a snapshot of our doco at the screening

It was really exciting seeing our doco on the big screen in a large dark room filled with audience, we were lucky to be slotted in the first half of the screening as people started leaving after the intermission. The fact that I was watching it tens of other people produced a different feeling when compared to watching it at the edit suites. Despite having watch the final cut many many times, watching our doco at the screening didn’t fail to move me emotionally. Interesting. Also, couldn’t help but to snap photos of the doco during screening (not to mention sending it via MMS to Charlie, our interviewee, who couldn’t make it there, and which he replied an “OMGGGG” to) for blogging purposes.

When watching our doco, I heard a giggle from one of the audience, who was a white male, whom was seated next to me when watching the part where Hazel talks about how people would guess the countries that she originates from, and asking whether she was aboriginal when they were in fact asking about her nationality. Briefly, I would think that this giggle meant that he was entertained because it was amusing. But, in what way was it amusing? Could it be because he that situation was relatable and he might have subconsciously questioned a person of other race before? Or perhaps a friend of his has?

Also, we knew that the jump cuts didn’t look great and that it might look several times more obvious on the big screen. But it turned out to be ok

I’m really happy how it turned out.

This is probably one of the most anticipated doco of the night. I loved the soundscapes in this doco, really heightened the emotions, particularly when watching the footage of the roller derby – useful, as we expected the more violence. Needless to say, the doco was shot so beautifully (with the bonus of cute kids). The structure is clear and the interviews and cutaways flow from one another seamlessly. A kind of documentary that’s entertaining. Anticipation not let down

Karl

Loved the opening of this doco where Karl plays a variety of roles, such a great hook that led me to ponder on the subject matter – the acting illustrates the subject matter that is about to be explored. There were moments that were truly emotional, the part where we see Karl getting up early in the mornings for work, Karl acting for an Internet commercial, etc. A subject matter that may seem pretty mediocre on the surface but shot and edited so well that it is entertaining. I liked this one a lot.

Sunset

A heart-touching subject matter about Chinese old folks at a an elderly foster home. Very emotional opening – old folks following the demonstration of an exercise video on screened on TV. We hear about a few old folk’s stories, one which has a broken leg and chooses to live there as to not burden her family, another one who tells about not wanting to watch TV because she doesn’t understand Cantonese and chooses to read books which the foster home borrows from the library once every six weeks. The old lady that was mentioned in the latter is in one scene doing calligraphy writing the chinese characters ‘mid autumn’ which I felt the producers could have addressed to include a subtitle or some sort. I felt that the ‘mid autumn’ chapter in the doco was not properly explored. Another thing that could have been improved was the interview with the lady who manages the foster home – sound were of poor quality. However, I still enjoyed this doco as it exposed the lives of old folks living in a foreign land.

Count Me In

Can say how much this subject matter interests me – deaf dancing. An interview with deaf dancers, with nothing but silence and subtitles – brilliant! It does not only grabs the attention of viewers but also lets them see how ‘real’ these people are, not much different from any one of us and equally capable. This is probably one of the toughest doco to edit with the need to consider where to include sounds and subtitles.

Dreamers

Give me a sense that the doco has been brought to a whole new level as the producers broke rules- interviewees do not face camera and go on in their daily lives while telling us their stories. There is also a usage of mirroring video effects which I found jarring but also found relatable to the subject matter. Speaking of which, I actually didn’t fully understand the subject matter but ‘death’ and ‘black magic’ comes to mind. I noticed the reverse movement of the fumes in the opening interview with a female interview, which shows how much effort the producers have put into editing this film. The opening interview with the female interviewee was shot in a wide shot with her right in the middle of the shot which I must say is very unusual.

Out of Character

A really cheerful subject matter, such a fresh idea. The only issue I have with this doco is that the interviews were conducted in a rather dull location and that the shot of the main female interviewee could have been cropped/ shot closer as she feels a little distant from the camera. But I must say there is a generous amount of cutaways which proves to be entertaining – the crowd at the screening laughed (so did I). Audience were even given the opportunity to step into the home the main male interviewee and be informed further about this subject matter – a peculiar hobby of some individuals. The story of wearing the wig to school is a good one – she was stopped not because of the red colour of the wig, but the actual fact that it was a wig.

