Assessment Task Three: Self-assessment

Production Project 2 – COMM 2323

The Social Studio Documentary Group

Tutor: Christina Heristanidis

Worked successfully as a team member

Our group worked very cohesively and well together, so I found it really quite easy to work successfully as a team member within it. I think the fact that we all knew each other previously helped a lot, because we knew each other’s personalities and how to communicate properly with each other. I knew going in to this that each of us had very strong-minded personalities and so this might lead to a few clashes when it came to decision-making, but I think that once we each settled into the groove of how we worked as a team I found my role as something of a mediator between the others helped us work cohesively together. I made extra care to listen to everyone’s input, and helped act as a mediator when the other’s weren’t listening to each other too well. I also made sure that I delivered on everything that I committed to do so that we could work efficiently as a team and be able to rely on each other.

Successful time management

We began filming really early on which was a blessing in disguise for us, because we then had more time to plan subsequent interviews and editing sessions. I had a discussion with my group early into the semester about how I thought one of the best things we could do was to just be really honest with each other about our other time commitments, so that when things started to get really busy towards the end of the semester we wouldn’t get frustrated or angry with each other.  I made a point of keeping them updated and asking them what they had on throughout the semester too so that we could plan editing sessions together around times that would be convenient to us. I also made use of weekends, coming in on Sundays to edit when there more editing suites available and I had more time free. When it came to editing, I made sure that I sat down at the start of every session, watched what we’d done so far and then made a list of everything I planned to accomplish during that session. I gave these goals time flexible time limits throughout the session so that I wouldn’t get stuck obsessing over minor details, and could instead move on and keep progressing. Because the sessions were usually hours long, I also set little alarms to remind myself to take a break and eat some brain food, and then come back to the editing suite with a fresh set of eyes to keep editing with. Because we had to slot our filming in between other uni work and jobs, I made use of my time in the car on the way back from the interview by uploading the fresh footage to my laptop so that we wouldn’t have to sit at uni for an hour waiting for it to upload once we got there. I took care of most of the communication between us and The Social Studio, and I tried to manage my time doing this wisely by often composing and responding to emails from my mobile while on the train or tram.

Marketing role (role in organising screening)

I can’t really respond to this section because we haven’t yet been given any opportunities to contribute to organising the screening yet.

Good technical skills in chosen production role

For this project we didn’t actually elect specific production roles but instead chose to share in the roles of producing, filming and editing together. I found  this to be extremely beneficial because it meant that I spent the semester improving not just one of those skills, but all three. I made particular effort to work on my filming and editing skills before it came to shooting for this project, because I knew this was where I lacked. A couple of weeks before we shot the TSS parade I booked and borrowed the exact equipment we were going to be using and took it home over the weekend so that I could get really familiar with how it operated, and practices filming with it to see what worked best. I filmed a short sequence around the house with my sister, and then uploaded the content and started editing it together. To get my editing skills up to scratch I started watching lots of different Final Cut Pro how-to videos on YouTube on other sites. I found this to be extremely helpful in learning how to efficiently use the program, and this also meant that by the time it came to edit our final doco together, my technical skills were of a much better standard.

Excellent problem solving skills

We ran into a few different problems throughout the course of this project, but I found that creative thinking often helped me come up with solutions for them. The first major problem occurred when we were shooting the TSS fashion parade, and we ran out of camera card space before the show actually started. I remembered that I had brought my laptop and camera cables with my in case something like this happened, and quickly started uploading the footage to my laptop to free up space so that we could continue shooting the show. We ran into another problem on the next shoot where we’d forgotten the right audio cables for the microphone, and collaboratively came up with the solution to move the camera up close to the subject and record the audio through the camera. This in the end presented more problems when it came to editing because the sound wasn’t the greatest quality, but upon reflection we all decided the interview footage wasn’t as great as what we’d shot at the fashion parade, and so decided to focus on editing that together to music. Another problem we ran in to when coming back from the interview shoot was that none of us could stay back to log and capture the footage in the editing suites, so I simply started uploading the content to my laptop in the car to save time and so that we could keep the footage safe.

