This week, we continued to enter the world of culture jamming and developed our fabricated story and fictional video to accompany it :)
Together we decided to take advantage of the current political state our nation is in. A hung parliament creates confusion and frustration, and needless to say is quite prominent in Australian media. Our idea was to build off the federal election and base a story around Australian youth and their annoyance with the election. The manipulation however, was the 'united protest' of young australians who would simultaneously beep their car horns at intersections. 'Honking' provides a voice to young australians that feel they are being ignored in politics.
We shot and edited a 2 minute video which includes footage of honking intersections and interviews with two 'honking' participants. The film was shot on a mobile phone, and hopefully gives the idea of an amateur university news team taking on a real issue that mainstream media may not have picked up on yet :)
For 3 months now my partner and I have refused to log on to our Facebook accounts.
Reason was, I hate everyone knowing these things about me, and being required to post stuff up about my life to people I barely knew. I know privacy settings can be changed and I limited my friends to people i knew, but how does that stop anybody from accessing it anyway.
There is enough stuff on the internet about me already let alone adding information from my daily life to it.
On the other hand, web 2.0 has made the biggest difference for those with creative ambitions. While there is a lot of shit on youtube, there is a lot of really cool stuff that is inspiring and amazing. However, I would slap YouTube for allowing Beiber on the scene. Still, there are many people that have made it big thanks to file sharing sites and Social Networking sites etc. Barrack Obama made it big in his election because of his 'tweets'. Web 2.0 is not just a resource we use in life but is a major part of modern life. We count on it for soo much, and many of us use it on a daily basis, even an hourly basis. I don't think people realise how much we have come to depend on it.
Lastly, the homework set for the week scared me. i have never though who OWNED MY stuff that i post on the internet, i just assumed it was me, and i believe many others do to. It is really scary that others could take it and abuse it, or the website i have posted it on can distribute it etc. That really freaks me out, and i guess will make me think twice about what i post on the net next time.
This week we are to enter the world of Culture Jamming.
How exciting :)
To do this we must fabricate a story, something that will catch the worlds eye, film a short video for evidence and post the story on CNN ireport. Hopefully, they will believe us!!!
This week we brainstormed ideas and determined something relevant and current in Australia would provide a stable platform for manipulation. Elaborating on something already going on in Australia or the Gold coast would make the story more believable. Ideas that were brought up were very political and based on the current federal election. We thought about the party leaders, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbot, and their policies etc. we also talked about the other main political issue of asylum seekers. As we would would most likely shoot the video at Griffith, we also thought that it should involve young people. The group choose to develop ideas over the coming week and would choose and film our story in week 6.
It was really interesting to learn just how much a consumer in todays society controls the content in their lives. I believe that it is very much a positive outcome of personal computers, smart phones and new media in general.People that can control what they watch, listen to and learn from is quite freeing and and release from main-stream media control. People can watch Tv shows because they WANT to watch them not because that is what Media barons want them to watch. Online Tv shows and movies have no or very little advertisement, providing freedom of thought rather than being shown what to think about. Social media sites allow people to be involved in groups that they can connect with, having relationships with certain people that may not be available to them in their own life or community. However, i do believe that user generated content in News Media is not all together a positive outcome. While it is a easy way for PROFESSIONALS to write and contribute news stories etc into the public sphere, Everyday nobody's without talent take advantage of new media and put their own unreliable and fabricated news stories etc into the publics hands, clogging up the internet with useless information. If we could somehow filter out the Shit from the good, the internet and its user generated content would be much more reliable source.
(and researching would not be so time consuming)
TUTE SPARK***
Culture Jamming is the 'practice of disrupting, disturbing or subverting of mainstream media messages'. (also known as Media Hacking)
ONe of the first accounts of culture jamming happened between 1979-1983. The campaign was called 'Truisms' and was produced by multimedia ar
tist Jenny Holzer. The campaign utilised stock tickers, electronic billboards and stadium scoreboards to flash 'sardonic' messages such as "money creates taste" and "murder has its sexual side" at audiences.
A common form of culture jamming is called 'Seismi
c Solution', which is the use of established well-known advertising or images that are manipulated and create a new message. These images are usually found in public places and capture a second glance by viewers. Some examples are as follows.
Columbus, Ohio - expressing feelings on one of the biggest mailing companies in America.
Streets of East London- quite obviously the impact fast food is having on children
The Hilton Columbus, Ohio, exhibited the picture willingly. - expressing the families (esp. Paris Hiltons) lack of class. :)
A german artist by the name of Ronen placed life size photos of migrants and asylum seekers displaying their papers behind bars and grates of sewage canals. (political message)
The first Web Tv show was launched back in 1995, it was called 'The Spot', many others were created but unfortunately the quality of video was limited and the sites were unable to handle the large amount of viewers tuning in to watch the episodic web videos. Then during 2000-2005, video-streaming with quality of picture and the ability to display content to a lot of users launched. These were the now famous Youtube and Daily motion. Web series like Rocket Boom began, along with the explosion of user content and low budget films.