A Cat’s World

A doco which I find the events detached from one another. I can see the efforts in covering the subject matter – from cats from competitions to cats at animal shelters. The reason to the events being a little detached is that the subject matter is too wide and hence the amount of time spent on each chapter in the doco seems a little rushed and incomplete. A large amount of the footage were also not in focus, particularly the footage from the royal melbourne show. The cutaways – photos of cats also seemed a little odd to me as it was just a stationary shot of the cat at that same location.

It’s been great working with my talented group mates, they really made this documentary happen. Cassie and Alene are great at conceptualising and know what’s needed for a good film, they were exceptional at filming and editing. Ruth on the other hand is fantastic with sound.

They was plenty to learn from this documentary project, things to learn that wasn’t present when producing a short film in TV1. For example, there was a greater need for organised planning in producing a documentary because there is no need to do prior research on a topic, or liaise with perspective interviewees in arranging a suitable time for an interview, nor watching each step you take to make sure you don’t ask the wrong questions and making sure you are constantly neutral when conducting an interview. There was a need to get sufficient footage of relevant b-rolls for cutaways to prevent producing a doco solely on talking heads.

However, filming this doco also means less emphasis in figuring out a good shooting locations, there is also no need dressing up the shooting locations and minimal requirement for props. The only props that were needed in our doco were the whiteboard and dolls for cutaways purposes. One thing that my group members and I struggled most in filming for TV1 was to move our equipments to the shooting location in Southbank which was horrific due to the fact that the equipment were heavy, we had no trolley and we had a fair distance to walk from the carpark to the actual shooting location. For this doco, the interviews were dominantly conducted in the studio with the exception for Texta’s interview which was conducted in her home. I must insist that moving equipments from building 9 to building 8 (mind you, not next to each other), most of the time without a trolley, was as tedious.

But regardless all the sweat and effort, it was a great experience. I definitely learnt to be more organised, even picked up a few good new knowledge about filming and not forgetting some people skills.

Yesterday, I was looking at our revised fine cut in which my group members just made alterations to the poem voiceover in our doco’s opening. The track that features a layering of several individuals’ voice reading the poem has been doubled, with the levels of the second track being lowered to give the whole opening greater reverberation. I personally thought there was too much echo that to the point that it made it too fuzzy to listen what was being said. However, Ming and Shu Shan who were also at the suites working on their doco dropped in and I asked them what they thought of our doco. Commenting specifically on the opening of the doco, they both actually really like the way it is and despite the high reverb, they said they could still clearly figure out what was being said. So yeah, it was great to hear two second opinions, beats my opinion I must say, I’d probably liked the original opening better because I was too used to the less echo version of the layered track. However, I’m still loving the overall look of the doco, big thanks to my group members

1. Social Media users are Lazy

We had to make things as simplistic and easily digested as it can be in order across our various platforms (Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter) to encourage participation from these users. A good example to justify the statement above would be the ‘What is your most reliable decision-making device?’ an 8-worded question that Being Indecisive posted on its Facebook wall which prompts a one-click participation (image below). Gaining responses are surprisingly easy to achieve and the question has gathered as many as 56 responds over a span of only a few days. In Facebook, all we had to do is each send out invites to our respective friends to notify them of a question that is awaiting their reply, all with just a few clicks.

snapshot taken from Being Indecisive

To further illustrate how actually true that social media users are lazy, take the Being Indecisive video submission competition on Tumblr which only managed to gain 5 video response from the public and even that were friends of our own which we needed to pressure and constantly persuade them participate. And mind you, this competition went on for weeks and the deadline had to be pushed forward repeatedly with hopes that we’ll gain a hopeful few more submissions. The reason to this poor response rate is that the video submission competition requires a higher degree of involvement from participants in terms of time and effort. In order to submit a video our Tumblr ‘submit’ page, participants would firstly need to upload their video either on a video hosting website such as Vimeo, YouTube or BlipTV, or to upload it directly to their respective Tumblr accounts (which I must say that not everyone have one, I’ve personally only created my Tumblr account for the purpose of the Being Indecisive project), and then embed the link to our ‘submit’ page. We would definitely prefer that participants have their individual Tumblr account as that would be more interactive because we would then be able to browse through their Tumblr accounts (not scarily stalking them) and learn more about about participants in terms of the types of posts they publish on their dashboards.

