ThatMediaBuzz

A Student Blog about Media and Media Cultures that explores key concepts for understanding own media use and critically examines the production, distribution and reception of contemporary media

[thatmediabuzz-blog]

LETS DO AN EXPERIMENT!

Back in the Victorian age, wealthy families would dress up in their best clothes and stand or sit still for several minutes in an effort to take a photograph with them being the subject matter. They were taken to give the best impressions of themselves- “We’re wealthy, we can afford to take a photograph in our nicest set of dress, look at us, immortalised in this photograph”. They were for a special occasion that only the rich could afford, or a family in middle class who saved up for an extremely important affair such as a wedding. Either way, each family insisted on looking the best that they could possibly could.

In 2010, the context of the photograph changed. People started taking photos of everything-food before they eat it, flowers on the side of the road and pictures of the beach with their toes in the sand. This was known as “life-blogging”. However, one of the main features in a photograph nowadays is themselves- a “selfie”. According to Wendt (2014), the first self-portrait with the hashtag #selfie was posted on Flickr in 2004. It’s been 11 years, and selfies are still around.

Today’s society promotes and also discourages the taking of a selfie, due to the many unwritten rules around taking one. If you are going to take a selfie, it has to be “perfect”, otherwise, don’t bother. There are so many tutorials on youtube and the internet on how to take the perfect selfie, because you can’t “just point the camera at your face and take a shot without planning—there's an art to taking attention-grabbing selfies that your friends will love seeing in their feeds” (Wikihow, n.d.). There’s video tutorials titled everything from “10 tips for a good selfie” to “The PERECT selfie- Makeup, apps, tips!”. Wendt (2014) states that people view the visual aspects of themselves as the entire sum of their identity and as a result, ignore their non-visual traits. So if the selfie isn’t perfect, then you’d be ridiculed for posting it. This is a theme that has carried on from the Victorian age; they may be taken for no reason whatsoever, but society still insists that we look our absolute best for it.

For females, a good selfie generally means having flawless makeup and a little bit of editing and a filter to show us at our “best”. Sometimes this deceives audiences into what we WANT to look like, as opposed to how we really are. My own experimental selfie challenges this by showing who society wants me to be and wants me to show the world, and who I really am. To achieve this, I asked a friend of mine to apply a “full face” of makeup to only one side of my face. This included a primer, BB cream, foundation, setting powder, contour, blush, three different eyeshadows, two different eyeliners, eyebrow pencil and mousse, mascara, lip liner and lipstick.  That’s a lot of “everyday” makeup for females, just for one photo. The other side of my face was left completely untouched. I then took two photos of myself, with one hand covering the natural side of my face, and then the other covering the made-up side. Using an online app called “picmonkey”, I placed the photos side by side to show the clear difference between them. This was hard, as the makeup made my face more defined on one side and made it difficult to match up the sides of my face well. I did not edit any of these, although picmonkey offers the experience of this as well. I wanted to show how simply putting on makeup can make such a huge difference.

Although it can be argued that I look my best with makeup on and therefore keeping in time with the photographic traditions of the Victorian era, its not who I really am. I have thin, patchy eyebrows, dark bags under my eyes and pale lips with blemishes across my skin. My face is rounded and my skintone is uneven. A selfie is a self-portrait and should show who we really are. We can look our best without changing that, and that is a tradition that we as a society should celebrate and encourage.

References:

Wednt, B. (2014). The Allure of the Selfie: Instagram and the new self-portrait. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Institute of Network Cultures

WikiHow. (n.d.). How to take good selfies. Retrieved from http://www.wikihow.com/Take-Good-Selfies

[thatmediabuzz-blog]

Lady Gaga, The Gender Warrior

Majority of the world population has heard of Lady Gaga. Popular since 2008, her weird style of dress made statements and her music videos held key messages about gender representation. The two together formed Lady Gaga, the androgynous woman who has used her talent, power and fame to wage a subtle war against female representation through her use of media.  In three music videos over Lady Gaga’s career, her approach to tackling the sexual exploits of women have become more mature, which shows that the problem has continued to exist from 2008 and requires more hard-hitting attention instead of flashy, almost ironic messages, which Lady Gaga gives over her career. Starting off in Paparazzi (2009), leading into Telephone (2009) and ending in the recently released Til It Happens To You (2015) shows a clear growth in the battle Gaga fights in against the sexually exploited and violent representations of women.

