post production

 Hello, for todays blog I am going to be talking about this weeks progress with the group project on Play, agency, and interactive narrative. Last weeks blog on my project mentioned the research and trying to make a script for each of our segments in the video. I also mentioned that we didn't have much experience with video editing and I will be talking about what we have done to learn so far.

When we made our scripts for our topics we had to make sure that all of our timing in our recordings together were not over the maximum of 6  minutes that we were given. This required us to trim down parts of our videos that were not necessary for understanding the topic and making our scripts a bit smaller.

When recording my segment of the video I kept an eye on the time that I was taking to talk so that I wasn't going over the time that I thought was the maximum that I could talk for. I did a few test runs to make sure that both my audio and visual quality were up to the standard that I needed them to be. It took me a few attempts  to get the perfect recording that I wanted but was worth the time in the end. My other group members were also able to complete their segments without much problems which allowed us to move on with video editing.

For learning video editing I watched a fair amount of YouTube tutorial videos on how to do certain features in the video that we wanted for our own. I decided that I would only learn the few things that I needed to know rather than watching a lot of videos because video editing tutorials tend to be over 20 minutes in length which all together would be a few hours of watch time.

Another part of our process that we managed to get was getting an interview with someone that streams on Twitch. We were able to contact the streamer through one of our group members that knew them and we compiled a list of questions from all the topics that we needed to talk about because we were very curious to see what a streamer thinks of the topics that we were going to talk about.  

What I am currently enjoying about this project is learning about the topics that my other group members have been researching as there was a few topics that I wasn't fully familiar with like agency and interactive narratives.

What I found frustrating so far in this process is that the maximum time of 6 minutes felt too short for all the information that we have to give on our topics because we feel like we cant give the proper explanation and examples that we want to which makes us feel that we are not giving as much representation that our topics need.

Sources:

- PNW Production - Creative commons zero license - Pexels

Final rewrite

 Hello, for todays blog I am going to be going over the experiences that I have had with the rewrites of my blog posts over this semester. Overall I have done 3 rewrites of random blogs in different weeks, while also doing 3 peer reviews. In each of these rewrites and peer reviews I have always learned something new which I can use in future work.

First I will be discussing my peer review experience. Overall, I would say that the peer review process has been a very good learning experience as it was something that I haven't had past experience with. My experience with peer reviews was always from getting markings and gradings from my teachers in secondary school primarily pointing out what I did wrong rather than pointing out both what I did right and wrong so that I know what I'm good at and where I can focus on improving.

When I found out that we were doing peer reviews I wanted to try make my reviews straight forward and easy to follow with information detailing what was done right by the writer and also giving constructive criticism on what that they can do better next time for their rewrite.

When I received peer feedback on my past blog work I was happy with the reviews that I had been given. They highlighted on what my strong points were while also pointing out my weaker areas so that I can improve in my next blog posts and in my rewrites. When you look at your own work it is sometimes difficult to find where you need to improve on so getting different peoples opinions on my writing helped me out a lot in seeing other peoples perspectives when they read my blogs.

Now moving onto my experience with rewriting my blogs that I had received peer reviews on. After receiving my reviews I had to rewrite the blogs that they were reviewing in order to improve on the areas that I was advised to work on. When rewriting it became more clear why people criticised certain areas and techniques in my blogs and I could then put myself in other peoples shoes to see what I needed to do.

previous to this course I had a minimal amount of rewriting experience from secondary school and from a post leaving cert course but this process has helped me improve on those skills.

After the rewriting experience I can definitely say that my writing overall has improved from rewriting. I learned that by spacing out my paragraphs into smaller chunks it becomes much more easier to read. Another thing I learned was that there are much better ways of laying out my sourcing at the end of my blog. I learned that using the Harvard referencing format allows for my referencing to be easily found and verified as real and reputable.

At the end of both my peer review and rewriting I can say that I am pleased that I had taken part in it and think that students from all courses can benefit from these skills as they can come in handy in the future.

The production process broken down into stages rewrite #3

For todays blog I will be going through 4  videos that I have watched in relation to the production process and go through the steps and stages that are mentioned in these videos.

