PP1 CP Self-assessment

Of all the myriad tasks required of us in completing PP1, the Content Producer project was the one I best understood. It was also the task that I best engaged with because at its heart, it involved physically making and designing media. The process was both familiar and alien to me simultaneously. On one hand, I was lighting and shooting video material, and I felt right at home. On the other hand, the story had to be conceived, shot, edited and presented as a complex transmedia narrative that harnessed the power of non-linear, online media spaces — something that I’ve never really done before. I guess that in comparison to many other PP1 projects, ours wasn’t quite as “out there” in terms of “new media”. We effectively created a fictitious character, Simon Brown, across multiple online spaces, and wove a narrative between our video episodes, blog posts, twitter feed and facebook pages. I liked the concept — it hinged on the fact that in online spaces, you can never come into contact with “real people”… only “people” who are pieced together from various fragments of online activity. Blogs, twitter feeds, etc, I don’t think it’s uncommon for people to systematically stalk a person across all of these platforms in order to get an understanding of what the person is really like. And this is the drive that we were attempting to harness in creating Simon Brown. I liked the concept, but the core challenge lay in marrying these fragments of online activity with our video content, which was arguably more blatantly fictitious in terms of its structure and content. Creating a transmedia project also challenged my ideas about typical media production workflows, the usual progression from pre to production to post. I’ll admit that although we initially conceived of Simon Brown as a transmedia story, we then broke the task down into smaller pieces, and this affected our workflow mentality. Early in the semester, we focused on creating Simon’s story in video-form, in terms of script development and shooting schedules. We knew that ultimately, this material would become part of a larger transmedia project, but at the time, we worked as if the video were self-contained, and this led to problems later on in our semester. Unlike text-based blogs and twitter feeds, video content is not particularly malleable — our production had to be finished within just a couple of days. Every extra day of physical shooting required great orchestration in order to get locations, equipment and actors — so it was difficult for our video content to “adapt” at all to the rest of our online project. If we had been aware of this problem earlier in semester, this may have meant that we would have planned our transmedia project more meticulously to begin with, before developing scripts or shooting individual segments. Without realising any of this at the start of semester, I guess I’ve learned a lot the hard way. When making transmedia objects, the typical distinctions between pre-production, post-production, online content and video content all break down and everything must develop simultaneously. This is the fundamental mistake we made in PP1 that ultimately limited what we could do with both our video content and the blog material.

Despite this oversight, I think that our project still holds together well. From the beginning of semester, we had a strong idea of what we wanted to make, and in many ways this made our production process quite streamlined. I think that I was intimately involved in the project throughout all stages of production, especially in relation to our video content. I worked on set as the cinematographer/camera operator, but also had significant input into script development and later pieced together each video segment in post-production. During the shooting period, I tried to work efficiently in order to minimise downtime, especially for the epic shoot at Stevie’s house that could have dragged on forever. Given the mundane, depressingly neutral state of Simon’s life, my lighting was correspondingly quite simple and naturalistic. I typically used just one fixture, a daylight-balanced Kino that provided a soft and reasonably cold key light, and enough spill to cover multiple actors simultaneously. The poker game scene proved the greatest challenge in terms of cinematography, in that we were working in a cramped space and needed to light both sides of the table at once without having any lights in shot, and without actors casting shadows on each other. It took a bit of experimentation, but I pieced together a workable setup and fine-tuned things for the tighter shots.