Lady Gaga herself dresses in a particular style throughout her videos to show the sexualisation of women in terms of relationships with men. In Paparazzi, she is dressed sexily in a white corset and jewels to represent her innocence, wealth and fame. She is a fantasy woman, and when she doesn’t give her man what he wants (sex), there is an act of violence where Gaga finds herself horribly injured. The male in the video appreciated her body, but not her voice, and this is a clear message about how women overall. Throughout the video, there are shots of more near naked “fantasy women” that have been murdered. However, this is where Lady Gaga lacks a vital aspect of representing women-not all women look the same, with perfect bodies and pretty faces. This gets better in her video for Telephone where she explores all different body types of women, and nails it in Til It Happens To You, showing maturity through her career. "Whether it is physical violence or sexual exploitation, these videos offer vivid depictions of male power over women's bodies” (Fogel &  Quinlan, 2011), which is a reoccuring theme throughout all videos.

Telephone is a 10-minute music video following Paparazzi, depiciting Lady Gaga in jail after killing the man that almost killed her in the first video. Here is where Gaga’s representation of women is more variable, as she is escorted by two ladies that are anything but “fantasy women”, and could be described as ‘Butch’. They are wearing hardly any clothing to show that they aren’t conforming to the gender standards that society has set due to media, instead of sexually exploiting their bodies. In the beginning of Telephone, we start to see Gaga’s blossoming maturity towards all genders, as she wears thick chains around her body, chaining her into a society-approved sexuality, and glasses made of lit cigarettes, the “smoking glasses becoming a cloudy veil that obstructs her view of reality, allowing her to base her feelings on senses alone, blurring the genders of the women around her” (Zafar, 2010). This shows that gender itself shouldn’t matter, but the person themselves. This hits home with Gaga, as she has faced rumours about her own gender before, and this is made clear in Telephone after the guards strip her naked and say “See, I told you she didn’t have a dick”. She soon sheds the chains and shows the fact that you can be whoever you want to be, and society shouldn’t define you. Telephone and Paparazzi do a great job of empowering women to show who they really are by showing Gaga absolutely kick male butt (She ends up killing an entire diner at the end of Telephone) but these earlier videos from her lack realism, and buy into the pop hype of colour, upbeat music, and flashy costumes. However, the most recent Lady Gaga video shows just how far she has come.

Til It Happens To You carries the same theme of violence happening to women, but this video is drastically different. Gaga herself doesn’t even star in it, and there is an absence of revealing clothes, dance numbers, or colour. Filmed entirely in black and white, it shows the raw truth about women of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and sexualities. The lyrics “what the hell do you know” and “til it happens to you, you don’t know how it feels/it won’t be real” are filled with true emotion, instead of lyrics from Paparazzi or Telephone. The audience can see close up the affects of rape on women and this was done purposely to show that this is a real thing that happens every day to women, even those that may identify as male. The effects aren’t Gaga in a surprisingly symbolic form of dress, but literal depictions of real women and how they are represented in real life- as normal, and then how there is still male dominance over them. The same theme from Lady Gaga’s earlier videos are there, just refined and more effective. This shows Gaga’s deepening understanding of gender representation and overall growth of maturity to produce a music video such as this.

All three of these videos show Lady Gaga’s war against the sexualisation of women clearly, as well as showing her clear development in the subject from 2009-2015. Her videos are made to empower women in all areas of life- media included, and she has a succeeded. The war will continue to rage at this mature, raw and emotional pace.

References:

Fogel, C., & Quinlan, A. (2011). "Lady Gaga and Feminism: A Critical Debate". Cross-Culture Communication. Retrieved September 26, 2015.

Zafar, A. (2010). Deconstructing Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” Video. The Atlantic. Retrieved September 27, 2015.

Links to Videos:

Paparazzi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2smz_1L2_0

Telephone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBsypHzF3U

Til It Happens To You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmWBrN7QV6Y

[thatmediabuzz-blog]

Copyright Has ‘Right’ In It For A Reason

Copyright Law exists to protect the exploitation of someones intellectual property and creativity. In New Zealand, we have the Copyright Act of 1994 which does the above for New Zealanders, but since creativity and intellectual property is all over the world, we also have to adher to at least three other international Copyright agreements, with the foremost being the Universal Copyright Convention passed in 1952. Copyright laws and agreements are vital to the creative outlets of New Zealand and the rest of the world.

