Over the course of the semester, I have managed to create a digital artefact that explores my love of film and interest in journal spreads. I was inspired with the idea to combine these two things by the many film journal videos/posts on TikTok or Instagram where they make aesthetic spreads as well as write their opinions on the movie.
I named my account “@journalsatthecinemas” because I thought it sounded catchy and easy to remember. In order to make my account unique, I came up with the idea to post a review every day, and allocated a certain genre to each day of the week. I pitched this idea at the start of the semester, you can read that here. The themes were Musical Mondays, Trash Tuesdays, Wholesome Wednesdays (I didn't have a good word that starts with W, but this vaguely meant family, romance or coming of age movies). Toon Thursdays, Fantasy Fridays, Spooky Saturdays, and Sporty Sundays. It was a really fun idea and it gave me an excuse to watch a bunch of movies that were on my watchlist for each genre, as well as rewatch some of my favourites after a long time.
Important Project Moments
Moment 1: Brainstorming And Account Setup
After coming up with the idea to post a different theme every day, I now had to figure out how I was going to produce the film review spreads. I had initially planned to create them on paper and post photos of them to Instagram, but after some thought I realised that would take a lot of time and money as I would have to buy scrapbooking supplies and a journal as well as hand write the reviews.
Instead, I decided to do online spreads using the photo editing app Picsart, which allows you to decorate a blank image with different ‘stickers’ as well as add photos and text. I have a lot of experience with this app as I used to use it to make collages for fun when I was younger. It is very easy to use which makes it easier to produce content faster every day as I could just create the spread while watching the film and then quickly write a review for it once finished.
To start with, I used Picsart to create a logo for my account as well as story highlights that tell my audience my posting schedule, what my account is about and the option for them to request a film for me to watch and review. I am really proud of how my account setup turned out and I think the purple theme makes my account somewhat calming and relaxing to look at. After my account was set up and ready to go, I started creating a list of what movies I wanted to watch for each theme, just so I know what to watch and don’t waste time browsing through streaming platforms trying to decide on a movie.
Moment 2: Prototype And Audience
Once my list was ready, it was time to watch the first movie. I created a somewhat schedule in my head, I would watch the movie the night before and edit the review spread and then post it the next morning. So, I watched Burlesque, my first musical movie on the account, on Sunday, and then posted the review on Monday August 21st 2023. This made it way easier as I only had time to watch movies at night time and only had a short amount of time to post during the day, so I would watch the movie the day before and post the review on the actual day when I woke up. It was a very fun way to unwind at the end of the day and I was really consistent with posting for the most part. My favourite post that I made was my first Fantasy Friday post, where I watched Ella Enchanted, one of my favourite movies as a kid. The spread I made for that was very aesthetic and very pretty. I also touched on how Fantasy Friday was my favourite day in my week 6 progress blog post. I also collaborated with one of my classmates on one of my Fantasy Friday posts, where I posted my review for the first Narnia movie as well as her review of the second Narnia movie.
This was really fun and she also posted my review of the Australian movie The Sapphires on her account. It was really fun to collaborate with her.
In regards to engagement, I wasn’t really getting much interaction with my posts. A lot of accounts would visit my profile, but not many would follow or like my posts. The most followers I got were 29 people, with most of that being people I know like friends or family.
The most liked post on my account was my September 5th Tuesday post where I reviewed the infamous movie Tall Girl, and that got 11 likes. I think this post was the most popular because this movie is a rather big meme on the internet so I think that had a factor into why it was my most engaged post.
Because I was struggling with engagement, I posted to Twitter asking for any tips that could help, and got two responses. One person suggested that I follow other accounts similar to mine and interact with their posts in order to get mine noticed, and another suggested that I use popular hashtags on my posts in order to try to get more reach, which I had already been doing. I ended up following a few other accounts that reviewed movies and my engagement went up slightly, but mostly stayed the same. I did get my first comment from this however, as one person who I followed liked all my posts and commented on my first one. Despite this, my account wasn’t getting much reach still so I was very stuck on what to do.
Moment 3: Pivot
Unfortunately, after about a month of posting consistently every day, I began to realise how draining running this account every day was. I had initially ignored my tutors warning that it would be a lot of effort, I believed I would be able to handle it. And I was able to for the most part, it just got a bit repetitive and stressful having to do the same posting routine every day. Because of this, I stopped posting and started thinking of ways to reframe or pivot from my original idea. I came up with the idea to create weekly movie commentary videos on YouTube, keeping up the concept of watching and reviewing films, just in a different form. I touched on this in my week 9 progress post. This was a way better idea as I would have more time to watch the movie and have all week to edit the video, instead of rushing through editing a post every single day. I was inspired by what kinds of videos I could post to my reaction channel through a few other content creators I enjoy watching such as Ur Internet Mom Ash, Dylan is In Trouble, Trin Lovell and Caitlin Mckillop. Below are my tweets about the things that inspired me the most about these creators:
Conclusion
At the time of writing this report, I have yet to start my reaction channel as I am still researching how to screen record films and avoid copyright strikes on YouTube. I think this new idea however will get much better engagement as reaction videos are a very popular genre on YouTube. I am excited to see where this project takes me in the future.
Now that a few weeks have passed since my last update, a lot of things have changed. I misunderstood my own limits when I created my own idea, and I should have listened to the people who said it wouldn’t work out, as they were right. I am very sick of posting everyday to Instagram and haven’t posted in over a week. Because of this, I have decided to pivot like we learnt in class and change my idea and platform completely.
Instead of posting a film review every day, I will instead be starting a reaction channel on Youtube where I post a movie or tv show reaction once a week. I really enjoy watching other movie commentary youtubers such as Ur Internet Mom Ash, Dylan Is In Trouble or Trin Lovell.
