“Text” is the  topic for my group work. The very first thing popped up in my mind was readings before going to.  Then a loads of processes that I have to  go through when it comes to academic reading: skimming, scanning, note taking and so on followed. “But wait a minute, I’m doing Media so ‘Text ‘cannot be that narrow. Alan Mckee (2003) says: “Texts are the material traces that are left of the practice of sense making – the only empirical evidence we have of how other people make sense of the world”. Ah ha, to make it simple, in media concept, ‘text’ is what comes to our eyes and interpreted by our brain and experience. The question is, as Media future practitioner, how do I read a ‘text’ effectively? Is it how we see and how we feel?

In today lecture, Brian Morris talked about ‘ The semiotic of tradition analysis’ which is a method of how to ‘read’ a ‘text’. At first, it was hard for me , but somehow I got it after the family picture. I find it very useful when I have to analyse a ‘Text’ in a technical way, not in an emotional way. Personally, I think emotion or feeling is the core to remind consumers of what they ‘read’. In general, I believe that to successfully ‘read’ a ‘Text’, we need our eyes to capture it, our brain to analyse every element of it and our heart to feel it.

“Texts are the material traces that are left of the practice of sense making – the only empirical evidence we have of how other people make sense of the world”

_ Alan Mckee (2003), Textual analysis: A beginner’s guide, p.19

This project is harder than the first one in many ways. Shooting other people can be problematic like permission or timetable. My first option is to make a video of an crossing supervisor working near where I am living. I got the whole idea right away, but approaching her is nearly impossible due to some kinds of laws. Then, I switch to my nephew on square one. Another problem is combing my footage with found footage. Most of the free footage seems to be outdated. There are still some points which satisfy me. For instance, I managed to capture unique moments of my nephew. Kids are really unpredictable. The Sony MC50 had to be ready to shoot at any time with his presence. However, this leads to another difficulty: cutting your raw videos. I hesitated to get rid of unfit scenes just because I worked so hard to shoot them.

After this project, I realized the importance of the background sound. It enhances the feeling of a video and help the story run smoothly. Besides, if I want put my voice in a video as a narrator, I must practice everyday. Moreover, I believe that the art of noticing is essential to Media practitioners. I would not be able to finish this project without paying attention to my nephew: his habits, hobbies or favorite things.

There was a sound recording practice on week 6 tutorial. Why do we need to record sound effects separately  while we can shoot video and record them at the same time?

I tried to make use of those direct sounds during my project 3,but it didn’t work as I had expected. The dialogue sounded  like missing its “emotion”. The background and ambient sound were not any better. Moreover, assuming the on the spot sounds were recorded correctly, we would definitely want to cut some of them to enhance the effects of the rest. For instance, too many ambiences such as footsteps, car beeping or wind will easily prevents audiences from focusing on main characters’ dialog.The process of recording and mixing sounds afterward with the video is called “Foley”. This technique is named after Jack Foley who established it.

The experience with the Zoom H2n was very helpful. I realized how hard it is to collecting sounds for the Foley. It is nearly impossible to record a specific sound in a place crowded with people or vehicles. Most of the time, If you do it outdoor, will be unwanted sounds get into your work. Controlling the volume of sounds is another challenge.

Today, Rachel Wilson provided us very useful tips of how to work effectively in a group. I just want add some more drawn from my  teamwork experience.

Bad experience
It was the first time I have a big project with my friends 6 or 7 years ago. Back there, I was not a organized person and I hadn’t done my part before coming to an important meeting. I felt very embarrassed, but I still attend the meeting. Fortunately, my team leader, a close friend who knows me pretty well, had already covered my part.
Lesson: It is brilliant to have a good leader who knows her/his members and always have a backup plan just in case something screwed up.

Good experience
Another big project during my last uni time. 4 out of 5 members in my group decided we would follow a topic that I find it boring. By doing extra researches, I managed to  persuade them to change to another interesting one. At the end of that subject, we got the highest marks among groups.
Lesson: Don’t be afraid to speak out your idea even if it is against the rest of the team’s and be ready to do extra works to prove your idea is worth trying.

REFLECTION

The main theme for this project is that no matter where or however long journey, my family is always with me.

Editing technique:

This is a second time I make a video so I just use some simple techniques to combine pieces of  materials together. I used Cyberlink Powerdirector 12 for this project. In term of materials, I collected all of them by myself based on the idea about family and myself. Sounds from the 2 videos were removed and replaced with my narrator voice and “bike chain” which is recorded separately.

Things that worked well:

I’m pretty satisfied with the story. It is a complete story which has a beginning and an end. Besides, I managed to time the video quite well: the transition between scenes seems to be smooth.

Things that did not work well:

First I changed the main theme of the video a lot. Every time I changed, I had to run through the whole materials again to see which one is fit. Second, the sound quality is not good. It sound like a raw product, not an edited one. Another problem is the subtitle. It always disappear whenever I save my work. May be the program is faulty.

I really need to work on my editing technique to enhance the quality of my product.

From TV series (The walking dead)  to movies (Zombie land, Dawn of the dead), from comic books (28 days later, iZombie) to games (Resident Evil), zombies have been invading to every aspect of modern media.

The first Western zombie movie could be “The white zombie” (1932). The movie did a great job in giving audiences the idea how creepy or scary a walking-dead body can be. ‘’Night of the living dead” (1968) marks an important milestone in the evolution of zombie: from puppets of voodoo in “The white zombie” (1932), they turn into flesh-eating monsters infected by radioactive. Then new types generations of zombie keep on appear: running zombie, a swarm of zombies, giant zombie and so on. However, my question is what makes zombie so popular that media practitioners still invest in creating more and more products of such a horrified figure?