Took responsibility for role

As I mentioned above we didn’t elect separate roles, but instead shared responsibility for them all. I shared the responsibility for producing the documentary by taking control of the majority of the communication between us and the Social Studio right from the start, and also formulating questions for our interviews and then conducting them. I shared in the responsibility for filming by helping book and transport all the equipment to our shoots, shooting the footage itself and also logging and capturing it. When it came to editing, I also took responsibility in sharing this role by being present at all group editing sessions and contributing to them, coming in on my own time to edit, giving up weekends to edit the footage, and spending whole days editing 9 – 5 when it came closer to the deadline.

Assisted on another shoot or mentored a fellow student

- During the semester Maddie and I often looked to each other for support because we were both lacking in technical skills at the beginning. Throughout the semester as I learnt more about editing and Final Cut Pro from different YouTube tutorials I taught Maddie the same techniques so that she could progress with me too.

Self-assessment score: HD 93%

Dawn of the Digital: The Hunger for New Media Has Spread

The last seminar of the series was a good one. Unfortunately because it was the last one of the year not a lot of people showed up (we had the same problem with ours the week before) but this was more due to student laziness than a lack of promotion, so I gave them a D for promotion of the seminar. I thought the content was focused and relevant, and they also had a particular section focused on how to break into the industry that was very helpful so I gave them an HD for that criterion. They got a D for guest’ relevance, because although they were diverse and had different perspectives, I thought it would have been really helpful to hear a woman’s perspective on the industry. I thought Dan Monheit had a lot of great advice about starting your own business though, something that I couldn’t remember anyone else in any of the other seminars speaking about. I thought his encouragement to start a business young and to keep learning and striving for success even if you hit a few roadblocks was very inspiring. I also really identified with they way he described traditional advertising as being  largely interruptive, to digital advertising which strove to get people to actually opt in to participate instead of disturbing them. I gave the quality of the facilitation a D. Overall it went pretty smoothly, but although I liked the idea the group had had to have the guests sit on a comfy couch instead of hard stools, I think this backfired on them because they guests were so positioned low on the stage that I could not see their faces properly when they were talking from where I was sitting. I thought the #dodigital  twitter feed was well monitored (well it kind of had to be, being that it was a digital-themed seminar) and so I gave them an HD for participation, and finally I gave them an HD for promotion because I saw lots of flyers around campus and really liked the trailer that they had produced for it.

It’s Alive: Why Radio Survived the Death of Traditional Media

I thought this seminar was extremely well prepared and ran pretty smoothly. For the first criterion, ‘seminar content is focused and relevant’, I gave them a distinction. I did this because I thought the questions they asked their guests were very relevant and tailored towards finding more about how to actually get into the industry, rather than just the way it was run. I particularly liked how they asked each of the guests to share their own personal story of how they entered the industry, as it provided real life examples of how to do so rather than just general advice. I would have given them an HD but I felt that even though I enjoyed the band performance at the end, I didn’t think it was entirely relevant and felt like it was kind of tacked on at the end just for added entertainment. That said, it did make the seminar more memorable and break up the talking. For the ‘guests relevance to topic and career development’ I gave them ah HD. I liked the fact that they had four guests from very different positions at very different radio stations. I thought it was particularly great that they had May Hu from SBS there, because she provided a very interesting perspective on radio from a different culture. The guests were also at very different stages in their career and of varied ages, and I felt this helped to give a broader perspective of where a career in radio can lead. I gave the group another D for the ‘quality of the seminar facilitation’. They did have a few different sound and lighting issues that were noticeable, but I really liked the way that they had structured the seminar and talked to each guest individually before moving into the panel discussion. I awarded them a credit for audience participation, because I didn’t think there was a whole lot of this. And finally I gave them a HD for the promotion of the seminar, because I had noticed a lot of signage and marketing material online in the lead up to the seminar.

28 Minutes Later: In Television

I found this seminar enjoyable because it seemed rather well planned. I gave them a D for the content being focused and relevant, because although they covered a lot of interesting areas like how comedy translates from production to onscreen and the best ways to pitch a show, I felt there could have been more content on how to actually break into the industry in the first place. I gave the group an HD for their guests being relevant, because I thought their choice of guests was quite diverse and they all had quite different experiences and personalities but brought something different to the discussion. I did find Matthew Saville’s contributions to be particularly entertaining given his comedic streak and frank honesty. It was a shame that their one female guest pulled out at the last minute, and so the panel was all male. I gave this group a D for seminar facilitation, as I found it was put together quite well but I thought the flow of conversation was a little bit awkward at times. I did however think that the production values of the trailer they made were very high. I also liked the way they had structured it in bringing each of the guests to the stage individually to talk to them on their own before starting the panel discussion. This let us get to know the individual guests a lot better and allowed the chance for them to share important information such as their own story of how they got into the television industry. I awarded this group a D for audience inclusion, because although they did have a Twitter feed there wasn’t much other opportunity for participation. And finally I gave them an HD for the promotion of the seminar, because I saw a lot of flyers on campus as well as material online promoting the seminar, and again I was really impressed with the trailer they created for it.