Twitter is a great Social Media site for lazy people, or I must say, perfect. To start with, Twitter only allows you to post up to 140 characters in one Tweet, hence discouraging you to be long-winded and pleading you to get straight to the point. Now why did I say Twitter is perfect for lazy people? Ah, yes. Tweet = lazy people micro-blog = lazy people read. Because there is a need for Twitter users to only micro-blog, the frequency of updates on your dashboard (depending on the number of people you follow) is tremendously too. But you can be assure that they are all short texts, or sometimes conversations between users, an external website link or an image uploaded directly to Twitter, hence it is perfect if you are feeling lazy but want to do something less strenuous on the brain, Tweet. Mobile phone companies such as Apple, is also understanding the lazy behaviour of their users and have since in-built the Twitter app into their latest iPhone release.

2. Social Media users use social media sites for other purposes

Social Media sites have evolved to more than just a platform for socialising. They use them to be informed and entertained, whether it is about the latest viral video or about a tragic news of a young man commenting suicide over a break-up, or simply to play games and publish about their life stories.

I have to admit that I as a social media user, predominantly a Facebook user, am also very lazy. I would be Facebook-ing whenever I need to procrastinate from assignments, or have nothing better to do on a lazy Saturday (or any other day). Most of the time I’d be looking at the latest news on the ‘news feed’ to see what my friends/virtual friends have been up to. Another regular thing that I always do is to log into Facebook on my mobile phone I’m already in bed but just can’t seem to fall asleep.

“hate it when I really want to sleep but my brain wants to go on FB”

And surprise surprise, a few of my friends do that too! At 2.30am on one of the mornings last month, I posted a ‘hate it when I really want to sleep but my brain wants to go FB instead’ Facebook status and gained responses from 3 different people whom are also awake at that time and is on Facebook. Please firstly disregard the Manglish (Malaysian English). I’d like to point out that my friend Ivan and Nelson is experiencing the exact same situation as I am.

This highlights the fact that Social Media users do not use social media sites solely for socialising but also a platform for them to spend time (or waste time). These days, there are plenty to do on social platforms such as like Facebook, which layout is constantly revamped to better attract their users to spend more time. This is due to the fact that the users are the source of income for the Facebook, <a href=”http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-makes-money-2010-01″>All Facebook</a> reports that the social media site makes about half a billion in revenue a year (O’Neil 2010). Now, that’s A LOT of money. No wonder there are now an increasing number of apps within Facebook, some are developed by companies to promote their respective brands, and some are games which would include ads. It is in turn safe to infer that Facebook users themselves use Facebook to advertise their products, this is done so either through the proper ad banners (example image below) or simply by informing their friends through walls, status messages, event invites or personal messages.

a snapshot of the ad banners along the right hand side in Facebook site

notifications regarding events hosted by friends

Take for example the third notification (image above) that I’ve received today. It is an event that John Roebuck sent me regarding a ‘Room for Rent This Summer’, which is not exactly an event to attend to but is actually him advertising about his room for rent this Summer as he is going overseas. Included in the detailed description in the event is the condition of the room – cheap and good price, as well as the actual address of his home. This is an excellent free-of-charge yet effective way to advertise small scale businesses (will work for larger businesses too) yet highly effective as he has invited his friends (more than 750 invites sent) to this ‘event’ and they can choose to have a one-click respond, either ‘attending’, ‘maybe’ or  ‘not attending’, or choose to enquire further or drop a personalised respond via ‘comments’. John may only have received 16 responses along with 4 comments but those replies were received within the half hour since the ‘event’ was posted up. The 7 people whom rsvp to ‘attending’ don’t actually quite make sense here judging that it isn’t actually an event to attend to. But then again, you don’t have to be too serious on Facebook, it is after all a social media sites for fun and games.