In post-production, much of the video content was easy to put together as we’d followed the script closely, however the speed dating scene was most problematic. Because we were missing a main actor, we were unable to shoot a master shot of two actors at once — we shot Simon Brown’s tight shot while searching for the people he was meant to be talking to. This lack of wide coverage made the sequence become cut-heavy and contrived, as the viewer can never properly understand the space in which Simon is talking. There was little I could do to minimise this monotonous back and forth style of editing, except to cut unnecessary lines of dialogue and ensure that vision cuts did not exactly match audio cuts. Later in the semester, when showing our rough cut to our PP1 tute, it was pointed out that Simon never really develops as a character — he does the exact same thing in each episode, and happens to find friends in the end for no real reason. To solve this problem, Kyla suggest that we give Simon some housemates who he only properly interacts with in the last episode, The Poker Game. However, this proved problematic as much of our video content involved Simon answering the door to a group of strangers who ask “is this the poker game?” etc. In short, while we attempted to weave this plot-device into Simon’s blog, it would require cutting significant portions of the video piece and make it end quite abruptly. This was perhaps the most difficult point in our collaborative production, as we had differing solutions to the problem. Ultimately, we scrapped the “house mates” idea, and manipulated the blog to fit the video. This may be “slack”, but I also think it’s realistic and demonstrates an understanding of different media forms. A blog is malleable — it can be quickly written and rewritten, unlike video material. Also, I would argue that Simon *does* develop as a character over the course of his story. Rather than dress up as a goth or pretend to be someone he’s not in the speed dating segment, Simon finally finds friends by inviting them over to his home and letting them into his world. In this way, the poker game segment represents Simon’s attempt to show people who he really is, and as we all know, learning to “be yourself” always results in the conclusion of your film. So to some extent, I think we were justified in leaving the video content intact and working on the blog content instead.

It may be argued that in this post I’m focusing too much on the production of video content and not enough on transmedia storytelling. However, given that this is a self-assessment post, I have to acknowledge that my primary concern in assessing Simon Brown, and indeed anything else I make, is the quality and appropriateness of my cinematography. This still remains the most important part of my CP role, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve also learned a lot about transmedia storytelling and the way this effects conventional media workflows. I’d definitely approach transmedia objects differently if I were to complete PP1 again. But as I previously outlined in my project brief, this is a secondary concern, subordinate to the technical quality of my work, and my ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with others on set. Transmedia production is undeniably different to what I’m used to. But in terms of online *video* content, no matter how non-linear or convergent the material is, ultimately, you’re still going out with a camera and exposing images onto film or tape. Feature films and online video series are thus born in exactly the same way, regardless of where each form of content ends up. In assessing myself for CP, I previously wrote that I would look at my practical research (cameras, codecs, etc), technical skill development and my collaborative work. I think that on all of these fronts, I’ve done well this semester. I’ve been heavily involved in group collaboration, I’ve worked closely on set under director Emma Judd and again in post production, making sure to voice any concerns that I have in a constructive manner. I’ve researched the camera we were shooting on, the Sony HVR-Z7, making sure that we were shooting in pseudo-progressive standard-def for optimum web compression quality, and I’ve experimented with ABC Pool’s video compression to find that it was altogether unusable for our purposes, hence our videos are hosted on vimeo. And in terms my practical application of this research and knowledge, I think that my cinematography was appropriate in conveying Simon Brown’s life to an audience, and in Final Cut I ensured that the story moved at a fast pace, understanding we fight many potential distractions in an online space. Overall, in terms of my initial criteria, I’ve done well, and I’m giving myself a 93% for the content producer task.

SMP Final

So now it’s time to discuss and summate my experiences as a social media producer on Pool. First I’m going to outline what it is that I actually did in this role, then I’ll talk about the broader, extrapolated meanings that I’ve gleaned from having to perform this role, and then I’ll assess myself.

What did I actually do? I’ll admit that compared to the elaborate plans of others which involved going out to rural communities and encouraging school children to make My Tribe content, my SMP plans were decidedly humble. I tried to stimulate activity on Pool through becoming an active Pool user myself. I figured that My Tribe needed a significant body of works before it could attract attention.. it needed some mass in order to build up momentum… that sort of thing. Reasonably early in semester, I became a My Tribe contributor. I put together a short, crudely executed animation featuring two small dots, stars, pixels, whatever you want to call them. With each contribution, I made sure to contextualise the work with a text-blurb designed to stimulate ideas and alternate ways of thinking about tribes and social difference. My animation dealt with the idea that difference is illusory — that everything in this world is composed of identical particles, and the “difference” we see around is us is merely the result of the rearranging of these particles. My second My Tribe piece was an audio recording — I wrote out a script and told my computer to read it out while I recorded the computer’s voice back into the computer. The piece explored the idea that forming a “tribe” in an online space might, paradoxically, isolate us. I know the concept is cliche, but I thought it might be a more accessible idea for other people to think about and hopefully make more content. My final contribution to My Tribe was text-based, exploring the fairly abstract realms of “the other” and social difference. It wasn’t the most positive conception of tribes, or of human society in general.. but it was designed to polarise an audience and stimulate strong responses.

