March 2018 – Reflections Off a Mirror

Month: March 2018

Interaction – Week #5.1

An article on the conversation given to us as class reading for week #5A talks about Interactivity, particularly in video games, where the users, or gamers rather, interact with the computer programme to create an experience unique to one’s chain of decisions made with regards to the game.

The article explores how this mode of delivering a unique experience can be a mode of storytelling, when taken into greater lengths, another method of screen production or documentary making. Which is what Jon Dovey & Mandy Rose wrote about in the “We’re happy and we know it: Documentary, data, montage”, for week #5B’s reading. The article explains the use of different interactive elements in documentary making, and exploring different media elements to be used in an online project. With still images, videos, audio, and texts, at the disposal of the filmmaker, they are now not limited or bounded to the limitations of traditional screen media in terms of formats, and method of distribution and delivery. This enables filmmakers and documentarians to reach out to a wider audience, on multiple platforms.

It is worth thinking how it could be reshaping the way we deliver information from an educational point of view. In another article on The Conversation, “How the internet is reshaping World Heritage and our experience of it”, people are more aware of historical events, landmarks, and occasion through the means of delivering them on the Internet, or Web 2.0 to be specific. This not only boosts people’s awareness of history, but enables content producers to think of innovative ways to present ideas, concepts, information outside of traditional media. I guess the key word from all of these readings is, “Interaction”, and with that comes with an experience to the user. People don’t want to just watch something and go home to have a cup of tea, they want to be immersed, to feel, to ignite their 5 sense, and I think what these readings have in common is that their end-users get to take home not only a virtual souvenir, but an experience unique to their own.

Looking into our next assignment, we will be exploring how we will be making or designing a project based on having modularity and variability properties, as defined in Manovich’s “The Language of New Media”. A good starting, I guess, would be sourcing for current documentaries that has been made purposely for online screen media. And the first that comes to mind would be the VR project I’ve blogged about in week #4, regarding the Indigenous culture and people. How does it differ from traditional documentaries? What makes it modular? How is it variable?

Reflection – Week #4.4

March 23, 2018 / Sem / 0 Comments

Interactivity has been put in the forefront when it comes to online screen making (as seen in the online projects presented in class). It’s engaging, it gives the audience freedom to roam on their own, and also allows media makers to exhibit more in their work.

Our project allows people to click on specific items they wish to find out more with regards to the person, like how online retailers let shoppers click and navigate through their website to purchase an item right from their bedroom. And since it’s hyperlink driven, it spread across multiple platforms from Facebook, to Instagram, to Youtube and more.

However, since we are not IT students with much knowledge on how to create our own website, we are not sure if it’ll be practical and it could be applied into the real world. Which brings me to the next point, unfortunately, our idea of using Youtube to embed links to our Resume, social media profiles, into the video has been disabled unless you are part of the Youtube Partner Programme. I guess this serves as a safety feature by Youtube to protect against people embedding sensitive, explicit, or just straight out illegal websites onto their youtube videos. As far as I know we are only able to embed links to subscribing, other exisiting Youtube videos, and other Youtube channels (talk about network literacy). I have, however, uploaded the different elements of the mock video to the shared folder in Google Drive, if anyone is actually interested.

I guess the only limitation I encountered was myself, actually. Like how Manovich describes “To understand new media, we need to turn to computer science.” And I have almost close to zero knowledge on computer science or software theory, other than how to operate a computer. The computer language part of new media is still an abyss I’ve not set foot on, and I do not think I might anytime soon. However, I think it’s worth noting that these two ideas of what Manovich calls, “human-computer interface and the interfaces of software applications used to author and access new media objects” definitely go hand-in-hand, ever evolving parallel to one another. Maybe if I had some skills on writing my own application or website, the result might be something different where I could work and improve on the interface and see how much more, or less, interactive we want the platform to be. I think it is also worth pointing out that some people might feel uncomfortable exposing themselves so much on the Internet, as the saying goes, what goes up in the Internet, stays in the Internet. And I actually sit in that camp of being more conservative on leaving my virtual footprint, or leaving my information out in the world wide web.

