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Project Brief 4 – Reflection – Week #13

June 2, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Alas, the end has come for us to say that we’re done with Project Brief 4. Both audio and video essays are very much completed and ready to be submitted through our google drives. It comes with great pleasure to be writing this blog post, not only because it’s the end of yet another long and gruelling Project Brief, but also the end of the first semester of uni, but I will reserve my comments on a separate posts regarding that. For now, I’ll express my thoughts and feelings that occurred over the course of this assignment.

For starters, it is the first assignment that is done as a group instead of individual. This comes with a set of pros and cons, fortunately, it all panned out with more pros than cons for this particular assignment. Way back in week 4 or 5, we received a lecture on teamwork and collaboration, which I mentioned in a blog post that I was pretty baffled that even in uni we are still being taught how to work with people. Thankfully, with the stroke of luck or whatever you want to call it, my group mates and I were all within the same wavelength and it was easy communicating with one another. Even when we couldn’t agree on certain things, we managed to work something out and achieve a general consensus accomodating most of our individual opinions.

The group didn’t waste any time getting started on PB4. We sat down to brainstorm ideas and arguments related to our topic, Audience. I still remember one of our very first group meetings, we were tossing out ideas, thoughts, opinions, personal experiences, academic articles, basically anything and everything that we could think of that is related to the word Audience. Like the other topics on media affordances, Audience is a really broad topic, and we needed to streamline our ideas to a specific question to form an argument and debate around that. This was where our annotated bibliographies come in to help narrow down on our findings and find a specific topic for us to debate back and forth on. Personally, it was a challenge putting together an annotated bibliographies as I’ve not done anything like this before. Moreover going through all these academically written articles and journals, it was quite a tough read for most of them. What more, sieving out information that might be related to our essay topics, and putting it into context of our arguments.

A few weeks went by and we were ready to record our audio essay. The night before, we had a conference call over Skype to finalise on our audio scripts. Unfortunately, I wasn’t available to attend the recording as I had a lecture to attend, but I accepted the role of editing and mixing the entire audio essay, as well as adding extra textural elements and composed a starting/ending theme song into it. I guess that should count as my “voice” in the essay, since my actual voice is absent from the audio essay.

Once we got the main bulk of the audio essay down, we began planning, storyboarding, and coming up with scripts for our video essay. Since we’ve already got the main content and arguments in paper, it was only natural for us to bring those into live action. We thought of a place and setting for everything to take place, and what better way to present on the topic of audience than being a group of audience ourselves. A fellow group member volunteered her lounge room over at her place for us to shoot our video essay and that was pretty much our set for the video essay. A bunch of us sitting on a couch in front of a television set talking about the whole concept of the shift of passive audience to active audience as we move from broadcast era into the post-broadcast era. Since non of us received any professional acting lessons or came from any performing arts background, it was a challenge for us to memorise our lines and speaking right into the camera. We had to do several takes on and on before we could get a hang of it. A simple trick we did was to place one of our laptops right in front of the television and that became a “teleprompter” for us in case any of us forgets our lines. Another minor problem we faced was getting a clean audio recording. The mic that came with the Sony MC50 that we loaned from the tech store at Building 9 was too sensitive and it was picking up almost everything in the room, and since the room was not acoustically treated, it sounded really echoey and boomy in the recording. To counter this issue, we decided to record our speech on a separate device, using one of our iPhones as a audio recording device. Thankfully, the audio that was recorded using the iPhone was not as echoey or boomy as the one from the Sony MC 50.

One of us decided to take on the role as the overall editor for the video essay rough cut. However, we sat down as a group to chip in our own input to the video essay during one of our final group meetings. We booked an editing suite at Building 9 to sit down and run through the final cut of the video essay. We also took the opportunity to target any last few kinks that were in the audio essay and made final adjustments to both audio and video essays before they were ready for submission.

