Here We Are Again... Year Review 2012/2013

I swear I promised at one point I would blog more.

Me and blogging have not gone in hand in my time at University. This is bad and I need to reticfy this. I need to understand the importance of it in my ambitions to work in the media. Then again - I also need to lose weight and I'm currently chewing on a Mars Bar. Here's to 2014!

DIGITAL MEDIA CULTURES

One of the modules I seemed to embrace the most as this most reminded me of my days in A-Level Media. Not on an intellectual level but more because I love finding out about the 'culture' and the media as an industry. It's something that fascinates me. I also found Keith Marley as a lecturer to be interesting and informative. This showed in my efforts in the essay we had to do for this module in which I got a 1st - a study into the changing relationship between the audience and the producer - in particular with the growth of social networks and UGC. This is an aea that fascinates me greatly and I do feel that platforms such as YouTube and Kickstarter are the futue for prospective people wanting to get into Media.

BEYOND THE CAMERA

This module tested me technically as I had to get to grips with programmes such as Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. These are area's I'm not strong in, but I had a good team in Mark Nugent and Ian Gardener who helped and supported me through it. I soon found myself embracing such programmes and could see the benefit of them in any future productions I plan. Here is my final product from this module: Fatale.

 

I didn't get marked on my voice acting, for the record.

 

 

TV STUDIO PRODUCTION

 

If I were to pick a module in which I embraced, loved and felt I got the most out of it was this. I initially had some fear going into this module after talking to friends with experience of doing such things in college. However, thankfully, I was placed in a group consisting of Gemma Blaney, Josh McDowell, Amy Palin Tune, Phoebe Ruddock and Ceri Dack - a bunch of people with the same ambition and work ethic as me. We had to come up with a lunch time magazine show suitable for Channel 4 - complete with guest and music performance piece. Our offering was the 'Alternative Lunch' - a show aimed primarilly at the student age range with a tastte of the perculiar about it. I was picked as presenter, given to me for what I hope was my experience in performing stand up comedy - not because I was useless at everything else. I was initially disappointed with this as I had hopes for being producer but I soon fitted into my role as presenter and embraced it. Watching back on our final product I am totally proud of what I and my group achieved. This has definitely opened up my interest into a potential career (this is television production - not presenting. Justin Lee Collin's has killed all market for potential fat, bearded television personalities. 'Good times'? Yeah right, Justin).

 



 

 

APPLIED MEDIA RESEARCH

I have talked about this in great length in another blog but strangely I think this module taught me the most in terms of the media industry I wish to get into. As someone who is interesting in the 'creative' side of filmmaking (i.e writing/directing) studying the idea of the role of writers in today and potentially the future of Media has given me some food to think about and, potentially, some idea's of what will be expected of me if I ever reach the levels I want to in this industry.

 

CONVERGEANCE MEDIA TEAMWORK

 

Multi platforming media seems to follow me around...

 

At the time of writing this I am half way through this module. However, like I said in the above section, the importance of multiplatforming in media is significant and growing and this module is giving me the chance to embrace it. Once again I'm in a great team of Gardener and Nugent and the project we have going on is exciting. I'm fully embracing the idea of telling a story across a range of platforms and I'm seeing the benefit of something I've studied throughout this year practically. What we're making exactly is in it's early stages, all I'm saying is simply beware the suits...

 

THE OUTSIDE WOLD AND I

 

This year I decided to embrace doing media work outside of my course. In particular this led to me taking on and experience the fantastic experience of being a runner for the official music video of "You'll Never Walk Alone". It was a fantastic couple of days working a with a kind and knowledgeable crew which I got so much out of - the effort everyone put in can be seen in the video. Great stuff.

 

http://youtu.be/OV5_LQArLa0

 

Zombies and Time Travel - An Insight to My Research for AMR.

“The internet, social media and other open systems have allowed for UGC, crowd surfing and other forms of audience participation to prevail in digital media. How do we transform those features into a transmedia experience without treading on the toes of the author?”