Further into the semester, I shifted gears and tried to interact with other ABC Pool users. I thought that even simple comments may attract people back to the website and encourage them to create more content. The problem with this idea was that the impact of my comments was extremely hard to gauge. Perhaps users did end up making works that were direct responses to my comments or contributions… but I have no idea if this is so. I also found that Pool’s structure as a website made it extremely difficult to maintain sustained interactions between users. I failed to find any way of monitoring which users I had previously interacted with, and no way of knowing when a user had replied. So to maintain ongoing interactions, I needed to remember the user’s name, search for it, find the user and then browse through the user’s contributions until I found the one that I’d commented on, and then I could see whether there were any new comments. This meant that while I left comments on 5 different user’s projects (I honestly don’t know the usernames of these people, or which works I commented on. I did not realise I’d need to link back to them in this post), I only managed to sustain interactions with one user — Wayne’s World on Web. Wayne regularly contributes text and image-based Pool contributions, often dealing with socio-political issues and power structures within Australia. I disagreed with one of Wayne’s posts, and decided to voice my disagreement in the form of a comment. Three weeks later, I checked back and saw that Wayne had replied, and so I started checking more regularly and continuing this debate (viewable here). I considered inviting Wayne over to My Tribe, but it felt too much like a plug. I ultimately figured that Wayne had already viewed my Pool profile, watched (and commented) on my works, and thus would have an idea of My Tribe purely through our interaction. The exchange showed me that meaningful interactions can be deliberately “triggered” in an online setting, though I cannot hope to measure what impact this really has on the My Tribe landscape. I feel that my performance as an SMP was damaged by the fact that I was rendered blind and oblivious to new comments and replies on the Pool website, I could not find a way to enable email notifications. Thus it became extremely difficult to monitor the consequences of my online interactions and keep track of them in any meaningful sense.

In any case, I think that if nothing else, working as an SMP on Pool has given me a better idea of what a social media producer is. I think that at its core, the SMP role involves a dynamic interaction between users and producers (who may also be users themselves). Because of this interaction, It’s not at all the same as marketing which (involves top-down, one-way communication). I don’t think the role of an SMP needs to centre around encouraging the creation of online content either — this was a function specific to working on ABC Pool. In this way, I see the SMP’s main purpose, in a general sense, is to stimulate communications, interactions and contributions with a group of users in an online space. The internet has always been considered an interactive space, and the SMP role takes this concept of online interactivity to another level. On ABC Pool, having dedicated SMPs continually provide feedback on users’ work undoubtedly transformed the site into a more active space — activity tends to trigger more activity, and so on. If we conceive of online spaces as extremely complex causal networks, we will see that a single comment can, theoretically, make unexpected and profound changes to the online environment holistically. This means that we cannot assess the work of a social media producer by simply counting the number of comments that he or she made. Each comment has the capacity to influence many different users, who may in turn influence more and more users, etc. I don’t think that the amount of influence is wholly measurable — but assuming that we understand the idea that interacting with users will encourage activity exponentially, we can work effectively as SMPs regardless. ( I can’t really justify these claims with evidence as that’s the whole point of what I’m saying, unfortunately)

In terms of self-assessment, I think that my performance has been much better in some areas than in others. I’ve uploaded My Tribe contributions that I personally think are interesting and potentially confronting — in an attempt to turn Pool into a more lively space. I’ve scoured the site for projects to comment on, and highlighted many My Tribe contributions during my time as an administrator on the Facebook page — and while my interaction with other users on Pool was reasonably limited, I think that I’ve used my time on Pool to look at the bigger picture, in terms of the meaning of online spaces and of being a social media producer within them. I’ve heavily questioned the entire purpose of the SMP role and, as a consequence, tried to redefine the role in conceptually solid terms. So.. I may not have revolutionised ABC Pool and encouraged large numbers of users to join and regularly upload work.. But that’s not really what I set out to do. I wanted to understand the space, the way it works, and the way social media producers should work within this space. So, I am going to give myself a 78 for my SMP work — looking at what I did objectively, it wasn’t stunning, it didn’t radiate goodness all over My Tribe… but I did all the things that I personally found important and relevant to me, and ultimately that’s what I care about in the realms of self-assessment.

