Media 1 (2016)

 David Morley’s piece of writing discuss the difference views and values of modern audiences as well as the values they have held historically. The platforms on which audiences have been based across was discussed and it was intriguing to see the difference between an audience of a novel (spread across space and time) compared to that of other instant platforms. Inventions through history which include the newspaper, radio and television also allowed for individuals to retrieve information from difference locations within the same time frame making a shared sense of “life in common” or connected-ness. The article discusses the progression of the television platform and how it has evolved into many channels in which its users can actively change and select what they want to watch. Morley uses different categories of audiences as examples including the mass audience, mediated audience and active audience. This particular note reminded me of other main theories in media involving audiences.

The ‘Active Audience Theory “media audiences do not just receive information passively but are actively involved, often unconsciously, in making sense of the message within their personal and social contexts”. The ‘Uses and Gratifications Theory “This theory created by Blumler and Katz’s suggests that media users play an active role in choosing and using the media. “There also was the ‘Hypodermic Needle Theory’ which isn’t used anymore in modern society but originally the “hypodermic needle theory implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences overall the theory played with the idea that media messages are injected straight into a passive audience”. Of course this was mainly used during a political time of propaganda (i.e WW2) but it is a good reflection on how the views and values of audiences have changed and how we have come to understand that active audiences are needed in order to contain media bias. In Morley’s article he discusses these ideas; weather an audience is passive or active. Are individuals controlled by the power of the media or are they actively choosing and arguing the content they intake. In an overall reflection Morley continues to note that it is those two groups (passive or active) that are in debate to see who makes up most of today’s audiences.

David Morley (2005), Entry on ‘Audience’ in New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Ed. T.Bennett, L. Grossberg & M. Morris (Wiley-Blackwell), pp.8-10.

Copywriting as my favourite reliable source would put it is “written content conveyed through online media and print materials. Copy is a content primarily used for the purpose of advertising or marketing. This type of written material is often used to persuade a person or group as well as raise brand awareness.” (Wikipedia) This topic was exactly what week 9’s lectorial focused upon, to be more precise the aspects we ourselves as students may not be aware off and the complexities various copywrite materials hold. Grey areas of the copywrite law include material museums, education, libraries and other areas where information and recourses that may want to share information for a non-profitable gain.

This brings me to my personal use of understanding and using copywrited material throughout the years. Apart from directly asking a content creator if you are able to use their material there are things known as licensing, where you can either buy and use the material, use it for your personal use, or it may come under a category known as Creative commons (CC).

The creative commons license s is a “worldwide non-profit organisation that provides copyright owners with free licences allowing them to share, reuse and remix their material, legally” (Creative Commons Australia). This has helped many budding filmmakers, students, and youtubers who do not have enough funding to be able to create and share material. It is important to note “offering your work under a Creative Commons licence does not mean giving up your copyright. It means permitting users to make use of your material in various ways, but only on certain conditions.”

Overall when choosing what material you will be using in a project (whether personal, public of educational) it is vital to look at the license that material comes under, if an individual has not stated where their material stands in terms of copywrite it is necessary to ask, infringements and defamation is the last thing any student would want for creating work to share with the world.

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop (feat. Fresh Big Mouf) by CSWS is a very upbeat contemporised hip hop track I was enjoying the other day so it came as a surprised when I learnt that the music artists Mighty & High make can be licenced for users to work with for free. This means I would be able to use this song in any media creation I want to. It made me want to understand why these particular artists and many more established ones choose to make their music royalty free when they could be earning money from licensing like other high achieving artists do.

At first note, exposure- allowing the track to be used without individuals having to pay allows for a wider audience to hear the music, giving the band an overall wider exposure. “The CSWS has been featured (via Youtube partnerships) on the homepage of some of the most prestigious culture sites on the web. Buzzfeed, Gawker, ESPN, YouTube, Huffington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, TechCrunch, TheChive, etc. All totalled, and across platforms, CSWS’ music has been listened to over 150 million plays.” (CSWS Facebook biography) I doubt the artists would have had as many users playing their track if again it wasn’t for the complimentary licensing.

