This week our lectorial we learnt about the laws and rules about copyright, the united state of America as an example which they have interesting set of copyright laws, different country will have different terms in order to protect the content we publish originally. I believe to work in the media industry, it is very important to make sure we follow the copyright rules closely, when we are using published production from another territory we still needed to make sure we have ticked off the copyright laws.

Myself found this lectorial extremely helpful. My family was from China where I noticed people in the Chinese media industry didn’t take copyright so importantly. The k-pop industry has become more and more popular all around the world, China has been influenced by the k-pop culture for sure. A lots of popular variety shows from Korea has attract the Chinese media industry’s attention. One variety show in China called ‘happy gagman’ was ‘created’ recently, which lots of people found it is extremely similar to the Korean variety show – ‘gag concert’. Its true that we can’t deny ‘Creation was originated from imitation, but the gagmen in ‘gag concert’ spend day and nights to produce different ideas for their fans and followers, it is extremely difficult to be gagman in Korea. This episode boomed in between the two countries, lots of Korean said hope the Chinese can pay respect to what other people have produce or published, as the author take a long time for this idea.

Reflecting back to week7 lectorial and reading, we noticed the same example of the gap toothed women was shown during the lectorial which really attracted my attention. I think is very clever that who has noticed the specail of gap-toothed women and the director has make it a advance instead of a flaw.

Categories are groupings that individuals or societies create to organize their knowledge of the world. It may base on scientific research, and these will often attempt to account exhaustively for all the data in question. An example of categorical form was Gap-Toothed Women, which was conceived, directed and filmed by Les Blank, who has been making personal documentary films since 1960s. I have never heard of a category called gap-toothed women until I saw Blank’s documentary and I think the documentary was well break down into segments that indicate that gap-toothed was seemed to be flaws at the beginning, by the end, Blank shows how being gap-toothed is associated with attractiveness, active and creativity. I particular like the part when there were few shots give on a close view of a woman’s mouth with a large gap and leads to their ‘signature’ bite on an apple, this was sort of showing being gap-tooth was disadvantaged but Blank has shown this through a humor, cute way.

WEEK 7 readings – what are collaborative teams?

Before any readings was done, in my perspective collaborative teams would have each member understand their responsibilities, the team members have common target, performance goals and everyone takes one part of responsibility. I have heard a lot from my friends that they have met group members who never contribute anything, so they have to finish everything by themselves. I think it is very important to grasp the skill of working collaboratively. First of all, ‘a team is…a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.’ Each member engages through self-organization and through shared commitment to their goal. In order to evolve to high performance team trust, sharing, self- organization and mutual accountability.

Now, this part is where I am most curious, when a team get to divergence? There are ways to solve divergence, but I think is better to keep the original members will take less time. For example, if we take a member out, how can the rest of members absorb the person’s role and does this need a shift in power/ influence or control? In another way, if we change the team’s goal questions still emerge, such as: how can we best formulate our complementary skills around the new goal? Or is there any reason for the new compelling reason for the team to exist?

I believe everyone can understand that it is very difficult for all the individual characters to come together with our complementary skills, so I think this article is basically telling us to hold mutually accountable and do our best in order to let the group meet the performance goal.

PB4 is going to be complete within small groups of 3-4, we received ‘institution’ as an area to be explore upon. We were very confused of what we are going to do upon this area, so we started with brainstorming of what do we think of when we looked at the word institution. I first think of schools, church and company, they are the most obvious institutions we see the most.

What are the others that might or seat on the edge of institution? Institution is a broad range, so we have to pick a specific area to focus on. Institution let me think of k-pop, Korean pop music is blowing all around the world and attracts different age level’s followers. Myself as one of them who are very addicted to K-pop, the movies, music videos, dramas and variety shows, most people are attracted by the idol groups. They can sing, dance, acting and they are good looking, before the idols debut, they have to pass audition of a particular entertainment. After they have entered the entertainment, they are arranged to learn to be a celebrity and this is what people called ‘trainers’ before debut. There is no time limit of training time, some trainers are lucky so they can debut within a short training time, but some trainers have been practice for more than 10 years. The trainers practice dance, singing, acting, how to show up in the public etc. everyday and they get an evaluation exam after a period of time.

