The most striking thing about The Good The Bad and The Ugly (TGTBTU)is the use of music to emphasize the action depicted by the fairly simply graphics.
The heartbeat drums building up smashed by the gunshots to introduce the main character and highlight the producers, directors name etc. The simple use of keying over red and green gives a real feel for the blood shed in the movie and is again emphasised buy the gunshots.
Combined with what seems like hand drawn animation (given the year of production) a real sense of fear and speed has been created by the meshing of these simple techniques. It is not a pleasing, easy on the ear sound and the harmonies that are ‘sung’ are dischordal and not harmonious making it a difficult and uncomfortable listen.
The Island of Dr Moreau (TIODM) is on the other hand a lot more modern and recongised as being a pioneer in motion graphics title sequences exhibits far more incredibly trickery and modern titling capabilities. At the same time there are similarities in some of the simplicities used here as well. There is a basic theme of simple core colours to begin with and these are matted or keyed out to reveal other imagery beneath them similar to TGTBTU. Where as in the latter a fragmented feel is achieved by washing text in and out the same overall effect is achieved in TIODM with text fragmentation. They both use a similar dramatic effect with sound accompaniment to emphasize key turning points with dramatic drumbeats and key splashes of sound movement. The music to TIODM is also dischordal and awkward on the ear and is used to create a sense of discomfort and fear and uneasiness to great effect.
Off topic, but an amazing title sequence to watch for Tracking, Compositing and 3D compositing is Carnivale by a52 (available on Art of the Title also). In this sequence the user is shown 2D flat plane Tarot cards that are then turned, tilted and zoomed into in a 3D composite manner. German imagery comes to life and American newsreels float in and out of perspective tweening between the film reels and the still imagery. The whole sequence is an amazing display of motion graphics, compositing and 3D animation merging with film. What kind of genre would you say this is? I think it belongs in the surreal pocket but has elements of so much it would be heard to define.
I also found the sequence from Casino Royale most intriguing visually, especially the way that the four suits from the deck of cards are used to excellent effect. Every time a character is crunched, punched, killed and squished they explode into an alternate suit from the deck. In one particular card scene a composite takes place where you are seeing an ink drawing of the Queen from the deck, as the crosshair passes over her we see a real woman of similar ilk beneath just for a second. The theme uses these images throughout the entire composition building on the theme of the casino as roulette wheels spin in and out of focus and characters dissolve into hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds while Daniel Craig romps around shooting people. Fantastic! I think I have found my calling, a total mesh of all of my favourite things piled into one!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Essay | Marked Assignment 2 | Is that a digital video in your pocket?
The purpose of this essay is to have a critical look at the contribution that Social Media is making and the effect it is having upon traditional film genres such as News and Documentaries. Emerging trends in Social Media are creating new sub genres blurring the lines between traditional news, documentaries and fiction storytelling. Some of the key things I will be looking at in detail: Is video content changing because of the devices being used to access these new genres? How is Social Media affecting traditional genres like documentaries and broadcast news channels? What are some of the new genres emerging out of social media?
With advances in technology, consumer targeted video equipment, software, and the Internet what is required to publish a digital video is now so widely accessible by most that literally anyone can publish their own videos. Social Media is rapidly becoming the new way that much of this content is being delivered, online whenever you want to watch it. What is happening in the online environment and specifically with user generated content is the key driver forcing corporate television networks and major production companies to look at very closely. Is it a threat, or an opportunity, what are the emerging trends in content, what is the next big thing?
Messages about the ‘next big thing’ video spread virally across a range of different platforms of Social Media incredibly fast. Historically traditional cinema was an absolute treat for the family - a circus for the mind eyes and ears. For a large family the journey to the cinema was a full experience, the outing followed by a meal, treats, popcorn and a block buster movie like E.T. In 1981 Special Effects created a new level of anthropomorphic horror that was so real and totally believable in An American Werewolf in London, even an Oscars awards category had to be created specifically for the film – Outstanding Achievement in Makeup. Going to cinema was much like going to a big carnival or show - plunged into another world or reality, the huge movie posters 12ft high and lit up, the smell of piping hot popcorn and then the screen and sound system itself a visual and aural overload of the senses.
But anecdotes such as these are possibly less impactful nowadays, as the experience is now online. Anyone with Internet access can go to YouTube and see a seemingly endless amount of user-generated content with a vast spread of genres being represented and created. YouTube gives people what they want to see when they want to see it. The world is much more instant with websites like YouTube where the experience is user driven. There is a new era of entertainment at your fingertips, one you don’t have to leave your house for. Facebook connects people globally as ‘friends’ creating a virtual social network with people uniting them on a common platform where you share all the video content you like. Traditional genres such as news, documentary, horror, and commercials are are represented but have been exposed to a new genre of its own, Reality TV.
