Category Archives: Unrelated, but still worthy

Media Industries Guest Lecture

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Dr Georgie McClean –Manager of Strategy and Research at Screen Australia (responsible for funding Australian cinema, television, the online & games)

 

  • How to integrate research material into broadcast material
  • SBS CQ – Cultural Intelligence (The Media and Diversity Debate)
  • Speaks about the challenges of applied research highlighting expectations, timeframes, language, strategic simplification and the advantage/disadvantage of finding your own position.
  • Understand the complexities in your field and think about how you can translate your ideas in an ‘everyday’ sense as well as an academic one.
  • Issues of viability and sustainability of projects

Audio Arts Listening Session.

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Give each audio arts piece a mark out of twenty…

Considerations//

  • Is the concept strong?
  • Does it work structurally/is there a narrative arc?
  • Does it hold the audiences attention?
  • Technical competencies – is it easy to listen to?
  • Are the performances engaging?
Sharehouse//
Concept: Sharehouse living, the issues that occur in sharehouses and the people that inhabit them.
  • Introduction is informative and easy to listen too, the narration is written really well and is engaging as he critiques what is going on in the scene.
  • The conversational content is very natural and gives the audience the sense they are inside the house – good technical use of panning and reverb.
  • There is a distinct sense of narrative as the impending dinner party builds tension and comedy.
  • The use of sound effects is very effective and do not overtake the piece.
17/20
Off the Meter//
Concept: Story of a wedding via the overhearings of a taxi driver.
  • The opening sound effects gives a great sense of location and we immediately know we are inside a taxi.
  • Each guest gives a different texture to the piece and is engaging, giving multiple perspectives on one situation.
16/20
50 Shades of Grey//
Concept: An erotic tale of love, lust and seniality.
  • The script is well written
  • The sound effects are a little too loud in some places and make it hard to hear the actors.
  • Performances/accents are great and consistent throughout the piece.
  • There is a great variety of texture in the content – the range of voices and music and sound effects which are mixed really well.
  • The content borders on wrong but I think the accent pulls it back and makes it funny rather than disturbing.
15/20
The End of Radio//
Concept: Radio is dying out and this is one of the last broadcasts ever.
  • There has obviously been a lot of research into the concept and the piece therefore carries a great sense of nostalgia which is engaging for audiences interested in the history of radio.
  • The vox pops add a great sense of texture and array of voices and also provide a really good range of relevant perspectives. The sound quality is great, the vox pops are very clear but the background sounds give a great ambient atmosphere of being outside on the street.
  • The piece is quite long and does well to capture audiences attention by breaking the piece up into radio style ‘segments’ which each carry a different tone and topic.
  • Great take off of Ira Glass!
  • Ending could have been more climactic
15/20
The Swim Team//
Concept: Adapted from a short story by Miranda July about elderly people who live in a dry arid town and learn to swim on the floor of a house.
  • Introduction is very atmospheric, the sound effects and great and Madeline’s voice gives a great sense of place and we are immediately transported into a reflective place – the narration is really nice throughout and provides a good anchor to the narrative.
  • The accents are very interesting and tell the story really nicely, although some of it is a little hard to understand, though they provide a really nice texture of memory.
  • The piece is really engaging and a beautiful piece of reflective fiction.
17/20
Flog FM//
Concept: Satirical look of radio behind the scenes – what we hear vs what goes on behind the scenes. 
  • Banter between the announcers is good and the sound difference between what ‘the audience is hearing’ and what we are hearing from the studio is really obvious as we are clearly in a car listening to the broadcast.
  • Technically, the piece is really smooth and its really well mixed and easy to understand throughout, it’s really coherent and consistent.
  • The piece builds and the script declines into a great argument and barrage of insults which is hilarious.
17/20

Radio Update

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Bianca and are now well and truly into the post production phase of the assignment and are at the fine editing stage. At the moment it’s looking like the piece will run for about twenty minuets so we are really happy with the time and texture. The structure took a bit of work as we really wanted the piece to speak for itself without too much narration as we felt the content was so strong we wanted to feature as much of it as possible.

Here’s some shots from our recording session with singer/songwriter Angeline Armstrong.

(thats me testing out the set up)

Recording and mixing the audio was a first time experience for me and I was really happy we had David there in the studio with us to help us through. We ended up using a three mic set up:

  • Vocals – Cardiod
  • Guitar – Cardiod
  • Fretboard – Pen Mic

This ensured a really deep, rich and complex sound and after panning the recording and adding reverb and compression, it came out sounding absolutely wonderful! Exporting it proved to be a bit more of a challenge as the computer in our suite had a bit of a conniption that not even David could explain, but after moving back into the multitrack studio, the problem seemed to sort itself out.

