeks of the studio, and I think this was due to a lack of defining roles and goals for each person. It felt like a lot of us were unsure where help was needed and we didn’t know each other enough to reach out to others to offer help. I, myself, was unconfident to step up as a leader because I was also unsure of what needed to be done and what steps should be taken when creating a film festival, so there was a lot of confusion at the beginning of the semester that probably took away a lot of valuable time that could’ve been put to work. A big obstacle that my design team came across was a lack of understanding with the marketing team. Especially with posts for Instagram, we wanted to utilize the design format of Instagram to grab the attention of viewers and thus, planned out a specific layout that scheduled the order of the posts. Unfortunately, the marketing team was not on the same page as us and didn’t know we had a scheduled plan for posts, so our goals for the Instagram contradicted and caused a bit of tension. These sort of collisions were not at all serious, but still caused tension within the groups and I knew these were not effective collaborations that benefited the festival. So, in order to solve these issues of misunderstandings, my design team had to crossover with the marketing team, which only makes sense in these types of collaborative work environments, and it was spelled out so obviously in the readings from the book, Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival (Kateřina Bartošová, Hana Kulhánková & Zuzana Raušová, 2015) and in the further reading I did in Bright Young Screens by Michaela Pnacekova, Mirona Nicola & Melissa Pritchard (2012). Particularly in Bright Young Screens, they discuss Bruce Tuckman’s model of group development called the Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing model. In the ‘Forming’ stage, it is expected that individuals are not yet “glued together by the common objective”, thus it was comforting to be affirmed that it’s normal for tensions to brew at the beginning. So, to solve this, communication and conducting meetings with compassionate and open-minded conversations is key to getting everyone happy and on the same page. Thus, with the tensions between the design and marketing team, we really just needed to have open conversations and constantly check in on each other to make sure we are all working towards the same end goal and stick to a plan we set out for ourselves. By the end of the semester, everything was definitely moving so smoothly and within a heartbeat, I would ask to work with the same people in future projects.
Regarding the more practical work, creating the program booklet was definitely the most challenging design work out of all the other works. (I have discussed my other design projects in the other blog posts). A big learned skill for me was figuring out how to use Adobe Illustrator. Prior to the studio, I only used Adobe Photoshop, but Illustrator was more appropriate for graphic design with vectors and shapes whilst Photoshop was more a program for image manipulation and editing. I don’t think I’ve ever learned how to use a program so quickly before, but it could not have been done without the help of my classmates and the abundance of tutorial videos on the internet. So, when it came to designing the booklet, we gave ourselves about a week to finish this because we wanted enough time to print, fold and staple hundreds of copies, and distribute them around the city to bring awareness to our festival. A week is not very long at all and I am pretty impressed by my design team’s skills to accomplish such a feat. It was definitely a combination of our great teamwork with the earlier design works that have developed our skills to efficiently complete the booklet; it was kinda like a final boss in a video game, we developed skills by completing earlier quests of design work that gave us the tools to defeat the final program booklet boss. It was also a great learning experience collaborating with the team in charge of the sponsorships and booklet drafts. I was so relieved to know that I didn’t have to do the copywriting, and so half of the load was delegated to another team who worked alongside us as we pieced together the designs. Idealistically, it would have been great if the drafting was all done and dusted before we made the design, but with the time constraints, we had to pick up the pieces as they were thrown at us. By the day of the deadline we set up for ourselves to have the booklet ready, I was up at 11 pm looking at my text messages as last-minute sponsors came in and I had to frantically add in last minute details, checking over everything 10 times to make sure everything was ready. I think it really dawned on us that night that this booklet was legitimate, it represented all our hard work to the public and I didn’t want the booklet to show anything less.
The days of the festival were definitely such a blur, and I wish I had the chance to really soak up the experience. Nonetheless, I am really proud of my teammates and what we have accomplished and the growth from this journey isn’t quite obvious until I have to write this reflection comparing how I was 4 months ago and how I am now. If all of us were to come back next year, I have no doubts that it would be better than this year’s festival. We all started off rocky at the beginning, but now that we have established a great collaborative working environment, we will be able to band together and churn out an even more epic festival. We would already have roles established and understand what’s realistic and accessible for us. Making sure we have set goals with deadlines and conduct meetings every week to keep everyone on the same page, these sort of aspects we lacked at the beginning of our semester would be implemented each week if we made another MIYFF next year.
Second Melbourne International Youth Film Festival 2020?
That has quite a nice ring to it.
Posted on June 3, 2019
Networked Media 2019 || Assignment 3 Report
My personal engagement with Instagram and accessing how Instagram caters for both professionals and casual participants
Since March 2019, statistics show that 1 billion people use Instagram every month with 25 million of these accounts set up as business profiles, and over 200 million users visit at least one of these business profiles each day (Hootsuite.com). So, how is it that Instagram has maintained such popularity since 2010, and how do they manage to cater to both casual participants, as well as those who utilize the platform for professional businesses? In this report, I critically analyze the mapping of Instagram’s interface that shapes the user experience for both casual participants and professionals. Furthermore, I will compare my own personal engagement with Instagram as a professional photographer with the past month of limiting myself to the confinement of smartphone and Instagram visual content, and access to what extent Instagram caters for my personal benefits.
