Category Archives: Media 1 Workshop

Audio Feedback

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Audio Feedback

This week we showed our rough cut audio essays to Rachel and got some helpful feedback.

Some of the things we needed to improve on:

  1. Be more direct- no characters or faking it.

We were told that with audio it becomes very obvious if someone is pretending to play a part and our voices easily give away the fact that it is stages or just too contrived. When we were more direct and said things as we thought of them the audio essay seemed more authentic and engaging despite it being planned out.

2. Have more layers

We should start thinking about different effects like music. We are thinking about making it a radio show and play the end of a song to introduce us.

3. focus on WHY kpop is an institution. 

This has been challenging to do because the definition of an institution is hard to pin down and recontextualize to a modern music industry. We’ve decided to stick with our definition. I’m going to say:

Business Studies Research-Professor Geoffrey Martin Hodgson, in his descriptive text ‘What are Institutions’ 2006, explores just that.

He states that an ‘institution’ is a sociological term that  usually connotates  a relationship between a dominant social power, certain conventions and behaviours over a passive and abiding collectivist community.

Does k-pop really fit that description?

wk 10 workshop

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Watching the video essay video again was very inspiring.

It got us talking about how we want to present our video essay. We decided that we are going to split up our audio and video essay not by topic but by approach. I think it might work out because we are using the mediums to their advantage. Our grand plan is to focus on the individual affect kpop has on its fans and what people think of it. And for the video we will take a step back and look at the broader picture of its holistic effect on countries and industries particularly clothes, make up etc

We hope this idea will work. The audio will be best for personal conversations between the host and guests allowing their perspectives to be expressed.

While in the video powerful imagery of churches, crowds, in sync dancing etc will visually send the message of unity and how kpop is an institution.

Wk 8 Workshop

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Listening to the audio essay from radiolab was a new experience it felt different from a straightforward podcast I’d normally listen to. Many audio devices were placed in the piece which got me thinking about creative ways we can implement these in our own work. Momentum was maintained by the constant overlapping of voices of the hosts and guests. The hosts played many parts: introducing experts, interjecting their own thoughts in anecdotes, providing comedic relief and even acting as a voice for the audience in questioning experts for us. 
Music was used in a very practical way to establish time. When we were hearing information from long ago there was vintage music for example the 40’s vs the 70’s.
Sound effects I also found engaging were the dolphin calls, cats purring brain waves. The brain waves converted into sound made visualise the undulating and sometimes erratic electric activity in the brain.
This audio essay had a complex array of sound textures.
I’ve realised that it is important to choose a topic or a style of portraying a topic where sound can be effectively used to prove a point or paint a picture.

wk 7 feedback

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I’ve always had a terrible fear of showing my work because unless its “perfect” the thought of anyone seeing it is too cringeworthy. And my work is never perfect so of course viewing our PB3 portraits in class was a challenge. The class was so friendly and accepting of the great work we saw I started to feel a lot better as we went down the roll all the way to “v.”

After getting into groups I received some great feedback that I will use to improve my next project

Since I dealt with a sensitive and controversial topic to some, it was suggested that I should tone down my portrayal of Charlotte as a raging gay. I decided not to because I felt that it is an essential part of who she is. I suppose I could next time find a way to not seem like I am criticising others (ilke Christian youth groups). In retrospect I should have asked Charlotte to emphasise that it was just the one incident. It was also mentioned that I should have used more stock footage as I was meant to have at least 30%.

The others appreciated my choice of colour using orange in most of the frames. I managed to somewhat create a sense of unity within the short film by keeping the colour pallet similar in each frame. They enjoyed my use of different music to change the moods during the film.

In reflection:

Personally next time I would cut out some of Charlotte’s responses so I have more room for relevant questions. I would also cut down the audio intro at the beginning (with all the news reports and speeches so I can have more of Charlotte’s voices. I thought the over laying of voices was done to a satisfactory level but I hope to make it smoother and more natural next time. Making this made me realise the difficulty in balancing the magic of spontaneity and organisation. I did have a rough storyboard but that got discarded pretty quickly. Next time I’m going to storyboard after I film. Maybe I will organise all the shots by naming them on sticky notes then arrange them on my wall like in Mistaken for Strangers (2013) directed by Tom Berninger. Another thing with organisation is placing the footage into folders. I should have done that as I was adding them after each shoot.