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?

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.