Recently, there is a popular variety show called ‘Produce 101’. Which means 101 trainers were selected from every entertainment in Korea and combines to make this variety show, at the final chapter of this show, the judges will pick 11 from 101 to debut. Although this variety show creates a huge reverberation in the k-pop industry, lots of people have argued that as the 101 of them were select out from each company to the public, so they do not belong to any entertainment anymore. Amount of them are not even over 18 years old, so many people think they are not allowed to release songs and perform in the public as celebrities before they actually belong to an entertainment.

Kpop is an interesting topic to me as it sits on the edge of institution, but we can still argue it not include in institution just as a culture.

Collaboration, I was quite interested when the word was presented on the big lecture screen. I do think collaboration is one of the important skills that everyone should grasp and I have noticed in the Australia educational system we learn it since kinder. Once we really get out from the university, collaboration is the basic skill that is necessary to be able to survive in this society. I believe for media or communication work people is more important to be able to work collaboratively.

I was originated from China, the reason could be there are too many people, but the educational system there is completely different to Australia. When I first arrived to Melbourne I was in year 8 and I received the first collaborative group assignment in Geography, everything was new to me in particularly how the system works and how we divided work to each person. I found that learning within a group actually helped me a lot, I speak English as second language, so I need the local students to correct the grammar mistakes for me.

ZHIYUN QIU – reflection for myself

• ‘more use of found footages, but the ones used were suitable ‘
• ‘the use of shadow when my interviewee was dancing, good angle that i didn’t get myself filmed’
• ‘like the flashing stars edited through the who video, worked very well…’

WANTING XU –

• The introduction of her interviewee was well edited, the different shots of her introducing herself which has really shown her characteristic, she looks comfortable talking in front of the camera and she loves to talk.
• Maybe have some more questions for her, with deeper questions such as: why do you study Spanish

Chynnae Jewell –

https://youtu.be/hGBaJy8FI64

• I like her title, it really sums up what her video going to talk about, her interviewee keeps changing her mind of what she wanted to do
• The use of found footage was very deliberate

Camilla Moi –

• Title was very straight forward
• I like the background being used when the interviewee was dancing, very suitable for his urban dance style
• I can tell how Camilla has designed the interview questions very deliberately that his introduction was very cleared and complete

http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/photographer-candace-karch-and-her-97-year-old-muse-marie-ulmer/

A news title have really attracted my attention — ‘Whatever, I’m only 97!’, it was a group of photos taken by photographer Candace Karch.  “I photograph people in moments. These people are characters in a fictitious book that if I sat down and wrote words, they would all be my heroes.” Candace met a 97 years old artist, Ms. Ulmer and they quickly developed friendship over their collaboration of arts. Marie Ulmer is a 97 years old artist and she is represented by Photographer Candace Karch at her Bambi Gallery in 2007.

Ms. Ulmer is described as Candace’s muse and she continues to make one piece of artwork for the last 90 years. What has attracted me to read all her news and reports was her positive attitude to face everything in her life, Ms. Ulmer says that: “The universe is very large, and yet you find the smallest things like grains of sand and moonbeams round. It is so wonderful to know God put them there for us to find.”  She is turning 98 in August, but she is already planning for her 100 celebration party with her friends, I like how she face her surroundings and how she stays positive with all the things.

By reading through the first reading piece for week 6, I was thinking how is the COMMedia introduced to the students in the first few weeks and how did the tutors design the program. The reading is basically emphasizing the important to learn through experience and as media workers in the future we need to be aware to everything around us intentionally. It is quite interesting that I can gradually find out why we are asked to write four pieces of blog per week. As media learners or the media worker of the next generation, it is our job and our responsibility to be aware of everything around us. ‘Noticing as used here is a collection of practices bother for living in, and hence learning from, experience, and for informing future practice’. I guess, the program is designed in this way because the progress is more important than the final piece. Through experience, observing, listening and recording our surroundings, we might get inspired and collect experience/ information which will inform our future practice. In this media course, I believe tutors want more of how our brain is processing from the beginning to the middle we might get stuck and then how do we get through the whole thing at last. The process will teach us more when we look back.