This might bring me to my next formal quality worth exploring, is the freedom that people have on the Internet compromises our privacy and personal information compromised when we upload stuff onto the Internet? And how do we protect ourselves from people attempting to steal these information? We might say it has lesser censorship rules, no form of fact checking, and controversial. But is there some way we can govern the Internet, like how a democratic society votes for a ruling party to govern the country? Can the Internet by regulated?

I am Sem – Week #4.3 – Project Work

March 23, 2018 / Sem / 0 Comments

Our project work is to explore the interactive side of making media for online screen, as well as hyperlink driven, which ties in to Manovich’s article on hypermedia.

But first…

Before I dive into describing the concept of our project work, I’d like to point out how old school I find myself annotating and highlighting readings not just from this studio, but in the other electives I’m taking too. Makes me think that no matter how technology evolves, some people might retain some deeply rooted old habits, and I’m no exception.

The Concept…

An online e-portfolio that allows viewers, potential employers, or even friends to view your profile. It’ll operate as a website based style, like how some of the projects we’ve seen during the week where they have customised web designs and multimedia. The portfolio will start with a brief opening introduction of the person, and then several hyperlinks will appear at the end for viewers to click on if they would like to find out more about the person. Links to their resumé, showreel or past work related achievements/projects, social media profiles, and other interests such as, hobbies, family, pets, etc…

Manovich refers to this as, “branching-type interactivity”, by having several branches to various platforms across the web to access different media texts and documents. It could be a family portrait on your Instagram account, or a vlog of your last getaway trip overseas. We thought of establishing a media platform that enables users to tie in all their social media platforms together with their credentials that they may have gathered throughout their professional career.

The Video…

Since we have no knowledge of web design or writing java scripts, we did a mock up of the platform with the use of Youtube’s function on embedding hyperlinks into the video.

The mock up video can be viewed below…

One Step Further…

I know this isn’t part of making media for online screens, but I attempted to do some compositing using Premiere Pro’s compound blur effect to touch up the face of yours truly. I mean, there is no better specimen than yourself right? Going back to my internship last summer, I was exposed to a full post-production house facility with a whole team of CG artists, compositors, colourists, online artists, and offline editors. I was shadowing one of the online artists for a week and witnessed him working on several TV commercials for a laundry detergents, beauty products, and more. The programme his used was Flame, developed by Autodesk, and I was really blown away by the capabilities that software is able to do. Currently, I’m still exploring the greater depths of what Premiere Pro can do, and I thought of touching up my face that puberty has done such a fabulous job on leaving its mark. And I must admit, it’s a long process, keying out frame by frame to mask the compound blur effect. I’m not sure if there’s a faster way of doing it, as Premiere does have a tracking function, however it isn’t as complex as Flame’s for that matter. I am currently still in the midst of everything, as you can tell from the mock up video, there are still some parts that are glitchy. Maybe I’ll put up a before & after video just to compare and see if it’s convincing or it looks too artificial…

*This segment of the post has been added on to the original post on 30/03/2018.

The verdict…

So as mentioned above, I took a bit more time to polish up a bit of the video we shot.

The video below would demonstrate what I’ve been messing around with on Premiere. I am very much aware that these can be done in other programmes in a much more efficient, and probably, more professional way, such as After Effects, Flame Assist, or Da Vinci Resolve, however, fortunately, or unfortunately, I am only limited to using Premiere Pro at the moment.

Interactive e-Portfolio – Week #4.2

March 20, 2018 / Sem / 0 Comments

After having experience several new media projects, as well as making our sketch for Assignment 1, Liam and I realised that most of the non-fiction new media projects were employing one of the key formal qualities of online screen media which is interactivity. Therefore, we wanted to explore the possibilities of making new media incorporating interactivity into our project work for Assignment 2.

We brainstormed a couple of ideas exploring ways of how interactivity can engage mass audience, but in order to do that, we must have an audience to appeal to, and since non of us are relatively popular Youtube or online influencers, we decided to take on another approach. One of the ideas that came to mind was to create a maze for users to navigate through either the entire Internet or in a particular social media app such as Facebook or Instagram. We thought it could be a good idea, and we discussed into great depth, however, we could not find a way to administer the game in order to monitor the progress of people playing it, the mechanics of the game, and so on. The initial idea was to use #hashtags in Instagram. Out of 3-4 hashtags false hashtags that will lead you to nowhere, only 1 will actually take you to another Instagram page, and the maze carries on from there. As mentioned, we were not too clear on how #hashtags worked (as silly as it sounds), but in order for it to work, we needed to have multiple Instagrams account, AND I discovered that if the user were to visit one of the account, he’ll be able to view all the leading pictures with the clues inside, hence the use of the hashtag would be redundant.