Digging Up the Truth: In Documentary

Digging up the Truth: In Documentary was the most popular of the seminars, probably because of one particularly notable guest, John Safran. I gave the group an D for the seminar content being focused and relevant. I found that the fact that they had four guests instead of three meant that a broad range of diverse topics and perspectives were inevitably brought up. I found it particularly interesting when they were discussion the possibilities of interactive documentaries in the future as a result of the gradual integration of the internet in documentary story-telling. I do think they could have had a little more on how to break into the industry though. I gave them an HD for their guests being relevant to the topic, and liked how all of them had had substantial careers already and so had a lot to talk about. I appreciated the fact that they had a mixture of both females and males as well. Obviously a lot of people were there to see John Safran and he didn’t point, being both funny and informative in his contributions. I gave the seminar facilitation quality an HD, as I found it ran very smoothly and they had no problems with all the mini trailers they ran for each of the guests. Little things such as the pamphlet and flyers also looked great. I also found Andrew to be a really comfortable host and did really well to get the conversation going. The group got an HD for audience inclusion for the incorporation and actual use of the twitter feed, as well as the Q&A session at the end. And finally I gave them an HD for the promotion of the week’s seminar, because there was a lot of activity both offline and online marketing the seminar in the week leading up to it.

Filmenstein: The Director’s Cut

Being the first of the seminar series, I was really quite surprised and pleased by how well this session was run. That said, looking back on it there were also things that could have been improved upon, but this is understandable given the short time frame they had to prepare for it. I gave this group a ‘C’ for seminar content being focused and relevant, because even though I thought it was interesting the way they structured it around a ‘fake movie’, I thought there needed to be more content focused on how to actually break into the industry. I gave them an HD for their guests’ relevance to the topic and career, and I thought they did particularly well scoring Glendyn Ivin as a guest on such short notice. I’d just started watching his latest TV series Puberty Blues and had been extremely impressed by the production values and just how well it all came together, so it was awesome to be able to actually hear about the influences behind his art. I was also pretty chuffed when I tweeted him after the seminar and he tweeted me back. I thought the choice of getting a director, producer, and someone from Film Victoria was a good one as it gave a few different perspectives on the industry. I gave the group a C for seminar facility. Unfortunately this group was the one that was going to experience a lot of teething problems, and there were a few awkward setup issues like the mics not coming out of the stands, the table being too small and the light shining in the guests’ eyes. I also thought the flow was disrupted a bit when the host sometimes talked over the guests. I gave the group an D for audience inclusion, because they not only had a Q&A section but also were the first to come up with the idea of running the twitter feed. I would have given them an HD however I tweeted a couple of questions during the seminar and neither of them came up, so I’m not sure how efficient the twitter feed actually was in the end. Finally, I gave the group an HD for promotion, because I saw a lot of signage building anticipation in the lead up to it.

Media Industries II Self Assessment

I put a lot into the Evenception Seminar, because the field of event production was something that I was greatly interested in and I knew the more I put in, the more I would get out of it. My contribution was as follows:

Contribution and collaboration

There was honestly so many different stages and aspects to the production of tis event it’s almost hard to remember everything that I was involved in, but here is what comes to mind. I took leadership from the very first brainstorming class and acted as the scribe who notes down all the ideas we came up with, everything from ‘different types of events’ to ‘different roles in event production’ and ‘examples of events in Australia and internationally’. When the opportunity came up to be on a proper leadership board, I raised my hand along with Maddie and Jenny, willing and excited to take the added leadership responsibilities in co-ordinating everyone working on this event. It was not always easy to be in this position, and at times it was hard to motivate others who hadn’t invested as much in the project to work with us. We employed a number of different strategies to work productively as a group, including making sure that all brainstorming sessions were open to everyone and we asked everyone to contribute, even those who could not make it to class and gave them a deadline to contribute to the discussion online. We also made sure that all major decisions were signed off by everyone so that we could create something that everyone was proud of. While this worked some of the time, there were instances where people were just not pulling their weight, and the only thing we could do at that point was just to take on a bit of extra work ourselves and make sure the work got done. Although this was frustrating at times, in hindsight I really didn’t mind so much because I learnt a lot more by getting involved in all the different processes. Even though I initially didn’t want to host the event, I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and felt better for having done it. My contribution was quite diverse and varied but to just pick some points…I extended upon and documented the research we started in our first few sessions, I researched different guests for us to invite, I wrote the blurb for the event, I found inspiration for the design group and prompted them to start designing the different media we needed such as pamphlets, tickets, slideshows etc, I brainstormed a lot of the ideas we had for how to turn this event into ‘an event within an event’, I organised the questions for the seminar once we had collated them together and structured how they would run, I helped host the event itself, and I did not miss a single class.

Proactive learning

I put A LOT of effort into extending my own learning beyond what was happening in class. This was motivated by a number of factors: because I wanted to know more about the industry so that I could help write intelligible questions and talk to our guests at our seminar; because I wanted to research the same area for my PNR report; and because it’s an area that I am extremely interested in working in in the future. I have a notebook that I kept most of my notes in from day 1, and here is where, after we started brainstorming ideas on the first day, I went home and spent hours brainstorming some more, and researching online real life examples of festivals that fit under the categories we’d brainstormed. I’m a very goal-driven person, and so when I went home after the first couple classes  I also wrote a list titled ‘goals for this course’, which included a number of specific goals for the seminar project. I set up a Facebook group just with myself where I started researching different areas of the event production industry online. I looked at everything from the different music festivals in Australia, and the world, to the major players in the industry, to the different companies that would be recruited to do staging or catering for events, to different issues that had faced the industry over the years (ranging from deaths in mosh pits to the ever-increasing bidding wars  for talent) and every time I would find something of note, I’d post the link in this facebook group and comment on it with any thoughts I had about it. In doing this I came across a number of different online music industry publications, and I picked about 5 I thought were worthwhile keeping track of and subscribed to their updates and newsletters so that I could keep up with what was happening in the biz. I also started an internship working in the marketing department at the Big Day Out, which helped put a lot of what I was learning into real life context.

Participation

I attended every single class and group meeting, and met every deadline we had online for approving decisions to contributing to research and ideas. I was also very active in all these instances, often taking a leadership role in directing te meeting, being the scribe or prompting and nudging others into fulfilling their roles. I came to the meetings very prepared, often having done extra research since our last meeting so that I had fresh new ideas to present, and always walked away with a new ‘To Do’ list to tackle. For the actual day itself I made honey joys the night before, met early with everyone to make sure everything was on track, printed of the list of questions and went through it with Jenny my co-host, meted and greeted the guests, co-hosted the actual seminar, thanked the guests, and then helped pack up afterwards.

Connections and intersections

I think that the seminar series was really, really useful, in a lot of different ways. First of all, it allowed me the opportunity to produce an event for the first time ever, and get my hands dirty in all the different processes involved in that. It allowed me to experience the collaboration that is involved in that and to realise how much of it is team work. It allowed me to network within the event production industry, and to gain some wisdom from our great guests who shared some very useful insight with us on the day. It also allowed me to learn a lot from all the other seminars I sat in on, from radio to documentary filmmaking. I found that I work well in a leadership position within a group, but also that I don’t like being the only leader. I learnt that I get frustrated when working with people who are unmotivated, but because I’m invested in the project I’ll end up putting extra work in because I know I’ll get more out of it in the end anyway. And I also learned that I would definitely like to keep pursuing a career in the music events industry!