Copyright Laws protect the creative practices of music, films, TV shows, novels and poems. Without Copyright, the public can have full use of all literary and artistic works to do with as they please-which may sound like a good idea, but in reality, is really not.  If all literary and artistic works were free to do with as we liked, there would be multiple copies of the same song, movie, TV shows, books etc with little or no change, all in an effort for people to make money off of it. And the original creator, the one that came up with the popular idea for such works? They get nothing. Their work is essentially stolen from them and exploited for the gain of people who didn’t nearly work as hard. In July of 1989, there was the case of Green vs Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand that displays this. Green had “developed the program ‘Opportunity Knocks’ on British television. He claimed copyright in the general structure or format of a similar television programme in New Zealand” (Swarb, 2015, para. 1). The New Zealand show had many similar elements, including the title! Green had clearly worked hard for the success of his TV show in Britian, only for someone here in New Zealand to exploit his hard work.

Not only is this ethically wrong, it’s illegal for a reason. Unfortunately, with easy Internet access, it’s even easier for the public to pirate basically any artistic work, especially films and music, without being caught. This means that artists, directors, screenwriters, actors, anyone to do with the creation of these works have done all of that hard work for nothing, because someone put a free copy up on the internet and millions of people are now watching that recently released film for free or listening to a new album with no thought to how it affects the original source- the creator.

In January 2013, the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) fined an anonymous Telecom customer on behalf of Sony Music and Universal Music. This is because the customer was downloading illegal music-music that was protected by Copyright law.  The customer stated that “she accepts responsibility for downloading the first song, Rihanna's "Man Down" via a BitTorrent client (file sharing programme) called utorrent” (NBR, 2013, para.  5). Unfortunately, this is not a single offence. BitTorrent is a service for sharing files, “so many more people among the 700,000 or New Zealanders it alleges use file sharing software could subsequently download the songs, compounding the financial damage. With the millions using file sharing, anyone who wants to access pirate content has no shortage of illegal avenues” (NBR, 2013, para. 8). That, simply, is not fair on those who have earned the right to own and consquently live off their own creativity, especially when there are free streaming applications such as Spotify that recognise and acknowledge the artists while giving customers free access to a large range of music. There are no more excuses!

If Copyright laws weren’t in place, there would be no balance within the creative world. Multimedia needs to protect their ideas to prevent exploitations of original works. Where is the creative intergrity? If artistic and literary works were accessible for free, as many people are doing illegally, without any legal consequences, there would be no furthering of ideas. No one would use the time and brainpower to build and create something new, and would opt for just playing with whatever was already available. The quantity of content would increase due to several verisons of the same thing appearing over and over again, yet the quality would decrease drastically. Everyone would have access to everything to play with, but with Copyright, only those who have the a gift, the creative gift, could EARN their right to have full ownership of what they create. Imagine a world where all you could find on the internet was the same, remade copies of a new song, and never the original. Where ametuer actors remade your favourite movie over and over again. Where people would deface the best literary works, the original magic lost forever.

Chaos. It would be completely uncreative chaos.

References:

Swarb. (2015). Green vs Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand. Retrieved from http://swarb.co.uk/green-v-broadcasting-corporation-of-new-zealand-pc-18-jul-1989/

NBR. (2015). First music pirate nailed under new copyright law. Retrieved from http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/first-music-pirate-nailed-under-new-copyright-law

[thatmediabuzz-blog]

Is Apple as Green as a Granny Smith?

Apple, an organisation that everyone has heard of, produces a popular media device used by a majority of the world’s population. The iPhone, typically generation 5 and up, are a popular choice for a cell phone. Apple states that an iPhone is environmentally friendly, especially in the manufacturing of the phone, whilst other organisations such as Greenpeace claim that Apple has some work to do. So what damage (if any), are they doing to the world that we live in, and can we, as savvy media consumers, make an ethical choice when purchasing an iPhone?

It’s incredibly hard to find the environmental statistics on the Apple website when looking at iPhones. A specific search resulted in a PDF file of the environmental statistics of an iPhone 5s, a popular cell phone, from the Apple organisation themselves. Focusing on the manufacture of the phone, Apple claims that the iPhone 5s “lead the industry in material efficiency” (Apple Inc., 2014, para. 4) and this reduces the material footprint of the phone. The materials used in the manufacture of the iPhone 5s are “highly desired by recyclers” (Apple Inc., 2014, para. 4). The PDF takes great care to list all the environmentally sound elements of the iPhone, such as having a display glass that doesn’t contain Arsenic and being both BRF and PVC free.