Background:
In this course, we looked at the design and functions of authoring, publishing and distributing photos and videos through a “networked” media. From understanding the developments of analogue photos and videos and how these forms were authored, published and distributed pre-internet, we then have investigated the evolution of Web 2.0 and the fluidity that allows for easier accessibility to authoring, publishing and distributing visual content. In particular, we look at the user interface of Instagram and how the affordances and constraints of the platform map the interaction between a user and the software. With Instagram functioning as the most popular image sharing app today, we have conversations in class analyzing the nature of how digital photos and videos are authored, published and distributed on the platform, whilst comparing this evolution from the times of analogue visual content.
Evidence/What?:
Prior to this report, I focused on posting 3 photos and 3 videos about “doors” onto Instagram with the intent to critically analyze the interface of Instagram and the level of engagement and quality I can develop within the constraints of a smartphone and the app software itself. The aim for my first photo and video was to create content to appeal to my followers and so, I posted a photo and video about my dog (because who doesn’t love dog videos?). The two classes after, I studied on the concept of ‘Instagramism’ and the software literacies of Instagram, thus I aimed to create my next posts emulating a tonal theme for my Instagram grid, whilst also critically analyzing the software capabilities that allow me to create this style of content.
Evaluation:
Going into this project, I specifically aimed to access how the interface of Instagram catered for two main demographics of Instagram users: casual users and professionals. Thus, as someone with a background in professional photography, confining within the parameters of how a casual Instagram user would create content offered me interesting outlooks on Instagram’s software for authoring, publishing and distributing content. When I usually post on Instagram, I take my photos on a DSLR, select and edit them in Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop, and I use a publishing app like Unum and Planoly to plan out my Instagram layout and schedule dates for posting. Thus, as I challenged myself to edit within the Instagram app, I came across many frustrating roadblocks that lead me to always thinking, “I could fix this in Photoshop”, or “I wish Instagram worked more like this other app.” So, although it was an accidental mistake, for the first week experimenting with apps outside of Instagram turned out very useful for my research because it allowed me more comparisons to make. Essentially three degrees of Instagram authoring, publishing and distributing: a) making content with professional gear and software, b) creating within the smartphone and additional apps with specific functions, and finally c) authoring, publishing and distributing only within the Instagram app.
My personal engagement with authoring, publishing and distributing within the parameters of a smartphone and the Instagram app deemed a very big challenge for me, as I wanted to still create content at the level of professional quality that I present my other work. Thus, I reached many hurdles and constraints that I had to navigate around in order to achieve a level of quality I could be proud of. Two main limitations that I want to focus on is first, the lack of versatility of a professional camera, and the lack of a function that would allow the element of planning and previewing the grid layout in order to achieve tonal uniformity; Instagramism.
As I was only allowed to author photos within the Instagram app that used my smartphone’s camera, I did not have the flexibility of particularly manual exposure adjustments that DSLR cameras offer. Thus, when trying to work around this constraint, it was helpful that I had fundamental skills in photography to help me navigate around these limitations. This particular concept has been integral to my understandings of working with software, which is if you can understand the functions of a design from its roots, you then can work around its constraints and manipulate the mappings in order to maximize the benefits of the design’s affordances. Thus, especially researching about professional iPhoneographers who work with these constraints day-to-day, I learned to find other strengths within photography such as composition and subject focus, and thus, I “fuelled the beast” and focused on these elements to make my photos stand out.
Affordances that I could identify from working within the mappings of the Instagram app is the convenience and immediacy of authoring, publishing and distributing images. For casual users who are not concerned with producing high-quality content and/or do not have time or accessibility to authoring outside of the Instagram app, Instagram has a clear layout so that casual users can easily navigate around the app. Furthermore, whilst the app skips over a few steps that professionals find integral to their craft (eg. selection process and more editing capabilities), for casual users or even photojournalists and professional vloggers, the simple steps of authoring, publishing and distributing content allows these specific users a fluid and quick process to get their content out there; an element of user sharing that is imperative in this age of new media.
Conclusion:
I was hoping that this experiment would help me discover new aspects of the Instagram app I could utilize for my future work, and although I have progressed in my opinions on iPhoneography, the constraints of Instagram for professionals is too restricting and I will probably remain working externally from the app. Instagram has proven to develop alongside the evolution of user engagement with new media and visual sharing, thus I do not doubt that Instagram will continue to find ways to cater to professionals. However, Instagram may lose its engagement from casual users if the interface becomes too complicated. Thus, ultimately Instagram will maintain its course of balance between catering for casual users and professionals, and for those who truly want to cut above the rest are the ones who understand the software and navigate around its constraints.
References:
Hinton, S & Hjorth L 2013, Understanding Social Media. Sage Publications, London 2013. (Section: pp. 1-31.)
Khoo E, Hight C, Torrens R, Cowie B 2017, ‘Introduction: Software and other Literacies’ in Software Literacy: Education and Beyond, Springer, Singapore. (pp.1-12)
Lister, M et al 2009, New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, New York. (Sections: Networks, Users and Economics pp 163-169; Wiki Worlds and Web 2.0 pp 204-209; The Long Tail pp 197-200; User-generated content, we are all users now pp 221-232.)