A game that is highly popular Facebook game at the moment is Tetris Battle which players can play the classical Tetris game at real time with other Facebook user globally. This game is so highly addictive as it allows players to compare their rankings and skills with their friends’. My friend Wai Kit is a huge fan of this game, having spent many hours playing the game between assignments, when at out at a cafe, or when not having anything else better to do at home. He has even gone to the extend of wanting to log into my personal Facebook account (because I’m still at a beginner’s level) to play against lower level players (yes, some people find the thrill in beating the weaker player in games), as well as to send ‘energy’ gifts (elements to boost his ‘skills’ in Tetris Battle) to his own account. This just goes the show how hooked Facebook can get their users to be to their Social Media site. Games in Facebook have a notification banner on the right hand side of the screen to let users know what games their friends are playing at the moment, which actually facilitates users to interact with their friends when they share common interests, i.e. to play the same game.

Tumblr is another great Social Media site to be informed and entertained. I must say that the scope of interaction on Tumblr is different from that in Facebook. Tumblr is somewhat like Twitter, but still not quite like it (otherwise, why would we bother to incorporate all three Social Media sites if they were similar), that dominantly expresses users opinions, interests, etc through blogging. However, it doesn’t have to be a chunk of text (like I said in the first point, Social Media users are lazy), it can be a series of text, for example what eightypercentwater posts – “A lot of people tell me I’m indecisive”, or just an image with or without a short caption, for example what kevin-gnapoor posted – a comic about making decisions with a chatterbox. Take a look at Being Indecisive’s Tumblr and you will find that we have reblogged plenty of media from other Tumblr users. These media in the form of text, image or/and video were scouted through the ‘search tag’ option on the right side banner in Tumblr, which brings result from other Tumblr users over the world who have blogged about similar topics. Unlike Facebook where there are games to play, people generally spend time on Tumblr specifically to look up on what their friends or other users have blogged about, whether about their personal lives, their interest, or something quirky that they found worth sharing.

Users on Twitter have also cleverly made use of the services for other purposes. VenturaBus, a Melbourne-based bus company has been utilising Twitter to provide real-time updates on their services i.e. notification of bus services disruptions. One example of Tweet that was published was “200 Ex Melbourne Central at 1345 to Bulleen at 1428 has been cancelled. Ventura apologises for any inconvenience caused”. I must say providing live updates via Twitter is mutually beneficial for both Twitter users and Ventura themselves. Ventura gains a platform to reach out to their customers with their urgent messages whereas the customers/Twitter users will be notified and not be waiting at the bus stop for a bus that was not coming. Many other companies are also making use of Twitter to be constantly in the minds of their customers as well as to widen their customer base. OzBargain is another good example for non-socialising purpose Twitting. OzBargain gains information from their users regarding bargains available all over Australia, whether at the stores or online, and then Tweets them so that their other users will be informed about them. Users can choose to ‘follow’ OzBargain to be in-the-know whenever OzBargain informs of a new bargain. An example of a Tweet from OzBargain is “Quiexo: SHOPPING SQUARE FLASH MEMORY SALE, $1 shipping with discounts for combined shipping http://ozb.me/7JG“. The bargain information done under 140 character includes all the information needed, and even includes the link to the actual website offering the bargain. No wonder OzBargain has 4,294 loyal followers.

Conclusion

From my observations, it is evident that Social Media sites are constantly evolving the way we Social Media users use their sites. They no longer only provide us a platform to keep in touch with other users but also interact with them via games, common interests and so forth. So regardless if we users are lazy or not, it is prominent that Social Media sites are gradually taking up a bigger part in (some) of our lives – we engage it even for leisure and at times of doubt. it is thus vital to understand the behaviour of Social Media users, and what Social Media sites can do for us to further enrich our lives.