The PDF makes no mention on any further steps it will take to create more environmentally friendly cell phones, nor does it go into as much detail on the elements of the phone that may not be so great for the environment. The air of the PDF is positive, pushing the iPhone onto any consumers that took the time to find the environmental information. Despite this, Apple Inc does state that the manufacture of iPhones is a major contribution to Greehouse Gases, which is a serious problem. It is merely skimmed over, however, showing clear bias towards the phone and company that created it is clear as the PDF is from the fact that Apple wrote it. The lack of information about most negative aspects is a clear sign of this bias.

In the Guide to Greener Electronics by Greenpeace, Apple products are in 6th position (from a 2012 survey), with a rating of 4.5/10. This is further ahead than some other electronic companies, yet Greenpeace only focuses on the negatives of Apple products, without balancing it out with praising the work they’ve done so far. “Apple continues to lose points for not setting a target to reduce emissions” (Greenpeace, n.d., para. 3) shows that Apple isn’t planning on making their products anymore environmentally friendly, which is justified by a lack of this in the Apple PDF. The Guide to Greener Electronics also has bias, by omitting any positive reviews about any electronic company, let alone Apple. They make it appear as if Apple alone is destroying the earth, which is the opposite bias from Apple Inc themselves.

One article found that seems to be an unbiased as one could get is iGoGreen: A Life Cycle Assessment of Apple’s iPhone. It forms a scientific, factual review of Apple’s iPhone environmental footprint by assessing five stages: “raw material acquisition, design and production, packaging and distribution, use and maintenance, and disposal” (Rodriguez, Carrasquillo, Lee, Lee, & Zhou, 2015). Focusing on the manafacturing of the device, attention was to drawn to how Apple Inc extracts raw materials for the phones with an “often inefficient process, involving the creation of chemical slurries in which only a fraction- approximately 12%- of the material is considered usable” (Rodriguez et al., 2015).  This is hard on the environment and can create further problems for the earth if this process is not altered or changed completely.

From an ethical point of view, any media device that causes any amount of damage to the earth in any way should be unethical to buy and use as we do. However, in this day and age, every one has a cellphone and there is constant pressure to upgrade and have the new “latest thing”. There is not a product out there currently that can fulfill your own needs, societies needs and is environmentally friendly enough to be considered an ethical purchase. One thing consumers can do though, is to not buy into the hype that you have to have the latest iPhone or other smartphone, and look after the phone you do have until it absolutely needs to be replaced. Prolonging the life of your phone will help reduce the amount of electronic waste and therefore further harm on the environment.

References:

Apple Inc. (2014). iPhone 5s environmental report. Retrieved from Apple website: https://www.apple.com/

Greenpeace. (2012). Guide to greener electronics. Retrieved from Greenpeace website: http://www.greenpeace.org/

Rodriguez, E., Carrasquillo, O., Lee, C., Lee, J., Zhou, A. (2015). iGo Green: A Life Cycle Assessment of Apple’s iPhone. Retrieved from https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/

[thatmediabuzz-blog]

Do They Compare? A critique of three different UGC recreated scenes

The first scene I am critiquing is retrieved from http://jesmedia.tumblr.com/. This scene is a recreation of a scene from the well-known drama, The Blind Side (Handcock, 2009) and was produced using VStudio, a video editing application for iPhone and iPad that is available to download from the Apple App Store.  In the original scene, a rich white family, the Touhy’s, takes in Michael Oher, a young homeless coloured teenager. They set Michael up in a room and he shares the shocking news that he’s never had a bed before.  While watching the recreated version from jesmedia, I noticed that the entire clip was captured in a portrait frame rather than a landscape frame. This unconventional film technique adds to the amateur effect of the scene, as well as being filmed on a free iPhone application, emphasising the low-budget quality. Having the scene filmed in portrait alienated the viewer and makes it hard to watch, but also creates the effect of the characters seeming shut off, which adds to the mood of the scene, as it’s supposed to be shockingly sad that Michael has never had his own bed before and emphasises the difference between him and the Touhy’s. Out of the three scenes that will be critiqued, this one had the best overall editing.