PB4 is definitely not an easy task to be taken lightly, and it was pretty daunting in the beginning as the tutor distributed the hardcopy around the class. To see that we had to produce, not one, but two essays, both with different content and only 30% could taken from each essays, was initially quite intimidating. Just visually, looking at the project brief felt suffocating and the list of submission requirements just seemed never ending. However, we took it one strike at a time and planned our group discussions, and what we needed to accomplish at the end of every meeting. One thing I would attribute the ease of going through this assignment was how we managed our time. Time management was crucial when it comes to producing two essays. We needed to know when we should put a pause for the audio essay to start on our video essay and also finding a common time for everyone to meet. The group had to rely on skype calls quite a fair bit on a few occasions, due to circumstances that we are not able to meet in person or the timing just does not permit us from seeing each other, however, it was these sessions that we managed to cover quite a lot of ground when it comes to coming up with our scripts, ideas, and content for both essays. I also felt fortunate that our tutor allowed us to carry out our discussion during class time therefore we had more time to ourselves to focus on other assignments from different courses.

On a personal level, I enjoyed collaborating with my group mates coming together to produce these two final products. You hear stories and rumours from other course mates about so and so not carrying their weight, or so and so is not turning up for meetings and so on, but I guess we’re fortunate enough that this wasn’t the case for us for this particular assignment. Look forward to the many collaborations I might be participating in future.

 

Feedback Feedback – Week #12

May 27, 2016 / / 0 Comments

For the last 2 workshops, we reviewed our audio and video rough cuts to our tutor during class and received really good constructive feedback from her in order to achieve the desired grade the group is aiming for.

For one, our audio essay lacked texture, and it was rather monotonous. This I can agree with, as I was the one responsible for mixing and editing the audio clips together and adding sound effects, music, and other sound clips that could lift the audio essay to sound a little more entertaining rather than just 3 people speaking. But due to the limited time in producing a rough cut, this was the main bulk that could be produced for the time being, and adding in extra textual elements would be slightly less taxing than arranging audio recordings and mixing the audio levels.

Our video essay was also coming together, but like the audio essay, it lacked extra textual elements such as found footages, still images, and maybe some minor editing techniques to make the video essay a little more engaging as well as entertaining instead of just 4 people sitting in front of the camera talking. Content wise and arguments, our tutor remarked that it was spot on and it was through provoking to the viewer, but also has a good resolution at the end.

This left the group going back to our drawing board to see how we could enhance our audio and video essays, adding extra sound effects, clips, found footages, images, and applying various technical effects to lighten up our essays to a more entertaining level. It’s easy to just produce an audio or video essay, after all, it’s just an essay with people reading out from a script through video or audio, but it’s not easy to make the final product something the listener/viewer can maintain their attention before they decide to stop and doze off into oblivion. We planned to use the remaining time frame that’s left before the deadline for PB4 to enhance our essays.

Not so Good with Goodbyes – Week #12

May 26, 2016 / / 0 Comments

This is pretty much the last week of teaching, lectures, tutorials, and, meeting people. As the clock reaches the last few minutes, students would line up around the classroom door to leave, and awkwardly looking at each other thinking of what to say as we all know we might not be seeing each other again next semester, particularly for school electives.

Personally, I would just smile and thank the tutor and carry on with my own way. If I do engaged with a conversation with a fellow course mate, would probably break into a conversation on how time passed so fast, and how the first semester of uni just flew by. When you’re actually in action while the semester is going on, you tend to wonder why does time pass so slowly and you can’t wait for the next break to happen so that you can enjoy your freedom, but when the last day of classes comes, you’ll think back and wonder where did all the time go and what have you managed to achieve over the period of the past few months.

I never felt more on top of the ball in this week’s lectorial, and for once I felt like I understood everything that the lecturer was saying. Only because, it was regarding the various studios that we will be attending next semester, and not something regarding media affordances with big words, theories, concepts and academic references. Don’t get me wrong, I try to understand and grasp the knowledge the lecturers are trying to convey to us during these weekly lectorials, but some times I find it a struggle to even just understand these theories and applying it into real life. I do question myself if I’ll ever apply this knowledge to my future job scope. Anyway, I digress, this week’s lectorial’s main focus was on the balloting and an extended announcement on attending a studio pitch that will be held on the 9th of June. I still have no clue what studios that I’ll be interested in, but I guess that studio pitching session should help ease my decision making when I come to it.