It’s a jungle out there

I’m finding it difficult to articulate what I’m thinking about My Tribe, Pool and SMP these days. At the start of semester, all of these things felt clearly alien. But now after so many weeks of acclimatisation, I can’t remember what “regular media” was, as opposed to this new “social/online/sophisticated media”. Why does this course feel so different to what I expected coming out of TV1 and TV2? Last year I made “self-contained media objects” — short films. And in my mind, the objective was simple: make a *good* short film that will look good on my showreel and generally impress people. Simple.. easy. That was last year. Now, in PP1, the rules all change. Media objects are now non-linear, hypertextual, existing as fragmented nodes in a larger network. It’s no longer easy to say “this is my film, and this is the start of it, this is the end of it”. In this way, working on a site called “Pool” is strangely fitting — today’s media works are.. messy. they all bleed together and I’m no longer sure which person is responsible for what. Media works accrue comments, and collections of comments can in themselves be seen as media artifacts.
Why do these spaces exist, and why do people feel compelled to use them? For many people, the drive to create something is a compulsion in itself — the uploading of media work is arguably subordinate to this initial drive. But from what I’ve seen on Pool, other sorts of motivations exist. Some people, having realised that ABC Pool is more than a simple viewing platform, have harnessed the networked-ness of online media in order to spread a particular social message or moral imperative. For instance, one Pool user contributed works that all centred around the experiences of refugees. One of these contributions, an eerie soundscape featuring gunfire in in forest at night, seemed like an attempt to make Pool users understand the psychological and phenomenological experience of being in a refugee’s situation. This sort of media work can only serve this purpose in an online, multimedia space such as Pool. Media contributions intended as morally confronting cannot function unless they are distributed. Further to this, Pool allows for the user to upload a variety of different media forms — in this case, while we may all understand what a refugee is, listening to an audio piece may force us to understand the concept on a deeper, more personal level.

Case studies aside, I have found that ABC Pool, and by extension My Tribe, is host to greater amounts of political, social and personal accounts of the real world than is common on YouTube or Vimeo. To some extent, this may because of the user demographic, and also because Pool is an Australian website — Australian users can voice their opinions on national issues that would be lost on international audiences. I also suspect that Pool’s connection to ABC encourages discussion of social issues of national importance rather than uploads of teen skating videos or whatever else is up on YouTube.

This is all great, but how do I use these observations in some sort of constructive fashion? I think the answer lies in rethinking our conception of online spaces. Many people make a self-contained media object and want to “showcase” it on the internet. For these people, websites such as Pool provide their audience with an interface through which the films can be consumed. It’s that simple. But this description of Pool as just a “viewing platform” is profoundly empty… there is a great deal of life and interaction on Pool — political discussions, constructive criticism, almost affectionate interactions between users of the opposite sex… Pool is not merely an online showcase. Its users are driven by all sorts of different motivations and their reasons for creating material vary dramatically. Thus as media makers, we must come to grips with the fact that making online content entails more than simply compressing and uploading a self-contained film. Our audience literally has the world at their fingertips, and it is naive and almost selfish to assume that users will be captivated by media content that was swiftly uploaded to the web without anyone considering the needs of an online audience.

New Direction

I’ve been approaching all of this “Pool stuff” the wrong way. I’ve been worried about how well I can stimulate activity on Pool as an “SMP” — purely because I thought I’d get a bad mark if I was an “unsuccessful” SMP. I thought the task lacked any meaning or purpose because we weren’t encouraged to extrapolate broader meanings from our work as SMPs on Pool. But really, that’s not the case. This is all an exercise in understanding online communities and user-generated media — through using Pool as a case study… a model. And that’s something that I can understand and work with. We’re placed in this real-world online environment and interact with real people — and all this collective online interaction constitutes the “text” that we are attempting to understand in this subject.