Reality TV is constantly transforming itself as shows are changed and warped into different genes. Big Brother has to be attributed to be the television series that kicked it all off into mass commercialism. Big Brother gave us the ultimate experience in people gazing, for one hour a night you could sit and watch strangers who have been forced to live together for 5 weeks and made to vote one another off of the show one by one. A type of game show, a blend of news, documentary from the perspective of the secret diary vlog, comedy and at the same time intimately watching people interact and socialise, Big Brother had created a sub genre to Reality TV - Surveillance.
Similar to vlogging where a user appears to be just being habituate, existing and exhibiting their normal daily routine, Surveillance has the added attraction that the artist know they’re being watched creating a tension and often over animated responses.
This was an interesting time for emerging genres and sub cultures, as ordinary people were suddenly becoming TV celebrities with all the fame and fortune. At a similar time another reality TV show was taking off in popularity. This time the scene is Survivor; a cast of people forced to live on a remote island with limited tools and resources and then vote each other off the island. Hosted like a game show where contestants must play games for a prize a new genre based around a documentary style but under surveillance fighting for basic human survival. Contestants would lose radical amounts of weight and change appearance dramatically right as you follow along on live broadcasts.
This merging of genres from Reality TV and this surveillance aspect of watching people YouTube creates a new type of exhibitionism, stemming from both the desire to be in it, and the desire for it to be watched. People will do anything it takes to get their video up as the Featured Video on the YouTube homepage. But just doing something crazy doesn’t necessarily mean instant success. The content still has to appeal to the mass audience for a hit result, they expect fair representation and honesty in being dealt with. Teresa Rizzo calls this ‘the cinema of attraction’ whereby we are drawn to the virtual circus and it stems from our natural curiosity and sense of wonder. Social Media is creating a new connection between traditional cinema formats and the emerging genres springing from user-generated content. Social Networking evolved from people connecting, chatting and sharing into one worth billions of dollars and one that most big corporates are willing to pay heavily for. Of particular interest in this new age of film is the delivery of all of this content which now is becoming increasingly more popular on hand held devices. Broadband delivery on a mobile device and of course like the iPhone consumers are now taking the delivery of video content with them.
Computational power increases and the storage capacity and multimedia ability of hand held devices gets more powerful it is quite reasonable to take your favourite movie, news, documentaries, animations and music with you and share them just as easily.
Another aspect of delivery that is new is the ability for producers to get two way feedback and interaction with users as is the case with current film ‘Two Fists One Heart’ (Riley 2009). The Australian producers of this film released 30 minutes of footage on the Internet for anyone to use as a ‘mashup’. A mashup is footage and audio from different films and soundtracks or music and combine them together to create something new. This is nothing new in itself but the fact that producers are releasing this footage under creative commons before the movie is released in Australian cinemas is. The producer David Elfick made available footage that was otherwise wasted – cutting room floor content - and used the web and its sharing capability for delivery. It could be judged as a clever marketing campaign prior to the movie release but this creates the opportunity for anyone to work on professionally shot footage with full artistic license. The additional incentive is that the 5 best scenes created from this footage will be added to Disney’s promotional Two Fists, One Heart site, and of course on YouTube. Other emerging genres from YouTube are PR viral campaigns and docu-vlogging. The YouTuber boxxybabee is a enigmatic young lady with a very unique persona talking about who she is, what she likes, exhibiting very eccentric behaviour and prime example of the docu-blog. She pertains to be telling the truth and is honestly representing herself as herself and becomes a smash hit, her video Foar Everywun from Boxxy has more than two and half million hits (YouTube Boxxybabee 2009). Her reach is global and makes media coverage. Whereas commercial industry can dictate ‘what you see’ via Hollywood mainstream productions and success but with YouTube and Social Media the success Boxxybabee is still decided through public opinion.
YouTube gives every user the ability to make a personal decision and be involved in or have some control in the process of making a docu-vlog successful. The sharing of these instant videos via email and viral messaging as well as word of mouth and publicity stunts in some cases spread the word. Public opinion rules. No Hollywood director, clever PR campaign or inane amount of spend on publicity has an effect. This new genre is driven purely on public opinion.
The creation of social networking sites like ‘Facebook’ has only increased this change in digital media and cinema. Where YouTube was one the place to view the user-generated content of choice, Social Media itself has enabled the genre by becoming the platform to propagate your favourite videos. Facebook recognized the success of video sharing sites like YouTube and quickly incorporated its own video sharing capability. Networks of connected people globally realized that digital video could be cross-referenced or embedded videos on their personal pages. Every other social media site from Blog to Corporate propaganda site also recognized the opportunity to raise the profile of their own messaging and YouTube cemented its place in current society as the video sharing site of preference. From my perspective digital media and cinema changed forever.