I have started to do research on how to do this, and I feel confident that I will be able to make it work. Giving myself a week to film and edit is a way smarter idea than me rushing a film review post in one night every day. I also think movie commentary is a way better idea than just reviewing films, as my audience can see my live reactions to moments in the movie or show. To keep elements from my original idea, at the end of the video I will also do a brief review of the film now that I’ve finished watching it.
Changing my idea to this will be very interesting and somewhat challenging, as I will have to download the media I will be reacting to and also sync my reaction to it, which sounds easy but I have a feeling might be harder than it sounds. Not to mention I will have to find a way to avoid copyright claims from youtube so that my videos do not get taken down.
I will also slightly continue the theming of my posts in this new artefact, except since I post once every week I will have a different theme each week, or I will just do a bunch of different themes randomly. For example, one week I might do a horror movie, and the next I do an animated movie, and then the week after that another horror movie and so on. In other words, no set order.
Another challenge with this new idea that should be easy to manage is filming, as I will have to film on my phone, so the quality will not be that great. But it should work out fine, I will just have to film in a quiet location with good lighting to help improve the quality. I will also have to make sure to edit the videos so that they aren’t too long or too short, and each video will have a similar length.
If I have time, I may revamp my original instagram to use it as a way to promote my youtube channel, and also maybe still do reviews, but I am not sure about this yet. I will see how I go following my first youtube video, which I will start making after I get back from the mid-session break.
Overall, I really enjoyed my original idea and it was really fun while it lasted. I do wish I could continue it but I have lost interest in doing it that way, and want to try something new. Hopefully with moving to youtube I can increase my audience and have fun, without the stress of having to post daily. I am thinking of naming this channel something simple, such as Reacts by Amelia, or Amelia Watches or something like that. I am excited to see where it goes from here and hopefully the pivot was a good idea!
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Also, women's defence in the 1930s is so fascinating, they look so badass yet also so graceful! Here is the tweet with the links to the videos where I first found out about this!
Following the pitch, the feedback for my idea for the Digital Artefact was mostly positive. My classmates found the idea of posting themed movie reviews every day interesting, however some people thought it could turn out to be too risky as it is a lot of work to do everyday. Despite that, since I started posting I have been very consistent with watching, editing and posting the film reviews to Instagram.
I find it relaxing to come home from uni or work everyday and get to watch a different movie for my assignment. It is also very satisfying to create the spreads on Picsart, and I’m happy with how they turn out in the end. So far, my favourite spreads I’ve made would have to be either the Ella Enchanted or Miss Peregrines Home For Peculiar Children posts made for Fantasy Fridays. Fantasy Friday is probably my favourite day to post, as I am absolutely obsessed with the fantasy genre.
Despite how relaxing it is, I have been finding it a little hard to manage my time between uni, work and posting. A lot of movies, especially the Fantasy Friday and Spooky Saturday ones are 2 hours long, and the spreads take around 30 minutes to an hour for me to make depending on how much I add to it. This means I have to put aside at least 3 hours a day to watch the movies which gets really hard since I usually watch them after uni, so I normally do it before bed, causing a lot of late nights. Because of this, some of my posts do not look very nice as they are rushed before I go to sleep at night.
This could be a factor in why my engagement is so low, as I have a lot of people visiting my profile but only 2 or 3 interact with my post, so my account does not have much reach yet. When I tweeted about this problem, a classmate of mine suggested I start following other similar movie review accounts and interact with them in order to get my account noticed more. I will try this in the next following weeks and hopefully my reach increases a bit.
The process of developing my project has been very complicated, the feedback I have received on my work so far has been very useful. It has invited me to take advantage of human-centred design thinking techniques. I have been encouraged to think critically and refine my approach in order to evolve my project into success.
I think that by creating a unique platform that promotes many genres of cinema as well as the creativity of editing the spreads around the review is very important. It allows fellow movie-watchers to get different recommendations on what to watch, as well as them seeing aesthetically pleasing posts. The ideas for my project are continuously changing, and I am excited to experiment with different things.
In the upcoming weeks, I will also be collaborating with another student who is also doing film reviews, which I think will help benefit the both of us. We have been casually providing one another with feedback on each of our posts which is very useful. Working together allows us to give each other ideas and suggestions on how to improve. Together we can both engage stronger with the film review community.
I am very excited to continue with this project and I hope it will help me grow and think more creatively. So far my progress has made me proud, and I am excited to see where it all goes from here.
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By the way, here is a link to one of my tweets where I talk about a very interesting TikTok "trend" that happened where they literally gaslit the internet into believing a fake movie was real!
For my digital artefact for BCM114, I am going to be running an Instagram account (and also, possibly a TikTok account) where I will create aesthetic journal spreads of movies/shows I watch and write a review on them! I think it will be really fun and I've allocated a certain theme to each day based off the starting letter! The themes are as follows:
Musical Mondays - musical movies/or just musicals
Trash Tuesdays - bad/low rated movies
Wholesome Wednesday - family feels or romance or coming of age movies
Toon Thursdays - animated movies
Fantasy Friday - fantasy movies
Spooky Saturday - spooky/horror movies (doesn’t have to be scary, can just be halloween related even)
Sporty Sundays - sports movies/movies that contain sports
In order to make the spreads, I am going to give a try at making them on paper but if that doesn't work out (either my own skills or just too expensive) then I'll just create digital spreads using Canva or Phonto!
I think it will be a really fun and relaxing project to do and it will help me finally get through my very long watchlist! :)
You can watch the pitch video below and start following the account here!
See you next time! In the meantime, check out my links:
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