Exiting times – a week to go until submission and everything is looking like it’s going to be ready on time! Yay.

Have a listen to the song!

Henry Jenkins – Convergence culture; where old and new media collide.

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“This book is about the relationship between three concepts, media convergence, participatory culture and collective intelligence”

  • Jenkins redefines a lot of terms which are used when evaluating the role of the media and focuses on informing readers on the discussions and changes that are taking place so they can have input into where we are heading.
  • Convergence involves both a change in the way media is produced and consumed. Some fear it is out of control while others feel it is too controlled, its both a top down corporate driven process and a bottom up consumer driven process, we are learning to interact with each other and fighting for our right to participate more fully in our own culture. Corporations must realise this shift away from passivity.
  • Jenkins sees convergence as consumers seeking out new information and forming connections among dispersed media content. Its an active process and cannot evolve without participation. We each construct our own personal mythologies surrounding the media we choose consume, and communities form out of that via conversations and sharing.
  • Media producers and consumers should no longer be seen as separate roles. Consumption has become a collective process. Jenkins isn’t interested in new technology, but rather how people are working together, interacting with technology, and consuming media and the effects this is having on religion, culture, advertising, education law and politics. He is interested in how ordinary customers have been transformed into drivers of media content.
  • Jenkins is sceptical of the way that nothing is reserved for one function anymore – everything is converging into one space that has to fit everything in and uses the example of a smart phone as an example of the erosion of a one-to-one relationship between a medium (the phone) and it’s use (to make calls) and the original function of the device is undermined – you cant get a phone without a camera/media player etc. Each media form used to have it’s own distinctive functions and regulations, however the power of communication technologies to support diversity, decentralisation and participation began to push people to break down the separating walls, content began to be produced across a variety of platforms. It seems the hardware is diverging while the content converges.
  • Nobody seems sure what kinds of functions should be confined – ebook readers, tablets etc.
  • “If the digital revolution paradigm presumed that new media would displace old media, the emerging convergence paradigm assumes that old and new media will interact in even more complex ways” – Pg 6
  • Jenkins describes the landscape as rocky and tumultuous, nobody really knows the rules, and there are no definite business models or modes of interplay – nobody knows what the outcomes of this ‘convergence’ will be. Media ownership no longer ensures profit or an appropriate gauge of interest and we are in a period of media transition – there are unintended consequences, mixed signals and competing interests. It is unclear whether these changes open new opportunities for expression or expand the power of big media. He is sure that we are entering an era where ‘media will be everywhere’ and that knowledge communities will form around mutual intellectual interests.
  • “Old media are not being displaced, rather, their functions and statuses are shifted by the introduction of new technologies” Pg 14. Role of Transmedia as an example.
  • Convergence is not a state we are ‘in’ it operates as a constant force for unification but is always in dynamic tension with change. When does participation become interference and when do producers exert too much power over the entertainment experience? We need to find a way to negotiate the changes, no one group can set the terms of access and participation.

“There will be no magical black box that puts everything in order again”

Terms to know

  1. Convergence: “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the corporation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want” (2).
  2. Participatory culture: “Culture in which fans and other consumers are invited to actively participate in the creation and circulation of new content”.
  3. Collective intelligence: “None of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills” (4).
  4. Black box fallacy: “The attempt to reduce convergence to a purely technological model for identifying which black box will be the nexus through which all future media content will flow”
  5. Delivery technologies: “tools we use to access media content” . If recorded sound is the medium, CDs, Mp3 files, and 8-track cassettes are delivery technologies.

Moonrise Kingdom Review.

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This is a review I wrote of Moonrise Kingdom for my writing class….

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) takes viewers on a nostalgic childhood adventure which finds joy, turmoil and aims for lasting love in a world which fails to fully acknowledge the intricate serious of losses that characterise growing up.

Review written by Zoe Annabel.

In his aesthetically dreamy 1960’s style masterpiece Moonrise Kingdom, director Wes Anderson brings to life his two central characters and their mutual dissatisfaction with worlds they inhabit and invites us to join their construction of new brighter one with gusto and sentimental charm. His latest foray into the theme of beauty in escapism does not disappoint and for viewers, is much like re-entering the playful, sunny world of childhood. Anderson imbues his youngsters Suzy Bishop, the heavy eye-lidded, blacksheep of her family (Kara Hayward) and Sam Shakusky, an orphaned oddball boy scout (Jared Gilman)  with a sense of naive charm while still managing to finding welcome balance with moments of genuine emotional honesty and realism. Despite the cinematic the beauty, there are moments of palpable sadness and regret and legitimate disenchantment with the banal elements of existence. Suzy and Sam escape their respective worlds of alienation and dissatisfaction and set out on an orchestrated adventure equipped with a cat, a record player and some library books, each relics which facilitate the beginnings of their precocious bond. The fleeting nature of their escape is unimportant, for the two share moments of such deep understanding and connection, finding the kind of tenderness absent from the lives of the adult characters who each harbour their own respective turmoil and disfunctionality.