An interesting aspect of this change is that the traditional delivery of blockbuster movies has not changed. It is reasonable to believe that the average family has a massive flatscreen tv or a massive overhead projector system creating a cinema at home, yet cinema still appeals and continues to fill seats. I believe that this is the extension of the cinema of attractions and the need for human beings to react and interact with each other. This is the atmosphere of the cinema of attractions. We laugh and cry together, react simultaneously and feel better for having similar reactions to the stranger next to us. We like the cinema. The bigger screen, the amazing Dolby Surround sound systems installed in today’s theatres forming a big part of the attraction and creating that atmosphere. Social Media connects our relationships and provides the platform to share and showcase any material. A user, or friend, posts a message, a picture, a video on an online social media page, every person in their contacts list sees that something something has been posted, they click watch and experience and by doing so alerting everybody in their contacts list of their interest in what I am saying, doing, experiencing and so the viral message spreads. New content is being created users and delivered online and it is very popular, and Social Media is having a prolific effect on digital video and cinema by the merging and blending of traditional genres like news and documentaries into docu-blogs and reality television based surveillance cinema. All of this content has a new angle to consider in that it has become completely mobile and portable. It has affected what we view on free-to-air television and cinema as much as it has affected traditional advertising and print media streams, and will be a key source for the emergence of new genres into the future.
Bibliography
Brie Byncild (2007). Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional. California: Peachpit Press, Berkley. 278. Ken Dancyger (2007). The Technique of Film and Video Editing. 4th ed. New York: Focal Press. 10. Anthony A. Apodaca, Larry Gritz, Ronen Barzel (1999). Advanced RenderMan. San Francisco, CA, USA: Morgan Kaufmann. 3. John Conomos (2007). Mutant Media: Essays on Cinema, Video Art and New Media. Australia: Power Publications. 31. Teresa Rizzo. (2008). YouTube: the Cinema of New Attractions. YouTube: the Cinema of New Attractions. 5 (1), 1. Jim Stinson. (202). Video Genres. Available: http://www.videomaker.com/article/8843/. Last accessed 20 March 2009. Duncan Riley. (2099). World first: cut movie footage released for fan mixing under Creative Commons . Available: http://www.inquisitr.com/20350/world-first-cut-movie-footage-released-for-fan-mixing-under-creative-commons/. Last accessed 21 March 2009. Mark Andrejevic. (2003). Between the New and the Old Medium. In: n.d. Reality TV: the Work of Being Watched. n.d.: Rowman & Littlefield. 1-6. CMNS6040 | Digital Video | University of Newcastle Marked Assignment 2 – Written Essay
– Student number 3103360 1
With advances in technology, consumer targeted video equipment, software, and the Internet what is required to publish a digital video is now so widely accessible by most that literally anyone can publish their own videos. Social Media is rapidly becoming the new way that much of this content is being delivered, online whenever you want to watch it. What is happening in the online environment and specifically with user generated content is the key driver forcing corporate television networks and major production companies to look at very closely. Is it a threat, or an opportunity, what are the emerging trends in content, what is the next big thing?
Messages about the ‘next big thing’ video spread virally across a range of different platforms of Social Media incredibly fast. Historically traditional cinema was an absolute treat for the family - a circus for the mind eyes and ears. For a large family the journey to the cinema was a full experience, the outing followed by a meal, treats, popcorn and a block buster movie like E.T. In 1981 Special Effects created a new level of anthropomorphic horror that was so real and totally believable in An American Werewolf in London, even an Oscars awards category had to be created specifically for the film – Outstanding Achievement in Makeup. Going to cinema was much like going to a big carnival or show - plunged into another world or reality, the huge movie posters 12ft high and lit up, the smell of piping hot popcorn and then the screen and sound system itself a visual and aural overload of the senses.
But anecdotes such as these are possibly less impactful nowadays, as the experience is now online. Anyone with Internet access can go to YouTube and see a seemingly endless amount of user-generated content with a vast spread of genres being represented and created. YouTube gives people what they want to see when they want to see it. The world is much more instant with websites like YouTube where the experience is user driven. There is a new era of entertainment at your fingertips, one you don’t have to leave your house for. Facebook connects people globally as ‘friends’ creating a virtual social network with people uniting them on a common platform where you share all the video content you like. Traditional genres such as news, documentary, horror, and commercials are are represented but have been exposed to a new genre of its own, Reality TV.
Reality TV is constantly transforming itself as shows are changed and warped into different genes. Big Brother has to be attributed to be the television series that kicked it all off into mass commercialism. Big Brother gave us the ultimate experience in people gazing, for one hour a night you could sit and watch strangers who have been forced to live together for 5 weeks and made to vote one another off of the show one by one. A type of game show, a blend of news, documentary from the perspective of the secret diary vlog, comedy and at the same time intimately watching people interact and socialise, Big Brother had created a sub genre to Reality TV - Surveillance.