References

O’Neil, Nick 2010, ‘The Secret To How Facebook Makes Money’, All Facebook, viewed 19 October 2011, <http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-makes-money-2010-01>

However, we are still stuck in terms of placing certain footages of our interviewee’s experience/opinions which we think will be very interesting to our audience but is difficult to be placed within the doco due to the constrains of the structure. I must say, my group members are each fantastic at what they do. Alene and Cassie are particularly articulate at structuring the doco. They constantly managed to improve and re-improve the layout of the footages even after what I thought already looked like a great documentary.

To recap back on how we went about editing this doco and determining a structure that we will follow, I must say it was a challenging journey. After screening the rough cut, we had suggestions and opinions from peers, which were very useful for us to gauge how audience responded to our doco. A majority of our peers liked the topic of documentary, most said that it was fresh new otherwise well-explored idea. Others suggested that we include the presence of the poem throughout the poem. What was most interesting is that they liked the doco because they could relate to the interviewees that were featured. It is safe to assume that audience can associate with them because of the interviewees’ similar age.

After showing the rough cut, we were determined to give the doco a major structuring as most footage were placed together at the very last minute. Because of the varied opinions that we have from a handful of our varied interviewees, we had to structure these opinions in a way that audience would be able to follow it from one to another digressing through the subject matters. The initial plan was to section the doco into chapters with titles taken from the poem, which was tried and tested but turns out to be unsuitable. That idea was scrapped as we later see the doco shaping up without the need of in-your-face voiceover or visual chapter titles but having the appropriate placing of the footage within the timeline to drive the flow of the doco.

We did find the opening of the doco a little tricky to be up to our satisfaction. We have had trials and errors in having few snippets of people’s facial features; what to show first and what to end with, having and altering the layers of the  poem voiceover; who starts and ends the poem voiceover. The opening was repeatedly altered in hopes that we can grab audiences’ attention and not drive them away due to the dullness or shock.

In terms of meeting the deadline, we’ll be able to do it. But at this point, it’s just plenty of polishing to do to keep the doco within the time constrain as well as produce one that’s with great structure.

Liam provides a good example from his own filming experience, a documentary which audience initially fail to understand how Liam became the subject of the film when he passed the camera his interviewer and be filmed instead. Due to such circumstance, he had to return to the filming location and film himself handling the camera over, pretending that it was filmed on the same day as the previous shoot in order to fill in that ‘gap’ in the documentary.

At this point, we are still in the midst of structuring our documentary, pulling out relevant and meaningful footages that we can consider incorporating into the final product. Cassie tells us that we do have plenty of footage to work on but are lacking of emotion shots of people to be used as cutaways from our interviewees. This is due to the fact that last week in the tutee where we screened our rough cut, Liam expressed his concern that our documentary will be place too much emphasis in interviews, resulting in a dull documentary, failing to hold on to audiences’ attention.

Interesting enough, we have had a small number of interaction from our like-minded audience. And to think that they had to get their mind straight and decide in clicking that ‘submit’ button when contributing their videos to us, I must say, we are Being Indecisive are very honoured. Honestly, we had no idea what to expect out of the competition. We haven’t got big prizes to offer but a small token of appreciation deep from our indecisive souls.

Along the way, I’ve picked up new knowledge in managing an online magazine. Specifically to Tumblr, we realised that there isn’t a ‘upload video’ function when in the ‘submit’ page our Being Indecisive and that could be one of the reasons to the small number of respondents. I must say that it is a little of a hassle to upload videos elsewhere before being able to embed in URL to our ‘submit’ page. However, if these people could upload directly to their respective Tumblr pages, they can easily just provide us their Tumblr URL for submission. Besides that, I’ve also learnt that it’s more effective when you post up simple chunks of messages and preferably accompanied with an image to foster audience interaction. Take for example, the simple questionnaire that Being Indecisive posted on Facebook to ask friends of their opinion on the most reliable decision-making device. And ‘writing ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on a rubber’ topped the list followed by tossing a coin. We had a total of 56 responds to this question and it is one of our most successful element of the online magazine.