So back to the drawing board again, and we thought we should just stick to what we’re actually good at, or at least just slightly better than trying to overhaul the hashtags system on Instagram. Both Liam and I have relatively strong background on filmmaking, hence we decided to shoot an interactive horror scene where the viewer gets to decide the outcome. If you have read the old horror story books by Goosebumps, you’ll remember having little footnotes that tells you what page to flip to if you want the main character to do this, or that. We thought of employing that idea, by providing links to the viewer for them to choose what kind of outcome they wish. However, given the tight timeline we have to go out and shoot the multiple alternate endings on how the protagonists is going to die, I came up with an idea of doing an online Interactive e-Portfolio. Basically the same idea, without the horror, gore, and suspense. Viewers will get an opening message from the profile, and they’ll get to click on links to view that person’s resumé, showreel, social media accounts, and other miscellaneous stuff like their interests, hobbies, family portraits…etc. I’ll elaborate more in my next post on how we think this idea might explore the formal quality of interactivity and other online screen media qualities.

we Are in veeArrh erA – Week #4.1

March 19, 2018 / Sem / 0 Comments

I’ve recently found this article regarding a VR project on The Conversation, which covers the topic of the Indigenous culture and people, facing threat from modernity and going under the radar for being the first people of the land.

The article goes on to elaborate how the VR film provided an immersive experience for people to observe the beautiful and enchanting environment of outback Australia as well as its lushes green rainforests where the Indigenous people predominantly occupy. This let me to ponder, on the post production process for making this VR film. Personally, I have very little knowledge on VR technology apart from how it works, but the mechanics behind it and how it can be edited, trimmed, and to what extent can be animated or composited, still escapes me. I might have mentioned in my previous blog posts in response to other studios that I have enrolled in prior to this that I aspire to become an offline editor in future. And being an editor requires one to possess a keen eye to detail, a sense of pacing, a good feel of mood, emotion, and contrast… However, thinking of applying all these traits of an offline editor into editing a VR video or film just doesn’t seem to gel.

Being an immersive technology, you require the audience to participate in the content of the media, instead of being just a passive audience. This means one can rotate his head around and witness everything that has been captured by the 360 degree camera, giving the illusion that he is right there while it’s all happening. This, however, would eliminate the sense of pacing and time, one of the key traits an offline editor embodies. Other traits that an offline editor might end up losing would be selecting the shots for the sequence. In traditional media, such as film, or TV, the editor would select the appropriate shot, camera angle, and take to follow up from the previous shot in order to make up one whole cohesive timeline and sequence. However, if everything was shot in 360 degrees, over a period of a couple of minutes or so, I don’t think there would be much footage the editor can choose from in terms of camera angle or takes.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, with 360 degree cameras emerging and VR technology coming up, would jobs or roles in the industry slowly die out or face “extinction”? It’s funny, because this VR project is trying to convey the message of Indigenous culture facing threat of being forgotten, while the technology employed to convey this message is something that might kill out older trades in the industry. Of course, we’ll always have films, TV series, dramas, documentaries, and more for a good ten to twenty years or so. But I think it’s still worth considering how are all these new technologies impacting the future of media in general.

I’m not sure how this post fits into the assignment 2, but I just found it thought provoking to consider how new technologies and new media might impact the occupations of not only both past and present, but in the future as well.

The trailer to the VR film can be viewed here.

What In the World of New Media?! – Week #3.2

March 16, 2018 / Sem / 0 Comments

During this week’s Thursday’s class, we were presented with several online projects used to convey, sway, motivate, or entertain the users and consumers.

One of the projects was a simple tool that allowed people to communicate without the need of registering or creating a new account. This separates itself from the torrent of programmes and apps to allow people to communicate from all over the world with the exception of creating an online account, one might have already too many accounts to keep track of these day. Hence this platform might come in handy for such situation. You can access the free website here.