Grade: HD 10/10

Final Blog Report - The Social Sell

 

 

Role

We didn’t allocate specific roles in our group right from the start, instead we just started researching different areas of social media marketing and found that we naturally gravitated towards different topics that were of personal interest to us, and hence became ‘allocated’ to those particular categories. I initially found that I was researching pretty much every topic across the board. When other group members mentioned some aspect of social media marketing that I wasn’t aware of I would go away and research it myself. Not because we particularly needed a second person researching it for the research project, but because I’m rather pedantic when it comes to learning about something I’m really interested in and I like to feel fully informed. While this was really great for my learning and I can confidently say I’m walking away from this project with a deep understanding of all the different aspects involved in it – even the ones I didn’t do the final write up of for the project – there did come a point in the semester where I realised I had to choose a particular topic or two to go with and work on researching those in depth for the final research report. This eventually formed the Technologies and Strategy Development sections of the final project, as well as the Future projections.

I found that as the semester evolved my broad research, in addition to the research I was doing at my social media internship, came in handy, and I took on a bit of a role as ‘helper’ to the other group members with their research. For example, while Caitlin was handling a lot of the strategies tips content, I had a LOT of great material for this from the social media marketing workshops I’d been to for my internship, and helped integrate this material with hers to round the research out. When Maddie had a little bit of trouble finding statistics for her History Timeline, I sent her a google doc with a number of statistics I’d previously compiled a couple weeks prior for ‘Number Crunch’ articles I was writing for my internship’s social media blog. When Diana started pondering out loud during one of our meetings wondering how Facebook’s terms and conditions work with running competitions online, I was able to inform her of what I knew on the subject from research I’d previously done for a white paper at my internship, and direct her to a couple of different resources she could use for further information. Being able to take on this role of ‘helper’ and aid my group members in this way was really gratifying for me because it helped me feel that I really was getting a good handle on our whole research topic.

Progress

One thing that I did notice with my research method is that I have a tendency to go off on great readings tangents when I’m learning about something. That is, I might start of researching a social media platform – say, Twitter – and come across an article talking about how Twitter recently acquired the team behind the social media platform Summify, and then I’ll go off and start researching Summify to find out that it was created by a start-up technology team from Europe that was brought out to an incubator in Canada financed by angel investors to work on the project, and then I’ll go off and start trying to figure out what angel investors are and how that all work…and it’s only hours later that I’ll actually get back reading the end of the original article I started with. Now, this isn’t usually a problem because I love learning and understanding the context of different pieces of knowledge, but I did find this particular method to be problematic when I needed to sit down and get through some quick research in a short period of time. I had to work on disciplining myself to stay focused, but I found a couple of methods to help me do this. One was creating a ‘resesarch plan’ every time I sat down to do some work. This meant creating a list of topics I wanted to research during that session, accompanied by time limits so that I knew how much time I could allocate to each one. I also started a Bitly account (a link shortening and bookmarking service) that allowed me to save, categorise and annotate web links that I came across and wanted to explore, but perhaps didn’t have the time to go off on a readings tangent with at that point. This way, I could still keep records of additional topics I discovered that I’d like to research further but not let them distract while I needed to be getting on with researching topics specific to our project. Making progress with my ability to research in an efficient and timely manner was really beneficial for this project, and a skill I’ll take with me into future endeavours.

Strategies

I tried a range of different research strategies throughout the duration of our project. These included, but are not limited to:

·      reading physical books

·      reading online journals, e-books and articles

·      collecting newspaper articles of current social media campaigns I found in the Herald Sun and MX

·      downloading free white papers from social media marketing companies

·       attending social media marketing workshops

·      following social media related boards on Pinterest

·      collecting Infographics on social media platforms

·      creating accounts on social media platforms I’d never previously used (for instance, Twitter, Pinterest and Bitly) to get a feel for how to use them and how they might be of use in a marketing strategy

I found that the research and learning strategies that worked best for me were the ones where I was actually DOING something, and not just reading about it. For instance, the workshops were really beneficial because I was involved in conversations with other social media marketers on how to design a strategy. And playing with the social media platforms myself was a lot more educational than reading about how to use them, because I could speak about the experience first hand and evaluate their usefulness myself without having to rely on someone else’s standards.

