Fashion in fandom and why it matters to this unfashionable girl.
Precursor: I am, and have always been, a shy, slightly socially anxious person, who hates being the centre of attention. I’ve never been the most confident person in the room, and honestly most of the time I’m thinking I’m pissing you off just by existing in the same space. I do however, love television more than words can possible express; (I got my degree so I could basically become CJ Cregg, if that helps give you some perspective) and this love of television and the characters within has certainly helped me be a less shy, social anxious person than I was 13 years ago.
“What Knowledge does a post-industrial media maker require to produce an interactive documentary?”
A Critical Report:
INTRODUCTION
In this report I respond to the prompt “what knowledge does a post-industrial media maker require to produce an interactive documentary.” I propose as a focus in the evaluation to concentrate on the idea of post-industrial media maker requiring a strong knowledge of the social media tools being used. What I mean by this is, for example in creating my interactive documentary prototype I discovered very different characteristics in the tools of Facebook and Twitter and how they are used. In order to properly examine what knowledge is required you need to have an understanding about what a post-industrial media maker and an interactive documentary actually are.
The opening sequence of ‘No Direction Home’ is used to make the audience aware to the broad scope that the film is covering.
The clip (which was the end of the one above and the next 2 minutes)opens up on concert footage of Bob Dylan performing that makes people instantly aware of who the film is about and what the focus will be. (I’m not even a Bob Dylan fan, and even I was able to tell who the film was about straight away). Yet it is with the next few shots that the real scope of the production is presented to the audience. From the concert footage, it jumps quite suddenly (both in the image and in the sudden lack of sound) to shots of a snow covered winter, a 1950’s US Country song starts to play as we first see his childhood home and before the sequence final expands out to him talking about his town, and how the economy in the town works.
This short 2 minute sequence makes the audience completely aware that whilst this may be a biopic documentary about the life of Bob Dylan, there is more to the man than just his music. He had a childhood and he had a family. He grew up in small, poor town. I found the sequence to work like an onion; that layers were being pulled back to show more and more about who Bob Dylan really is and what his life was like.
This is presented to us in a multitude of ways. The concert footage in the beginning lets the audience know this is about Bob Dylan. The poor socio-economic state of this family is shown through the image of his run down house, his soft and almost sad tone in the voiceover and in the music that is accompanying it. This also works into making the audience understand the plight of the town, when the harsh landscapes are shown, with the soft 1950’s music playing delicately in the background, and the voice over talks about the hard times that have faced this town.
This short opening sets the tone for the documentary and makes the audience aware of what is going to follow on for the rest of the film. The audience knows that it is not going to just focus on Bob Dylan’s music career, but instead focus on how he went from a poor young man in a mining town, to one of the biggest musicians in history. This small sequence, lets you know that this transformation took place, and then asks the audience to watch the rest to find out how.
Forbidden Lie$ is an Australian documentary looking at a book about supposed Honour Killings in Jordan. The clip below is a section of the film, which begins to pull apart the factual inaccuracies that are present in the book.
The clip uses many different sounds as a technique to get across the points of its incredulousness. The film uses a variety of sounds including:
Collaboration and communication between collaborators is key to creating a successful production project.
When we begun to work on Early Onset we all assigned ourselves roles within the production that we wanted to take control of, but as the production really moved forward Sarah and I began to work together in most of our roles, whilst Leon focused solely on the animation, as that was his areas of expertise.
The video presentation by Clay Shirky: “How Social Media Can Make History” makes many points about how the media industry has evolved with the creation and popularity of social media tools and services.
Editing can be a tricky and time consuming process, so knowing a few shortcuts can end up saving you a lot of time. I personally use Sony Vegas Movie Studio and the shortcuts for that program have helpfully been compiled by killerkeys.com
Marius Foley gave a presentation on the idea of “Identity and Co Creative Publics” and within it he presents many ideas of what knowledge would be required for Post Industrial Media Makers to produce a successful interactive documentary.
The project of the “everyday” has grown and changed since I created the pitch on my first day of Post Industrial Media.
When I was originally coming up with the idea of “Everyday” my first thought was of water. I don’t drink soft drinks or juice very often so my beverage of choice is usually water and because of this water is something that I value highly. This lead me to think about the many different ways water is a part of my daily life, including everything from showers to rain. It was this diversity that leads me to place the value I do in water and to want to have that represented. Yet when I continued with the project my mind was opened to the many different ways that other people view and value water in their daily lives. Through co-contributors I was presented with the idea of water colour painting, and in my facilitated contributions I was shown water a viewed by a child and water as it can be used in a professional situation, as shown by my friend the tattoo artist who uses water everyday to clean her ink gun.
These different views of water made me set a challenge for myself with my own contributions. Whilst I wanted to maintain the theme of keeping it water that I naturally encountered in my daily life, I chose to use many different forms of social media to present them. I tried to make sure that each contribution was suited for the social media platform it was presented on. I did this as an obvious representation of the many different ways that water can be viewed.
The project has evolved a lot from the ideas presented by my contributors but the ultimate goal of presenting the effect water has on peoples lives is one I feel was successful, however what the project grew to present was how subjective the view of water can be.
laurendouglas23 