We’ve been looking into global television this week. We analysed how habits of media consumption have changed, but more specifically the way media can cross over cultural boundaries and it’s ability to translate for a new audience. I want to unpack both of these concepts in a little depth to see if any links between the two can be drawn.

Firstly, the way we watch television has obviously changed. Growing up, we had one TV in my house, one remote, and about 20 VCR’s and DVD’s on standby – ready to be re-watched for the 38th time. There was a magic in watching the television, and I think that it’s definitely dissipated slowly over the last decade. Part of this magic was being in an audience, the whole family would sit down together on a specific night to watch a specific show. You would debrief on this weeks happenings with your family or friends afterwards – this doesn’t happen as much as it should anymore.

It is quite possible this is linked to the rise of technology and the rise of ‘streaming’ services. Business like Netflix, Stan, and Foxtel (among hundreds of others) are all intertwined in people’s everyday lives. They make it so simple to just unwind, watch an episode of your favourite show, watch another episode of your favourite show, and then fall asleep watching a third. While being convenient, cheap and simple, these streaming services are also part of the force sucking the magic out of television. Everyone in your family can watch something different at the same time, in different rooms of the same house.

Popularity of streaming sites says lots about our generation. We definitely are more open to the idea of binge-watching whole series than we once were. I don’t think laziness is the only factor in play here though.

With streaming sites, we are able to access so much more content than that which we would on the television. Content from all over is suddenly in the palm of our hands. It’s not only British and American television, but masses of media coming from countries that don’t even share the same dialect, such as Korea, Japan, France, and Norway. I want to introduce the term cultural proximity. A 2008 article in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media defines cultural proximity as ‘the intuitively appealing notion that people will gravitate toward media from their own culture.’ When we are crossing cultural boundaries with our media, there is the always going to be the problem of how well it will translate into a new cultural region. For example, something that many Australians find humorous, may fall flat on American audiences. Case in point with the series Kath and Kim, an Australian situational comedy focusing on a ‘bogan’ mother and daughter duo. While widely popular in Australia, an American version was commissioned to try and tap into a seemingly popular market. Unsurprisingly, a television show based solely off Australian humour did not go down well in the states, getting the can after barely one season.

While streaming and globalisation has definitely played a part in creating a wider cultural understanding, it also needs to pick moments. It is important that we realise what can and can’t translate, as well as whether there is a need at all for appropriation at all!

I know your milk is homogenised, but are your movies? To explore the world of global film we looked at homogenisation and hybridisation, and the idea of the division of Global North and South when it comes to film creation.

Powerful countries are able to make films that are spread around without much alteration. Mainly movies coming out of Hollywood, with big-name directors and actors. They are accepted into new cultures as they are. This process is homogenisation. The ulterior occurs when movies are made and then upon spreading they are reinterpreted and remade by their new adoptive cultures or nations. This process is the theory behind the hybridisation model. This model encourages globalisation and the spread and acceptance of other culture.

Global North and South are terms used in media to separate the more developed countries from the developing countries. North are generally wealthier and consist of countries such as North America, Australia, Russia, Britain, and many European and South-East Asian Countries. When we combine these terms with the models of homogenisation and hybridisation, we can better understand how both work. Most commonly, countries in the Global North will create bigger films as they have larger industries, Hollywood being the prime example, and then these filter through to the countries in the Global South, where they often take aspects from and hybridise these films to suit their culture and market.

I’ve recently watched the film ‘Mother’ on Netflix, directed by Darren Aronofsky. It is an American-made film, with primary American lead actors. I don’t want to spoil it by speaking too much on the plot, but it primarily is a thriller/psychological horror film following the life of a couple whose tranquil life is interrupted when visitors start coming in unannounced to their isolated country home.

The whole film draws parallels to the biblical stories of God and Mother Earth, Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel. It is very much a film that can cross national and cultural barriers, as it uses the Bible, an international religious text, as a base for telling it’s story. Without having any knowledge of the aspects of Christianity, this film would be quite contrived and hard to understand. The fact that Christianity is practised almost worldwide makes this film and it’s themes easy to translate through cultural boundaries.

