Week four reflections!

Last tuesday was our last day of engaging media for two weeks, which made me very sad indeed.

This week we covered Copyright.

To begin with we played a little role playing game where the class split into groups of two and one was to be a teacher whilst the other was a student caught plagiarising .

They then had to think how they would feel if in this situation and then act it out.

I however, was the actual author of the plagiarised book.

The exercise was rather strange. I walked around the room and talked to 3 different groups of teacher/students and told them I felt rather mad that my work was being used without giving me credit, which I suppose would be what would actually happen. The first two just sat there, confused, just like any normal students would.

In the second group I decided to try and blame the teacher for not teaching the student how to reference.

They didn't know what to think!

The person playing the student then told me she really liked my jeans. I think that statement wasn't acting. I do have nice jeans. Thanyou. :)

The third group was tricky, as I began to yell abuse one of them tried to bamboozle me with Presentism and Galilean relativity theories. But I wasn't fooled, I avoided having the abuse hurled back at me by hastily returning to my seat.

Then we watched this, a video about the new way to copyright. Watch it, it'll help you understand this post a bit better.

Next we watched this video about the horribly wrong lawsuit against men at work.

Bullshit right?

I've written on my notes "terrible segway". When the reporter said,

"Was the song about beer and women so manly after all? Or was it more akin to the girl guides?"

I thought it was a terrible segway. Terrible!

Anyway this video was relevant to our topic this week because ANYONE even the awesomest band in the world can be sued for copyright infringement these days.

Radiohead.

Then we were asked "How does remediation impact copyright?"

Well, in many cases, I've noticed that people are allowed to remediate work without infringing the big C.

As long as it is not for profit.

There are so many big websites that have huge amounts of remediated work on them, fanfiction.com is solely about remediated work and on youtube it is impossibly hard to find something that has not been influenced by another persons piece of work. That includes songs, clips, characters, stories and products.

More Radiohead.

And thats what I got out of the tut for last week.

See you all in two weeks!

Digital Distractions

I thought this video from last nights Hungry Beast episode might be relevant...

Week 3 Tut (March 16)

First we were asked a few questions this is what we came up with;

"Who Produces our Media?"; Companies, Creators, Designers, Public, Journalists.

"How do we get it?"; Over the net, by paying, from TV sponsors, other people giving.

"Where do we get it?"; In our homes, TV, cinema, on the net, mobiles, basically EVERYWHERE.

Then we watched this masterpiece;

This is a type of fan art or "vidding", the art of gathering footage off 1 or more medias and mashing them together to create your own movie. These mashups are a very popular and often hilarious new media that is all over youtube these days, a sign that participatory culture is very alive.

Next we had a group discussion about the topic

"How useful is the net in terms of active resistance to powerful institutions?"

Although everyone talked we didn't actually talk about the question...

These are the points that I gathered from the talking;

• Comments online are useless, why bother
• Its easier for the "youf" to use becuase they have been growing up along side the net.
• Apparently it's good for creating awareness of problems but it can not fix them.

Didn't really answer the question...

I'm going to answer it myself and say not very, the internet is used best by big companies and in fact some of the richest ones exist purely because of the net. Because they can actually employ internet marketers to think of the best way to keep people interested in their company online, the internet in fact becomes very focused on the big companies because they have the best websites. And don't be fooled by some guy on a forum saying how great something is, most of the time they actually like the product but many times it could be an employee of a company employed purely to troll forums and tell everyone how great their product is.

At the end of the tut we were asked to create a spoof ad for next tut. Mines in the previous post.

Spoof ad.

We were asked to create a spoof of an ad for next weeks tut.
Heres mine, a spoof of the current coke advertising campaign, "open happiness".

The spoof compares a 600ml bottle of coke's nutritional info to other unhealthy foods.

The results are surprising.

If you don't believe me check the different nutritional information here.

Summary of: The Promise is Great

This week we were asked to read a piece of text about a type of movie dubbed "Blockbusters".
This is what I learnt from it;

In the late 1940's and early 50's due to the baby boom, financial struggles, TV and scandals concerning movie stars people were becoming less inclined to seek entertainment at the cinema. This lead to the cinemas trying to beat that by creating bigger, better and more expensive movies.

The first movie to advertise on TV and premier at a large amount of cinemas was Jaws, possibly the first blockbuster.

Blockbusters cost a lot to make and advertise, they need to guarantee success so they operate at a profit rather than a loss.

Things that define a blockbuster;
Born from US pop culture
Targeted at the mass public, particularly young people.
Few artistic expectations
Contain enthralling situations and characters
Uninnovative and simple narratives
Call themselves "Must see!" They promise something great.
Commercial, generates merchandise.
High concept, can be summarised in one sentence or image to stick in peoples minds.
Effects are better than the actual story.
They tend to produce sequels or are already known from another media.
Sometimes rely on star power.
They are trendy to go see.
Very expensive to make and advertise.

I believe if the movie you are going to see next has a large number of these things in it, it could be called a blockbuster.

Because these movies are so expensive and absolutely need to make a profit they really rely on making a lot of money in opening week. To do this they make their movie a must see and advertise heavily the week before the opening night.

The internet has made it difficult for these movies to do as well, particularly if they're crap. It allows people to tell each other about the movie much quicker and if the movie is bad it may the ruin the chances of it doing well.

And that is what I got from the text.

Second Tut Reflections (March 9)

Today we mainly looked at and discussed in class the topics of participatory culture and convergence.

To begin we watched this;

In this Jeff Greenfield is explaining how far the world of media has come due to the wonders of the internet and little devices!

He seems to really want to tell you how AMAZING it all is so he emphasises almost every 3rd or 4th word.

I find it interesting when Jeff begins to talk about convergence. The way he says every type of media comes to us on the same device completely contradicts the text we read during and after our first tut (Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture, Introduction).

"Much contemporary discourse about convergence starts and ends with what I call the Black Box Fallacy. Sooner or later, the argument goes, all media content is going to flow through a single black box into our living rooms... I don't know about you, but in my living room, I am seeing more and more black boxes.... there will be no single black box that controls the flow of media into our homes."

I completely agree with Henry Jenkins in this argument.

Jeff suggests that we don't have to use anything but an iPhone to get our media these days which I believe is completely untrue.

Whilst it is true that the iPhone can basically do anything most of our older media technologies could it is certainly not a convenient way to do them and could never be the single supreme device (I scoffed when he said it's a movie theatre and a TV. It isn't).

Jenkins point is one I am sure many people can relate to, the number of different media technologies they must learn to use and swap when they want use different media types clearly demonstrates as far as technology goes we have not reached a point where a single device can do everything comfortably.

He says "there will be no single black box" and I believe that there never will due to the competing media and technology companies, their different business goals and the different needs of the various consumers.

We were then asked the two terms, heres the little I wrote;

Participatory Culture: Media companies allowing to actively comment on, contribute and shape content within the media.

Convergence: Everything coming together as one.

On reflection and further research, whilst the definition of participatory culture isn't wrong I should have included that everyday people can bring content and ideas to the world (over the net) that they previously would not have been able to do.

This is what the class as a whole defined the terms as;

Participatory Culture:

• Audience participation in media
• Circulation of media texts
• Allowing consumers to contribute to content creation across media platforms

Convergence:

• Cultural shift
• An ongoing process
• Simplification by bringing media together
• Lines between different platforms are blurred
• Constant adoption to new media and increasing consumer power

Finally we watched this;

Four Stories from Cyberspace Summary

Last week we were asked to read some text with the title "Four Stories from Cyberspace" then summarise it with the help of other class members.

The text was a chapter from a book that gave four stories about the different problems that can arise when people are online or in "cyberspace" and then used these examples to make the reader think about how the cyberspace should be changed or kept the same to address these problems.

Here is what we thought were the most important points;

• Laws are different in Cyberspace, it may need to be refined.
• Lives are spent online now more than ever.
• The anonymity of the web can bring out peoples true natures or give people a chance to try a new one.
• Real world laws are being applied to the cyber world and sometimes they aren't compatible.
• Therefore we need a separate set of rules or laws for the internet.

First Tut Reflections (March 2)

In our first tut we were introduced to Deepti, our tutor, before she showed us this;

This video is someones view of what could possibly happen to the media over the

next few decades.

It concludes that the world become even more online and suggests that as the internet

becomes bigger people may opt to become part of it themselves.

This may have been deduced by looking at the way MMORPGS (such as Second

Life or World of Warcraft) have already had an impact on people living now.

Next we were asked to write down what type of Media we had used before coming to this class.

Many of us were left with very large lists and it showed us how large the world of media is.

Lists were compared and we discovered that our group uses the internet way more than anything else.

This was easily the most used media source.

Note: I would assume the most used type of media would be different depending on the age/sex

of people asked. (Refer to the very big generalisation below)

Gen Y= Facebook and almost purely internet.

Gen X= Internet mostly but still enjoys the TV and some even read the... paper?

Baby Boomers= More and more are beginnig to brave the seas of the WWW but many like to stick

to the good ol' TVs, newspapers and Radio.

Pre-BB= Many like the comfort of the traditional radios, newspapers and TVs.

Next we watched this very interesting video.

It shows us how big and amazing the Web, particularly Web 2.0 is and raises some interesting points about

how we need to refine the way the web is being used, particularly regarding the legal side of it.

We read some text (which will be covered more next week) and then watched this before we left;

This video was particularly interesting/ funny and I hope to be able to reference it at least once this

semester.

And that was the first tutorial!