For those who were too lazy to read the reading (TL;DR lmao) it was basically about the failure of MEDIA LITERACY doing its job. And what is its job, you ask?
It’s
critically asking who is publishing the content
whether the venue is respectable
and biases the author may have
One example I’d like to talk about is one of the most recent event – the United Airlines “incident” involving a POC (Person of Colour) and the police. For those who have been keeping up with the recent news over the past five years, racial issues have rose significantly in several media outlets with headlines of police brutality and their abuse of power. The combination of a POC getting harmed by the police was enough to spark several news outlets reporting about it. Some sympathise for the victim whilst others decided to demonise the victim (maybe because he was Asian? there could be many reasons for that but I believe it was because he was a POC).
VS
Now you see where I’m heading with this, right? News outlets have the power to expose the stakeholders but it is out job as an audience to detect the favouritism of media, I suppose. Otherwise, I can’t say too much about news agencies because I don’t know what goes beyond their mindset and motives.
The stresses of university has finally creeped up to me and as a result, my sleeping schedule is basically non-existent. I’d give a detailed description of what time I go to bed but that would just be irrelevant. Anyway, the reading! The reeeeeeaaaaading. I actually approached it differently to what I usually do which is obviously read it in my head but hallelujah for technology. I made my laptop read it out for me (please refer to fig. 1). I’d say that she has a fine Aussie accent with a slight difficulty to pronounce certain words. Hah.
(Figure 1)
Before I stray away onto another topic, I was quite confused as to why we were given a reading about Harry Potter until Brian actually explained it in the lectorial. However, reading a blog post (?) about an interest of mine (which was Harry Potter) was actually quite refreshing. Not saying that the readings have been bland but this is just one of those that peaked my interests, unlike the one about the animals… As for the actual reading, I knew Jenkins was talking about the actual concept of a ‘fandom’ and how it thrives and survives in our perception of reality. I know. Deep as f*ck right? He was reflecting on Harry Potter’s large following, hence why it even has its own theme park for fans to visit and re-live the world of the story.
Now relating the reading to the lectorial – Brian’s lecture made me think about the subculture of a ‘fandom’ and how it affects and influences. I’ve never actually reflected how large a following can get (aka a fandom) until Brian mentioned cosplaying and made me rethink – “wow, fandoms are actually crazy”. And now that I think about it, I think I’ve been in a fandom myself (oh god this is super embarrassing) and I’ve noticed the relations we make between the real word and the world of -insert any TV show/movie/cartoon/etc-. From cosplaying to fan-fictions, we try to make sense of the reality we face as a coping mechanism to whatever we may be facing in our daily lives. As Brian said, it “expresses who we are while trying to relate it to the reality of the world‘.
As for the editing segment of the lecture, the class was shown what the actual meaning of a “rough cut” and a “fine cut”. To be honest, I had no clear concept of what both those cuts meant and I simply just meshed the process of a rough and fine cut. For the next time I use Premiere Pro for a major project, I’ll definitely keep these two things in mind:
Rough cuts are when you assemble the pieces of story together, cutting down anything unnecessary.
Fine cuts are for when you refine the story. And what I mean by refining consists of colour-correcting, audio mixing and checking for any bits of tiny details that piece the story together. It’s truly the time to add in your aesthetic style.
Like I said in week seven, I’d conclude my thoughts on 13 Reasons Why, especially its impact on myself after finishing the show. The ending left on a cliff-hanger with another death of character, leaving fans to interpret and come up with speculations about what’s going to happen next. I guess that’s how people usually cope when they’ve binged-watched a series right? The show sparked both positive and negative reviews/responses and honestly, I stand more on the negative spectrum in the crowd of opinions. In fact, my friends and I have even de-briefed and reflected on character development, plot and essentially the message it gives. We feel that it doesn’t promote a very helpful message on teenage issues – it actually just worsens and deflects on preventing suicide.
Now look, I could sit here all day providing resources, articles, tweets and comments about why this show is an unhealthy portrayal of suicide but each to their own I guess. It just doesn’t sit right with me, that’s all. At the end of the day, it’s the content-maker’s job to entertain – a show won’t get popular like this if it were portraying boring characters with real storylines. Eh.
I’m finally back from my 4-day hiatus and boy do I have a lot to say about week 3’s madness! I’ll be honest – I found this week to be in the middle of the spectrum in terms of difficulty ever since we were introduced to the software “Premiere Pro CC 2017”. I’m still getting the hang of its technicalities and controls, seeming as I have never encountered a software this difficult before. Honestly, it is such a hard software to deal with and I’m on the verge of slamming my laptop – I’ve been deleting my PP project and restarting all over again because it. is. always. acting. up.
Nonetheless, I made it through the week without dying. Let’s begin our recap of Week 3:
LECTORIAL:
As usual, I began the lectorial huffing and puffing because I decided to be athletic and take the stairs from the 5th to the 11th floor. I know. It was also a little different this week with Liam Ward (my tutor) leading the lecture. I definitely saw the relation between his lecture and reading. I had a wrong interpretation about the reading after hearing Liam mention the power of editing. I was viewing the reading from the audience’s perspective rather than the editor’s. Hitchcock’s example of editing also exemplified its power and the ability we have over media as editors:
It also reminded of how almost brain-washed we are as audience – I was recently watching a Filipino reality show and the heavily edited scenes made certain people turn into either the “hero” or a “malicious” character (would you say this is my initiative? ). As Liam mentioned continuity editing, it definitely plays a part in modern television, especially when unlinked events suddenly become related, thus, creating an opportunity for editors to make out a story from it (also known as categorising).
Liam had also prepared an activity in order for us to fully realise this concept. From a famous short-story, One of These Daysby Gabriel Garcia Marques, we were given a scrambled version of a story and we had to connect two scenes together. This exercise helped me understand editing not just in videos but in all forms of media – the structure of a story truly impacts the effect on the story and what kind of emotional response it should invoke. With this story, we also discussed the power of closure and how you can immediately tell a story is nearly coming to an end. The order of the story can give away the fact that the story is ending – that is how impactful closure can be.
WORKSHOP:
The workshop was a mixture between a discussion, critiquing someone’s work and essentially, a workshop/tutorial for Premiere Pro. This week, we reviewed some of the girls’ Haiku video and I think we’re finally getting the hang of the “6 hats” style of critiques. In comparison to my Haiku video, they were well thought-out and made really well. I could tell they put in a lot of effort into it. I felt sort of envious about their hard work because I really didn’t put enough heart into it – it was simply my way of learning how to play with the software.
In my opinion, it’s unfair how they immediately dove us straight into using the software instead of holding at least a beginners’s mini class or tutorial for us. I understand why followed through this approach though – they wanted to us to experiment in our own terms and that definitely a type of learning I’m not used to. I’m at a disadvantage because I’m not too knowledgeable when it comes to programs like these.
Straying away from my mini rant, Liam showed us a couple of videos of the students’ previous work and I was amazed! I saw the personalities of these individuals I’ve never seen before in a span of 59 seconds. I’d really like to replicate a polished video like those, but of course in my own version.
). As Liam mentioned continuity editing, it definitely plays a part in modern television, especially when unlinked events suddenly become related, thus, creating an opportunity for editors to make out a story from it (also known as categorising).