Having seen the website put to use by my fellow classmates and tutor, made me recall an episode of Modern Family, called, Connection Lost. Which in my opinion is one of the best episodes of the series, just for the fact that the entire episode was based off Claire’s computer screen, and it shows her communicating with her family through Facetime and texts messages as she stalks her daughter’s (Haley) Facebook account to find out of her whereabouts. The episode exhibits almost all of the 5 principles that Manovich has mentioned in the readings, which mind boggles me how far we’ve come, not just in terms of modern technology, but filmmaking and script writing as well. In television series, there is always a “bottle” episode where the entire episode takes place in a single location, the iconic “Fly” episode of Breaking Bad is prime example. In this case, this episode of Modern Family does takes place in a single location, however, not a physical one, but in the realm’s of Claire’s computer. Which some might argue is a gateway through into a whole different dimension and opportunities to explore, a whole new virtual location, if you will.

This inspires me to do something similar or perhaps explore the possibility of doing screen capture or screen recording in relation to being interactive. The content of what I will be actually recording or capturing isn’t really clear at the moment, as I might have to go through several discussions with my group mate to see if we are on the same page with our research ideas. However, I am pretty confident we would like to tackle the formal quality of interactivity, hyperlinks, and if possible, branch out into exploring hypermedia.

I’m New to New Media – Week #3.1

March 14, 2018 / Sem / 0 Comments

Weeks 3 and 4’s readings cover the whole technical definition of what is new media, and it’s no coincidence that the chapter was called, “What Is New Media?”, from the book, “The Language of New Media.”

What intrigued me how was the author, Manovich, can classify and categorise multiple platforms of media, new and old, digital and analog, with such ease. Just thinking of the magnitude of how computers, AI, and algorithms have made an impact on people’s everyday lives can be overwhelming, however, Manovich was able to break things down to simple terms and classify various platforms, methods of production, exhibition and distribution, into an easy way for readers like myself to understand. An example would be how she broke down the principles of new media into 5 characteristics, and contrasting them with old media.

In the third principle, Automation, Manovich identified 2 types of automation, low and high level of automation. And as she describes how high level automation functions using a “smart camera” in a virtual environment where a user can interact with animated characters, engaging in conversations and dialogue based on the user’s emotional state, reactions, facial expressions and more. I can’t help but to be reminded of an episode I’ve watched on Black Mirror, called, “Be Right Back”. Where the plot revolves around a girl who communicates with her dead boyfriend through an app that gathers all of the past tweets, Facebook posts, comments, likes, shares, pictures, videos, basically developing an online avatar of the guy from his online profile and virtual footprints. An analysis of the video can be viewed below.

The reading also raises issues on media texts that could already exists as some form on the Internet.

“These technologies allowed us, over the course of 150 years, to accumulate an unprecedented amount of media materials…” (Manovic, 2002)

This line along with the paragraph this line was from reminded me of a time during my internship back home in Singapore with a post-production company, VHQ Media. I was interned as an offline editor, and I was tasked to find stock footage for a TV commercial of not just a few shots, but quite a decent amount of landscape shots of birds, weather, and more, which will be employed by the online artist at a later stage in the post production. I realise how reliant we have become on existing media that has already been shot or produced and then using it in another way or representation before it to takes on as a new role or function, as a new form of media, and I strongly believe it does not stop there. Websites such as, Getty Images, Pond5, and ShutterStock, provide stock footage, royalty free images and music, soundtracks, to users all over the world to create their own content. Sounds a little oxymoronic to me. You buy other people’s work to use in your own projects to make new media? This can also be tied up with Week 2’s reading by Adrian Miles on “all parts remain as parts” on the Internet, simply implying that, although I have bought the rights to use a certain stock image or footage from any of those stock image website, other interested parties are able to purchase that same footage or image, and are free to use them however they like.

The reading explains the simplicity of hyperlinks and the theory behind hypermedia, which I think it is worth exploring in Assessment 2, and I will uncover over the next couple of blog posts. Basically unpacking the “interactive” side of new media, and seeing what my group mate and I can do with open interactivity and closed interactivity as demonstrated in the reading.