1. What is the ‘controlling idea’ (Robert McKee) of your portrait?

The most interested thing that attracted me was he is a dancer, but he dance is because dance has helped him to find his self-value, so he continued on. I think the most important/ interesting thing I wanted to highlight or indicate about my interviewee is the two sides of his personality, Jim told me: ‘because the existence of the ‘black’, the white seems more dazzling’, his words really inspired me on how to arrange the sequence and which direction am I going to. I wanted to highlight how Jim overcame all the depression and struggle, so I wanted to emphasize the turning point has an extremely important impact on him until now.

2. How is your portrait film structured?

The structure/sequence of my portrait film was inspired by my interviewee, from the list of interview questions, I have asked him: ‘If you need to produce a self-portrait film for yourself, what are the shots you might include or highlight which really tells who you are?’ Jim answered that, I think I will start with myself in a dark dance studio doing athletic, I can only see my face and I am sweating. Story will go back from this moment like a call back to the black memories of mine and then gradually move to the light part to indicate the white of myself. As the result, how I structured was the black part which is a brief summary of his pass in the beginning; Turning point is in the dance studio and it is dark and gloomy at the start than gradually brightening; The end of this film will be how he survived by dancing and how he finds who he really is through dance.

3. What do you want your audience to make of your interviewee?

As a dancer myself, I find confidence and self-value through dance, and so does for my interviewee, dance taught him who he really is, where he should be and he finds his self-value through dance. I want to tell my audience through this film is: if there is fog in front of you, then there must be rainbow behind you.

4. How is our portrait being narrated? Why? How does it affect the structure?

It is narrated and structured through a time sequence from his pass where he is very lost to the turning point, which is the highlight of the film that he have started to dance. The last part of the film will be what his status is now.

5. What role will the ‘found footage’ play in your portrait?

Comparison, I guess is the largest part of my portrait film. As I am highlighting how dance has changed and helped Jim, so I used comparison of his dark part and light part to emphasize how he is different.

6. Does your portrait have a dramatic turning point?

I do, the turning point I represent was manipulate by the lighting, at first there is only a spot light on his face and gradually the light bright up the whole space.

7. When does this turning point in your portrait and why?

I have designed this turning point at the one-third through, as I have briefly summarized my interviewee’s pass in a dark tone and the turning point is gradually introduced in the one-third part of the film which gives me more time to highlight the difference between the pass and now.

8. How does your portrait gather and maintain momentum?

In my perspection, I found very interested in chatting with different people and listen to their little stories. Doesn’t matter what kind of person they are, chatty or not, there must be stories behind everyone which caused their personality. Through the whole progression, I kept in touch with my interviewee which made him feel easier to talk with me so he can tell me more. And I really think my interviewee is the best, he has so many stories to ‘dig out’ and they are so dramatic! Every time I found something new that I may like to add to the footage, I felt I have another step forward to the finish piece.

9. Where will your portrait’s dramatic tension come from?

I think the tension might create by the tone I used through the whole film, I manipulate the lighting which I think is an important tool in order to appeal tension to the audience. Through the beginning the tone of lighting was chilly, dark and dusky. I have carefully manipulated the lighting in turning point, there is a spot light right on my interviewee’s face and then the environment light gradually spread out and brighten up the whole space.

10. Does the portrait have a climax and/ or resolution?

• Climax: When he is extremely down and trapped by his situation, when he was struggling, he has started dance training. Through day and night, none stop for a whole year.
• Resolution: Dance appeared as his mental guide and pulled him out to the lightness, showed him who he is and what kind of person he can be. ‘I am free and I am satisfied’.