Monthly Archives: May 2014

The power of a click: Triple J Hack’s most shared article

BY EMILY MALONE
(Photo: Jay Morrison via flickr)

Last week the Australian radio program Hack on Triple J reached a record number of shares with an article posted to their Facebook page.

 

Alecia Eberhardt originally published the article Stop saying “I have a boyfriend” in an American magazine in September. However, the Internet has resurrected the article and it has quickly become a viral hit.

With over 1000 shares, nearly 4500 likes and close to 400 comments on Hack’s Facebook, the article was quickly circulated onto many young Australian’s screens. Hack said the link was viewed by more than half a million people.

In the piece, Eberhardt argues that women should stop using the phrase ‘I have a boyfriend’ to deter men who are hitting on them because it buys into power imbalances between men and women. She believes that women should be empowered to decline an advance simply by saying no, without calling on a male’s supposed possession of you. She thinks we have been socialised to use patriarchal bargaining to our advantage instead of challenging it.

Male privilege is “I have a boyfriend” being the only thing that can actually stop someone from hitting on you because they respect another male-bodied person more than they respect your rejection/lack of interest.

Hack is celebrated as a unique national news source, discussing relevant issues to young Australians from diverse viewpoints. They embrace the strong history of talkback radio by inviting their listeners to contribute and critique the debate on air, which frequently results in a robust and topical discussion that is pertinent to their demographic.

Last Thursday, Hack broadcasted a 30-minute segment discussing the article. Host Tom Tilley interviewed the author, as well as Mamamia writer Alyx Gorman, and professional dating coach Jonathan Sankey.

Whilst the article has sparked some great feminist commentary, I think the importance of it going viral is that it continues to show the power of new media. Every day, new audiences are exposed to thought-provoking commentary, which proves the ease of accessibility in our digital age.

The article has opened a contentious conversation about feminism on many online platforms. Twitter has recorded over 1500 tweets with the phrase ‘stop saying i have a boyfriend’ in the past week.

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In a 2013 Neilsen study, Triple J recorded 1.78 million listeners per week on average. Their Hack podcast is downloaded over 125,000 times per month.

There has never been more competition for young people’s media attention, but Triple J is continuing to inform and educate, whilst engaging young audiences in a multi-platform experience.

Week 10: Meeting notes

During class, Imogen showed us the Gantt chart she had prepared using the software SmartSheet. We all agreed on the timelines, even though we set them quite early to allow for mistakes and competing pressures from other projects. We continued discussing project management and how we were going to share the tasks we have left to complete for the project.

We assembled our skills matrix after discussing each team member’s strengths, weaknesses and what they have to offer. We believe that we have delegated the tasks in a balanced and efficient manner in order to produce the best outcome.

We have decided that we are going to try and embrace the spontaneity of our project. The entire point behind it is to explore the diversity and intricacies of life, so we have to try not to stage, create or stunt moments from happening.We want to try and capture as many characteristics from each person including all of their nuances and flaws.

The three of us have began thinking about keyword ideas we might use, despite only having a limited number of clips. Our ideas so far are:

  • family
  • love
  • trust

We are going to try and have the shots done by next week so that we can focus on the editing, essay writing and keywords (which are contingent on the footage we record).

The rest of the lab was dedicated to listening to presentations from other groups, as well as getting some preliminary feedback from Seth and our peers after our first prototype presentation (for a bonus 5%). Seth had concerns about whether the content was complex enough, and asked if we needed to refine the question yet again. He reminded us that we need to get something ‘interesting’ out of each interview, so we might have to ask our subjects to elaborate and give personal anecdotes behind their life lessons. He also got us to consider whether we were ‘close’ enough to the subject in our filming. He suggested that we could use more extreme close-ups to make it more intimate. We did question whether he was asking us to treat each fragment too individually, as opposed to concerning ourselves with what the cumulative effect of the work will be.