It’s in the Story – Reflection – Week #2.2

March 9, 2018 / Sem / 0 Comments

So our little experiment went pretty well. As mentioned in my previous blog post, Liam and I were targeting the Interactive aspect of Instagram and to see what depths we can achieve beyond the very common comments that are usually related to the very picture being uploaded to the Instagram account. We wanted to see if Instagram could be pushed to something more serious, for our case, an SOS call for help.

The tools for a help call are on Instagram stories in times of crisis, there is the polling function to ask for opinions from your friends, there is obviously a comment section where people can reply do your stories, and tagging function where you can tag your location so that people know where you are so that they can locate you or provide some form of assistance. So why not try using them in a different way from how ordinary users would.

Through the means of conducting this test, we found out that due to the limited amount of duration that could be uploaded as a story, we had to keep things tight and concise. No time for fooling around or spending too much time on the backstory. Since we wanted everything to be spontaneous, hence we took on the “vlogging” approach where our subject will be taking “selfie-like” videos and commentating over the series of events that unfolds. We did consider other approach such as the POV, and third-person, but in order to keep this realistic, we stuck with the selfie in most of the shots.

Another limitation we’ve encountered along the way was that we had to keep our aspect ration to 9:16, instead of the usual 16:9 like us, MEdia practitioners, are so used to. Hence, this sort of affected the way we had to frame certain shots, which in turn should help us keep to the theme of being real. I guess one thing to note is that online content is usually produced in a 9:16 format or possibly even a 1:1 format especially if that content is going to be posted on a Facebook or Instagram newsfeed. During my internship last semester in a post-production house, back home in Singapore, we had a couple of jobs that involved producing a Facebook advertisement, and it gave us a hard time figuring out how to conform and manage the media in 9:16 aspect ratio for our timeline settings, as the commercial was shot in a 16:9 format with the camera flipped 90 degrees. Don’t intend to get too in depth with the technicalities, but there are definitely some technical aspects that should be considered before producing anything for online platforms.

In terms of the respond we manage to get from the followers, well, we found out that it is subject to the amount of followers the user has (obviously), but also how active the user is on Instagram. If it’s a passive account, example, someone who just uses his account to view other people’s posts and pictures rather than posting his own content, might have fewer responders to his cry for help as compared to someone who might be posting regularly.

I think I would like to expand a little more research on the interaction part of social media, not just through Instagram, but maybe on Facebook, or even Youtube. Particularly with the use of a Live stream. I find that initially this “LIVE” word is usually related to someone who is a star or holds some sort of a celebrity status, but now anyone can go Live, it’s really intriguing. However in order to go Live, I should have something to present Live, and that’s where I might need a little more thinking and considering before I dive into the next assignment, where content is being focused on, rather than what platform the content is on. And what differentiates good content from bad content, as well as, is the Internet bias towards certain content or vice versa?

Interaction In Instagram – Week #2.1

March 7, 2018 / Sem / 0 Comments

InstaStories has always intrigued me. It may not be the first of its kind, but I have only been using Instagram and Facebook as far as my social media apps are concern. And the cuts between stories always seemed like an actual cut in a well edited film, whether it was employed intentionally or unintentionally by the user. Hence I thought of the idea of using the cut as an editing tool to cut between shots in an Instastory.

During our brainstorming session on Monday’s class, our table raised the topic of how do we use Instagram for more than just posting beautiful pictures, moments, and advertisements. Therefore my partner for this assignment 1, Liam, and I thought of exploring the formal quality of the amount of interaction within Instagram. We know it allows people to comment, converse, tags, sharing locations, and more. But we were wondering if we could break the barrier of only just having mediocre comments like, “Oh! That looks awesome! Wish we could be there!” or, “Congratulations! All the best for your marriage!” and more.

As far as Instagram goes, there is very little linking across different social media platforms other than sharing your pictures on other social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and/or, Tumblr. And for Instastories, you can’t share it on other platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook Stories, and more. However, you could download or save the video you’ve recorded, and then maybe upload it via the other social media apps as you wish. Other than that, Instagram seems to be lacking in the cross-platform-sharing space. If I wanted to share a post or picture I’ve seen on my Instagram newsfeed, I would have to take a snapshot of my phone screen and then share it as a picture on whatever platform I’m using. (ie. WhatsApp, Facebook, an email, or even as another Instagram post).