When I first saw this question my immediate reaction 'wow, thats a lot of words'.


The idea of multi-platforming and storytelling was something that wasn't alien to me. As I will talk in my other blog post I spent a good amount of time this second year looking at the idea of multiplatforming and, more importantly, the idea of 'power to the audience'. In fact this theme has strangely followed me from the first year in which I studied Mike Walsh's 'Futuretainment'. If I've learnt one thing already from my time in MPS at Liverpool John Moores is that the world of Media is getting very left-wing. The influence of corporations and companies are now slowly getting undermined by the people who are deciding what they want and how they want it. If a game isn't right - someone can mod the games programming and allow it for a free download on the internet. If a game was good enough it didn't need to spend masses on promotion - it could easily get its audience through 'word of mouth' on forums and other social media formats. More importantly, however, was the idea of control. People now are getting less content by being told what happened in a story - they wanted to be part of it. They wanted to make their own decisions, their own choices and to decide their own fate. Not what some poxy writer told them. The amount of debates or discussions I have had with my friends or on online forums about my or other peoples fustrations over events that happened in previous episodes of Doctor Who are countless and probably wasted time on me writing more on this blog. Sorry about that, blog. I do love you. Honest.

 

Mentioning Doctor Who this is another aspect of fan participation I had noticed. These days shows with cult followings such as Doctor Who and Star Trek are now being written and produced by fans. Especially in Who's case. It was brought back brilliant in 2005 by its then showrunner Russell T Davies who had been a fan of the show from the 1960's. He had even tried to contribute in the series' original one having a range of scripts being rejected in 1980 (saying thatt, mind, considering one of the episodes in this time period was a satire on the Thatcher regime with the visual metaphor of a monster called the 'Candyman' which resembled Bertie Bassett those scripts must have been bad). Even his protege and now show runner Steven Moffatt grew up a fan of the show. These were people who embraced the show by its original creators and had embraced fan fiction, the audio adventures like the many fans around them to the point where they were inspired to be writers themselves. If that isn't audience participation I don't know what is. Even myself when I was younger used to participate into what could be 'user generated content' by writing my own Doctor Who fan fiction for my own enjoyment. I did just admit that on the internet. I had a very lonely childhood.

 

Also at the time of being asked this question I had quite got into AMC's "The Walking Dead". I had been first made aware of the show in its original format of graphic novels by Robert Kirkman by my friend in high school who told me 'it would be the next big thing'. I ignored him. At the time of writing its in its third series on a budget of about two million dollars an episode whilst still maintaining its status as one of the highest watched TV drama's in America. I realise now that my mate might not been as much of an idiot as I put him down as. It is quite frankly a brilliant piece of television - finally embracing the zombie genre but actually focusing on character development instead of being gore-porn. The story itself was also gripping. Watching theses characters slowly lose their humanity in their inhumane enviroment was interesting. The decisions they made even more so. I spent many a time with my friends discussing whether they were right or wrong to do what they did made for many a great conversation. Conversation I probably wasted not doing this blog. I'm spotting a trend here. Please dont look at me this way blog.

With the success the franchise was having it was only obvious a game would soon follow. Zombie games are much like zombie films - take a gun and kill as many of the undead as you can. Telltales take on the Walking Dead was fantastic though. Its stayed true to the TV show and the comics and made it a game about character development - it was clever. Instead of relying on reactions you had to rely on your sense of judgement and character. You decided your own story, your own fate. It was wonderful. I actually found finding the experience of watching someone watch the game just as fascinating as playing it myself. I even considered at one point whether I prefered playing the game to watching the show.  It was this which led me to making this a key part of our reseach with our focus group.

At the end of our experience I had come to a clear conclusion. Personally I feel that audience participation and freedom to explore in a story wold. For me, Robert Kirkman epitomises the idea of a modern author. He created a brilliant story world in the Walking Dead and his keenness to allow people into that world to explore it and create their own worlds has lead to creativity and excellent content.

Well done, Kirkman, well done.