We had a really interesting experience separating the video footage from the audio for the first time and listening without the visuals. It was a very different experience with the artefact, which I think helped us further open our eyes to what we are trying to achieve with the work – insights into people using only their voice and feet.

We then went outside to shoot footage for about two hours. Ren was our wonderful cameraman and got some amazing footage. I found it very intimidating approaching strangers and asking to film their feet, however we quickly learned the best way to approach and phrase our invitation. We also discovered that approaching groups of people made them feel more comfortable as they could bounce off their friends and didn’t feel so under pressure. We decided to focus the question a little more towards the notion of what advice you would give someone as a life lesson. We found that probing the question got more interesting, personal answers. We’re really looking forward to seeing how this project comes together.

(Image via flickr)

Week 10: Reflections

The first question of this week’s symposium was “how can we emphasise moments of contemplation through making our Korsakow films?” Adrian said we should encourage the viewer to discover the poetics of our K-films. Their relationship with the content will change as they navigate through the film, so create relations that aren’t literal. Remember that the design of your interface can reflect your intentions of contemplation too. He made the point that repetition is a tool that is often used to inspire contemplation (such as meditation and religious practices). Think about how you build something with your camera and your software, and open up a conversation with these.

Adrian spoke briefly about the idea of ‘gaps’ which need to be filled in by the audience. He said that the more gaps a work has, the more it regards itself as poetically higher. The less gaps, the more popularist it is. I personally have troubles with this – what about people who go against the grain and love both? For example, I have a borderline unhealthy love of binge-watching British and American television dramas – but it’s healthily balanced with academic engagement, exploration and experiment. What’s to say that something popularist can’t be sophisticated? Or vise versa?

In a discussion about Korsakow keywords, it was agreed upon that due to the fine line between showing and telling, and the respect that this deserves, it is better to make your keywords mood or meaning based, as opposed to visual based (which merely skims the surface of what relations and power a work can have). A title or a short statement at the beginning of your film can be a useful tool for giving a frame to contextualise and understand the work within.

Finally, we had a look at the Kuleshov effect, which is fundamental to our understanding of cinema. The juxtaposition demonstrates that meaning is not internet to the shot – it’s established by the relations between the shots. Therefore, meaning lives outside the shots.

(Image via flickr)

Week 09: Troubleshooting

Things have been going pretty well, troubleshooting-wise.

In regards to filming for our final Korsakow project, Ren has been filming on his (very fancy and beautiful) DSLR with a 50mm lens. Imogen has lent us her ‘camera-caddy’ for the filming, which is helping us get stable shots.

I have been doing my editing in GarageBand (for audio), iMovie, and then compressing in MPEG stream clip.

We have decided that in order to maintain good file keeping, the entire project will be stored on Imogen’s hard drive, and we’ve decided on a consistent file-naming protocol to ensure an easy Korsakow build.

I did have to learn how to navigate Google drive a little more now that our final project documentation is being hosted there. But this just really required some clicks around and getting to know it.

I also had to re-familiarise myself with Gantt charts in order to complete the bonus 5% for the final project. However, Imogen told us about some software she had used in the past called SmartSheet, so she built our Gantt chart in there.

The only other troubleshooting I’ve been facing is learning how to best ask the interview question which we’re approaching our interviewees with. It’s getting better as we fine tune it with every time we shoot.

(Image via flickr)

Week 09: Value

This week I wanted to discuss the concept of ‘value’ and what makes a media artefact valuable.

It’s so incredibly and laughably subjective that it’s almost not worth talking about – but hey, I’m going to try anyway.

I think the overwhelming thoughts I have at this moment in (media) time/history, is that we’re so swamped by a media environment of saturation.

On YouTube alone, 450,000 years of video content are watched each and every month worldwide.

Video has become a bit of a ‘throwaway’ piece of culture which we treat as ephemeral amidst a sea of mediocre offerings.

So what makes a piece of content worthy of your attention? What makes it good?

Do you know what?

It doesn’t matter.

These days, it does not matter.