2. What recent innovations are luring us to the movies?
Most recently i think it is the explosion of 3D in cinema. New digital technology has made the creation and use of 3D cinema much more believable and life like than ever before. For example, Avatar. There is the recent release of the popular children's movie Toy Story 3, and the dance movie Step Up 3D. Also with advancing technologies in sound equipment, cinemas offer an experience of sound that is un parallel to anything achievable at home for most people. The film industry are trying to keep their audience base by offering new experiences, such as 3D cinema and TV, Blu-ray and Sound. Unfortunately , with the ease of Video streaming and torrent downloads a lot of people download movies and television shows because its cheaper. Hopefully by offering new and better experiences at the cinema or TV, people will still venture out and make the purchase to rightfully view the movie or show.
3. Are short films still getting made? Why? who pays for them?
Yes short films are still getting made and with video hosting sites like Youtube, it is even easier for independent film makers to have their show or movie watched. Low budget short films are usually funded by raised money or the money of those participating in the creation. It is usually in the hope that the film goes viral or enters a film festival with the possibility of making money in return.
4. The term viral is thrown around a lot, what does it mean?
a viral video is one that has become extremely popular via file-sharing websites and email. some examples are The Beautiful Seatbelt - which turned into a commerical
ANd the Old Spice Ad
5. Webisodes, what are they and how do they affect the audience?
Webisodes are Tv series of episodes that are specifically made for the internet. With the use of file-sharing like Youtube, blogs and social networking sites, low budget shows can hit large audiences easily and cheaply. It allows people form all over the world to have to ability to watch programs of a specific interest which aren't available on free-to-air television. i believe the outcome is a positive one giving the viewer freedom of choice in what programs they consume. :)
An example of a highly rated Webisode is 'The Guild'
The lecture yesterday was interesting. i thought it was really cool how much cinema has changed and the challenges cinema have faced over the years due to technological advances. I can't say i would enjoy shock-cinema or smell-o-vision, but they were pretty funny ideas to keep the audience interested. Even though i know i can hop on my computer and download a video illegally, i still visit the cinemas often. Its an experience with the wide screen and the popcorn. Its not the same when your stuck in your room or something watching a blurred movie on your small computer screen. I think cinema will live on :)
TUTESPARK***
1. 'Mankind is no Island' won Tropfest 2008. Its a film made completely on a mobile phone and is shot between two cities, New York USA and Sydney AUS. The film uses words and pictures to tell a story of homelessness and peoples lack of empathy for them. Its a hard hitting story that makes you think about what you can do for other less fortunate than yourself. NO wonder it won Tropfest.
2. 'The Picnic' won tropfest NY 2007. It was filmed in Marrickville AUS by Belinda King. The story follows a group of friends going on a picnic that turns very nasty. Its quite a weird, evil sense of humour.
3. 'The Plan' is an award winning short film that trades in everything and travels to vegas to bet all. On his trip he meets a girl who changes things up. The has been some critique about the film because it is said that some ideas have been stolen from another short film called 'SNAP', it is also suggested that film is very cliche.
The following is a slideshow i did by myself as i was away for the week 2 tutorial.
My video is about visiting a long lost friend.
Many shots are used to display the subject and the main objects that i want the audience to concentrate on. I did this by using close-up and distance shots of the subject and object of the picture. I also used photos of the sky, such as day and night images, to depict timing and the passing of time. Long distance shots were also used to accompany two subjects at once, displaying their relationship and interaction with one another. Simple pictures over the shoulder also assisted in communicating to the audience what the subject was doing and looking at. The music choice is a happy, fun song which gives a sense of adventure and excitement. Altogether i believe i have created a story via short images successfully. :)
Q5. Hatsune Miku is a japanese anime character who sings. She belongs to the vocaloid character vocal series, and uses the voice of the japanese actress Saki Fujita. Her birthday is the 31st of August.
Week 3's lecture was not as boring as i thought it would be :) It's so weird how we use these technologies everyday of every week and barely any of us actually have an understanding of where they originated from and why it is so. I couldn't believe the the first ideas of a computer started back in the 1800's, let alone by a woman!! (which is amazing) It amazes me the society just continues to invite this stuff into their lives, to me it seems as though there is little apprehension in accepting these technologies into our lives. When really, little of us have a complete understanding of the way in which these technologies work and what they are capable of. I don't know maybe computers really will take over the world.... It was interesting to see how Mac and Pc came around. I thought it was crazy that 1. Bill gates dropped out of University, and 2. that Apple started in a garage.
All in all, history of communication technologies (computer esp.) wasn't all that bad.
TUTESPARK**
This task is impossible. I searched the meaning of electric, digital and analog and could not with the life of me piece together 1 situation let alone 3, where digital technology could be formed without the use of electricity in some form. This TUTESPARK was bad, and i think that we needed more of an explanation or example in either the lecture or tutorial.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend this weeks lecture. I did notice however, after looking up the lecture notes on Learning@Griffith that it was about the way different camera angles communicate a message in video. It almost seems like a language we learn without realising. The amount of Television and Media in general people consume on a daily basis, we seem to have created an ability to piece two and two together from little snippets. Maybe media has become so predictable that we no longer need imagination. When i was looking at some of the typical camera angles to display a subject and what they were interacting with, i realised just how common those shots were in movies and television, even in news stories. It really has become second nature to understand what is going on.