The second scene I am critiquing is retrieved from http://mjc84.tumblr.com/. This scene is a recreation of a scene from the incredibly famous film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Columbus, 2001) and was produced using an unknown editing software. In the original scene, an eleven-year-old boy, Harry Potter, finds out that he is a wizard, after a large half-giant Hagrid informs him of the news. While watching the recreated version from mjc84, I noticed that it was filmed in a 4’3 ratio, which meant the scene consisted entirely of close ups and were edited together using jump cuts. Although this meant that some of the shots were cut-off mid sentence and seemed rushed or didn’t have much thought put into them, I felt it added to the confusion and frustration Harry would be feeling at that particular time, so mjc84 captured that mood perfectly. This scene is similar to jesmedia’s Blind Side scene as they were both low budget, amateur films captured in non-conventional filming techniques, the portrait and 4’3, and consisted of two characters conversing with one another. The differences include the fact that jesmedia had two actors playing one character each and the clip consisted of a variety of shots and smoother editing, while mjc84 used his glasses as a prop to interchange between the two characters themselves, and used one type of shot consistently, with jump-cut editing.

The third and final scene I am critiquing is retrieved from http://megamediachick.tumblr.com/. This scene is a recreation of a scene from the well-known teen film Clueless (Heckerling, 1995) and was produced using an unknown editing software. This recreated scene is the only non-live action scene out of the three. In the original scene, Cher is presenting a oral report to her class on viewing violence in media. While watching the recreated version from megamediachick, I noticed that there was no acting, just several close up of stills from the film edited together with a recreated voiceover of the original dialogue. Megamediachick had decided to speed up her dialogue in an attempt to sound more American, which I felt was executed poorly. The result was more of a chipmunks voice than an American accent, and would have been more successful to keep the dialogue at original speed and attempted to portray an accent with tone of voice over speed. The handheld camera was shaky when filming the stills from the movie, which showcased the amateur aspect of the clip. The shakiness makes the audience feel uneasy and could be improved if the scene was recreated. However, using stills instead of reacting out the scene itself was a creative move that had unfortunate aspects due to being low budget. Being a non-live action recreation was the major difference between this clip and the other three, but also had similarities such as having a conversation between two or more characters within the scene and using similar close up shots to mjc84’s Harry Potter clip.

All three of these user-generated content scenes were filmed on a handheld camera, most likely a phone. This emphasises the amateur levels of the scenes and also concludes that all three are low budget. Due to these aspects, the recreated scenes are not supposed to be on par with the original films, and are essentially parodying them, and I believe all three had similarities and differences, but above all were creative and successful in many ways.

Links to Clips

The Blind Side (http://jesmedia.tumblr.com/)   http://jesmedia.tumblr.com/post/126333412034/i-chose-to-recreate-a-scene-from-the-blind-side

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (http://mjc84.tumblr.com/) http://mjc84.tumblr.com/post/126366136801/i-chose-to-re-create-a-section-of-the-scene-from

Clueless (http://megamediachick.tumblr.com/) https://vimeo.com/135788580

[thatmediabuzz-blog]

Audience Response: Extra! All responses in full (See below post for #blog2 criteria/assignment)

C, 18, Student, Male. 

“That’s from Pitch Perfect 2, right? [Nope]. No? But it’s a recent girly movie with singing! [It’s from 2010.] Okay. High School Musical? [No. Easy A]. “Oh, I haven’t seen that. Can I see the original clip?”

“Well, I think you kept close to the original, which I really liked. The shower scene was funny, you nailed the actions, costumes and stuff. I also think that it ran really smoothly, I wasn’t distracted by any messing up in the syncing of the music or scene transitions, which is great. You filmed it here?” [Yup, this room and the hall showers]. “You can barely tell. It was really good!” [Do you think there’s an intended message behind this remake?] “Um, I haven’t seen the movie, so all I can guess is that you can be fulfilled on a daily basis by the way you express yourself, because you were dancing around and singing a lot, and you don’t have to find happiness in life with other people”

L, 20, Receptionist, Female

“It’s from Easy A! The intended message I think is to show people that it is important to have fun with life no matter what the situation is, like in your case despite the fact that you had to do this for an assignment you made sure you had fun making it. Overall thoughts of the clip was well done video, ran really well, I could barely tell that the card wasn’t making the noise like it implied and it was extremely funny”

J, 22, Insurance, Male

“******, I’m sorry, but I have no idea what that is off.” [Do you think it has a message anyway?] “Uhhh… I don’t know. I will say that I am that guy who never reads into movies or books etc and takes everything as it appears. Sorry if that doesn’t help. I like the clip though, it looked really good and the shower scene was funny! Oh and you can’t sing. At all.”