If IM1 is teaching me anything, it’s that I have to learn to let go of the paternalistic notion that I have any control over the content I produce and the audiences who may find and interact with it.

The media environment that is forming, evolving and adapting around us is one that is the opposite of traditional/legacy media: it embraces change, interactivity and experiments. Or rather, those involved in this ‘new’ environment embrace it. And they will find your work if it’s doing something worthwhile. Never underestimate the agency of your audience.

(Image via flickr)

Week 09: Kitchen Stories

I’m going to analyse this student K-film ‘Kitchen Stories’ (2012) using De Bono’s hats.

RED  – My emotional response to the piece was that I found it hard to enjoy. It was about relations of food, using colour.

BLACK – It was very hard to get away from one specific colour, and I had to click through many many many clips to arrive at a new, fresh cluster of fragments. The constant background track was a little distracting and gave it a bit too much of a ‘linear’ feel for me. Each shot generally has different close-ups of the same food from different angles, which quickly became repetitive for me. I found the fragments to be a little too long each to keep me engaged.

YELLOW – I liked the use of multi-language. There was a sense of wholesomeness behind the idea/concept. I felt like there was a very ‘family-oriented’ vibe, with the three different cultures intersecting over their shared love of food. 

GREEN –  The background image stayed the same the entire film (with the previews on top), as does the interface. I would have liked to see what some changes and variety could have added to the film.

 

Week 09: Meeting notes

This week we met to show each other our test clips and discuss which direction to continue taking our idea for the final Korsakow project. We decided to refine our prompt to “filming individual’s feet while interviewing them to get a glimpse into their lives and how they’ve found their feet, without ever showing their face.”

We established some more constraints in order to ensure that our project will run smoother. We agreed on a file management system, which includes how we label the clips and where we store them (on Imogen’s external hard drive). We also decided we could compress our video and thumbnails as we go, aiming for the former to be under 8-10MB each.

We arranged to meet after class next Tuesday (13 May) to film a selection of shots together in various locations around the city. We created a final deadline for all shots to be Monday 19 May.

One challenge we are facing at this stage is finalising the question which we will ask our sixty participants. For our test clips, we began with two questions which were:

  1. What excites you/gets you going/get you up on your feet and why?
  2. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned (and how has this helped you find your feet)?

After speaking with Seth to get some preliminary feedback about our idea, he suggested we continue trying to refine this question in order to come up with a perfect one-liner we can ask all participants. He pointed out that the success of our piece will be entirely determined by our interviewing techniques, which is important to keep in mind as we go along.

We agreed to try and incorporate as much variety in our fragments as possible – through things like movement (to keep the eye engaged), a variety of interfaces (which we will talk about and design next week), and variations of different feet in different situations (which aligns with our goal of showing that a person’s feet and environment can tell a lot about them. We also talked about whether we want moving or static previews, which we are going to experiment with once we have started filming. We discussed the use of text in our project and whether it would add or detract from what we are trying to do. We ultimately decided to leave the project as a visually-driven piece that doesn’t spoon-feed its viewers with text cues.

Imogen presented the visual research she had conducted by showing us some examples on vimeo which she was drawn to (including ‘Hands + Feet’ by Jeremy Snell, and ‘Looking Down’ by Hrrrthrrr. Ren also discussed the Polish film ‘Talking Heads’ (1980) by Gadajace Glowy which has a similar interview style which we are attempting. Seth also pointed us in the direction of Gillian Wearing’s works to further our research. He also suggested that we could use lapel microphones to get the best sound quality we can, and create another layer of intimacy with the interview subject. He thinks we should conduct the interview first and then record the footage, as this may help us get an idea of the visual footage we might want after hearing the content of the interview.

We are now beginning to think of how we will keyword our Korsakow project, and whether this will be thematic or visual. We like the idea of using the responses of our participants to categorise the clips and group together certain emotions and ideas (i.e. love, family, success, etc.). We also have a very rough working title which is ‘Finding Your Feet’.

(Image via flickr)