I found that one of my weaknesses with the research process at first was keeping an organised record of all the useful information I came across. I tried a few different note-taking programs and also physically writing them out but I found that this wasn’t very helpful with image and video content I wanted to keep tabs on. I (appropriately) created an account with new social media platform Pinterest and started pinning visual content onto boards I’d categorised according to different sectors of social media information – everything from the different platforms to particular types of campaigns to a board called ‘Marketing 101’ onto which I pinned helpful information I came across as I started learning the art of marketing online. I actually found this method to be extremely helpful because I’m a very visual learner and like to use graphs and images to remember things. I’m also border on being obsessive compulsive about the way I like to categorise and order information, and this service allowed me to appropriately segregate bits of information into my own categories. Using Pinterest as an organisational tool is something I’ll definitely keep on doing, in fact I’ve actually already created a separate Pinterest account to pin items relating to my various other areas of interest.

In hindsight, I’m think our collaboration strategy could have used a bit of work. For the most of it we all worked fine together, but we found that towards the end one of our group members wasn’t quite pulling her weight and the work that she’d claimed to have done wasn’t quite up to the standard she’d led us to believe it was. This could have been avoided if we’d made certain checkpoints along the research journey where we shared all our work and progress with each other, rather than just relying on what we’d each said we’d done. However the lesson is learnt and I will take this insight with me into my next collaborative project to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Problems

Well there were a number of problems…well not such much problems, but rather ‘learning experiences’ I came across in my own research journey and tried to find ways to rectify that I’ve already talked about. The only real problem I had along the whole process was as part of the collaborative process with one of the other group members. I have to take responsibility for some of the factors myself, as I’m sure there were measures I could have taken to prevent this but it basically came down to one of our group members taking advantage of the rest of us doing all the hard work. This problem was most apparent in the last few weeks of the project when we began to share the finished versions of our sections, and we realised that most of her research was not really ‘research’ at all but written from a single source. I tried to help rectify this problem at the time by tactfully pointing this out to her and explaining why it wasn’t appropriate to put this in a research project that was meant to be the result of a semester’s worth of work, but unfortunately she didn’t seem to see the problem with it and left it the way it was. Instead her excuse was that I should integrate some of my own research with hers so that it became the result of more than one source. While I did end up doing this, it added a great deal more work onto my workload which was already rather large. I continued to have similar problems with the same group member where she wouldn’t complete something that she was meant to do properly, for example, a trailer for our website, and I would be left trying to fix it at the last minute. I attempted to fix this problem in a number of ways, as did my other group members by asking her nicely to finish the tasks she’d volunteered to do properly, and highlighting the fact that we were all doing a lot more work than she was already. Unfortunately our attempts were largely unsuccessful and we had to rectify the mistakes ourselves, or leave them as they were.  I found that even though I referred back to our collaborative contract a couple of times to find new ways of approaching the situation, nothing really worked. I do believe that in the future it would be beneficial for this particular assignment to be tutor assessed but peer moderated, to prevent situations like this arising where group members are taken advantage of.

Connections & Intersections

This course has been one of the most educational and enjoyable classes I’ve taken at RMIT thus far. This is largely due to the fact that we were able to choose research topics that were of interest to us, and social media is something that I’m keenly interested in and would like to chase a career in. I learnt a lot about solving problems that I have with learning processes by simply trying different methods until I find the ones that work best for me. I learnt that I learn best when I am doing something, there are visuals involved and I have control over organising the information. I also learnt that despite one problem with the collaboration process, I actually really enjoyed collaborating on a research project with other people because it increased my learning and the information I was exposed to tenfold. I learnt a few new tips and tricks on communicating with group members online using various tools such as Facebook groups and google docs, and I actually picked up a few new web designing skills that I’ll be happy to put to good use when I create my own online portfolio in the coming weeks. I honed my networking skills and discovered the most effective ways to contact industry professionals online (mostly by tweetings at them!) when few contacts replied to my emails, and I also discovered that workshops are great places to network with people because they bring a large number of industry professionals together in a casual environment where everyone wants to learn. The learnings I have taken from this process will help me as I continue to research different areas of social media for my internship and keep writing articles and white papers for them. The wealth of knowledge I now possess about social media will help me to market myself online as a media professional, and I now think that the next step I would like to take is creating a social media marketing strategy for my best friend’s fashion label to see how well I go putting all this knowledge into action.

