Reflections Off a Mirror

Just another Media Factory site

Month: May 2016 (page 2 of 2)

A Single Voice with Loud Message – Week #10

May 10, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Singapore just went through a by-election for a township, Bukit Batok, and the ruling party, People’s Action Party (PAP) won the by-election. However, that isn’t the point of this post. This post comes with interest in the whole passive and active audience that was touched on in the lectorial in week 9.

Amos Yee is a YouTube personality who expresses his strong views and opinions on the Singapore politics and how the government runs the country. I won’t go in too much on his background, but just how he uses social media to spread his views around and how he has made his name from just social media platforms well into the front pages of newspapers and headlines of prime time news.

Viewer discretion is advised, course and offensive language is used in the duration of the video.

The Active Audience in a Post-Broadcast Era – Week #10

May 10, 2016 / / 0 Comments

What is the difference between active and passive audience? With the advancement of technology, consumers rely a lot on mobility and flexibility of digital devices capable of processing information in high speed ie. smartphones, tablets, laptops. And with the rise in social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more, it is so easy for one to produce “home videos” to express one’s views and opinion of the world.

These are the basic ingredients for an active audience to make some home made appetisers to wet the taste buds of other media consumers who might be active on both mainstream and new media platforms, then leaving comments, sharing, liking or thumbs up-ing, and so on. This sparks the whole cycle of the active audience. It basically is having the audience to participate and takes a step further from just consumer media texts presented to them on mainstream media.

The argument goes on with regards to where the power lies, is it with big media broadcasting companies or with the audience who are actively uploading content from their bedroom. However, both wouldn’t exist without the existence of the other. Take the news for example. Back then, people turn on the news to gather information on current affairs and general interests, it was a mean for the government to reach out to the public, a tool for propaganda, and a playground for advertises to bring on their ‘A’ game to promote products to various target audience. Today, we have the term, “citizen journalism”, which in wikipedia’s definition, “is based upon public citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing, and disseminating news and information””. Is this an easy way out for news companies to gather news in the environment? Or is this a clever way to engage in audience participation in hopes of increasing their viewership? In business terms, there’s a saying, “The customer’s always right, even when they are wrong.”. Applying that to the citizen journalism scenario, user generated content (UGC) has been on the rise recently in online social media networks, in a nutshell, news made by the audience for the audience. In some ways, it’s driving news companies into bankruptcy, in other ways, it’s aiding them, depending on how the news companies employ such citizen journalists.

We are living in times where a single comment or status on your Facebook could just as easily go viral for the right OR wrong reasons. This power can be used to enrich, but also exploited when in the wrong hands. Quoting a line from the first Spider Man movie, “With great power comes great responsibility”. We have this idea that we have total control of what we post on the internet, but are we really a hundred percent sure? We never know what goes behind the scenes of all these multilevel databases and servers and what they do with the things we post online, and for some cases, it may just be our identity or financial status.

The audience definitely has a say in the media world, a very significant role in fact, but just how long will the audience hold power? Or are they just placed in a delusion that they are in power by the media corporations?

Have I come full circle? – Week #9

May 6, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Having moved to Melbourne for nearly 3 months, I’ve definitely picked up on some stuffs and learned more things about myself that I never knew I was capable of, and would probably would not be able to expose that part of me if I chose to do my tertiary education back in the comforts of  home in Singapore.

For one, I have cooked meals for myself in these 3 months more than I’ve ever cooked for myself or for anyone for that matter in my entire life. Some meals turned out well, some not so, but it’s a learning curve and cycle where you analyse what went wrong and pick up from what did went well and see how you can improve on that. I guess that pretty much works for everything else other than just cooking. This definitely applies to the field of study that I’m in, Media, and the whole pre-production to post-production where there are so many things to accomplish. Murphy’s law states, “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” and you can never ignore that, no matter how much preparation you have put into doing the actual thing. There are just so many possibilities of something going wrong that is far beyond your control. For example, if you planned to shoot at a particular location, and you’ve got your permits approved, your talents ready to go, your crew ready for action, but just due to bad luck it started pouring heavily and it stays like that for pretty much most of the day. Are you going to call it quits? Or come up with something else to improvise? Those are the decision one faces when something does not go to plan and it’s beyond one’s control.

Moving here has made me realise suddenly uni isn’t just everything. There are so many things that you have to keep your eye on, like paying your rent on time, making sure there’s always food in the refrigerator at home, making sure that you’ve got your daily necessities like your toiletries, clean clothes, just overall well being. On top of that, you have to manage your own financing. Living in the city comes with its perks of being just 5 minutes walk to RMIT and to major shopping centres, but that also means that everything else would be jacked up sky high in terms of prices. Decent meals would be AUD$7 onwards around the CBD. I would be really contented if I could get away with having lunch less than AUD$10. If anyone has any recommendation to get lunch less than AUD$5, I’m all ears. Of course there’s always Domino’s value pizzas at $5 each, but come on, how long can you go on eating those on a daily basis?