Similar to vlogging where a user appears to be just being habituate, existing and exhibiting their normal daily routine, Surveillance has the added attraction that the artist know they’re being watched creating a tension and often over animated responses.
This was an interesting time for emerging genres and sub cultures, as ordinary people were suddenly becoming TV celebrities with all the fame and fortune. At a similar time another reality TV show was taking off in popularity. This time the scene is Survivor; a cast of people forced to live on a remote island with limited tools and resources and then vote each other off the island. Hosted like a game show where contestants must play games for a prize a new genre based around a documentary style but under surveillance fighting for basic human survival. Contestants would lose radical amounts of weight and change appearance dramatically right as you follow along on live broadcasts.
This merging of genres from Reality TV and this surveillance aspect of watching people YouTube creates a new type of exhibitionism, stemming from both the desire to be in it, and the desire for it to be watched. People will do anything it takes to get their video up as the Featured Video on the YouTube homepage. But just doing something crazy doesn’t necessarily mean instant success. The content still has to appeal to the mass audience for a hit result, they expect fair representation and honesty in being dealt with. Teresa Rizzo calls this ‘the cinema of attraction’ whereby we are drawn to the virtual circus and it stems from our natural curiosity and sense of wonder. Social Media is creating a new connection between traditional cinema formats and the emerging genres springing from user-generated content. Social Networking evolved from people connecting, chatting and sharing into one worth billions of dollars and one that most big corporates are willing to pay heavily for. Of particular interest in this new age of film is the delivery of all of this content which now is becoming increasingly more popular on hand held devices. Broadband delivery on a mobile device and of course like the iPhone consumers are now taking the delivery of video content with them.
Computational power increases and the storage capacity and multimedia ability of hand held devices gets more powerful it is quite reasonable to take your favourite movie, news, documentaries, animations and music with you and share them just as easily.
Another aspect of delivery that is new is the ability for producers to get two way feedback and interaction with users as is the case with current film ‘Two Fists One Heart’ (Riley 2009). The Australian producers of this film released 30 minutes of footage on the Internet for anyone to use as a ‘mashup’. A mashup is footage and audio from different films and soundtracks or music and combine them together to create something new. This is nothing new in itself but the fact that producers are releasing this footage under creative commons before the movie is released in Australian cinemas is. The producer David Elfick made available footage that was otherwise wasted – cutting room floor content - and used the web and its sharing capability for delivery. It could be judged as a clever marketing campaign prior to the movie release but this creates the opportunity for anyone to work on professionally shot footage with full artistic license. The additional incentive is that the 5 best scenes created from this footage will be added to Disney’s promotional Two Fists, One Heart site, and of course on YouTube. Other emerging genres from YouTube are PR viral campaigns and docu-vlogging. The YouTuber boxxybabee is a enigmatic young lady with a very unique persona talking about who she is, what she likes, exhibiting very eccentric behaviour and prime example of the docu-blog. She pertains to be telling the truth and is honestly representing herself as herself and becomes a smash hit, her video Foar Everywun from Boxxy has more than two and half million hits (YouTube Boxxybabee 2009). Her reach is global and makes media coverage. Whereas commercial industry can dictate ‘what you see’ via Hollywood mainstream productions and success but with YouTube and Social Media the success Boxxybabee is still decided through public opinion.
YouTube gives every user the ability to make a personal decision and be involved in or have some control in the process of making a docu-vlog successful. The sharing of these instant videos via email and viral messaging as well as word of mouth and publicity stunts in some cases spread the word. Public opinion rules. No Hollywood director, clever PR campaign or inane amount of spend on publicity has an effect. This new genre is driven purely on public opinion.
The creation of social networking sites like ‘Facebook’ has only increased this change in digital media and cinema. Where YouTube was one the place to view the user-generated content of choice, Social Media itself has enabled the genre by becoming the platform to propagate your favourite videos. Facebook recognized the success of video sharing sites like YouTube and quickly incorporated its own video sharing capability. Networks of connected people globally realized that digital video could be cross-referenced or embedded videos on their personal pages. Every other social media site from Blog to Corporate propaganda site also recognized the opportunity to raise the profile of their own messaging and YouTube cemented its place in current society as the video sharing site of preference. From my perspective digital media and cinema changed forever.