This sounds much better than what I previously understood to be the situation. I guess that when I read the course guide, all the talk about “you’re now a producer working for ABC and you’re going to do real-life media work and pretend you’re all professional media people” got to my head… I thought that doing well in PP1 meant impressing officials at the ABC because in the real world, that’s all that matters. But yea. In week 9, I discovered that PP1 was not solely about this.. great job by me. In any case, I’m feeling more comfortable with what this assessment task is actually about, and that can only be a good thing.

Vultures

Another possible problem: if every PP1 student is now wandering ABC Pool in search of users to comment on, are we unintentionally going to end up spamming our helpless user population? I’ve gone around to a few users and commented on their works, suggested that they consider submitting something to My Tribe, etc.. but I’m now thinking that if even one other RMIT student has given similar advice to this user, the “My Tribe Message” is somewhat cheapened. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that the only solution would be to systematically check each of the user’s works for comments to make sure there are no My Tribe related ones.. and even then, the user may have been contacted via private message.
Maybe this problem hasn’t even arisen, but I don’t know. In my head, we’ve all become hungry vultures scouring the internet for users and, by extension, PP1 marks. It’s a harsh world I guess.

No one can hear you scream

At times, this internet feels like a vacuum. Anything is possible, and this freedom feels like nothingness. I can communicate with anyone, track down whoever I want, upload whatever I want.. create huge and abstract online spaces for all to see. But I don’t.
The internet can be cold and lonely and monotonous… but what disturbs me most is the apparent lack of purpose to it all. Millions upon millions of pages.. so much text, so many pixels, bytes and bits. But why? What compels me to cast my creations out into this digital chasm? Why do I write in this text box, and not in a physical diary?
What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that there is no definite *reason* for putting our works online. Maybe it’s nice to think that someone out there is watching.. to get an occasional comment, etc. But because there is no definite *purpose* to content creation, because it’s something that people “just do”, it becomes extremely hard to evaluate or give feedback on what people put online. Yes, your poetry piece *could* have used more visual metaphors, that might have been nice.. but why does it matter? Ultimately, you’ve had a moment of inspiration and regurgitated your creativity into the great vat of Pool. And that’s all you needed to do. Your works are personal, the value of your works are subjective. Whatever I can say about your work is immaterial because *the work itself does not matter*. It’s not about your creations, it’s about going through the motions of *creating*. What can I say about any work, in light of this?

Yes. I’m being defeatist. Yes. I do like receiving comments from people, and I’m sure that others would also appreciate receiving comments, and this would stimulate activity on Pool. But I’m stuck in a vicious cycle where my comments are all necessarily meaningless, and so I cannot think of comments, and so I cannot encourage great torrents of activity on Pool. Also.. how do I quantify the impact of my comments? My comments may have inspired someone into an online creative frenzy, and I may never know.

So many paradoxes. So little time.

My life underwater

Now that all my shooting is over and the dust is clearing, I can start looking at my SMP tasks once more. I’ve set myself quite an amorphous set of goals for this task.. I need to make “substantial contact” with people on Pool.. something more sustained than “great work!” or whatever. And.. I have done that. I’ve had a sustained political discussion with some guy who discusses politics.. surprise surprise. It’s interesting, a good discussion in general.. am I now meant to convert this person into a My Tribe person? See.. the problem, if this actually *is* what I need to do, is that My Tribe is a category.. it’s a label for your work. So what I’d be asking, effectively, is for people to *relabel* their work so that it is classified as “my tribe”.. and when you talk about it on paper, that doesn’t sound like a particularly compelling thing to do. It sounds fairly trivial.. the only benefit is that your work is looked at by ABC and RMIT, and is potentially showcased somewhere. That’s cool, I know. But since I’m approaching this SMP task as a *user*, on the same level as other users, I find it difficult to phrase “make something for mytribe and win fantastic prizes!” in a way that sounds less like I’m a salesman. In “real life”, if we were both regular “users”, we’d both be equally aware of My Tribe and equally capable of making something for it if we chose to do so.
My other problem is that as I sift through works on ABC Pool, I find that a large proportion of it is made by fellow RMIT students.. and at times it’s difficult to tell what content is non-RMIT.. which is really what I need to focus on in terms of interacting with users.
Whatever. Complaining won’t solve very much. I’m going to wrap this post up now and continue my journey into the deepest darkest corners of Pool.