Manovich, Lev. 2016, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA, viewed 5 May 2018, http://manovich.net/index.php/projects/instagram-and-contemporary-image(Follow link and download pdf from the web page – ‘Introduction: ‘Instagram Platform as a Medium’ 9-18′)
Manovich, L. 2016, Instagram and the Contemporary Image. University of San Diego, USA. (‘Part 3: Instagramism.’)
Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things , Basic Book, New York (Sections: Preface vii-xv; Chapter one pp 1-13; Chapter 4 (constraints) pp 81-87; (computers) pp 177-186).
Palmer, D 2014 ‘Mobile Media Photography’, in The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, (eds) Goggin G., Hjorth L., Routledge, New York pp. 249–55.
Siapera, E. 2013, Understanding New Media. SAGE Publications, London (Section: pp.1-16).
Posted on May 30, 2019
The Final Countdown
Festival Experience Studio blog post #10
These past three weeks for the festival have been incredibly chaotic, but somehow we’re making it and I think it’s because everyone has reached the point of genuine collaboration. I believe it’s a mix of getting to know each other better and feeling more comfortable working together, with the exponentially growing pressure as the Film Festival dates creep closer.
In these three weeks, I focused most of my attention on completing the festival booklets. I think it really hit us at this point how little time we had left till the festival, so the air had definitely shifted from the first few months of class to now all of us buckling down, heads in laptops churning out the materials. I worked alongside Leann and Arnie to design this booklet, while Grace and Bridie worked on the script and sponsorships so that we had the information ready to put in place of our design. Ideally, I prefer having the information done and dusted before we put place them into the booklet template, but there were sudden sponsor dropouts and new sponsors coming in last minute, so everything definitely became a little fiddly. Leann, Arnie and I already expected things to get really messy, so we implemented a good system of uploading and backing up everything to Google Drive, making sure everything was labeled clearly so we knew who updated the booklet design and when. Thus, whenever Grace or Bridie had new information that needed to be added to the booklet, anyone who was free at the time could access the latest version and update it from there. It was incredibly messy, but this was the best we could do with the nature of fixing and updating. We all knew that we wanted to have the booklets ready to be printed at least a few days before the festival to use as further promotional material, so we put Monday 27th as the final deadline for the booklet design. Literally, at 11 pm that day, Bridie and Grace were fixing up the newest sponsors and information and proofreading everything for the 100th time while I edited as fast as I could to make sure the design was ready to be printed for the next day. Looking back on that day, I am baffled at the speed we were working and while it was tedious to complete, I’m really proud of what we achieved.
Posted on May 29, 2019
Panel Session with Rohan Spong and Erin Rosenberg
Festival Experience Studio blog post #9
I have already covered the feedback in this previous post, however, as I only explained what the feedback was, in today’s post, I will be going over the feedback in more detail and discuss the new plans we have made in response to the feedback.
Alana, who has worked with the marketing and programming side of things made a great suggestion to start posting our short films’ posters or stills in Instagram since the panel thought that our original Instagram layout was not vibrant and colorful enough. So, I made a couple more posts of the quotes and black and white photos of the directors to finish one line of the Instagram grid and then began to work on posting stills from our short films simultaneously as Alana posted their posters on our Facebook page. I really liked this collaborative work process, and Alana was really helpful writing up quick descriptions that I used for the Instagram captions, while I worked on the hashtags and tagging. Furthermore, to maximize Instagram’s capabilities to reach out to our followers and audience on Instagram, I also added the posters with simple text on our Instastories so that if any followers missed our Instagram posts, they would be alerted via the stories. See final Instagram layout below, and some Instastory samples.
Regarding the trailers, the girls in charge of making international trailers have made another one, however, I was uncertain if this new one communicated “film festival” vibes and whether or not it was clearly targetting Chinese international students. Especially since they received amazing feedback for their last trailer, the panel expressed that they enjoyed its simplicity of explaining the premise of the festival, as well as its relatability. So, with their newest trailer that didn’t seem to communicate this in my opinion, I told them to think back to what made their last trailer so successful and fuel that message from there.
With editing the English trailers with Phil and Armin, they were feeling a little loss of direction, so I made sure to sit down with them and discuss the panel feedback and figure out the next gameplan. We decided to make shorter videos that would be more appropriate for Instagram, so they created snappier shorts that were simple and had less of a story that risked misinterpretation like the trailer we showed the panel. Below is one of the trailers that I ended up posting on Instagram.
Posted on May 24, 2019
The Softwares of Instagram
Networked Media 2019 Week 11
How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
Continuing to follow a specific aesthetic of nature themes and green tones, this time I wanted to experiment with the other facilities of Instagram, particularly the InstaStory function to see if I could be more creative with my video post. Instagram’s video recording function is very simple and only allows a “press and hold to record” style of video editing; no video effects of speed manipulation or animations to add. However, the Instastory has so many filters – ten times more than I remembered from using the filters months ago – and they have very creative and interesting animated filters and speed expansion/compression filters. So, when I was working on this week’s video, I browsed through the abundance of fancy filters, finding ones for face filters, and others that created an atmospheric mood such as raining snowflakes, fireflies, firey demon underworld a, etc. I finally decided on a ‘watercolor’ effect for its soft aesthetic that I thought would suit my green, nature tones. The watercolor effect also didn’t function just as an additional layer like the other Instagram filters, the effect had graphic movement itself that made my video look more alive.