An interesting aspect of this change is that the traditional delivery of blockbuster movies has not changed. It is reasonable to believe that the average family has a massive flatscreen tv or a massive overhead projector system creating a cinema at home, yet cinema still appeals and continues to fill seats. I believe that this is the extension of the cinema of attractions and the need for human beings to react and interact with each other. This is the atmosphere of the cinema of attractions. We laugh and cry together, react simultaneously and feel better for having similar reactions to the stranger next to us. We like the cinema. The bigger screen, the amazing Dolby Surround sound systems installed in today’s theatres forming a big part of the attraction and creating that atmosphere. Social Media connects our relationships and provides the platform to share and showcase any material. A user, or friend, posts a message, a picture, a video on an online social media page, every person in their contacts list sees that something something has been posted, they click watch and experience and by doing so alerting everybody in their contacts list of their interest in what I am saying, doing, experiencing and so the viral message spreads. New content is being created users and delivered online and it is very popular, and Social Media is having a prolific effect on digital video and cinema by the merging and blending of traditional genres like news and documentaries into docu-blogs and reality television based surveillance cinema. All of this content has a new angle to consider in that it has become completely mobile and portable. It has affected what we view on free-to-air television and cinema as much as it has affected traditional advertising and print media streams, and will be a key source for the emergence of new genres into the future.
Bibliography
Brie Byncild (2007). Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional. California: Peachpit Press, Berkley. 278. Ken Dancyger (2007). The Technique of Film and Video Editing. 4th ed. New York: Focal Press. 10. Anthony A. Apodaca, Larry Gritz, Ronen Barzel (1999). Advanced RenderMan. San Francisco, CA, USA: Morgan Kaufmann. 3. John Conomos (2007). Mutant Media: Essays on Cinema, Video Art and New Media. Australia: Power Publications. 31. Teresa Rizzo. (2008). YouTube: the Cinema of New Attractions. YouTube: the Cinema of New Attractions. 5 (1), 1. Jim Stinson. (202). Video Genres. Available: http://www.videomaker.com/article/8843/. Last accessed 20 March 2009. Duncan Riley. (2099). World first: cut movie footage released for fan mixing under Creative Commons . Available: http://www.inquisitr.com/20350/world-first-cut-movie-footage-released-for-fan-mixing-under-creative-commons/. Last accessed 21 March 2009. Mark Andrejevic. (2003). Between the New and the Old Medium. In: n.d. Reality TV: the Work of Being Watched. n.d.: Rowman & Littlefield. 1-6. CMNS6040 | Digital Video | University of Newcastle Marked Assignment 2 – Written Essay
– Student number 3103360 1
Sunday, March 15, 2009
The Struggle Within & Resolution
I was, note was, having a MAJOR conniption over my genre essay, due this weekend.
I had picked Superheroes as my genre and have to admit I wasnt even really sure if that was a genre. So I sent Cathie a request to clarify and she was a bit aloof and wouldnt really say yes or no but that she thought the genre would be more comic book action genre. This got me starting to think that I didnt even really know what a bloody genre was!
I spent hours, almost a whole weekend fine tuning my 200 word synopsis and managed to pin point some more finite areas to concentrate on looking at green screening and how effects in general have affected the believability of superheroes. I know... pretty fine tuned!
So hitting the research again started to become very frustrating and not turning up much good reference material. You cant rely soley on some user generated content wiki right?
And this is when it came to me: FLASH! Pow! Just like an old comic superhero - look at Social Media as a genre! I madly started jotting down points of interest, paragraphs of loose thoughts, headings and quotes, references and topics to discuss an before I knew it I had 1500 jumbled words and thoughts down on the page.
This is it I told myself, this will be an interesting essay.
I quickly wrote to Cathie again seeking permission to go off topic and change the focus of my essay and just got the reply now so I am thrilled! Here is the reply:
Dan, that sounds terrific - you could focus on a specific genre that uses social media. Social media itself isn't a genre they are social networks and distributed platforms, but they are doing exactly what you're saying impacting on traditional genres and methods of exhibition and distribution. You could clarify this in your essay and site examples of developing genres & programs that are developing through social media networks. For example 'The Matrix' and sci-fi genres were one of the first to use 'fan culture' and distribute aspects of their story across the internet. ARGs and Cross-media productions use social networks for both drama and documentary and have created hybrids such as ficto-documentaries or factual-dramas and reality games which blurr factual content with dramatic structures. You may have to search the website for conference papers and articles on this one and develop your essay through a key example of a program.
cheers, Cathie
So that has fired me up and I can hardly wait to get home and get these thoughts out of my head, so much to get down and done so that I can start to really focus on the final assignment, going to look at how mobile content is also affecting and develping genres.
ughh... the final assignement...I cant decide for the life of me what, who, when, how I will do it. I think I want to do the Imaginery World concept but havent got one single lucid original thought in my entire vapid brain at the moment... it's KILLING ME!