The life of Being Indecisive is about to come to an end as we approach Week 12 of Integrated Media where we at Being Indecisive will be pitching our progress and learnings to the students and lecturers of Integrated Media, and after Week 12, it is unlikely that Being Indecisive will remain being active. It is a waste to let it go but we will be leaving it inactive without taking it off the internet as part of future references for work portfolio and such.

It has been a tiring weekend for all four of us, well, this is mostly due to the carrying of equipments. On top of the basic camera + tripod and audio kit, we also had dolly tracks as well as the the kino and dedo.

We had planned to do performative shooting as well as to conduct interviews on Saturday and Sunday at the green screen studio in building 8 level 7. Knowing the fact that our cards would not have gain access after hours, we have submitted access card forms to be granted access to the studio on the weekend and have received emails to confirm that we are now able to access the studio. However, when we arrived on Saturday midday, we realised that none of our access cards worked. That made us panic. However, we were somewhat relieved that the only interview scheduled for that day has been pushed to the following day. So we decided to head to the lounge area in building 9 to do the scheduled performative shooting. However, the area at building 9 is rather unappealing. Cassie and Alene suggested that we give Liam a call to explain about our situation. He advised that we contact the security which eventually managed to get us into the green screen studio. (imagine the equipments moving from building 9 to building 8 as we had no trolleys) Anyway, one thing to learn from this is to check that the access cards work even after receiving a confirmation email.

So learning from experience, getting into the studio on Sunday was a breeze. We got in contact with the security once more and we were able to get in easily. All were going well in the morning with two great interviews (with Elaine and Olivia) till it was time to interview Bec, our third interviewee. The mixer for some reasons is producing static noises that were unacceptable to be recorded. Ruth did mention that this has happened before when we did some b-roll shooting a few days earlier but sound was not essential then. She tried changing the batteries and readjusting the cables but it was no good, the static noises was still present and we have no choice but to call it a day. We quickly took a few cutaways shots of interviewees Bec and Simon and would have to resort to getting a H2 zoom out one of the days and get an audio recording of them. These problems that occurred over these two days, it reminded us about what Paul mentioned about serendipity. The good things that come out of bad happenings. But what good thing could come out of this? We only managed to do half of the amount of interviews that we intended to do. Perhaps just working with audio recordings of Bec and Simon, we would have less troubles of fitting useful footages into the 7 minutes maximum requirement? Or perhaps just working on audio, we are able to learn a new editing technique of layering these audio clips in without making audience realise that we did not have a filmed interview with these people? I hope some good serendipity better come out of this. Time to face Week 11!!

As I took out the template and told my friends that it was a chatterbox, one of those paper decision makers which we as kids like to play with in school, my friend Kit immediately responded “Oh, I want to fold it!!” and “It’s been awhile since I last folded one!” and he did fold it.

And to start the game rolling, my Don holds on to the Chatterbox and asks Kit what he would like answers on. He wonders whether he’ll have a good night out on Friday and chooses to go with Red and his lucky number 8 on the Chatterbox. The Chatterbox tells him to “Call Mum” which, he was initially isn’t too impressed with as he still hasn’t got his answer. But not giving up yet, he decides to actually call his mum (hahaha!!) When his mum picks up the phone, she was to answer either yes or no without even being told what she was answering to. And her answer was ‘yes’ which made Kit really HAPPY!

(quickly!) moving on as my other friend Sandra cannot wait to have a go at the Chatterbox too! To poke fun at Don who holding on to the Chatterbox, she asks if he’ll shout her for a coffee (as we were seated at 1000 Pound Bend). This time she picks Yellow and number three which gave her the answer “Flip a Coin”. You could have imagined her sad puppy dog expression as she like Kit, did not get immediate answers. But she wasn’t reluctant at all and immediately reaches for her purse to find a coin. She had fixed ‘heads’ for ‘yes’ and ‘tails’ for ‘no’ on the coins and proceeds to flip the coin. And… the coin with ‘heads’ UP! HAHAHAHA, and poor Don has to reluctantly buy her that coffee!

and that was that! my friends actually did enjoy the Chatterbox as it was a reminiscent of their childhood days.