The first video that I have watched is called 'What is Design Thinking? An Overview'. This video was done by a youtuber called AJ&Smart. Design thinking is a way of problem solving that can be used using creativity to find solutions. The reason why design thinking is so important today is (AJ&Smart YouTube (2020).  "Almost every innovative company in the world uses some form of design thinking". 

In the video the 5 main steps for design thinking are mentioned that is a structure that is commonly used by the production industry. These 5 steps are empathise, which is trying to understand what a customer needs. Define, is using the information you gathered from the first step to try figure out what the customer needs. Ideate, is the stage where you begin coming up with your ideas to solve the problem. Prototype, is taking the ideas you came up with and taking them to the next stage by trying to see if they are viable. The final stage is test which is to take your best prototypes and get people to test them to see how well they work. This video gave me ideas of sectors that you can apply design thinking to. An example would be if you are a graphic designer creating a logo you could apply these 5 steps to make your logo. 

Prior to watching this video I had never seen these 5 steps but after watching it made more sense to me. This will help me get a better understanding of my customers when designing something 

 Another video that I watched was Film Production Stages by the YouTube channel Five Minute Film School. In this video he mentions that production is broken down into 3 parts. Pre production which is at the very beginning where the ideas of coming up with the film. This includes film writing, hiring staff to shoot the film, getting a cast for the film, organising locations to film, obtaining props, making a budget and having a schedule. The second part is production. Once you are at the production stage you should be fully committed to your film because at this stage you are paying salaries for your staff and your cast. The last stage is post production. This mostly consists of editing like visual effects, sound effects, colour correction, picture editing and music. 

Film production stages was something that I had seen before and made a lot of sense to me. These steps helped me plan out part of our group project that we are currently making a video on. In the past I have done video production so this previous experience should help me with this in the future.

After watching these videos I would say that the most useful one for me at the start of my project would be 'What is Design Thinking? An Overview'. The reason why this video would be most useful to me is because of the 5 steps that were mentioned in this video and how they can be applied to the process of making a project.

In a group project I think that it is important to organise ourselves into roles for example someone can be a leader that can organise what work needs to be done and give people roles. Another role would be the researcher which could try find information that can be useful. Another role that could be used is scheduler/timekeeper which is making sure that there is enough time allocated for specific stages in the process and also to make sure that goals for deadlines can be reached.

A role that I think that might not be in the group project is the leader role because depending on the group they might all want to be equal and make decisions together as oppose to one person choosing what happens.

 -Bibliography

-AJ&Smart - What Is Design Thinking? An Overview - 2020 -  YouTube

- FiveMinuteFilmSchool - Film Production Stages - Five Minute Film School - 2014 - YouTube

- Science Filmmaking Tips - The Process of Making a Documentary: Pre to Post Production - 2018 - YouTube

- Indy Mogul - 4 Easy Steps to Film a Short Documentary - 2019 - YouTube

- Photo by Canva Studio - creative commons zero license - Pexels

media representation

 Hello, for todays blog I have watched 3 videos that are related to the ethics of media of how many media sources portray races, sexualities, ethic groups, politicians and genders. To help me discuss this topic, I have watched 3 videos related to these topics in media. The first video I watched is called 'why representation matters', the second was 'Stuart Hall's Representation Theory Explained! Media Studies revision' and the third video I watched was 'Miss Representation Female Leadership'.

The first video 'why representation matters' by StoryBlock and it goes over cultural representation in the world of media. In the video the issue that there is not a lot of cultural or racial representation in the stock photos industry. The stock photo industry is huge supplying thousands of photos for people to use online for things like advertising.

 I have noticed myself that there is barely any people of different ethnic groups and cultures in stock photos when you look at their content. Mostly it consists of white people in straight relationships. The goal of StoryBlock is to bring light to this subject by encouraging companies to employ people for stock images of a mix of different races, ethnic groups and sexualities in order to diversify the market.

This will also provide content to a far more diverse audience and consumers to media if the market becomes more diverse in its representation of other people.

The second video that I watched was 'Stuart Hall's Representation Theory Explained! Media Studies revision'. This video goes over the theory that Stuart Hall has on representation and about how different medias portray events. We live in an age where there are so many different media platforms we can consume information from. However these different medias can have varying opinions on certain people or political alignment which can alter what they create. 