I had picked Superheroes as my genre and have to admit I wasnt even really sure if that was a genre. So I sent Cathie a request to clarify and she was a bit aloof and wouldnt really say yes or no but that she thought the genre would be more comic book action genre. This got me starting to think that I didnt even really know what a bloody genre was!
I spent hours, almost a whole weekend fine tuning my 200 word synopsis and managed to pin point some more finite areas to concentrate on looking at green screening and how effects in general have affected the believability of superheroes. I know... pretty fine tuned!
So hitting the research again started to become very frustrating and not turning up much good reference material. You cant rely soley on some user generated content wiki right?
And this is when it came to me: FLASH! Pow! Just like an old comic superhero - look at Social Media as a genre! I madly started jotting down points of interest, paragraphs of loose thoughts, headings and quotes, references and topics to discuss an before I knew it I had 1500 jumbled words and thoughts down on the page.
This is it I told myself, this will be an interesting essay.
I quickly wrote to Cathie again seeking permission to go off topic and change the focus of my essay and just got the reply now so I am thrilled! Here is the reply:
Dan, that sounds terrific - you could focus on a specific genre that uses social media. Social media itself isn't a genre they are social networks and distributed platforms, but they are doing exactly what you're saying impacting on traditional genres and methods of exhibition and distribution. You could clarify this in your essay and site examples of developing genres & programs that are developing through social media networks. For example 'The Matrix' and sci-fi genres were one of the first to use 'fan culture' and distribute aspects of their story across the internet. ARGs and Cross-media productions use social networks for both drama and documentary and have created hybrids such as ficto-documentaries or factual-dramas and reality games which blurr factual content with dramatic structures. You may have to search the website for conference papers and articles on this one and develop your essay through a key example of a program.
cheers, Cathie
So that has fired me up and I can hardly wait to get home and get these thoughts out of my head, so much to get down and done so that I can start to really focus on the final assignment, going to look at how mobile content is also affecting and develping genres.
ughh... the final assignement...I cant decide for the life of me what, who, when, how I will do it. I think I want to do the Imaginery World concept but havent got one single lucid original thought in my entire vapid brain at the moment... it's KILLING ME!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Blog Discussion| Factual Content: Conglomerates & Independents
The big difference I perceive between independent news and broadcast television is like the contrast between narrative and non-narrative storytelling. In true form narrative will have a cause and effect chain of events building to a conclusion, whereas non-narrative storytelling has no constraints, telling stories through scenes that can be completely unrelated but still make a point.
Broadcast news television is the narrative; a controlled series of events chosen to tell a particular story with a finite for or against opinion, whereas the independent can tell any story they feel the need to get out. Often the independent can tell the story the corporate, government, broadcaster don’t want the public to hear, see or experience.
In the same way, factual content can be manipulated by both parties but in broadcast television - in a news sense - they are bound by litigation to actually offer some ‘truth’ to the viewer, whereas an independent can offer his or her opinion about anything society has to offer. One is bound by chains and forced to give the viewer a construct of truth, the other is without boundary to tell it like it is, or however they chose to depict it. In this way the conventions of modern television have been blown wide apart, user generated content is paving the way for the future, society is demanding WYSWIG content when we want it over high speed broadband. This is forcing the networks to sit up and listen. A proliferation of reality TV has taken over and as discussed in the lecture has spawned such a wide range of hybrid genres where potentially anybody is a reporter and the lines between fact and fiction are blurred.
Social Media has also spawned its own phenomena – YouTube, Facebook & Myspace have online populations larger than small countries. What you want, when you want it content, opinion stripped of commercial intervention. Big corporates trying to get in on the act make fatal errors in judgement misrepresenting themselves with viral marketing campaigns that are struck down by the savvy new age community as fakes. A recent example was the Witchery ‘Naked’ campaign whereby an attractive woman claimed be trying to get in touch with a man by the jacket that he left without contact details after their first date.
This video was posted to YouTube and purported as a genuine website of an attractive woman, but was quickly exposed as a PR exercise and hence lost on the community quickly. At first Witchery denied the claim and then found unthought-of of legal implications for the hoax and had to fess up - it exposed a need for widespread awareness by these big companies meddling in new media. Just how should online viral content by executed? What really is factual content? As soon as the video was exposed as hoax traffic to it plummeted.
Social Media communities, user generated content and independent 'convergent journalists' are able to influence the public more with an original idea, an honest opinion, a real story just as easily and viral messages can spread like wildfire. There is real power in honest representation and integrity.
There is no doubt that this new era of Digital Video is going to effect broadcast television in many ways, and as technology increases and broadband reaches 100Mmps capacity becoming truly ‘two-way’, these changes are surely only the tip of the iceberg.
Digital content over broadband poses a very real serious threat to the corporate networks and I cant wait to see where it takes us.