K, 15, High School Student, Female

“EASY A! I love that movie. I like how you embarrassed yourself on the internet. [Do you think that theres an intended message behind the remake?] “I think that "pocket full of sunshine" means that everything is going to be okay and that you can have fun by yourself”

D, 49, Mother of 4 and ESOL Tutor, Female

“This clip is a remake of Easy A. After watching this clip I am finding the intended message behind this remake is that pocketful of sunshine is giving me the impression of it doesn't matter what is going on in your life there is always a silver lining!  In this case a pocketful of sunshine which will wash away the sad/blue feeling and nothing is as it may seem. My thought of the remake overall was very well thought of using the shower scene which shows a great camera angle. I loved the toy puppy sitting on the bed, it was a perfect extra touch.”

[thatmediabuzz-blog]

Audience Response: Was ‘Easy A’ easily identified?

For my audience responses of my 30-second video, I looked for five individuals that differed in age, gender and careers. I felt that this would give me a wide range of responses on the clip and would enable me to find any patterns that could arise. This lead to my audience having an age range of 15-49 years old with two boys and three girls.

Neither of the boys, aged 18 and 22, knew what the clip was a remake of.

C, a 18 year old student who is a self-acclaimed movie junkie, thought it was from Pitch Perfect 2, as “it’s a recent girly movie with singing!”. He had not seen Easy A, and this made it difficult for him to understand any intended messages. He did assure me that he felt like it was showing him that “you don’t have to find happiness in your life with other people”, which was a positive review. He also stated that the remake flowed smoothly, and was a pleasure to watch, with no transition fumbles or sync problems to distract him.

J, a 22 year old working at AA Insurance, couldn’t guess the movie and was silent when asked if he thought there was an intended meaning. He finally responded with “I will say that I am that guy who never reads into movies or books etc and takes everything as it appears”.

These two responses show me that my original movie choice was not as diverse as I thought. If I was to repeat this process, I would choose a movie that appeals to both genders, and had a very clear message that could not be missed. However, all three of the girls immediately identified what movie the clip was based off, showing that Easy A was popular among females as a romantic teen comedy. The three females were aged 15, 20 and 49, with job diversity such as a high school student, a receptionist and a ESOL tutor who is also a mother of four. All three decoded a similar message, which was that having a fun and positive attitude no matter what situation you were in, and having a ‘pocketful of sunshine’ will wash away any bad feelings you may have. I found this decoding to be incredibly accurate, as I had fun making the clip, even if it was for an assignment.

All five of my respondents mentioned that the clip itself- the transitions, music sync and camera angles- worked incredibly well and ran smoothly.  The particular 30 seconds I had chosen led to all five respondents laughing at my singing, especially the shower scene. This leads me to believe that even if they haven’t seen Easy A, or if they have, they can still appreciate the work that went behind the remake, can potentially decode a meaning from it and it also shows that I have competent editing skills.

[thatmediabuzz-blog]

The above video is a 36-second remake of a scene from of the popular teen film, Easy A. It was chosen for reasons such as interest in the original film, seemed simple enough to recreate, and as I collaborated with media-explorations.tumblr.com, it was a well-known scene that lasted about a minute, making it easily split among two. Media-explorations has the first 30 seconds of this scene.

The scene has a variety of shots that made the clip more difficult than expected. The first “Sunday Morning” shot was a simple mid-shot was used throughout which was easy enough to begin our journey with. A weakness of this was having to make a remix of the song “pocketful of sunshine” to have a stop-start theme to match the opening and closing of the card. However, the desired effect was achieved satisfactorily, after some period of time. The singing in the shower shots (”Sunday Afternoon/Late Afternoon”) proved to be slightly more difficult due to setting. Media-explorations and I live in halls of residence, where the showers are small, and co-ed for sharing.  The shower door had to remain open to fit the camera on the tripod, as well as making sure the steam didn’t fog up the lens. Filming the close-up shots for this proved to be borderline embarrassing, as many people would pass us and call out, ruining the shots. The location was a weakness that could not be avoided.

The most difficult part of the remake was the final shots, on “Sunday Night”. Having to do a continuous eye-level shot, then retaking the scene in a continuous mid-shot was simple enough, but in the editing process, having to cut them together in fragments and matching the music up proved to be frustrating and troublesome. However, I am very pleased with the overall clip and the strengths of having prior filming/editing knowledge, perseverance, and the willing to look slightly idiotic on camera outweighed the weaknesses previously mentioned.

[thatmediabuzz-blog]

SMST102

Welcome to ThatMediaBuzz! This is a blog for an University paper, SMST102, which will be graded. Each week, there will be a new upload concerning media and the culture that surrounds it.