This creates a bias and disinformation in the media which can affect peoples opinions. A great example of this would be how people feel about Donald Trump during his presidency. Most people either strongly hate him or love him depending on which medias they follow Republican media agencies would praise Donald  Trumps acts and decisions while Democratic aligned medias would criticise his actions.

This is something I have personally seen from American news channels like FOX News and CNN. Making sure we do our own research and fact checking what we see in media helps us get a full understanding on what is happening.

The way media portrays certain groups of people like ethnic minorities can be very damaging to these people, for example the stereotype that migrants are criminals that want to take peoples jobs has been very damaging on how people think they are like in the past and current migration crisis's from war torn countries coming to Europe. This further enforces that you should always investigate into the media you consume to see if there is any bias or misinformation.

The third video I watched called  'Miss Representation Female Leadership' was one that I found very concerning after I watched. The video is about how women are discriminated in the political world and showed American politics as its example. 

Examples in this video showed the bias of some media platforms in how they portray women in politics. An example would be that when women object or disagree to something and are quoted by media the verbs used are often portraying women in an annoying way by saying things like she complained or cried, as oppose to men being given verbs like disputing or challenging which gives men politicians a more professional look .

Women are also given a large amount of abuse from media by sexualising them rather than actually taking them seriously. Some media also ridicule them with stereotypes saying that they should stay at home and be in the kitchen. 

In my opinion I think its outrageous that they can be treated with this disrespect and the politicians that say these things dont face any consequences. The video is backed up with numerous examples of these sexist quotes and the politicians that have said them.

 

Bibliography

- why representation matters by StoryBlocks

- Stuart Hall's Representation Theory Explained! Media Studies revision by The Media Insider

- Miss Representation Female Leadership by Jennifer Siebel Newsom

- image by Pixabay on Pexels

Another revision of a past blog post

 Hello, today I am going to be going over how I improved on a blog post that I had done a few weeks ago on the importance of media literacy. Since when I made that blog post I have learned more about proof reading, layout, revision and peer reviewing which has allowed me to become a better writer. 

For the preparation to rewrite this blog post I read 2 articles relating to feedback and revision. In the feedback document I found useful information like in Brilliant Academic Writing, Pearson Education Limited, 2012 in chapter 14 its said: "The simplest form of feedback is the mark itself. If it’s good, you’ll know you’re reaching the required standard; if it’s not, you’ll know you need to do something to improve". (Bill Kirton Brilliant Academic Writing, Pearson Education Limited, 2012).

I found this information to be very useful because by knowing that you are getting a good grading on your work you can  tell that what you are doing is in line with the marking scheme and should stick to the way that you are approaching your work, and if you are not getting good marks then you should probably change your approach.

In the second document I also learned useful information to do with revision. I learned that revision is even more extensive than proof reading because your going through every detail to make sure it is right rather than just skimming over the work.

 When I revised my old blog post I took into account what advice I got from peer reviews in the past. I decided that I would separate larger paragraphs into smaller ones because I had seen other peoples blogs and from a readers perspective I thought it made the blog easier to read. Another change I did was leave links to my sources in the bottom where I had only left author names and names of documents making it easier to access the information. I also had made minor changes to the way I worded sentences.

Sources

- Brilliant Academic Writing, Pearson Education Limited, 2012, Chapter 14 - Bill Kirton - (link)

- Writing a paper: Revising - Walden University - (link)

The importance of media literacy rewrite #2

 Hello, in this blog I will be discussing the importance of media literacy. For discussing this topic I have read 3 articles related to the topics of  digital media companies, misleading information regarding Covid 19 in the UK, News media literacy, perceptions of bias, and interpretation of news.

The first article I read was about how digital media companies are failing to help its users to understand the information that they are seeing online. A survey conducted in Ireland said that 62% of people were concerned about misinformation online. personally I see this as a very important issue that needs to be addressed in a serious manner by all digital media companies because of how much people consume information online. To combat misinformation digital media companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft have all signed up to the EC code of practice on disinformation. 