Broadcast news television is the narrative; a controlled series of events chosen to tell a particular story with a finite for or against opinion, whereas the independent can tell any story they feel the need to get out. Often the independent can tell the story the corporate, government, broadcaster don’t want the public to hear, see or experience.
In the same way, factual content can be manipulated by both parties but in broadcast television - in a news sense - they are bound by litigation to actually offer some ‘truth’ to the viewer, whereas an independent can offer his or her opinion about anything society has to offer. One is bound by chains and forced to give the viewer a construct of truth, the other is without boundary to tell it like it is, or however they chose to depict it. In this way the conventions of modern television have been blown wide apart, user generated content is paving the way for the future, society is demanding WYSWIG content when we want it over high speed broadband. This is forcing the networks to sit up and listen. A proliferation of reality TV has taken over and as discussed in the lecture has spawned such a wide range of hybrid genres where potentially anybody is a reporter and the lines between fact and fiction are blurred.
Social Media has also spawned its own phenomena – YouTube, Facebook & Myspace have online populations larger than small countries. What you want, when you want it content, opinion stripped of commercial intervention. Big corporates trying to get in on the act make fatal errors in judgement misrepresenting themselves with viral marketing campaigns that are struck down by the savvy new age community as fakes. A recent example was the Witchery ‘Naked’ campaign whereby an attractive woman claimed be trying to get in touch with a man by the jacket that he left without contact details after their first date.
This video was posted to YouTube and purported as a genuine website of an attractive woman, but was quickly exposed as a PR exercise and hence lost on the community quickly. At first Witchery denied the claim and then found unthought-of of legal implications for the hoax and had to fess up - it exposed a need for widespread awareness by these big companies meddling in new media. Just how should online viral content by executed? What really is factual content? As soon as the video was exposed as hoax traffic to it plummeted.
Social Media communities, user generated content and independent 'convergent journalists' are able to influence the public more with an original idea, an honest opinion, a real story just as easily and viral messages can spread like wildfire. There is real power in honest representation and integrity.
There is no doubt that this new era of Digital Video is going to effect broadcast television in many ways, and as technology increases and broadband reaches 100Mmps capacity becoming truly ‘two-way’, these changes are surely only the tip of the iceberg.
Digital content over broadband poses a very real serious threat to the corporate networks and I cant wait to see where it takes us.
Week 6 | Case Study - Current TV
Current TV houses so much content it becomes hard to define what the actual main purpose of the site is. I have been watching video after video and trying to determine exactly that for hours now and although it is entertaining and at times interesting I cant quite put my finger on what it achieves. Does it actually drive what content is going to be played in America?
I am not altogether sure, it doesn’t feel anything like Media Storm in that it has a much wider depth of content and a very busy structure that is not really that intuitive. I thought that by picking a genre from the submenu across the top banner, say Music, that I would find specific content just about music. What I did find was a bunch of disorganised content with no real lead to whether I would be watching video or listening to audio or reading static news. This was frustrating.
I also find American humour particularly annoying, I don’t get the one liner gags of David Letterman and when commercial mainstream spoof movies are released you wont find someone running further from the Cinema than me. I am mostly insulted by their commentary and stupid jokes. What is interesting about this drivel of content is the user generated stuff.
In a disorganised way if you are to find genuine original content in the site you will find that a whole gamut of different users are posting their thoughts on what they just watched. This acts in the genuine Web 2.0 way that this form of multimedia should. Users are able to say what they truly feel and it appears that just about anyone can contribute with Vlogs or Blogs, comments and just voting or using the numerous ways of tagging the content. Mostly it appears to be unmoderated, but how you could be really sure is beyond me after trawling through the site for the past few hours I am mostly just annoyed with it than interested.
I much prefer the serious side to MediaStorm where genuine artists are telling honest narratives that have meaning and try to put something positive out to the masses than the not-funny-slapstick content on this messy site. Thumbs Down from Dan.
I am not altogether sure, it doesn’t feel anything like Media Storm in that it has a much wider depth of content and a very busy structure that is not really that intuitive. I thought that by picking a genre from the submenu across the top banner, say Music, that I would find specific content just about music. What I did find was a bunch of disorganised content with no real lead to whether I would be watching video or listening to audio or reading static news. This was frustrating.
I also find American humour particularly annoying, I don’t get the one liner gags of David Letterman and when commercial mainstream spoof movies are released you wont find someone running further from the Cinema than me. I am mostly insulted by their commentary and stupid jokes. What is interesting about this drivel of content is the user generated stuff.