Come Wednesday, my weekly Media 1 workshop went on for the last time this semester. Our tutor was sweet enough to give out little bite sized candies like Maltesers and Sneakers. Just little gestures like this makes us, the students, feel like we actually matter and not just a body of people you come in to meet day in and day out. I would like to express my appreciation towards all the tutors, across all the courses I took this semester, and hope to see them again soon.

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?

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.

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.

Audience – Week #8

April 30, 2016 / / 0 Comments

For Project Brief 4, my group of 4 was assigned the topic of “Audience”. It is such a simple word and we all know what does the word means. But when we start to unpack the meaning and various definitions behind the word, it starts to get really diverse and there are so many levels of theory relating to becoming an audience. It could be a simple meaning like being an audience member of a play or a magic show, to becoming a target audience of a product being promoted and driven to be sold to make profits from various corporate companies. Not forgetting the general audience of TV, radio, film, and online multimedia social platforms where sometimes the hunted becomes the hunter.

We live in the day and age where we can catch up with our favourite TV programmes on demand. Gone are the days where we have to set our VHS recorders to tape our favourite TV shows, we can now catch up on TV series online at our own convenience, and pushing a step further with the tagline, “Anytime, Anywhere…”. It has now become an age where we might be witnessing a shift in power from the producers of a TV programme to the actual audiences. It used to be TV producers control what we watch and when we watch it on our old CRT television sets, now, the audience have the control over when they get to watch it, on their own device of their choice (ie. a tablet, laptop, phone or TV.). Another thing the producers are very much afraid of is the ratings of their programme. What classifies as a good show? The number of people viewing it of course! Producers are always seeking different means and ways to keep their ratings up even if it is to listen to the audience and deliver what they want on screen. In certain ways, the producers have become at the audience’s mercy to boost ratings. Is this the new shift in power?

On the other hand of the spectrum, we have advertisements, TV commercials, product placements, sponsorships, endorsements and so on, so keep audience buying more and more products. For decades, the media industry has become a platform for many companies to “create awareness” of their products to the public, hence hoping to drive up sales of their products in order to make profit. Are the audience a victim here of the power of advertising and marketing delivered by the media?

It is an endless debate if the power has shifted from the hands of the producers to the hands of the audience and vice versa. Currently, my group is still on the research of how it all began, and where the media bubble became as big as it is today. Are we seeing a new dawn of an age that we might not be ready? With the uprising of citizen journalism and user source content (USC), media texts and articles are now made by the audience, for the audience. Then who are the ones being the producers now? Would it turn out to become a catch 22 situation where the audience can’t function if there were no producers, but the producers rely on the audience for fundings and reputation. We’ll find out soon, hopefully.

Peer Feedback – Week #7

April 24, 2016 / / 0 Comments

In this week’s workshop we were given feedback from our peers regarding our PB3.

I received feedbacks, both positive and negative, one of each was that the sound wasn’t mixed all that well. One of my peers found it a little distracting when my subject is speaking, her voice seems to be competing with the backing music and it was a struggle for them to focus on what she was saying. Which I found it a little odd, as I was very particular in mixing the audio levels, especially coming from an audio background, I thought it was one of my strengths in mixing audio levels in a short clip like this. I guess sometimes it boils down to the source that you’re listening from. I was mixing the audio levels on a pair of professional studio headphones, and my PB3 was played out from my laptop speakers, therefore I think there was some difference in terms of audio quality. Well, at least, now I know that I have to cater for that when mixing audio levels in future projects.

As for positive feedbacks that I’ve received, one of my peers mentioned that the subject matter was interesting and engaging with the audience. He thought it was something new and entertaining. Having said that, it was some much of a portrait video of someone, but rather more towards the subject of ‘Singlish’. Hopefully, the tutors who are going to mark my assignment would be a little lenient on that, as it is still a good representation of my subject and her background coming from Singapore and what she’s doing in Melbourne.

I believe that peer evaluation is a strong tool in gathering critical and constructive feedback, as it is from the ground, unlike coming from someone like a tutor or lecturer, there is a certain motive of wanting you to achieve a certain grade or meeting the marking criteria or assessment constraints, but coming from your peers, they are in your shoes and they can provide some views that may be beyond the sights of the classroom, such as personal experiences, trending affairs and more.

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