This code of practice is monitored by the European Regulators Group for Audio-visual Media Services. In my opinion this is a step in the right direction to get these companies to enforce rules on disinformation,  although it is only a small effect on a large issue. Personally I feel that if everyone could enhance their digital literacy it would be easier for everyone to find sources that are reliable and know how to spot misinformation.

The second article I read is regarding misinformation about Covid 19 in the United Kingdom. Ofcom have been researching misinformation being spread on the internet by conducting surveys. In one of their surveys they discovered that half of the people that they surveyed have come across false or misleading information about Covid 19.

 Ofcom have been doing these surveys periodically through the pandemic to monitor what misinformation is being spread and where people are coming across it. One figure which I found concerning was that 4 out of 10 people were getting their Covid 19 information from social media which can easily be misleading. luckily most information regarding Covid 19 came from trusted sources such as the BBC. 

Another concerning figure I have seen in this article is that 35% of Northern Irish participants said they found it hard to know what's true and what's false. This shows how important it is to have good digital literacy in the modern world.

The third article I read was News media literacy, perceptions of bias, and interpretation of news. This article focuses a lot of its content on American politics about political parties, sources of information and media literacy.  A part of this article I found interesting was about the news sources that people were looking at for their information.

 I discovered that certain news channels such as CNN would bias towards the Democratic political party by giving them positive praise while on other channels like Fox News would have a bias towards the Republican party.  An interesting survey in this article showing the age, gender, party ID, opinion on the importance of news and media literacy education can effect their opinions.

 From this survey I discovered that depending on someone having media literacy education greatly effects someone's opinion of the importance of news which was important for nearly everyone that had media literacy education, rather than what political party they vote for.

After reading these articles I have discovered how immensely important it is to have media literacy in todays world where there is so many sources of information which have a possibility of being false or misleading.

Sources

- Digital Media Companies Found Lacking in Helping Users Understand The Online Environment - by  Dr Niamh Kirk - (link)

- Ofcom research: Nearly half of people across the UK nations have come across false or misleading information about Covid-19 - by Rebecca Lennon, Regulatory Affairs Advisor at Ofcom. - (link)

- News media literacy, perceptions of bias, and interpretation of news - by Melissa Tully The University of Iowa, USA Emily K Vraga George Mason University, USA - Anne-Bennett Smithson George Mason University, USA - (link) 

Learning about media compresion

 Hello, in todays blog I am going to be going over the topic of media compression. Media compression is when you lower the size and quality in different areas of a video in order to make the file size of the photo or video smaller so that it can be accessed online much easier and for a wider audience. Before watching these videos I already had a decent knowledge with media compression as I have done photography in the past as well as experience with audio files. I will be talking about some of the ways that compression works and can be used.

First I will talk about compression in relation to video quality. Videos have a wide variety of quality that they can be rendered in each having their own strengths and weaknesses. The most commonly known video qualities that are seen on online websites like YouTube. 

The higher qualities are 2160p 4K which is the highest quality available on the site. Others like 1440p and 1080p are in HD. Once you go lower than 720p on YouTube to for example 480p and below go from 60 frames per second down to 30 frames per second. The downside to high quality videos is that the higher the quality, the more strong of a connection that you need to stop it from buffering and the files are usually quite large. By having the video quality lower you need a less powerful internet connection and file sizes are much lower but compromise the quality of video.

Compression is also present with audio files. The most common file format for audio files like music is MP3. MP3 are a small size file that can retain a high quality with minimal quality loss. However if you drop your MP3 quality from for example 320k down to a lower MP3 quality like 60k you loose a considerable amount of quality and sound can sound distorted and hollow.

Another area where compression is present is in photos. The highest quality file for photos are in raw mode in a camera. These files are very large because of their high detail but can be compressed to much smaller file sizes like JPEG. JPEG images are very small in size but can retain a decent quality but when you zoom into the image you can really see where the quality has been compromised. Although JPEG are no where near as high quality as a raw file, they can be downloaded and uploaded around the internet very easily while raw files can sometimes not be able to be uploaded to websites because the file is too big.

-Sources

- Techquickei - Video Compression as Fast As Possible

- Double A - What You Lose When You Compress Music to MP3, M4A, WMA, etc.

- Qencode - Video Formats, Codecs and Containers (Explained)

- image by Amar Preciado - creative commons zero license - (link)