Hey! So just to say I have began a new blog for my second year as a Media Production student, why not take a peek?
https://grantsnaithyr2blog.wordpress.com
UNITED STATES – CIRCA 1950s: Woman with surprised look. (Photo by George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images)
The paradigms of media have altered drastically since the invention of the internet that has connected all of these variations of media into one new form. Our generation grew up in a time before the invention of social media whilst younger generations will have grown using social media in ways that we never could at that age. This is just one effect of the invention of the internet and how it has impacted on every day life. The art of social media has presented us with a way of presenting ourselves in an international manner. It seems like websites such as Facebook and Twitter have been a part of our lives for as long as we can remember, websites that allow us to archive our lives in small banks of data that continue to be accessible even after expiration. Here is a video that Facebook produced to introduce there timeline feature:
Professor Marshall McLuhan has the insistence that the audience wants something to do and his famous assertion of 1964 that the medium is the message, essentially prophesied the rise of the internet and interactivity of TV shows and the audiences involvement in the creation of media. Media has adapted throughout the years:
In this ever expanding world of media on the web , how do we create an impact? Often studying the things that got viral is an interesting way of understanding the patterns that occur. Often shocking images or elicit imagery is something that makes a global impact. We live in an interesting world where by videos of a girl eating a bloody tampon disturbs audiences where as a video of a black man being shot eight times doesn’t, the internet has also created a sense of desensitisation for violence and gore but not so much for things society deem weird.
“Natural talent does NOT exist. Not even child prodigies and savants have natural talent. Everything they achieve comes through practice. 10,000 hours – minimum is what the number crunchers say. That’s 3 and a half years, eight hours a day, seven days a week. Thats what it takes to be shit hot at something”
We began by creating a transcript of Maurice’s interview and separately highlighting key areas of the interview, looking for emotionally charged points of speech and key components in the telling of the story. We then brought this 
together to create a master transcript of what was going into the final piece. I found that this didn’t really work as it then took us a long time to decide on what made the final cut and what didn’t and even then when it came to making the actual edit we found that whilst these bits worked with the audio, they didn’t necessarily work on a visual level. In hindsight, creating a master transcript as a group from the start would have saved us a days worth of the editing process to perfect the final product.
We felt that it was important to keep two types of shots in the piece in addition to the talking head piece; shots of the house and shots of him painting. Both kind of showed an ideal scenario that Maurice had almost created around 
himself that would create a stark contrast to the story of the war that he was telling. The house in particular was a beautiful addition as it portrays the perfect family and upbringing that he never had and the opening and closing of the house creates a sense of the opening and closing of his story. His paintings carry a subtle undertone of him painting beautiful paintings despite his past creating an optimistic vision of the world against all odds.
In hindsight, the editing process was handled reasonably well, we all contributed equally taking in other ideas and offering up constructive criticism on things we didn’t agree with. It took a lot of time to achieve however and could have been more streamlined, perhaps a schedule for the editing with deadlines to meet within the time period allotted would have been useful. Overall, the piece demonstrates the desired slow pace and the story, hopefully provoking a powerful connection between audience and subject. This is the story of Maurice Shakespeare.
Here are a number of stills captured during our experience working on 160MC T2 People 2 People. During my time working on this I have learnt invaluable skills of communication, understanding and compassion across all of society and walks of life. I found that everyone has a story to tell no matter how mundane they may think themselves to be and as Media practitioners it is important to capture these stories and share them through the globally understand cinematic language. I also learnt that the world of Media can open so many doors to so many different walks of life that it is essentially a passport to everything, I never could have imagined the sheer quantity of opportunities that a Media Production course at Coventry University could open up for me and only within my first year. A big thanks to everyone in these pictures: Jarno Kilstrom, Chuck Weber, Dominic Flynn, Simil Gurung, Craig Thompson and Maurice Shakespeare as well as my amazing team Karen Jensen-Clark, Michael Moser and Chris Caswell.
As part of our fourth week of 161MC we were given a number of useful resources to read and look into as part of our self development in creating impact in media.
We were asked to consider the history and present of Media, where it came from and where it has arrived at. In our first reading, ‘What Is New Media’ by Lev Manovich, asked a simple question “What is new media?” The start of this article begins to create an argument that New Media cannot be clarified as a digital representation of something because being digital doesn’t necessarily make something superior. What makes the term New Media so difficult to understand is that the term itself is never relevant, by the time something can be classified as New Media there is already something else being developed that could perceived as the next New Media. So taking it back to Lev Manovich’s argument in a few years time digital representation will no longer be classified as New Media, besides this I agree in that I don’t think something digital is superior outright, only superior in the consumers view. 
It is also important to have an understanding as Media practitioners where the origins of Media come from to learn the patterns of advancements in the industry itself and the reasons for why we each understand the language of cinema. I talk about this in further detail in the below link:
https://grantsnaithyr1.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/cinematic-language/
Related Task Blogs:
https://grantsnaithyr1.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/stop-motion-vine/
As part of our third week of 161MC we were given a number of useful resources to read and look into as part of our self development in creating impact in media.