In a different light having the artists give free royalties also means that they create music because they believe in the music giving them a sense of authenticity and ‘realness’ that other artists in modern pop culture music seem to lack. Overall I am excited to be able to use this track in future creations and look forward to looking for more royalty free music that stems away from just the standard audio beats we hear within many Youtube videos.

‘Privacy Risks in Mobile Dating Apps’

This article explores an in-depth analysis into the social media trend of dating apps and the privacy risks uses can encounter when participating with these platforms. The article suggests Proximity-based GSNs or ‘proximity systems’ and other GeoSocial apps that broadcast a user’s location can lead to potential invasions of privacy. The researches also explore the analysed use of Facebook login credentials as an authentication provider in which many applications can access to a user’s profile information including that which may be switched onto private. The article is useful to the research within our topic as it provides an in depth insight into the use of applications within wearable smartphone devices and the influx of these devices in modern society. It also examines the statistics within the number of users using the apps as well as which application use different proximity systems. The article is beneficial to our topic since it touches on an issue inherent to the subject of wearable devices.

The findings relate to how privacy on mobile dating apps is quite limited almost stating in half of the apps the article presents the researchers were able to recover messages sent or received by a user. The article also notes almost all of the applications mentioned leaked profile images to some extent. The overall summary being that in using GeoSocial dating apps, much of the data can be easily recovered even once deleted. This article had a personal interest to me as well having used many apps that involved GeoSocial retrieval of information. It makes me question which ones I would allow to have access and which could potentially be unsafe.
Farnden, J, Martini, B, Choo, K-K R, 2015. ‘Privacy Risks in Mobile Dating Apps’, University of South Australia, Association for Information Systems, pp. 13-15

The week eight tutorial was the first tutorial I missed due to being ill, It’s strange how far behind you can feel even after only missing one class. Nevertheless the Media 1 blog was a savior having all the content discussed in class online helps me stay in check and once I was feeling slightly better, study, research and begin working on project brief four’s annotated bibliography.

The tutorial involved checking in with collaborative contracts (In my case Michael Firus and Gloria Chen). Group 4 (which is was presented with the theme ‘Mediums and Technologies’) seems to be doing quite well.
We have launched and are actively using a Facebook group to share content as well as making sure nobody uses the same sources for their annotated bibliographies.

Our tutor Brian Morris also explained how to use the RMIT Library (and eLibrary) to collect resources to do academic research. This is for the annotated bibliographies and the overall project, it re-enforces that the sources we are using for information are creditable as well as verified.

Finally in the tutorial there was a briefing on audio essay techniques through examples from Radiolab (http://www.radiolab.org/).  The momentum in the audio essays was maintained through the use of overlays of separate audio pieces or mixed and re-edited vocals to give the piece pace. The easier part of an audio essay compared to film is that mixing and overlapping audio is much simpler without always needing to add a visual counterpart. This is especially when a presenters content is good but content must be slashed.

As there was no media lectorial this week due to ANZAC day, it seems only suitable to post a video from the day in which thousands of Australians stand to sing the national anthem.

Asha Carrington:
1) Found footage matches the characters personality, lively narration with a story that had a climax and conclusion.
2) Outside shot possibly less bright and more saturation to bring out the color and life of her performances. More close ups on interviewee.

Aine Hamilton:
1) A nice simple use of found footage that interacts with that the narrator was discussing.
2) Parts of interview were slightly over exposed (higher f-stop) possibly less natural light and more use of an interior set up so that you have more control.

Stella Cooper:
1) A very good mix of overlays and narration, this fitted together quite well and added color, life and adventurous into the piece. Good to see the themes clearly layered out within the piece.
2) The Audio was slightly over amplified thus the gain needed to be lowered and possibly the audio equalized. The audio for the music also needed to be slightly lowered so It didn’t interrupt any of the narration.

MAC Cosmetics accused of appropriating Native American culture in new “Vibe Tribe” collection

MAC’s new collection of cosmetics is reaching out to a certain type of audience- that being the influential young adults who consistently want to look more ‘bohemian’ at music festivals in order for society to accept them as a spiritual individual. For this particular advertisement (a Summer 2016 campaign) MAC commented saying the imagery was inspired by “Art, outdoor music festivals, and the colors of the desert.” No reference to the Native American culture? Then why choose to use aspects from the culture in order to promote a cosmetic product? Hence we look back at the target audience for this answer the fact that they are specifically promoting the product to individuals attending events such as ‘Coachella’ really admits that a large part of cultural appropriation lies deeper within our society- within younger generations who are less inclined to pay respects to historical cultures. To read more about the article click the title above in order to gather an opinion.

