Category Archives: On class content

Filming for Broadcast Media

This week I submitted an evaluative assignment on this blog for my class, Networked Media. In this evaluation of my blogging, I was forced to put down on paper a thought which I have managed to supress for a while: I could be using this blog better.

As far as an educational tool goes, blogging is a big one. An academic blog is like an archive of categorised and archived notes, portfolio pieces, opinions and ideas in one. Everything is linked in a linear way through chronology but also in non-linear ways that would be far more significant for learning. It also stays online to be reflected on later, even years later as paper notes and jotted ideas do not. Not only that but it is all writing practice, after all it is published, public writing, and is therefore practice for committing yourself to something, both the blog and the educational boost that it promises in the long term.

I haven’t used the blog to its best educational ability. In order to do that I would need to write and integrate more blog posts on other work from other classes, other readings and material that I find out of class that I find relates to class content- which is growing every day.

So today I will start trying to use the blog better. Starting with this post about my lack of utilization so far and also about my other summer subject, Broadcast Media.

Today we didn’t have classes, but my group and I did a lot of work on one of our major assessments which is filming and producing a current affairs segment for Today Tonight. The theme is summer and we have chosen beach safety as a topic.

IMG_7889

Today we were filming on location at Mill Beach in Mornington. It was a beautiful day, the location was fantastic and everything went smoothly. We were lucky to have very accommodating and helpful interviewees who were patient and allowed us to boss them around and move props around and even assisted us in re-enacting a beach rescue (for which I rather embarrassingly had to play the victim). This made the day flow so easily, but it was a great learning experience nonetheless.

As I film weddings and have seen current affairs pieces filmed before, I thought everything would be a breeze, but there were things to think about which I didn’t expect.

We had to change the direction of the subject and the camera to get the right lighting as it was an outdoor shoot, we had trouble levelling the tripod because it was on sand, the microphones were extremely sensitive to the sounds of the ocean and so we had to swap microphones and be careful of the direction. The angle of the camera in relation to direction in which the speakers were looking and the composition of the frame. All these were things that we’d discussed in class that seemed like common sense were things that you really had to think about in the field.

As we had planned to get all our shooting done in the one day on location, we couldn’t afford to get anything wrong and wanted to get the best possible shots with every piece of recording. However, once you start recording you tend to just point and shoot and forget about some details, the details which make the overall piece look professional.

It will be interesting to see how it turns out. I think there are little things that we could have been more conscious of that will really separate our piece from professional work. Our content is going to be fantastic, our interviewees were amazing and so were our vox-pops, and although I didn’t see our re-enactment as I was the actor, the others said it is looking good as well. Over all the day felt like a huge success for a first time filming this type of current affairs segment. Having watched this segment from Today Tonight since returning I have noticed the small things they do which we took no notice of. On the other hand I think our content is more relevant, interesting and significant than many of their topics and so maybe that levels us out.

There are things I would do differently if I could go back, one thing in particular is to have the presenter standing next to the camera so that when the interviewee speaks he speaks almost into the camera but not directly. This technique is just a minute detail, but it makes Today Tonight, and indeed much TV journalism, more professional now that I think about it. But I think that’s a good thing that I’ve noticed this now. I will be more aware of the details next time, and that’s what the first few times of doing anything is all about.

Trial and error on Social Media

As I’ve mentioned in a couple of posts, I currently work as a freelance photographer and videographer. I love my job; I love capturing true emotion on film. This is what I’m good at and I hope to one day turn my passion into an alternative creative media company.

What I’m not so great at is the business planning side of things. I started freelancing just by putting an ad on Gumtree and I have gradually been growing the business ever since.

Today I decided to set aside the day to set out a business plan. I divided this into three categories.

  1.  Business goals
    Here I set out the things that I want to achieve in the short term and long term, and outlined the steps in achieving them 
  2. Work efficiency
    This category covers all the boring organisational stuff. Payment methods, booking sheets, editing software, file organisation and backups etc. The stuff that no one enjoys in but it needs to be done in order to work effectively.
  3. Advertising and social media
    All my advertising is done online, on free ad posting outlets and through social media. I intend to create more work opportunities and contacts by putting more effort into my online presence.

Advertising and Social Media should be the area that I most enjoy working on, but I quickly found out that it is more difficult than other people make it look.

I already have a pretty decent website up. I’m quite proud of it because I did everything myself through Adobe Muse. I also have a work Facebook page and I occasionally use my personal Twitter and Instagram accounts to post  work related content.

View my blog here.

Today I set out to make the tools I already use more effective and to integrate other popular social media tools in order to reach a greater population.

I was inspired by Linh Luu’s work, he’s a classmate of mine who happens to be an extremely talented photographer and possibly an even more talented social media tycoon. His Facebook page has over 27 thousand followers.

I’m also inspired by Lakshal Perera, a wedding photographer whose work I follow through his Facebook page. Other than admiring his work, I really love the way that Perera uses his blog on his website to connect with fans of his work. He reflects on every wedding he photographs and his blog is a reflection of his amiable nature, talent and also genuinely caring work methods. This is so effective that he doesn’t even need to advertise.

I genuinely love filming weddings, and I feel a connection to the couples that I capture on film through the emotion that I sense on their big day. But this is something I find very difficult to get across, not in my work but when I talk about my work. Letting the work speak for itself isn’t enough online.

So today I went about adding a blog to my website. I had a long series of issues with embedding the blog, I tried multiple platforms and landed on one that worked. Then I had trouble uploading the photos, I couldn’t upload them how I wanted them no matter how many different methods I tried.

I decided to give that a rest and move on to something else. Adding new social media profiles. There are so many visually engaging sites that people are using these days which I could utilize to promote my work, such as:

  • Facebook pages
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Flickr
  • WordPress, Blogger, Weebly, LiveJournal etc
  • Instagram

I want to get my work out there, but posting individual photos to each of these platforms would just be too much work. I decided to use IFTTT in order to integrate some of these processes. Again, I had a lot of trouble. I ran into problem after problem and after five hours of work, I feel that I have accomplished very little.

I expected it to be difficult and time consuming, but I didn’t expect to be right back where I started, only with less options and a throbbing headache, after hours of work.

However, I am determined and I am going to jump right back into it. I am hoping that once I find something that works, with practice and effort it will become much easier. So adios, I have tutorials to watch, questions to Google and code to attempt. Trial and error until I find something that works, and it could be a long night.

Oh and here is a great blog post about creating great content rather than flashy content. Once I figure out how to get my content online and integrated, maybe I’ll be able to take the advice!

Connecting travel to design fiction

Two of my last posts are about Design Fiction and my travels to India. While writing my post on India, during the period of time that I was studying Design Fiction, I was struck by a connection between the two-albeit an abstract one. (Very abstract.)

I live in Australia and I live an Australian lifestyle that is very separated from the lifestyles of Indian people living in India.

For me, India is another world, almost like the speculative worlds that we discuss in Design Fiction.

I was almost like the product, the design that was thrust into a speculative world to see how I would react and how I affected the world around me.

The flaw in this theory is that I am not a piece of technology or a design, I am one person and I didn’t have a huge influence on the society around me. However, the society did have a big impact on me.

Travel is like reverse Design Fiction.

Learning to blog

We spent our Networked Media class on Wednesday learning some simple skills to make the design of our blogging better.

As I’m also trying to learn to code at the moment, it’s a little easier for me. Although there aren’t options to change things like font and size of font through the ‘Add Post’ application, I can do it through the option to use HTML.

So things like changing font and changing the size of font and even the colour of text, is relatively easy.

Lucky me. Maybe soon I’ll be adding mini web apps?