According to Hubner et al (2014), zombie culture offers consumers an alternative life in which they can experience and step out of their ordinary selves: no homework, no stress or future goal. Furthermore, what impresses me is that the world created by zombie culture not only provides audiences a place to hide from the reality, but also satisfies the aggression of human nature. From the ethological perspective, Lorenz (1966) suggested that humans have evolved a ‘’fighting instinct” and it is unavoidable. In the real world, we are restrained from hurting other people by the law unless it is a self-defence situation. In the zombie world, characters are free to kick, smash or kill flesh-hunting monsters to survive. In other word, media consumers see the reflection of their aggressive instinct in this particular culture.

To sum up, there are many other elements which make zombie culture become so popular; but for me, making impacts on human nature and desire in modern society is what make it popular.

References cited:
1. Hubner, L, Leaning, M, & Manning, P (2014), The Zombie Renaissance in Popular Culture, Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Lorenz, K & Latzke, M (1966), On aggression, London: Methuen

Who are you? – I am myself.
What are you doing here? – Starting something new…or just running away?
What is lofi self-portrait media? – Using media to let people know who you are.

For over the last 2 weeks, I’ve been asking countless of questions. Some got the answers, some still remain unsolved. I want everyone to know my true identity? Or I want to satisfy everyone’s expectation of me?

Here are some fragments of ”me”

During the second lecture, an advertisement of OMO at a bus stop in Vietnam was mentioned by Rachel Wilson. She said that Vietnamese advertisement too many texts because Vietnamese are influenced strongly by the literary culture. At this point, she made a good judgement but from my personal point of view, there are at least 3 more reasons besides literature.

First, abstract or literature depends on the type of the product. In Vietnam, a product like OMO is usually referred to house wives and they are very busy. Many of them take the responsibility to take care of everything  from making money to doing the laundry. So these specific types of product is often as simple as possible.

Second , after the civil war in 1975, the government imprisoned the entire economy by turning Vietnam into a heavy industrial country which depended on the agriculture to survive. As a result, the Pearl of Southeast Asia was turned into a stone. Everything about science, art and media including advertising was shut down or limited. The advertising industry just began to raise again about 15 years ago. That is the reason why Vietnamese advertisements (ads) fall far behind in the globalization era.

Last but not least, the failure of the current out-dated education system plays an important role for this matter. The system restrains people to think out of the box. On the one hand, it does encourage students to think critically and make questions in “paper”. On the other hand, the grading criteria is based strictly on the “official” textbooks. So, which way will a student choose? An old but safe  one or a new but risky one? Logically, they have to play safe if they don’t want to waste money and time to retake a class or even the whole course. Years after years, the system produces generations that are lazy to think and make question. And of course, when the majority of audience do not desire to think much, ad with lots of texts is a good option. Even if ad designers can come up with better ideas, they still have to follow customers who only want the audiences know what they are selling easily.

In a nutshell, to develop the advertising industry in Vietnam, many things must be changed. Good things are more and more people pay attention to this issue everyday. I hope that there will be a positive changes for the whole media, not just advertising, in the near future.

Original photo by Rachel Wilson

In the book “Researching your own practice : The discipline of noticing” , John Mason analyses and categorizes the “noticing”. There are 3 stages of noticing: ordinary-noticing, marking and recording. He mentions that the majority of people ( including me) are making ordinary-noticing everyday which means we may distinguish some particular things from their surroundings. Besides, he also provides  useful exercises to help us master the art of noticing which is extremely important for media practitioners.

On the ground:

Mid-ground:

Back ground:

Up high:

Mason, J 2002, Researching your own practice : The discipline of noticing, London: Routledge Falmer, pp. 29-37

I came from Vietnam, a country where information is controlled by the government. Frankly speaking, newspaper and the news on TV or radio are the 2 main sources that citizen could get information from. Therefore, we did not have any other means to clarify that whether we were fed with faked information or not.

In 2005, Yahoo introduced Yahoo! 360° to Vietnam and everything changed. Yahoo! 360° was a phenomenon which presented  to Vietnamese a brand new era of information. Most of people who had internet connection quickly experienced this type of social network. Those who had ability to write, analyse and express their ideas became “blogger” and the rest became “blog reader”. As a result, people started to discuss and debate their perspective about a specific work, mentioned in a blog, more open. They talked about a review of something like a book, a movie and so on from ordinary people, not just only from experts or journalists like before. And soon enough, political issues which is supervised by the “higher-up” began to spread at an unstoppable speed. Moreover, a number of bloggers achieved a high status in blogging community no matter how their status in real life was. There were also unofficial fan clubs for a popular bloggers. They were ready to fight back someone dared to comment negatively.

Then, in 2007, Yahoo decided to stop supporting for Yahoo! 360° because American did not  pay much attention to this site. However, it was significantly successful in Vietnam and Yahoo even developed another version called Yahoo 360 Plus for Vietnamese. Suddenly, Yahoo officially shut down the blog in 2009 and caused panic in blogger community since many people considered it as their “food”. For the first time, we witnessed how real life was affected strongly by such a social Web site.

To sum up, although Yahoo! 360° only lasted for 4 years but it made a huge impact on Vietnamese community. Like it or not, we should never underestimate the power of social network.