For the photo, I once again tried to emphasize the greens of the image like last time and after seeing how the previous photo looked with green shadow tones, I really didn’t enjoy the effect and its visual interactions with the other post. So for this photo, I just boosted the saturation and to fix the jarring brownish reds that were also accentuated, I took a photo beforehand of green leaves with bright red berries so that the red hues could work in continuation with my Instagram feed.
How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
As we are looking at Software and Digital literacies this week, I wanted to access my authoring, publishing and distributing content on Instagram more critically of the software and functions of the platform. My photograph was published immediately after I was done editing the image, however publishing was slightly different with the video as I authored it through Instastory. The app allowed me to immediately download the Instastory when I was happy with it, and then when I went to the posting page, the video was saved in my gallery for immediate publication.
So, as expressed in my previous post, I appreciate the immediacy of authoring, publishing and distributing content that the app allows to which I can see how particular users thrive from this convenience, and how Instagram will thrive from enticing more users to use the app with this accessibility. However, where Instagram loses me, and I’m sure many other users from authoring and publishing within the app is the few extra steps that Instagram skips over, for example, the post-production phase of selecting the desired photos from a batch, and checking layouts to see how the photos look in aligning with each other. Especially with this phenomenon of “Instagramism” is rising in popularity, I doubt that users are planning their posts and creating their feeds all within the Instagram app.
Instagram has proven over the years to have evolved and accommodated to their users. For example, the editing functions of Instagram began as just selected filters that quickly grew out of date, but when people started experimenting with adjusting the light and colors of their images externally from the app, Instagram implemented their own editing functions for contrast, hues, color, tints, etc. which would have brought many users off external apps. I wonder if Instagram will start implementing planning software and galleries for users to store multiple photos for selection, as well as functions to layout the Instagram posts and scheduling capabilities. I want to hope that this will be implemented soon for the convenience, however, I don’t think there are enough users who utilize these functions to encourage Instagram to update their software to this level.
How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?
I have not changed anything with my distribution process from the other times, though I have been interested to see what distributing has done to bring more clicks to my Instagram page. Perhaps I have not waited long enough, but I have not witnessed any traffic from Twitter or Reddit coming to my Instagram posts. If anything, I think the hashtagging in my Instagram description has done the most in bringing more eyes to my profile. Looking at the software functions of distribution and sharing between Instagram, Twitter and Reddit, similar to the authoring and publishing predicaments, a lot of the issues I am coming across can be fixed when externally from the app. However, as the goal of this project is to access the affordances of the Instagram app, there are many aspects that should be fixed of the owners of Instagram want to keep their users within the app. T
Posted on May 24, 2019
Aesthetics of Doors?
Networked Media 2019 Week 10
By the second week of this assignment, I was really struggling to find ideas on how to make more posts of doors whilst also creating photos and videos that I can be proud of artistically. For the readings this week, I chose to look at the third part of Lev Manovich’s 2016 book titled ‘Instagram and Contemporary Image’, this section looked at what he calls ‘Instagramism.’ Manovich describes this concept as a form that meets design with photography, to which content posted on an Instagram account not have individual purpose and composition each but, as they appear in a form with each other on a user’s Instagram page, the posts work together with “attitude” and “tonality”. For example, one of my favorite photographers, Takeru Koharu, posts beautiful film photographs of mostly portraits and street photography around Japan. The “Instagramism” concept comes in when you look at her feed as a whole and notice that there is a uniformed aesthetic of soft, blue hues with accents of oranges and reds that flow through the page. Thus, for this week and the next, I will try to make the next few posts individually aesthetic whilst also creating this “Instagramism” tone on my Instagram page.
View this post on InstagramWelcoming the windy days 🍃🌿 #NetworkedMedia #2019 #door #leaves #nature #uniproject
View this post on InstagramA lamppost that looks like it could be from Narnia • #NetworkedMedia #2019 #door #house #uniproject
How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
Keeping in mind a purpose to have a continuing tone for my next posts, as I walked around my neighborhood, I noticed that other than having an abundance of doors, there were lots of beautiful green foliage despite the season being Autumn on the verge of Winter, so I figured tones of “greens”, “earthy”, “leaves” would be a good motif that could link my posts together. Firstly, I made a video, this time within the Instagram app itself by holding down the record button, featuring a blue-grey door in the background and green leaves moving in the wind in the foreground (I will admit to manipulating the leaves’ movements a little). The next editing stage, I got rid of the sound because I’ve always disliked the sound of the wind blowing into a phonemic, and I applied the filter ‘Juno’ and dialed back the filter’s strength to about 40%.