Not all films are as easy to interpret though. Especially when you don’t even know the language. An important factor to consider when these films are being homogenised is that the literal translation doesn’t always make sense. There are quite a few phrases in English that are nonsense in French, and vice versa. Hybridisation can in some cases, such as that with Kung-Fu Panda 3, re-direct whole sections of films in order to make them more understandable to new audiences. Which is pretty damn cool.

There’s much more to films than just the name and language. Next time you sit down to watch a movie, maybe you’ll think a little deeper as to how exactly it has reached you. I know I will.

Music is something that can supersede language. The best part about having ears is that all sound is interpreted in the same process. Different types and genres of music stem from all different cultures, but should that mean they are limited to being only created within those circles? Cultural appropriation is an act of adopting elements from a culture different to one’s own, and this can become controversial when the adopter is taking from a minority culture, or without having a proper understanding and respect for the original culture, and context. This is where many artists have fallen victim to criticism, and rightly so.

Personally, I don’t think there is a problem with adopting traits of other cultures music and incorporating them into one’s own music. Irish people hit the nail on the head with the fiddle, African drums have a rich and unique sound, a Didgeridoo sounds like nothing else, and the sitar is a beautifully melodic Indian instrument. All of these should have opportunity to be shared among cultures and used to create new and exciting sounds – AS LONG AS it is done respectfully and with care for traditional values. This value of respect should exist not only with physical instruments, but also with vocal styles and especially artists’ image.

Recently the music industry has seen a boom in popularity for Rap and Hip-Hop genres, including the introduction of the grime genre – a UK based underground, gritty rap style brought into light by rappers such as Stomzy and Skepta.

The problem that arises with rap is that many of the big artists are of African American descent, which means they may have been subject to oppression, in their lives, or in their ancestors lives. Some rappers see their resulting behaviour as part of an image that they can adopt, such as the Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, who began to adopt many traits characteristic of their culture. Controversy arose in 2015-2016 amid the #BlackLivesMatter movement, in which Iggy kept quiet throughout and didn’t really make comment on.

Respect has a major part to play when it comes to borrowing ideas from other cultures. It is of paramount importance that, if you want to adopt a trait, that you understand the meaning behind it, and that it is deemed appropriate by people of that culture. Once again hybridisation comes to light, as appropriating these traits can also be seen as a form of hybridisation.

Okay, so ‘Crap Shacks of the Gong’ is live and running. Let’s look at our ‘Digital Artefact’ process so far. Making Media, or BCM114, is a subject mandatory for Bachelor of Communications and Media students, myself and my good pal Hunter included. The subject isn’t too tricky to unpack – as my tutor Travis likes to state at the beginning of each class, ‘This is Making Media, so make media.’

The main assignment throughout the Making Media course is to create a digital artefact. A Digital Artefact can be pretty much anything, as long as there’s an online component and an audience interaction. Deliberating ideas for my Digital Artefact was tough, but I think the key was just to stick with something and go for it. This is something drawn from two principles we learnt of early in the semester: FEFO and FIST.

FEFO- fail early, fail often

Fefo is a concept that makes a lot of sense. It’s all about releasing lots of content and releasing this content early in order to get feedback from audiences in order to improve. Following this is critical if you want to achieve a good relationship with your audience, and create an environment where they have a role in curating the content that you create.

FIST – fast, inexpensive, simple, tiny

A successful DA will ideally utilise concepts of #fist. Overall, your DA shouldn’t be beating around the bush and contrived. Fist is a good model for producing content, dealing with ideas, spreading content, and heaps of other operations that can be undergone throughout the DA process.

Basically, it’s more about the execution than the idea in the end. To begin, we wanted to create a digital artefact that would interest and excite us. Hunter, my partner for this project is majoring in Digital Media Marketing, and I am majoring in Screen Media. Having a deluded idea of our own senses of humour, we wanted to create a satirical social media platform to create some sort of funny content – a type of content we both enjoy and follow on Facebook ourselves.

Main inspiration was drawn from two main businesses – ‘The Betoota Advocate,’ a satirical online newspaper producer, and ‘Shit Towns of Australia,’ a page that gives weekly rankings of the shittest towns in Australia based on events that have occurred throughout the week (something of note is that both of these pages have gone on to create and sell merchandise, which is definitely something that could be a source of revenue in future.)

So here we introduce ‘Crap Shacks of the Gong’ – a facebook page that uploads weekly videos which review various spots and locations within the Wollongong region. We decided around week two that we needed to pick this idea and stick to it, with aim to get content out there as soon as we could. Sadly we both got a little busy around week three, so our first upload wasn’t until week four.

Being a week or so behind when getting into the creation process, we have only had one video out at the time of this blog. In a 24hr period, the post has definitely caused an increase in traffic on the page. Initially, we invited large amounts of our friends to like our facebook page, but there’s only so many friends one can have. So in order to expand now, we need to start producing more content and just create more material to be viewed in general.

One of the main things we need is an interactive audience. We need to create through our persona an atmosphere where people are happily sharing their thoughts and ideas. Persona is important when you have an online media presence. You have to be approachable, interactive, friendly, and funny. Well we do in this case anyway. In order to create this atmosphere with our followers, we need to be consistent with the language in our posts, reviewing them prior to posting. We also need it to be known that we are happy with any direct feedback and will take it all on board. Observation of other pages is important here, and we spent time looking at some of the stats for other successful facebook pages, such as the ones mentioned earlier. I did this in order to see if there are any trends in turning points where small pages develop into bigger ones. These were actually pretty hard to pinpoint, and as written by Hannah Williams, “There’s not a magic formula to social media success.” The article as a whole has a bunch of tips for creating media yourself, and staying in peoples feeds’ without being pesky. It’s definitely worth checking out.

A few things to conclude on, there is definitely a lot of room for this project to grow, but also a lot of room for failure. Hunter and I are going to have to work hard to keep on releasing consistent content, at a constant rate (try saying that ten times quickly!) The iteration phase for us has been one of learning, trying to grab onto ropes, sliding down those ropes, but holding on tight as we can. Hopefully the prototyping stage will start showing us some more user feedback, help us gather analytics for the facebook page, and maybe someone other than our mum’s will be telling us that we are funny.

For my DA, I decided to team up with my friend Hunter, and create the Facebook page ‘Crap Shacks of the Gong.‘ It involves us travelling around the Wollongong area, and reviewing places that may be deemed ‘shit’. We will create short, 1-2 minute videos that will be easily digestible and humorous, and post these on a weekly basis.

We want to continue to build and grow throughout the semester, so we will be continually taking on feedback in the forms of comments, polls, analytics and messages. In order to be successful, we are following the rules of FIST. It will be a fast turnaround production, and we will be able to receive weekly feedback in order to quickly adapt for the following week. The only cost will be fuel costs, so quite an inexpensive venture. It’s a simple and tiny project, but there’s lots of room for it to grow.

The page can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/Crap-Shacks-of-the-Gong-100998974602801/?notif_id=1565951279885278&notif_t=page_invite_accept

And here’s our pitch video:

Cheers,

my first short film made back in 2016, a one minute clip that had to include the theme ‘time’.

enjoy

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=949504065104619&id=817787028276324

Here’s my final work for my BCM115 Introduction to Screen Media class.

I have followed on from my previous assignment, a soundscape that explored a subject – my friend Emma, and her idea of what it means to be a rebel. My work extends on this concept through the addition of the visual layer.

The motion picture employs some of the different film techniques we have looked at as part of our lecture content. I have tried to use things such as montage, discontinuity editing, and use of space when exploring different activities Emma goes through in her day. I’ve included many still, spacious shots of Emma hanging around, not doing much at all. I wanted to create soft focus shots that aren’t too demanding on the eye.

The concept behind the whole video is that there can be a certain innocence in a rebellion that often goes unseen. People like Emma, who don’t necessarily conform aren’t exactly criminals either. They are just people. they hang out, laugh, fix their hair, ponder life and do silly dances just like the rest of us.

A few films we looked at in our lectures can be seen as an inspiration for my work. The use of space in the film ‘Her’, directed by Spike Jonze was a big influence on the framing techniques in many shots I made. Takes that would linger slightly too long I took from films such as ‘Spectre’ of the James Bond series and even movies created by Hitchcock. Viewing these examples is, for me, an integral part of developing my own style and techniques of filmmaking.

Part of the global cinema medium is the act of actually creating and producing content for the global cinema. Through the usage of techniques we have observed in many different films from around the world, my motion picture contributes to the plethora of other works that define the style of the modern era – a collage that extends worldwide.

So enjoy, this is my representation of a modern living rebel. I hope you’re inspired, or disgusted, or at the least entertained. Thanks for your time, it means a lot.

Cheers,

Ideally, the front page of the newspaper is nothing short of attention grabbing. That is, in essence, the whole point of a front page – draw attention in order to sell copies. Where do we draw the line though, between what imagery is acceptable to broadcast to potentially thousands of viewers, and what is not? Where is this invisible line drawn? Is depicting the lifeless corpse of a toddler an acceptable form of attention?

Photojournalism is the way in which we tell news stories through images. It most commonly refers to photographs taken of notable events and is a form of conveying emotion and a sense of reality that often gets lost when in the form of text. Photojournalism is a critical part of successful journalism. As with all other aspects of journalistic practice, there is a code of ethics that requires one’s commitment with, in order to be deemed fair and accurate journalism. In Australia, this code is presented by the National Press Photographers Association, or the NPPA, and sets a code of conduct that is widely accepted and abided by within the practice. Images of tragedy can be interpreted by one of the standards of photojournalism in the following way:

“Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.”

The story of Aylan Kurdi is undoubtedly a tragedy. The three-year-old Syrian refugee was found washed up on a beach in Turkey on September 2nd, 2015. A series of photographs taken and shared by Nilüfer Demir, of the lifeless body lying in the sand went viral shortly after being taken and quickly reached two billion views within 12 hours. Aylan’s death was caused earlier that morning, when the inflatable boat that his family, among 12 other Turkish people were attempting to illegally flee their country to seek asylum was capsized. Aylan was not the only casualty of this disaster, with his father being the only one in their family of four to survive the event that took the lives of his wife and two children. The boat was a small dinghy that intended to smuggle citizens out of Bodrum, Turkey and into Greece for the price of $5860, to ultimately escape their corrupt and war torn country. It left under the cover of darkness – around midnight, loaded beyond capacity and without proper life preservers. When it capsized shortly after departing, the captain fled and all the passengers were left to fend for themselves with faulty lifejackets. Many didn’t survive the night.

When the photo of Aylan, one of the first of the bodies to wash ashore was captured, Demir knew it was instantly going to shock the world. The internet’s rising popularity meant that it was viewed digitally and spread by millions of people in hundreds of countries within just hours. After that, those who had not seen it on a screen would have seen it in the countless newspaper publishing’s which shared the photo. All over, news reporters deemed this photo as front-page worthy. Thousands of publishers sent the image out into the world for consumption. Billions of people had access to this image within 24 hours of its capture, but what did this mean for us? Was it an example of ethical photojournalism?

Has it ever been okay in the past to publish images of death without any sort of content warning? This image obviously was not everyday viewing, which probably added to its effect. The image, as chilling as it is, sparked worldwide conversation about the Syrian refugee crisis. It put a face to the stories that everyone had been hearing and dismissing, but this image wasn’t easily dismissed. Conversation exploded in relation to the refugee crisis. Everyone knew, and it was all they wanted to talk about. Donations to charities supporting refugees in Syria escalated up 55 times the normal amount in the following weeks. This photo was an obvious turning point for the crisis and created a positive movement for it, but the image wasn’t without backlash. Although no legal action was sought, many people deemed this photo as highly offensive. Young children themselves would have been subject to this image, mentally fragile people, and sensitive people on top of that. There were many people who didn’t deem the explicit photo as essential or necessary viewing for the public.