This week we were focused on the issues surrounding Copyright and what that meant to us as Media Producers. This is an area of Media that I am self admittedly hazy on, and one that I struggle to get my head around. We began by discussing our boundaries and levels of caution that should be adhered to during our filming, a knowledge of the rules and when it is acceptable to work around them. When I sat down to begin the reading I first came across ‘Right to Culture: Future Scenarios’ a project to explore the possible outcomes of laws impact on creativity, one article within it ‘Morphology of a Copyright Tale’ by Aymeric Mansoux I found particularly useful. Aymeric breaks down the scenario of a creative practitioner straying from the standard procedures but within a folk tale style in somewhat of a homage to Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp. I think this appealed to me more because I am used to reading narrative in the manner this is portrayed as opposed to legal documentation.
In addition to this we were shown the film ‘The Internets Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz’, a moving piece about the young man in question who was a pioneer for freedom of use on the internet. For further information on this, please see the below link.
https://grantsnaithyr1.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/the-internets-own-boy-the-aaron-schwarz-story/
Related Task Blogs:
https://grantsnaithyr1.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/marvel-avengers-remix/
https://grantsnaithyr1.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/classmates-remixes/
We were recently set the task of creating a 2 to 4 minute video using the web based editing software ‘Popcorn Maker’ provided by Mozilla. The idea was to take a documentary we could find on the internet and remix it in an interesting way utilising the tool to add videos and images to the video to add context and meaning.
I decided I wanted to do a short remix of a scene from the tv documentary Walking with Dinosaurs, I remixed this with a few other clips from Jurassic Park and experts on dinosaurs talking about the nature of the tyrant lizard.
https://snaithius.makes.org/popcorn/2qzv
Whilst I found it useful to learn the mechanics of this programme I found that this style of media production didn’t appeal to me. I felt that most of what was being done in this programme could be easily created in premiere by downloading clips from youtube as we had done in our previous tasks, so long as we stuck to the Fair Use law.
Vicarious
Experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person.
The poetic piece entitled ‘Vicarious’ starts off with a blurred shot of light particles crackling from the side of the screen, this slow and beautiful visual lures its viewers into a false sense of security from the
get go. The initial idea of using this visual was centred around the idea that it was the glow of the television screen just out of view and that as the video progressed we were going to be viewing the television set and we would then end on the same visual to suggest we had turned away from the violence presented to us by the controlling media.
I wanted to play around with the theme of eyes through out the entirety of this poetic piece for several reasons. Firstly, the eyes are the gates through which we allow this violence to flood into our systems and the visuals successfully show this by interjecting as the violence of each clip increases, becoming more and more rapid in movement and ‘distressed’. Secondly I wanted to capture emotion in my piece to help the
audience feel an emotional tie to the themes behind the poem, I don’t think I successfully achieved this target as well as the first because of the quality of some of the eye clips chosen were blurry.
Some of the shots of eyes carried a little more significance than to simply convey ourselves as absorbers of the media. There are two shots of eyes that I chose specifically to show; one of an eye being removed and another of a lobotomy procedure. Both shots whilst very different in som
e respects were chosen to represent connotations of how the media experiments on us as viewers and consumers. I know that this was a great choice as a few classmates even commented upon this visual. The final eye shot was without careful examination completely similar to every other shot of the eye before it however I chose that particular shot as it focused on the retracting of the iris to suggest a moment of realisation or an ‘eye opening’ experience.
At one stage of the poem the following lines occur “Bloated on pain and swollen on suffering” for me this was a brilliant part of the poem as I felt it really emphasised the feeling that we simply cannot get enough, however I had trouble thinking of a visual for this piece. I eventually came to the realisation that a simple twisting and swirling black and white visual could be great here. Its intended purpose was to symbolise the discomforting contortion feeling of being bloated.
Overall, ‘Vicarious’ is a representation of a human coming to terms with the brutality we are spoon fed on a daily basis by the controlling media. It points the finger at you and asks the question what is wrong with humanity that we feel the need to see such misery and violence and enjoy doing so. I hope that this has opened your eyes to this frightening reality of modern day society.
Behold! The Lord of Flame, Ragnaros lives!
We call our selves a Civilised Society.
Yet we sit like animals at the glowing screen awaiting our next morsel of misery. Bloated on pain and Swollen on suffering,
yet we crave and consume, vomiting dignity before us.
Enveloped in the evening glow, we behold the malcontent of our own existence. For you see, this world is filled with violence.
O’ sweet violence, We hate it, but we love to hate it.
So this is version two of my poem, Vicarious, and with this I really wanted to focus on the human nature to sit before a screen whether it TV, Cinema, Mobile Phone or Tablet and simply gorge ourselves on the pain and misery of others, even to the extent that we actively seek out this misery in the simulated format of violent programmes. It has not gone unnoticed by the Media Corporations who fill our eyes with this horrific material instead of the happiness and beauty that can be found in this world. The visuals I have selected to accompany this piece (whether this is the finished product or not)are grainy black and white images of violence and torture with the ultimate goal of unsettling the audience. My idea is that we consume this stuff on a daily basis and are desensitised to the material, however when it is shown before our eyes with a focused purpose, it can make people feel unnerved. I hope that this unnerving aspect will really bring this issue to light and make them question what it is we consume in the modern day civilised world and its intended purpose.
The Journey Begins 