Another thing I didn’t guess I would be so quick on doing would be performing household chores. Back home, everything seemed to be taken care of, but here, no one is going to clean up that pile of dishes you might have used to make dinner, no one is going to wash the toilet or scrub the insides of the showering cubicle. IT’s really all on you. Calling back on my National Service days in the army, we had this thing called “Stand By Area”, which basically means you had to stand by your bunk and the Company Sergeant Major (CSM) would go round inspecting your bunk for the smallest detail of dirt or dust. Obviously, back then, non of us could give two cents about it and just went through the motions of cleaning and tidying up the bunk before standing by our area, just so that we would be granted permission to book out from camp for the weekends. But here it’s really different, although I’m not being placed in the threat of having to stay back in camp to clean up the bunk while others happily make their way home for the weekend, I feel like I am very much responsible for cleaning up every single thing in the apartment as much as I am responsible for my studies in uni, even if it means scrubbing the insides of the toilet bowl, removing the dirt and gunk hidden in the kitchen pipe and so on.

It’s really the matter of being independent, and how long I can go before I press the ‘eject’ button and start booking the next flight out of Melbourne to Singapore. (I strongly hope I don’t resort to this). On the other hand, there is also the freedom I get when I’m here, pretty much not like how I am in Singapore. I answer to no one, I get to make my own decisions, but whether they’re good or bad is a slightly different story. I guess what I’m trying to say is, am I really ready for the world? Only time will tell, just like how only time would tell how the weather would turn out tomorrow.

Film Style – Week #9

May 5, 2016 / / 0 Comments

What’s style in layman terms would just mean something that is unique to one’s character. It is a result of work that identifiable to someone, be it in art, music, fashion, or film. From this, we are able to spot patterns and repetitions in across the work of an individual and then draw summaries of that particular person’s style. Film wise, we see a consistent patters of technique that might have been employed by the filmmaker in not just one or two of his films, but his entire repertoire.

In the reading, Boredwell and Thompson describe the concept of style as patterns of technique that is used to construct the overall form. The filmmaker faces an array of decision making during pre-production, production and post-production. No doubt, making a decision would cause to have another layer of decision making waiting for him behind the door he choose to open. Hence, the filmmaker has to carefully consider his decisions before moving further into his film making progress. The reading mentioned that most filmmakers would tend to create parallels with the characters and situations that happens within the plot. In most mainstream films, filmmakers use various techniques to alter the stylistic elements to help identify different settings and story lines.

Boredwell and Thompson goes on to explain that the role of the director is not just to direct the actors, and to input creative or technical decisions on set, but also direct the audience’s attention. Therefore, this shapes the audience’s reaction and experience while watching the film. Going back to an example used by Alfred Hitchcock about the bomb ticking under a table with 2 men sitting around it. The filmmaker has the choice to let the audience know that there’s the bomb under the table that is about to explode, or just keep the audience unaware of the bomb just like how the 2 man are unaware of the bomb. The first technique develops suspense and audience interaction to the plot that the bomb is going to explode. Almost nudging the audience to the edge of their sits wanting to tell the 2 man that there’s a bomb. The second technique use the element of surprise and explodes out of the blue. Some actions sequence in films employ this technique to shock the audience and rely heavily on special effects, foley, and sound effects to recreate the entire explosion. Both techniques used have the same outcome of the explosion and tells the same story, however, brings out different reactions from the audience. And this would be a preempt the audience to next sequences to come.

The reading then shares certain ways to analyze style, one is to look and listen carefully, while the other is to put yourself into the shoes of a filmmaker. I remember hearing in one of the lectures that if you’re watching a film and you find yourself feeling bored of the narrative aspect of the film, look towards the various patterns of techniques and see if you can make out a certain form from the patterns. And that’s what I think the reading is trying to say in a more elaborate and in depth manner. Asking us to go beyond just paying attention to the narrative and plot, but to dig deeper into the different techniques that the filmmaker might have employed during the course of the film and why he chose to do it. Also try to think about other alternatives that the filmmaker could have done instead of going with the way it was rendered in the final cut.

Pause fillers – Week #9

May 5, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Have you ever listened to a peer or a person on the tram speaking and he or she is always going on and on with a repetition of a certain word? Say for example, “I was like… But like… And he was like… Like… Kinda like… He’s like…”. And when you try to listen into it even more, it’s almost kind of annoying? Well, that is pause fillers working right there.