In a disorganised way if you are to find genuine original content in the site you will find that a whole gamut of different users are posting their thoughts on what they just watched. This acts in the genuine Web 2.0 way that this form of multimedia should. Users are able to say what they truly feel and it appears that just about anyone can contribute with Vlogs or Blogs, comments and just voting or using the numerous ways of tagging the content. Mostly it appears to be unmoderated, but how you could be really sure is beyond me after trawling through the site for the past few hours I am mostly just annoyed with it than interested.
I much prefer the serious side to MediaStorm where genuine artists are telling honest narratives that have meaning and try to put something positive out to the masses than the not-funny-slapstick content on this messy site. Thumbs Down from Dan.
Week 6 Case Study | Media Storm
What MediaStorm can offer over documentary time slots of television is industry recognition and exposure without requiring a huge budget or globally recognised CV to achieve it.
The submissions section of the site states 'We want to provide a vehicle for the most outstanding work. In short, if you have exceptional work that you feel we should see, we want to see it.' There is no boundary to communicate the type of story that the artist wants to portray.
This allows the user, like the students in this course, to be creative and not forced into a particular type of factual genre at all. The result here is a cross combination from the factual genres & hybrids as well as animation and multimedia projects. Media Storm coin their own best term; ‘diverse narratives that speak to the heart of the human condition’.
This site is an exemplary exhibition of outstanding hybrid factual content created by individuals striving to do something outside of the norm. Perhaps not all are particularly suitable for mainstream television. Not to say that they are not worthy, quite the opposite, but the monetary driven market that is corporate television these days may not be ready for the honesty and kinds of truths exposed by the independents creating these kinds of chilling narratives, animations, documentaries and short films.
As a launching pad for producers directors and animators alike this site has a whole lot to offer. MediaStorm offers new artists the opportunity to showcase their work in an unbiased way with the hope of creating the opportunity for further distribution.
The submissions section of the site states 'We want to provide a vehicle for the most outstanding work. In short, if you have exceptional work that you feel we should see, we want to see it.' There is no boundary to communicate the type of story that the artist wants to portray.
This allows the user, like the students in this course, to be creative and not forced into a particular type of factual genre at all. The result here is a cross combination from the factual genres & hybrids as well as animation and multimedia projects. Media Storm coin their own best term; ‘diverse narratives that speak to the heart of the human condition’.
This site is an exemplary exhibition of outstanding hybrid factual content created by individuals striving to do something outside of the norm. Perhaps not all are particularly suitable for mainstream television. Not to say that they are not worthy, quite the opposite, but the monetary driven market that is corporate television these days may not be ready for the honesty and kinds of truths exposed by the independents creating these kinds of chilling narratives, animations, documentaries and short films.
As a launching pad for producers directors and animators alike this site has a whole lot to offer. MediaStorm offers new artists the opportunity to showcase their work in an unbiased way with the hope of creating the opportunity for further distribution.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Marked Assignment 2: Written Essay | Synopsis
For my written essay I will be looking at Superheroes as a genre. I am going to look at how Superheroes have been defined traditionally as a genre, and the affect advancements in digital video and technology has had on the genre.
I define the superhero genre as any film focusing on character/s who have supernatural power or abilities. Traditionally this could be said to have started with movies like the 1978 classic ‘Superman’ and TV series like ‘Batman and Robin’ and ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’. Nowadays producers are turning to Marvel Comics and producing one after another; creating blockbuster hits such as ‘The Xmen’, ‘Iron Man’ and most recently ‘Watchmen’.
One area I am focusing on is how ‘green screen’ technology has affected the development and progression of special effects in the superheroes genre.
Advancements in technology, exponential increases in computational power, and the availability of consumer special effects have made this accessible to everyone from novice to expert. I am going to research and analyse how green screen advancements have made the superhero genre more believable.
Has the genre been redefined? Is it more mainstream nowadays? Does it need to be born of comic book? What are the emerging trends? What are the attributes of successful use of the technology? Are audiences becoming desensitised and how does CGI play its part in the genre?
I define the superhero genre as any film focusing on character/s who have supernatural power or abilities. Traditionally this could be said to have started with movies like the 1978 classic ‘Superman’ and TV series like ‘Batman and Robin’ and ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’. Nowadays producers are turning to Marvel Comics and producing one after another; creating blockbuster hits such as ‘The Xmen’, ‘Iron Man’ and most recently ‘Watchmen’.
One area I am focusing on is how ‘green screen’ technology has affected the development and progression of special effects in the superheroes genre.
Advancements in technology, exponential increases in computational power, and the availability of consumer special effects have made this accessible to everyone from novice to expert. I am going to research and analyse how green screen advancements have made the superhero genre more believable.
Has the genre been redefined? Is it more mainstream nowadays? Does it need to be born of comic book? What are the emerging trends? What are the attributes of successful use of the technology? Are audiences becoming desensitised and how does CGI play its part in the genre?
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