The adult characters in the film remain confusing to Suzy and Sam and seem to complicate everything. In a particularly poignant scene, Suzy explains to her mother simply, that she loves Sam and wants to be with him. What’s so wrong with that, she asks? Her mother (Frances McDormand) is unable to respond, which is a particularly telling moment in the narrative as it points to Anderson’s overarching concerns of growing up which span his entire body of work. With the absence of any role models, the audience is invited to understand the need for escape and entranced by the beauty of Anderson’s yellow and mustard toned world. Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) who despite an affair with Suzy’s mother exhibits a genuine empathy for the orphaned Sam and ends up saving him and Suzy from peril during the highly contrasting, climactic storm scene at the films closure, providing perhaps a sole moment of adult selflessness. The film is at it’s best when exploring the rift between adults and children, and ironically points out that in times of moral uncertainty or personal conflict, the young characters often respond in a far more logical fashion than their adult counterparts.

Anderson manages to find moments of charm in each one of the colliding worlds he constructs. His wonderfully satirical depiction of the Khaki boy Scouts is carried by the brilliant performances of both the boy scouts and Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton). Norton conveys an endearing seriousness which is taken on by the boys who are almost solider like in their drilled efficiency, but again, there is a lingering sense of genuine emotional connection between the scout leader and his boys which enables some of the most touching moments of boyish mateship in the film. There are moments of hyperbole but these balance out among the slow, unobtrusive camera work, poetically sharp dialogue and meticulously detailed mise en scene Anderson crafts. The scenes that take place at Suzy’s home convey an isolated, confined existence which contrasts beautifully with the impending scenes of endless beaches and yellow fields she and Sam escape to.

Managing to maintain high brow focus while finding a consistent sense of childlike joviality, Anderson’s film is a joy and is most enjoyable for audiences with a sense of imagination and who will allow Andersons imagery to wash over them as an all encompassing, visually gorgeous reminder that the power of gazing through the lens of a child can often remind us of some surprising truths.

Moonrise Kingdom is now showing in limited release in Arthouse cinemas across Melbourne. 

WTF is this social media thing all about?

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There seems to be almost on onslaught of social media sites that encourage us to link into its ‘unique’ methods of forging connections, uploading content, sharing and being present online.

Recently, it appears that sites are emerging that aim to bring all elements of a persons online activity into one cumulative space that functions to tell their ‘online story’. This is kind of like a version of Facebook’s addition of timeline which maps out your life and how it has progressed through your events, photos, status updates, check ins and interets.

I have chosen to have a look at Storify, which claims to allow users to create their own narrative by pulling together a whole bunch of things from various social media and information sources to create your own story of the event. You can write a headline, introduction and insert text anywhere inside your story. You can add headers, hyperlinks and styled text and build a narrative and give context to your readers.

Storify opens a whole new browser page and allows you to search through popular social media applications to build up content to create your story.

Quick Example: Melbourne Coffee.

 I think this device could prove to be extremely useful in mapping out how different people use social media to subvert it’s very intentions. For example, one could accumulate a whole collection of tweets from an individual who claims to hold a particular viewpoint and contrast them to prove otherwise. Maybe I just have a sick twisted mind, but it I think Storify holds the potential to reveal a lot of the issues with revealing to much online, and almost exhibits the negative role it can play for mass corporate media outlets who so often make online blunders that never become viral.

Users of this platform appear to be quite intellectually motivated as many of the featured stories map out coverage of political events, foregrounding good sources of information and ridiculing other perceptions or the medias attempts to put a certain spin or slant on certain aspects of the event.

Similar to other platforms, Storify allows users to create a profile and follow certain users with similar interests, so I think it does well to build communities of like minded people who are committed to making changes, or to shedding light on things that perhaps others take for granted or accept as truth – however, it does so in such a crafty way by using the actual content that others would find it both eye opening and interesting.

Of course, it provides scope for creativity and remix which is fun and interactive – but Storify is definitely a great way of using social media to tell alternative versions of already established stories.

Check it out here.