Filmed on a Panasonic LUMIX GH4 with Tripod. Audio- Rode VideoMic and edited with Adobe Premier Pro CC (audio files mixed on Audition).

Choosing my subject was quite simple generally I think about people who have a passion and drive on a subject they’d be willing to talk about but what I didn’t take into account this time is whether they’d be able to properly articulate that on camera. Although my close friend is quite talkative as soon as the lens was pointed the words started to stutter, in future this has given me a learning experience as to always create a test demo with a subject before committing them fully to a project.

When I was editing the hue on the wide shot was more intense then the close up which caused extra editing in terms of color correcting and even though the hues were lowered and more blues added to tone out the strong saturation of red it still wasn’t as white balanced as the close up shot was.
The most successful aspect was the mise-en-scene especially aesthetically- I choose to shoot in a room where I could control the amount of natural light and mainly use electrical as this gave me more power over what the intensity and brightness would look like on screen.

The problematic aspect was the interviewee was quite camera shy and less articulate than his real life personality, this made cutting and mixing audio together more of a challenge this also made the footage more relaxed with less momentum which didn’t suit the themes of ‘travelling, Japan and sports photography’.
I managed to overcome a lot of this by mixing audio and adding extra overlays to cover the mixing, this made the interviewees voice sound faster and gave the piece a stronger momentum and created a more precise meaning. Also to take note the choice of audio was a risk I was willing to take, originally a Jazz piece was chosen but ultimately this dragged the pace of the film down, thus I switched to a track that had the speed I wanted but also vocals- my main issue was to make sure the vocals didn’t distract from the subject this meant fiddling with the audio and remixing the track to suit my liking. 

Key notes would be once again to create a test demo with your subject on screen before filming further as well as understanding that the creative possibilities of storytelling expand beyond visuals and audio, It’s so important to make sure the subject has enough engaging substance so that the target audience will be drawn in throughout the whole piece. Creating this piece really makes me want to delve more into the realm of lighting and especially expression within lighting (mood lighting) as well as color pallets although these were also aspects I’ve been wanting to explore for a while. I’d love to create more of an art-house portrait that contains a less conventional narrative structure and one with more interpretative means.

In terms of broader development my main note would be to always edit and have time to re-shoot in case any footage or feedback you receive from a teacher, producer, director isn’t the type you were hoping for. The feedback I received really helped me reedit my whole piece although I did not have the time to re-shoot, I also believe in overshooting when it comes to extra footage than undershooting so if anything goes wrong and you’re under timed or some of the footage doesn’t fit you always have extra to fit in.

An in depth analysis on Non-narrative documentary storytelling was the focus during this weeks (Week 7, 19th-23rd of April) reading and lectorial. The reading was an extract on Non-narrative documentary: ‘Non-Narrative Documentary’ film in D. Bordwell and K.Thompson, 2006,  Film Art: An Introduction, pp. 342-370.

As a brief reflection I will highlight certain aspects of the reading that introduced new terminology, it can be noted that there are two types of categories that fall into documentary film making one being ‘Categorical form’ and the other being ‘Rhetoric form’. The latter is created with an argument in mind whereas the first is more simple and factual. Obviously information is important as we enter into project brief four which will not only focus on collaboration (as discussed within the lectorial) but also skills involved in documentary media making. It’s quite interesting to see how the mise-en-scene develops depending on which form you choose to take, in fact ‘argumentative’ documentary film-making can be seen and sometimes is a form of propaganda as generally there is a major media biased involved weather that be either political, economical or environmental ect.

I found Bordwell and Thompsons views on types of form on abstract film an interesting discussion. The film as a whole is generally organised around colours, shapes, sizes and movements within the images. This doesn’t have to be linear in order to create a message (which can be generally open to interpretation). Although for this task our pieces must be must more structured in the ways of research, narrative and argumentative.