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Over time, many photos have caused debate as to whether they were ethical or unethical. A photo titled “The Terror of War” taken by Nick Ut in 1973 depicts a terrified group, among them a naked Vietnamese girl, crying and screaming as she runs away naked from a napalm explosion during the second world war. The image was a big eye-opener for the public in regards to the unknown horrors of war that had been hidden from so many. “The Struggling Girl,” captured by Kevin Carter in 1993 shows a starving African girl with a vulture eyeing her off in the background. This photo caused controversy, as many believed the photographer should have helped and fed the girl instead of taking a photo. The backlash from the public eventually lead to the photographer’s suicide, in response to all the hate he had received for simply capturing a significant moment.

So what actually determines whether a photograph is or is not ethical? There is a very thin line that photographers tread when under the scrutinising eye of the public. It seems as though many images can comply by the NPAA code of ethics, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to be interpreted as such by a wider audience. For an image to pass off as acceptable, ideally it should be one that evokes deep emotional responses while also triggering positive repercussions. A journalist can never be certain how their images will be interpreted, so how can they be certain they are always ethical in the eyes of the public?

For my second Screen Media assignment, I continued to work with Emma as my living rebel. We decided to create a script that would portray how ideas of rebelliousness can form for different people. The script covers things Emma and I saw as rebellious but explores these in different ways – some silly, some serious, some personal. We looked at some of Emma’s favourite rebels through time to draw inspiration. In the end, we narrowed a long list down to six rebels who we thought we could pull strong ideas and quotes from. These included the artist Duchamp, musicians Bowie, Dolly Parton, and Patti Smith, as well as some younger influences around today, Amandla Stenberg and Greta Thunberg. Emma reflected on these rebels and how they influenced her personally, and we used some of their quotes to get the ball rolling on what being a rebel meant to Emma.

The song “Charlie’s Manifesto” by the Finks has a very powerful delivery and structure, and I wanted to try and use the form of a spoken word poem, delivering an ideology, with subtle background guitar. So we set out the different rebel ideas in an order that we thought flowed smoothly and had good rhythm and tempo, and recorded the script, the guitar and wrote a keyboard part. I added some seagulls recorded at the beach to create ambience and atmosphere.

I accept the terms and conditions. Possibly one of the most commonly overlooked agreements in today’s world. You’re too busy trying to quickly make an account so that you can either order Uber Eats, or maybe make a Twitter for uni, or ordering an online gift so its here time for grandma’s birthday. You decide to overlook the 20-page agreement about your rights as a consumer. I mean we all do it, but just how exactly does it affect us? What are we signing away?

This week in classes we looked at how we are affected more and more by media ownership. Media ownership infers to the extent that media producers have influence over us, ie, the amount of newspapers/radio stations/news shows one company might own within an area.

When it comes to news consumption, I find myself consuming news most regularly through the social media platform Facebook. While it is a publicly listed company on the share market, creator Mark Zuckerberg has a substantial share in the business, giving him voting rights within the company. The website is pretty much a free platform for people to say what the like – to an extent. A problem that’s arisen with Facebook though is the desire for and sometimes lack of privacy.

When we agree to Facebook’s terms and conditions, we accept that they securely will store our personal and private data. Privacy is very important to people. Just how secure is our privacy in the hands of Mr Zuckerberg though? Recently, a company called ‘Cambridge Analytica’ was found to have accessed the data of thousands of Facebook accounts and used this information to convey political messages to users. This was very hard-hitting for so many Facebook users, many of which deactivated accounts and boycotted Facebook completely. How could we trust a platform that would let us be manipulated like this? 

We don’t.

When you write something on Facebook and publish that statement, it’s there for people to read, regardless of whether or not what you say is true. The problem with social media is that anyone is welcome to have their say – and not everyone is always honest. Many people just want to spread their own ideologies. Personally, I find it hard to trust Facebook and feel there’s a need a lot of the time to perform a bit of background research on things you may read there. Don’t take it all as gospel.

All in all, the internet has made our lives substantially easier in a lot of ways. Being able to agree to something 135 pages long has never been as easy as it is now. Remember when you do agree, just what it is you’re accepting – are you agreeing to be unconsciously persuaded and misinformed under the guise of free thinking?

Cheers,