Hence, Liam and I decided to use Instastory as a means to put out a distressed signal or an SOS call, if you like, to see if anyone really treats such stories seriously. It may be like a boy who cried wolf situation, and you might say we’re doing something similar to the World of the Worlds radio broadcast which brought a whole stir of events to the people who actually thought they were being invaded by real aliens. Of course, we’re not hoping to achieve the same outcome, but just to test the water to see if anyone’s going to respond to our cry for help.

The actual plot or storyline is still undergoing works and changes, as we have to take into consideration the limitations of using Instastories as our platform, each cut has to be a maximum of 10 seconds before we need to make another story. And how are we going to present the whole story, whether in a first person, or as a commentary, or a mix of both. I foresee we definitely would need to do several trial and errors, which is good that Instastories allows people to delete their post if they’re not happy with what goes up on the internet.

Another thing to consider is how are we going to document all of these down. As mentioned above, Instagram allows us to save our stories, so that’s that, however, I might shoot some stills to cover some “behind the scenes” shots. We’ll be meeting again on Thursday’s class and probably shoot our story then. Looking forward to that.

Web 2 point what? – Week #1.1

March 2, 2018 / Sem / 0 Comments

In the first class of semester, we have been introduced to Web 2.0. The ability to create, edit, share, and comment has never been more feasible than the last 5 years. Being digital natives, we know of its existence, we may use it in our everyday lives, but we may not quite understand the scale or magnitude of how it has impacted the current media landscape. The internet has brought people closer than ever and it has been affecting other forms of media particularly the more traditional platforms.

How media is being produced as well as consumed has to be reevaluated by the people who are constantly putting out content, be it online, broadcast, or print, because, let’s face it, almost any form of media could be migrated into an online form one way or another. I have been following this YouTube channel called, Mightycarmods, and it was created by these 2 guys from Sydney, Australia, producing how-to videos, documentaries, travel vlogs, and other content falling in the realms of automotive goodness. What entices me in watching their videos and hitting the ‘subscribe’ button is not only that I share a common interest in cars, but how their videos are being made. Since it’s mostly self funded with some support from a local car insurance company, everything else is more or less on their own.

If we were to breakdown the videos into its technical qualities, obviously it wouldn’t meet the mark of a Hollywood blockbuster film, but reasonable enough for people to have a very good grasp of what is going on on-screen. In an Q&A episode they did in 2012 (yes, they do entire episodes just answering questions posted on their forum by their fans every now and then), one of the frequently asked questions were how do they make their videos and what sort of equipment do they use. And they were using average video recording devices such as the Canon EOS 70D, a common tool in most youtubers’ inventory for making videos, just for the fact that it’s affordable and it can produce decent quality in terms of video recording. One thing they did stress though is SOUND, which many might overlook the fact that the sound quality of a video would affect its viewership. I do admit that I would get turned off by a video with very bad sound quality especially they have been recorded straight off from the built-in microphones on the camera which are not the world’s best sound recording devices.

Ten years later, and the channel has now grown to a whopping 2.6 million subscribers and has done a diverse range of projects from little bite sized mythbusting videos to feature length films all uploaded on their Youtube channel. The ability to exercise their freedom of creative thinking is definitely shown in their videos, and this is aided by the fact that they have no commitments to any networks, TV stations, investors (other than the one I’ve mentioned), or other financial heavy weights that might want to have a say in how they should run things. Having said that, they have been approached by Discovery network to broadcast their videos on one of their sister channels. Hence, you could say they’ve gone full cycle? From a little home made video producer, to network related content. Which is interesting to study as this could very well be the shape of the current media landscape where networks are approaching online content creators for their content and buying their rights to air them on television? I’m positive that there are many other youtubers who have been approached by networks to air their videos on television, the question is what goes into the fine lines of the contract between these youtube born stars and the networks.

Thinking of how fast technology is changing and advancing is always daunting. Every now and then I hear of new devices being put out by tech giants and the capabilities of these devices are astonishing. Can’t help but to wonder where do I fit in this ever changing space, as cliche as it sounds, I guess only time will tell.

Reflections Off a Mirror

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