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?