Pause fillers comes in different forms and it varies from person to person. Some people use, “Erm…” others use, “Err…” or like the example mentioned above, using the word ‘like’ over extensively. Somehow during our speech, we tend to rely on pause fillers a lot, without even ourselves aware of it. Whether it is a good or bad thing, it really depends. Some people do it subtly in a timely manner in order to incorporate good pacing and it punctuates their sentences well. Others might use it to cover up lack of content or vocabulary to express and articulate themselves. At the end of the day, it is just how much we use it in our speech and language, and when we use it.

In a formal context when an individual is giving a public address or carrying out a presentation, the pause fillers comes out even more obvious as now that person is in the spotlight and everyone is listening. Unlike being in a conversation with a peer, where it is pretty much a 2-way street, giving a speech or when you are in public speaking circumstances, it is more of a 1-way street for most of the session, up until at least during the Q&A session. Hence, all ears are on that person and some people would really go to the point of scrutinising every single word the person is speaking. Therefore all this little pause fillers of “Erm…”, “Arh…”, “Hmm…”, “Like…”, would stick out like kinks and dents on a smooth copper wire.

How would do you get away from having pause fillers you might ask? Well, there no right or wrong method in getting rid of having pause fillers. In fact, I don’t think it is possible to completely eliminate pause fillers from your speech. It is what gives the human element in the speech and makes it less of a robotic or an announcement. However, we could always cut down on pause fillers by rehearsing our speeches and the content in front of a mirror. Being a lecturer, my dad grades his business students’ presentation skills base on how well they deliver their content and how well they manage their time to fit everything inside a specific duration, once the timer goes off, the students will be asked to stop presenting whether they are finished or not, pretty much simulating the scenario of pitching their business ideas to potential clients. One of the tips he mentioned to me was to practice in front of the mirror with your notes in your hands. If you find yourself having to refer to the notes more often than not, you’re not ready for the presentation. On the other hand, if you can go without having to refer to your notes or a minimal number of times and having to see yourself in the mirror most of the time, then you’re pretty much good to go.

Having said that, it really varies from person to person and how one articulates one’s self. So we should always experiment in front of the mirror to simulate public speaking just to brush up on our presentation skills. Who knows, your next sales pitch could make or break you just base on how many times you refer to your notes or how many times you rely on your pause fillers.

Timely Post – Week #9

May 5, 2016 / / 0 Comments

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/singaporean-english-is-almost-impossible-to-pick-up?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page

I stumbled upon this article on the background of my home country’s ‘dialect’, Singlish. And I use the word dialect very loosely as it’s not even an official dialect of the English Language, but it is still a language that we use to communicate back home, not intentional but evolved organically derived form the different ethnic groups and diverse cultures that Singapore has to offer.

It was posted in a timely fashion, as the subject matter of my Project Brief 3 was how we used the dialect back home and how it differs from the standard English that we use when we’re in a foreign land that has English as the main language like Australia. So for those who are really interested into knowing how the dialect was formed and how to use it in future when you do head down the the little red dot, this article is for you as a head start on how the whole Singlish took its form and became the working language the locals use.

On the plus side, there is a comical side of the article with a re-make of a scene from Beauty and The Beast dubbed with Singlish over the original dialogue. Some Singaporeans might find it rather offensive or like we’ve been made fun of, but at the end of the day, it’s just all for laughs. Hope you guys enjoy reading it and watching the video.

What Makes a Good Podcast? – Week #8

May 3, 2016 / / 0 Comments

This week’s workshop, one of the things covered was a podcast about sleep. It was a rather lengthy one, probably lasting about an hour, but our tutor only played the first 20-30 minutes of the podcast. Then we had a little discussion on what makes a good podcast. What are the ingredients that make a podcast interesting and keeping the listeners engaged. Having the whole visual aspect taken away, it’s always so easy to drift into another thought while the whole soundtrack just shifts to the background while your mind wanders and start to think what should you have for lunch later or if the weather would turn out great for your golf match later.

This are what some of us from class came up with that keeps the podcast engaging,

  1. Sound effects
  2. Dialogues
  3. Interviews
  4. Atmos
  5. Music

The list goes on, but those above are the main criteria to make a podcast engaging to the audience. Always introducing a new element is a good way to keep the audience on their feet, new characters or subjects to keep their mind engage like they are a part of the conversation as well.

This whole exercise is just a little starter before the main course, the audio essay of project brief 4, which in a way is quite a heavy weightage assignment when it comes to the overall grade for Media 1. And what a better way to start by analysing the work of others and start referencing and unpacking the technicalities behind it.

Newer posts

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Meta

© 2024 Reflections Off a Mirror

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑

Skip to toolbar