I stayed away from blogging about my progress and learnings throughout the semester, because I found that this wasn’t very beneficial for me. Instead I have included here some photos of the different methods I used to document and reflect on my process along the way. The variety of methods I used demonstrate the progress I kept making in trying different methods I learning, until I found the ones that worked for me:

·      the ‘to do’ lists I started creating before every study session

·      lists of people I networked with at the workshops

·      my social media Pinterest board

·      scribbled notes from the multiple social media marketing workshops I attended

·      an example of one of the social media articles I wrote on Australian facebook usage, and later shared the statistics with Maddie

·      A snapshot of my new Instagram account I created to get a feel for the platform

·      A snapshot of my new bitly account that I use to collate links

·      A snap of the ‘Investigation’ word document I kept to organise text information in, complete with 16 separate tabs for all the different aspects of social media marketing I was researching

·      Structural mind maps I scribbled to work out how to structure our website.

Advanced Skills Workshops

The Advanced Skills Workshop that I attended was ‘Design Principles for the Web’. I have a keen interest in web design so I was really looking forward to this workshop as a way to develop my ability to design the elements of a web page before coding them. Miek Dunbar, a freelance web and interaction designer, conducted the workshop and covered a range of different methods to use when mapping out a website. The method that I found most helpful and will definitely utilise in my own practice involved sketches called ‘wireframes’. Wireframes are simple, usually black and white hand drawn sketches of all web page in a website. They are act similarly to storyboards in a movie in that they ensure that all of the necessary elements of the web page are plotted within the aspect ratio of a computer screen, and they also ensure consistency between all of the pages within a site. During the class I drew a number of wireframes to a fictional website brief that I created just for the exercise, and learnt that although the exercise sounded simple enough it took me over ten attempts to achieve a wireframe that I was happy with. I found that although one layout might have worked well for the homepage, it might not have been appropriate for the other pages of the site and so would have failed to maintain an element of consistency throughout the different pages. This realisation will prove to be very helpful when designing web pages in the future. Previously I used to just go straight to Photoshop and create the different visual elements of a web page without really drawing out the layout to consider how the elements will interact with each other over a number of different pages. Incorporating this process into my practice will allow me to create websites that are more aesthetically appealing. It will also help my webpages to become more functional because it allows me to consider where elements like the navigation bar should sit so that they can be easily accessed without impeding on the content within the body of the web page.
I would love to be able to display my PP2 documentary on The Social Studio online within its own webpage so that it can be publicly accessed and shared, and this knowledge will help me in the process of designing a website that can appropriately display a visual documentary.

Another skill that I took away from this workshop was the ability to create a good site map. As Miek explained, a site map is a tree diagram of all of the different pages of a website, and is essential to be being able to understand how the different pages relate to each other. It graphically displays the different access points and is extremely helpful in managing a large website with a lot of content on it. I’ve previously drawn site maps when creating my own websites, however Miek gave me a few really good tips that I will take away to improve my practice. He taught me to differentiate between the different pages on a site map that will be static and remain the same, and those that act more like ‘buckets’ and will have forever changing content. For example, the homepage of a website usually changes to update content and highlight new activity. This tip will help me  in the future to manage websites more efficiently, because I can now use a site map to instantly tell which pages I will need to keep updating weekly and which ones I can leave without checking constantly.

Production Project 2: Fashion Documentary Ideas

Here are some ideas that I have brainstormed for my fashion documentary, ranging from thoughts on subject to angle to production medium: 

1. Character

One key point that I picked up from both the documentaries I watched was the intense sense of character each of them possessed. Both Bill Cunningham and Anna Wintour posses unique idiosyncracies and eccentic personalities that proved extremely captivating for the viewer, and I think it would be prudent to find a subject that is just as enthralling for my fashion documentary. I have not met any of the workers at The Social Studio, but I think that given their past experiences as refugees many of them will have extremely interesting stories to tell. I think the best angle to go for here would be to find one or two subjects within the Studio that are willing to participate and help them tell their story to the best of their ability. I am excited at the prospect of doing this, because I feel that the workers there would prove to be extremely interesting subjects for a number of reasons. First of all, they each come from a different culture and way of living, and it would be intriguing to document their transition to life in Australia, and how they’ve brought their customs here with them. Also, the conflict and struggle involved in fleeing one’s own home country references emotions and feelings that are both compelling and tug on one’s heart strings, captivating the viewer and eliciting a sense of humanity and care from within them. I think that through focusing on a sense of character and a personal story I could create a documentary that is not only about fashion but also about one person’s story of struggle and inspiration behind it.