Social difference

Behold, my latest contribution to the Pool, a written piece (from http://pool.org.au/text/ndisarray/tribalism_and_the_other)

“We’re defined by difference. It’s the first rule of semiotics — the word “cat” develops its meaning as we understand that it’s “not dog”, “not rat”, “not bird”, etc. And in light of this system of negation and negative meaning, any sense of “togetherness” that we can collectively develop is fairly miraculous.
“We” come together from time to time, because that’s how togetherness works. When we’re faced with opposition, an “other” of some sort, seemingly unrelated people unite.. in the face of “terrorism”, or “the internet” or “adolescent depravity”. “Togetherness” cannot exist without “otherness”, and both are social tools that serve a social purpose.

Are we to celebrate tribalism? Human civilisation is itself a super-tribe of sorts.. and without tribes and societies, I wouldn’t be thinking these thoughts right now.. let alone publishing these thoughts to the internet. But I’m reluctant to embrace tribalism in its entirety.. We’re dying for purpose. We’re dying for a place to belong, a reason to live on this planet.. and because this “us and them” mentality *gives* us this sense of purpose and identity, it’s dangerous. Our logic is relentlessly binary, and every tribe excludes.. every tribe has an “other”. Jews, refugees, the young, the old, people who don’t barrack for an AFL team… I don’t know what to think. We define ourselves against what we are not.. we define our social groups and tribes in this same negative manner.. and this tension between “us” and “them” has driven the development of human civilisation over thousands of years. It’s incredible. We’ve come so far.

But perhaps we’ve reached a point where tribalism has taken us far enough. Is it possible to step back and acknowledge that social difference is both great and terrible?”

I’m quite pleased. Again, it’s not particularly positive, but it may stimulate some conversation.. I like playing devil’s advocate. And in this case, it’s more than an act.. I do believe that “tribes” are fairly problematic social structures. Go and argue with me. On Pool of course..

On the western front

Notice how everything has gone quiet here, in terms of PP1? It’s because my group project is taking on a life of its own, because I’m slowly undertaking my individual SMP task, and because my adverse reactions to this subject have calmed and lessened.

I’m slightly worried about my individual SMP task.. it’s just difficult to find new ways of approaching the “My Tribe” theme. And I have no conception of what constitutes “enough” content for me to produce, or of what standard I’m aiming for. I’ve made a small, crude animation, and now I’m uploading a short audio piece. They’re both quite abstract, and neither talks about ‘my tribe’ in a particularly.. ‘happy’ way. I find it hard, this theme, because I’ve never identified with blatant “tribes” of any kind.. I identify with Daria.

And for this assignment, that’s not a particularly helpful outlook.

Anyway, here’s my latest addition to the Pool: http://pool.org.au/audio/ndisarray/cold_and_fickle

I’m not sure what to do next. Possibly something photographic.. that way it won’t be as crude as my animations/audio experiments.. I can make an alright photo. But of what? I’m trapped in the real world if I use photography.. unless I make some kind of ungodly collage out of multiple images/textures.. hmm. It’s worth thinking about but I don’t want each of these contributions to consume my life.. Maybe written contributions could be a good idea for this reason. All I need is a brain, a few fingers, a keyboard…

The next problem I’m facing is the actual interaction I need to have with Pool users… I’ll get to that soon.

Particles

“We’re all fundamentally the same. The world is composed of sameness, as you break it down further and further. We perceive so much difference.. when ultimately, everything is matter. Protons, neutrons, electrons.. rearranged to create the illusion of difference.
What am I? What is my tribe?
The universe, probably.”

http://pool.org.au/video/ndisarray/particlex2

I like this concept of blurbs for video works. You can add deeper context and meaning to a fairly abstract piece of video via text. This particular “abstract piece of video” is fairly crap, by all measures. I’m just experimenting with animation.. creating interesting videos about My Tribe on my own seems a much more difficult task, as solo video projects generally look terrible, and it’s hard to avoid filming something that very literally addresses the My Tribe theme. Hence animation.. for now at least. This video also doubles as a compression test, to see how the pool handles reduced visual complexity. And it handles quite well, since 90% of the frame is flat blackness at any one point in time. That’s good to know…