For my photo for this week, I really liked the way the owner of the land had their front yard designed with the plants, the Narnia-looking lamp post, and the brick stairs that lead up to its arched, white door. So, when framing this photo in particular, I was loosely following a one-point perspective format of having the door in the background, and the lines of the stairs leading up to that focus, whilst having the lamp post and the plants frame the sides of the photograph in the foreground. Unfortunately, when it came to editing I wanted to keep this “green foliage” motif, however, Instagram’s editing format only allowed me to manipulate the shadows or highlights with a green hue rather than manipulating the greens within the photo separately. Another option I played with was boosting the saturation, but the app did not let me control which colors were manipulated and thus, although I could bring out the greens of the image, other colors like the reds and oranges came up too harshly and essentially ruined the photo, in my opinion. So, I opted for just adding green hues to the shadows to hopefully match the continuing theme I had begun on my Instagram.
Additionally, since last week’s posts were not created with a broader aesthetic in mind, I quickly added an extra post of my dog with beige hues to somewhat complete that line of posts on my page.
And so, with four posts left, but with Instagram having a format of threes, I decided to add an extra photograph for this set and the next so in total makes 6 new posts to make a clean form for my page with matching aesthetics. Thus, for this week, I took a textured close-up of some ferns that had hints of yellow and browns that I hoped would match with the other posts’ color palettes, and I placed it in between the main photo and video.
How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
Pretty much when I took the photo and video I was happy with, I clicked next and then I was on the publishing page where I could put my descriptions, then one more button to press and it was published to my feed.
As it’s my first time authoring and publishing all within the Instagram app, I found it really interesting the immediacy of publishing content, however also found it detrimental the lack of self-checking and editing that came with this. What I mean by this is that the curating and publishing functions of the app allowed me to quickly take a picture and upload within seconds, this immediacy skips over crucial steps for photographers such as a selection phase and a mapping phase. So, for users who want to utilise the popular fad of Instagram page aesthetics, the Instagram app itself makes it impossible for users to experiment and plan their posts before publishing.
How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?
Same as last week, I shared my posts to Twitter and Reddit and struggled with the same issues from last time as well. I had a think about what I could do to solve these issues, and I concluded that the best solution would be to manually post on the platforms themselves so that I had control over the layout and which content had visual priority. This would solve my issue with Twitter where distributing directly from Instagram only showed the text and then linked to the visual content. If I posted directly to Twitter, I could upload the photo/video so that my captions had context rather than just existing on the feed alone.
Furthermore, I understood from discussions in class that hashtags were also a function of distributing content. As expressed before, I’m not much of a fan of posting something online and then sharing it to other platforms. I like to maintain an individual purpose for each of my social media accounts, such as Facebook for staying in touch with friends and family, Reddit for my memes, Instagram for my photo and video content. Perhaps I’m not embracing the potentials of networked media, but I don’t feel the necessity to share something to another platform just for my same friends to see the same thing somewhere else. So with this, I’m lacking in the distributing department of my content, but I put thought into my hashtags that will hopefully circulate and act as a distributing factor. When I was typing in #dog, I noticed that this hashtag is attached to over 80 million posts. So, I’m sure that my posts this week will be seen and circulated amongst the many other puppy videos on Instagram to be seen by strangers on the other side of the cyber screens. A subtle distribution act, but a powerful one, I reckon.
Posted on May 20, 2019
It’s Only Up From Here
Festival Experience Studio blog post #8
We did it! The fundraiser was such a success and I am so proud of us for pulling it together!
This day was such an eventful day, beginning with presenting our film festival project to a panel of Rowan Spong, an RMIT studio leader and award-winning filmmaker, and Erin Rosenberg, the programming and distribution co-ordinator of the Jewish International Film Festival (JIFF). The two gave us such comprehensive and useful feedback to all departments and generally, it felt like we are all on the right track to making a successful film festival. For the design work in particular, here are the materials we presented and their feedback:
- Instagram posts have a nice aesthetic but could use a bit more color. I explained to them the reasoning for the black, white and red uniformed colors, to which they understand the layout better, but they also suggested to play with a little more wash of color.
- There was too much text here for a poster, and the design seemed a lot more appropriate as a pamphlet. The panel suggested that posters should be very visual with minimal text, and so I will be enlarging the picture to be a focal point, and keep only the important information, such as our name, and the time and location of the festival.
TRAILERS (unable to link yet, as they are not uploaded on YouTube or Vimeo)
- Chinese International Trailers – Some of our classmates worked on creating short trailers to target specifically international Chinese students who may be interested in attending our festival. They created two videos of young Chinese students talking about the festival and expressing their interest in going. The panel loved the videos and suggested very minor adjustments, but praised the trailers for being simple, and relatable, and also loved the idea of reaching out to the international demographic in Melbourne.
- English cinematic trailer – A couple of other classmates and I filmed some footage of a young adult walking around a park taking photos and filming. We aimed to create a short, cinematic trailer to appeal to the youth filmmakers to promote our festival. I helped filmed the footage, and then gave the materials to another classmate to edit. The final outcome was cute, cheesy and had a satirical feel to the “overly-cinematic” style, but unfortunately, the panel was not to keen on the idea and thought it best to pull away from the parody/satirical style, which may alienate our audience. I wholeheartedly agree with this comment, and I think the next step for our trailers (other than creating supercut trailers of the short films), is to pull away from the satire and make a more genuine, inspirational and encouraging trailer for youth filmmakers to relate to more.
Event photos I took at the Fundraiser event. It wasn’t my best work because I forgot to bring my external flash and the venue lighting was difficult to shoot in, but now I know to be extra prepared and promise to deliver better quality photos for the festival.
The fundraiser event, although small, was such a huge success in my eyes. Considering the little amount of time we had to prepare and promote the event online and around RMIT, I am really proud of how everything turned out. It was a bit disheartening to see a lack of help from some of our classmates, but trying to look at it optimistically; if only a few of us worked our butts off to make this event happen within this short amount of time, when all 22 of us pull our heads together and work towards the film festival, I reckon it’s going to be an absolute blast of a festival. It really is only up from here, and I am more excited than ever for the festival.
Posted on May 13, 2019
When in doubt, post dog pics
Networked Media 2019 Week 9
Nash: For the next few weeks, you guys get to post your own stuff now!
Me: Ooh!
Nash: But everything has to be made on your phones
Me: Oh?
Nash: And it has to be about doors.
Me: Oh.
I guess I’ll take what I can get, there’s plenty of other opportunities for me to create my own content in my own way. But if anything, these tasks although simple can be my own challenge to make content I’m proud of with the limitations of my phone and with the Instagram app. So, being too precious about my main Instagram account’s aesthetics (shameless plug in 3… 2… @tessamay_x), this week, I have posted a photo and video of my dog waiting by my front door on my personal account @tessamay.c
View this post on InstagramThis is why I’m late to class so much 🐶 #dog #puppy #door #shotoniphone #iphonephotography
How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
Firstly, I would like to confess that I did not read the assignment’s instructions properly. So, instead of capturing and editing the photos and videos within the Instagram app, for this week, I had used the phone’s camera app and other editing applications to make the above posts. I was already apprehensive knowing I could only use my phone to record the photos and videos, and so, the task of having to complete everything using only the Instagram app flew straight over my head. The last time I probably ever used the camera function within the app was when it first came out in 2010. Any posts after that, if they were not my phone’s own camera app, but uploaded photographs from my digital cameras. I reckon this assignment 3 will be quite the challenge for me, however, I am willing to step out of my comfort zone and experiment with the app to see if I can create content that I can be proud of.
So, after this week’s class, Nash sent us off to take photos of doors we find around the city, but I was really uninspired. So, I figured out three aspects that I have observed from studying iPhoneographers in the past weeks in order to create appealing content. The first two aspects regard the visual aesthetics of the image: lighting and composition. I’m using a Google Pixel 2 which has an amazing inbuilt camera, but it doesn’t have the flexibility of playing with the exposure that a DSLR allows, as well as high-quality zooms and focal lengths. So, working with a rather stiff wide angle with my phone’s camera, I really need to rely on the external factors of photography to make my photos work. The architecture of my front door is pretty decent. There is a themed color palette of off-white creams and I made sure to clear away the slippers and shoes. I did my best to line up the shot so that everything looked somewhat in line. However, I’ve noticed that my phone has a strange tendency to warp the image, and I think it has something to do with the focus stabilizing, so that is something I need to practice and learn how to combat. Regardless, the composition was there however, I waited till a specific hour in the late afternoon to take the photos. At a certain time of the day, beautiful streaks of light pour through the windows of my front door and this really adds that something special to a photograph to make it worth waiting around till that time. Finally, the third aspect is content and…
You really can’t go wrong with dog videos.
We already know that the photos and videos had to be about doors, however, I wanted to find a way to make this theme a little more interesting. And, I post photos and videos of my dog all the time anyway. My interaction with my front door is almost always about leaving my clingy dog or greeting her with cuddles and kisses. I wanted to play with the ‘aww’ factor and I think I’ve been quite successful with that after observing the comments from my friends on the posts. I’ve noticed that with the photo, I paid a lot more attention to the aesthetics of lighting and composition, whilst the video was heavily on the content on how my dog greets me, jumps up on me and gets her well-deserved scratches. This is honestly due to my limitations of filming and curating the photos and videos by myself with my android. With taking a photo, I can pause and take my time to frame the shot, whilst with a moving video with an excited puppy, I figured that the ‘POV’ style would effectively communicate the close relationship I have with my fur baby.
Regarding editing, I used the Adobe mobile apps, Photoshop Lightroom and Premiere Rush, which worked as well as I expected of a mobile editing app. They had a lot more options than what I remember of Instagram’s editing options, however, for my freelance work I would definitely not edit my clients’ photographs on these apps, although I reckon it would be very convenient if mobile editing apps had the same potential as computer editing softwares. (Can you imagine? I would be able to do so much editing on the train without having to balance my clunky laptop on my lap!)
How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
Since I was using my phone’s camera app to take photos of my door in front of my front door, I had the luxury to take about 20 photos, trying different angles and whenever my dog looked in a different selection. Then, going onto the Lightroom app, I uploaded all those photos and edited a couple of those until I found the one I really liked and finessed the editing on the chosen photo.
For video editing, I recorded the action of opening the door, letting my dog walk out and jump onto me all in one go, but I didn’t like seeing my bag flopped over in the background, so I cut the footage up into segments using the Premiere Rush app. I also did some color correcting, bringing up the contrast and shadows, basic image editing in addition to the linear editing.
Both apps also allowed me to immediately share to Instagram once I was done with the editing, there was an easily recognizable symbol in the corner (I don’t even know what it is, but this is what it looks like): 
So, with that function, I could skip a couple of steps having to save, download, upload to Instagram; the app’s share functions allowed me to quickly get my content out there so that I can get on with my blog posts for Nash.
How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?
The two additional social media platforms that I shared my photo and video to were Twitter and Reddit. I’ve never shared posts across platforms due to having different content purposes for each platform, so it was really interesting trying to navigate around the cross-platform sharing functions. Sharing to Twitter was super easy, Instagram had its own allocated switch to immediately share to Twitter, however, I was not expecting the Twitter to omit the visuals and just have the Instagram link beneath the caption. Prioritizing the visuals on Instagram, I didn’t put much thought into the captions, so when my posts on Twitter went caption first, then link to the image, I can imagine that my 10 followers would be rather confused and lost when they come across those tweets. Reddit was even more frustrating to deal with. Firstly, they would only let me post every 10 minutes, so I had to wait around after I shared one post to share the other. Furthermore, the image and video didn’t show either and were instead hidden by a default thumbnail that hyperlinked to Instagram.
I never shared cross-platforms before, but after seeing how clunky and mismatched the visual vernaculars are for each platform, I don’t think I will ever share cross-platform again after this project if the mechanisms remain like this.
Posted on May 11, 2019
Learning from Mistakes…
Festival Experience blog post #7
Is it really week 8 already? I swear just last week we were deciding the name of our film festival, but here we are now, organizing our first fundraiser event.
This week’s readings looked at Australian classification, and although I’m not on the programming team, I have studied about classification, particularly with film and video games and so I do have a few things to say even though I’m on the design team. The act and code of the Australian Classification Guidelines seek to protect minors from materials that will disturb and harm them, whilst also allowing adults to consume the materials they wish. Thus, classifications are implemented to sort through media materials and distinguish whether media forms, especially films, are appropriate for all ages, or if they should be strictly accessible to only 15+ or 18+ years of age, or if they should be banned altogether. When it comes to films, especially with bigtime Hollywood films, classification gets interesting between M (mature: themes are moderate) and MA15+ (Mature accompanied: themes are strong and illegal to be consumed by those under ages 15), because when a film is classified at MA15+, you lose the chance to reach a wider demographic of those under 15 years of age. Thus, many producers will often fight and argue to get their films’ classifications lowered to an M rating for that extra coverage and sales. However, when it comes to our film festival, luckily we’re not so fussed about having to fight to lower our classifications. I believe we have a responsibility to maintain the code of conduct for film classification, and even if children are coming to our event, I know that our programming team has organized a kids-appropriate program for the day screenings on Saturday.
Now, an update on design production, I was unfortunately quite sick and unable to attend class this week, but I made sure to stay online to help out if needed. I ended up fixing some errors on the fundraiser poster, as well as added some final details, then had them printed and plastered all over Building 9 which was quite a jarring, but an exciting sight to see. I did hit a roadblock though, and it’s an embarrassing mistake, but I think it should be addressed. Sunday morning, I woke up to a text message from a classmate requesting to create an Instagram post to be shared on the RMIT Instagram promoting our fundraiser. I quickly edited the fundraiser poster to make a design appropriate for the aesthetics of Instagram, and it was up by the end of the day. Unfortunately, another one of our classmates pointed out the next day that the post said “March” instead of “May”, and my heart instantly dropped into my stomach. Quickly taking action to inform my classmates to get the post taken down, and rushing home to re-edit the post, I found out that the post was eventually taken down, but those in charge of the RMIT Instagram probably wouldn’t re-post again on behalf of us. I felt terrible and so guilty to have made this mistake, and it also seems that we have all been a bit careless with our copywriting lately. So, instead of sulking about this, I think it’s important that we take this as a lesson and double, triple, quadruple check everything we create and write before we publish them.
Posted on May 5, 2019
Networked Media Assignment 2 || Review
Name: Tessa-May Chung S3662677
I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration – https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/support-and-facilities/student-support/equitable-learning-services
Blog Posts:
- Provide a definition for ‘analogue photography’.
The definition of analogue itself is the analogy and representation of measurements through physical quantities. However, as digital technologies began to develop, the term ‘analogue’ simply became a reference to anything not digital. For example, the hands of an analogue clock represent time through their placements and incremental movements around the face of the clock. Thus, regarding analogue photography, it is the physical recording of light. More specifically, photographs taken on an analogue camera are created by the interaction of light, mirrors, and chemicals on film rolls to record what the photographer chooses to capture.
- Provide a definition for ‘analogue video’.
Considering analogue as a definition for non-digital recording technologies, analogue video is the physical recording of movement through analogue camera recorders by storing pictures, most commonly recorded and played back in 16 to 24 frames per second. As opposed to digital video recording where the frames are stored as numbers, the analogue video camera records multiple images within a second. This is done by light reflected through the camera onto a photosensitive plate, to which the camera tube within the camera sends a focused beam of electrons to scan the image from left to right, up then down. As multiple images are taken and scanned within each second of recording, the images are played back in sequence, thus creating the illusion of movement for audience viewership.
- Provide a definition for ‘networked photography’.
As digital technologies begin to develop during the 20th century, a new era of networking opened up new avenues of possibilities for online communication and sharing. Thus, in a time of analogue photography where the material exists physically, sharing and distribution was a long, arduous process. The introduction of Web 2.0 meant that accessibility was much easier between one computer to another, thus a photograph that existed in the network could be accessed within seconds from anywhere across the world. Hence, networked photography defines faster and simpler access to create and share images whenever and wherever around the world.
- Provide a definition for ‘networked video’.
Understanding the definition of ‘networked video’ is helpful when looking at the developments of video blogging. For what began as amateur developed rapidly in the early 2000s, not only due to equipment becoming cheaper and more user-friendly, but also the rapid growth of digital technologies and software that allowed recording, editing, storing and sharing to be much easier and convenient. Thus, from what began as celluloid film movies, then experimental videos that required a knowledge of encoding, now anyone with access to a smartphone can create video content to send and share from any time and anywhere around the world.
- Provide definitions for the terms ‘authoring’, ‘publishing’ and ‘distributing’.
Authoring is the creative process of how a practitioner creates their work.
Definitions of publishing and distributing often blur together, however, to make a clearer distinction, it is helpful to understand how these terms are used in the music industry. Music Distribution allows an artist to sell their music in online stores and streaming services, and then collect the royalties from the music that they own. Whereas, Publishing Administrations allow artists to collect publishing royalties that come from sales and streams of their crafts. Thus, to apply these concepts to how a photograph or video is published and distributed, publishing is seen as the act of issuing materials for sales, whilst distribution is the method of sharing and allowing the material to spread and circulate to other platforms and to wider audiences.
- What differences and similarities did you discover between the way analogue and networked photos are authored, published and distributed?
Timing and efficiency in the executions of publishing and distribution are the key differences I discovered in researching analogue and networked photos. In particular, I investigated the infamous Nick Ut’s ‘Napalm Girl’ photograph (1972) and works from Aik Beng Chia, a contemporary iPhoneographer and photojournalist. The two were alike in aspects of their craft; they both used their skills in photography for means of documentary and photojournalism, whilst also having comprehensive understandings of art and framing images. As photojournalism is interconnected with marketing and news broadcasting, immediacy is essential with this line of work. Hence, although Nick Ut’s photograph played an integral part of ending the Vietnam War, it was still an arduous operation of processing the film and sending the image via a photo transmitter to news companies in New York. Now with the evolution from analogue to digital, publishing and distribution methods are more accessible and convenient for both professionals, as well as amateurs.The introduction of iPhoneography has changed the dynamics of street photography and photojournalism, as the iPhone ‘achieves a form of communicative presence that extends the mediated presence offered by traditional photography’ (Daniel Palmer, 2014). Thus, from the works of Aik Beng Chia, he values the iPhone for its consistency of apps that allow him to shoot, edit and publish his works all on the one device, eliminating the extra steps that come from traditional photography and its relationship with publishing and distributing works.
- What differences and similarities did you discover between the way analogue and networked videos are authored, published and distributed?
Comparing my research on “the father of video art”, Nam June Paik with the beauty guru, Bretman Rock, key differences I have discovered between analogue and networked videos are the authoring and understanding of the crafting a video, as well as the evolution of convenience for publishing and distributing content that is similar to analogue and networked photography. Nam June Paik experimented with video art, and in doing so, he needed a comprehensive understanding of the mechanics of video in order to radicalize the format. Furthermore, despite his ingenuity with the craft and ultimately incited the conversation of global connectivity with his broadcast of “Good Morning, Mr. Orwell!” (1984), as his works were experimental, Paik still experienced many issues and technical problems with the broadcast. Similarly, as photography has shifted from analogue to digital with developing technologies, functions of shooting, editing and sharing content have become so simple and convenient, a user does not need to develop the same level of knowledge as Paik had to create a video. Hence, with Rock and many other video blogging personalities, all he needed was his phone and a social media platform to easily create and upload his content. With the easy accessibility to create, upload and share videos in a global online network, people were able to notice him and circulate his content to other viewers, thus propelling his rise to fame.
References:
Berry, T. B 2018, ‘Situating Videoblogging’, Institute of Network Cultures, viewed 14 March 2018, pp. 9–22, http://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Videoblogging-Before-YouTube-web.pdf
Kamila K & Zylinska J, editors. Photomediations: A Reader. Open Humanities Press, 2016, viewed 2 February 2018, http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/ titles/photomediations/ (pp.7-16 Photomediations: An Introduction by Joanna Zylinkska)
Lister, M et al 2009, New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, New York.
Palmer, D 2014 ‘Mobile Media Photography’, in The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, (eds) Goggin G., Hjorth L., Routledge, New York pp. 249–55.
Spielmann, Y., 2007. Video: The Reflexive Medium. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Villi, Mikko and Stocchetti, Matteo (2011) ‘Visual mobile communication, mediated presence and the politics of space’, Visual Studies, 26: 2, 102 — 112
Woodford, C. (2019). Analog and digital technology – What’s the difference?. [online] Explain that Stuff. Available at: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/analog-and-digital.html