2. Street Style

I would love to inject the theme of street style into my documentary. In Bill Cunningham New York, the subject notes that “the best fashion show is definitely on the street. Always has been, always will be.” I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. To me fashion is the style that emerges on the street, what happens when ordinary people go about their daily business in fascinating ways. Having travelled quite a bit and lived overseas for the past couple of years I have come to notice just what a unique sense of style Melbourne has. I was often reminded of this when I first returned home this summer at places like the Victoria Night Market or various music festivals, where the more eclectic crowd would come out and I’d be delighted by the girls wearing long, flowing sheer skirts that were cropped in the front, or most recently long woolen cardigans cinched at the waist with a belt and worn as a dress. Melbournians sure do know how to dress, and they never fail to inspire me with their creativity. I know that the original subject for the documentary was The Social Studio, but amidst some recent talk that the subject may change I think Street Style is a great potential theme that I would love to explore.

3. Fashion Pin Board

From my understanding the creation of our documentaries are not only limited to the medium of film, but can be created using whatever medium we see fit (within reason). I am drawn to the idea of creating a documentary using a virtual online, a social space. My recent interest and focus on social media in my degree has got me thinking about the different ways I could document a subject and house it online somewhere where people can interact and play with it. Recently I have begun using Pinterest, a content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects onto their pinboard and also includes social networking features allowing users to easily share them with each other. 

It might be an interesting idea to create a pinboard for my documentary of The Social Studio and pin different mediums such as photos and video and text onto it to create a diverse user experience. The creation of a ‘pin’board for a fashion documentary is ironically appropriate.

Bill Cunningham New York

This documentary was transfixing. To be completely honest I’d never heard of Bill Cunningham before in my life, but his name and his story are going to stick with me for years to come. The reasons I liked this documentary are varied. First of all, the Bill’s passion – street photography – was already a very visually appealing subject to work with and it translated brilliantly onto the video screen. That our documentaries are also going to be based on fashion is a blessing, because the subject itself is already one of beauty and colour, just waiting to be shot.

I also really loved this particular angle on fashion…street photography. “The best fashion show is definitely on the street. Always has been, always will be.” I’m attracted to this idea of the street being a runway, or THE runway and would love to work this idea of the ‘ordinary man’ being the subject into my documentary. I identify with this notion of challenging the traditionally ‘high end’ or ‘exclusive’ view of fashion and examining the beauty that is created when it is put in the creative hands of the everyday man.

One thing I think works so well in this documentary is its sense of character. This sense of character comes from two different things, I think, one of which is the city of New York, and the other being Bill Cunningham himself. New York’s personality is felt through a number of means, firstly experienced through the big band jazz music that accompanies the opening scene. It is also felt through the inclusion of shots of New York taken at various times of Cunninghams’s life, spanning from the 1920’s to the present, as well as featuring landmark buildings as major parts of the storyline – for example Carnegie Hall, which was the photographer’s home for many years. The remix of old and new footage also lends to a dynamically interesting rhythm.

Cunningham himself makes for an amazing subject, and it is his eccentricity and idiosyncrasies that really draws the viewer in. The focus on his particularly unique personality traits – his undying passion for his photography, his disregard for relationships and food, his hate for money and belief in financial liberty – are what give this documentary its character. I think that featuring a human subject, one that viewers can identify with or feel for, is a very important element of a documentary, because that is what makes the viewers connect with what would otherwise feel like static, disconnected information.

What I think I love the most about this documentary though, was the inspiration I drew from it. I found that I sat down with a notebook and pen, and by then end of it had pages and pages of notes and quotes I’d scribbled down in my haste to not miss the next shot. Bill Cunningham was an amazingly wise old man, one who I cannot help but admire for his passion and dedication to his art. I can also completely identify with his disregard for money and desire to stay unbound by financial ties. “You see if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do kid.”

I will end this post with a handful of my favorite quotes from the legend that is Bill Cunningham:

·       “Money is the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.”

·      “I eat with my eyes.”

·      “I don’t work. I only know how to have fun every day.”

·      “The wider world that perceives fashion as a …frivolity that should be done away with in the face of social upheavals and problems that are enormous…well the point is in fact that fashion…it’s the armour to survive the reality of everyday life. “

Here are some photos of the notes I couldn't help but scribble down as I was watching the documentary: