Digital Media Distribution

Alright so I made this sweet powerful video, well now what? How do I get it to my intended audience? Well lets go back to Bitzer and talk about exigency, this video was created to help college kids at my campus coop with stress and the effects of living in Houghton with little control over family life. How do I get it to them? 

The best way I can think of (and also the quickest) would be to post to YouTube or Vimeo, any quick video uploading sites, then, post the shit out of it all over facebook/twitter/myspace(to the few lost souls still there) and sit back and collect. Facebook has a Michigan tech page, makes it soooo easy posting to it to help connect to students right away. Michigan Tech's facebook group has almost 2,500 members, before the internet, how would I get to all of these students without walking around, posting flyers, trying to get people to sit and watch my movie. Thank you, digital information age. 

Videos just posted to youtube will get lost in the sea of incoming videos. There has to be an intermediate site to connect with the audience. Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, all of these are web 2.0 sites. Youtube alone boosts. They all are dependent on user participation to survive. So the more effort I put into this participation, the more audience I can reach. 

I never explicitly say Michigan Tech in my video, so this allows me to create the secondary audience to be any college student anywhere. How powerful can that be? This video applies hardest to students who are stuck and stressed with their work, school, and its very difficult for many young people to talk about it. I've had to have many conversations with friends who are struggling with campus/home life. 'How can I watch after my family if I'm stuck here?' How can you watch after anyone if you don’t get a degree? You can only have so much control, in so many parts of your life, you’re only human. 

Its difficult to portray that message. People don’t want to be told that they're not all powerful, vulnerable. I feel that the way I produced this video will help explain this in a suitable, non-invasive way, not to long to belabor the issue (or engage fight or flight), and not to short that it's left open ended. People are much more likely (judging from personal experience) to give a video a chance if its short, ~3 minutes or less.  

These social media sites allow us to have great influence and power over advertisement. I don't have to spend a dime, or even an hour, to get my link out to thousands of people. Strategy is key, most people heard, most primary audience reached, with the least amount of effort. 

Good thing I'm not a marketing major. 

-Comrade Chris

Video Youtube Link

Alright so I finally uploaded my video. However there are about 1.463 Million damn videos named "What is Control?" So I'll probably pull it down, retitle it, then reupload it. Dumb.

-Comrade Chris

Are video games an art form?

First of all, absolutely! Think about what video games are comprised of: story line, music, animation, and participation. All of these things go into a game, and all of these things are considered art by themselves. So why is it then that when we put them all together...its not art?

I just read Henry Jenkins piece titled: Art Form from the Digital Age: Video Games shape our culutre. It's time we took them seriously.

It's a fantastic piece and he does a great job of looking at video games in a rhetorical fashion. What can video games do for us? Why cant they win art awards for being beautiful in storyline and gameplay?

Just a thought.

-Comrade Chris

Percussive maintenance - a fine technique

Web definitions

• Percussive maintenance, also known as percussion therapy or a technical tap, is a term used to describe the malediction of an ill-behaved device to make it work, that is to say, swear at it and hit it. 

Its kind of humorous when you think about it, and its definitely worked for me on numerous occasions. 

Grabbed this definition off Wiki. 

-Comrade Chris

Digital Media Rhetorical Analysis

                The idea behind this production was to reveal the vulnerability of humans and our lack of control. We do a good job of hiding our insecurities and as a culture, society, and as an individual. The purpose of this production was to show our strengths by showing tall buildings and talking about are power over the elements, slowly building up the drive of humanity to control the world, make the audience feel comfortable. Then take that away by showing that nature is in control, showing clips of nature effecting humanity, and persistent erosion. If the video would have gone right out and attacked humans’ strengths then it would me more likely to engage the fight or flight mechanism and make the video less effective.

                As the film is done mainly in Houghton, the audience is a local one, however I think the message applies to a wide range of people. Most of the footage is done of the campus buildings to help build a since of localness. By doing that it will make the piece seem more credible, which is very necessary to get the audience to sit and watch the whole video to fully explain my thoughts. I did include some shots of the bridge and the war memorial because those are also objects that people see every day but don’t really spend too much time thinking about their meaning.  The message that I recorded could have been given just as audio and let the imagination run wild with ideas, but with added visual content it helps keep us all on the same page and keep the viewer focused and interested.

                Contextually this is a very complicated idea and can go many places. The idea of using a video as opposed to text (in a website format) or audio alone was discussed but the fluidity of a video and its multi-sensory output was picked over the other two. Narrating the audio also helps the reader follow along. Instead of having to stumble through texts with people’s different reading speeds, by reading it to the audience I can go at a quicker pace and increases the quality of the video. Text can come off as tacky and can make it seem like a poor production.  It adds a sense of realism to actually hear a sincere sounding speaker pull in the listener.

                Overall during the testing the video turned out effective. I did intend for the end of the video to be uplifting but it was hard to do without completely changing the music around.  It did come across with its intended serous tone and showed great potential to effect an audience after a little bit of editing to slow it down so the reader can keep up with the idea. After this video is posted on a video site such as YouTube, its quick 2 minute message will have great usability and can keep the short attention span viewers intent on the message.  

-Comrade Chris

Other digital media project reviews

Alex's piece: Not exactly sure what the argument is, the artwork is extremely well down though.  From what I could see while he was standing up there it's related to his tattoos. It needs a little further development but I think it has potential.

My own work: got the argument, music went well, good quality, good visual of buildings, visual wasn't distracting.

development: sadder music audience would've cried, more audio splicing, image fade in/out.

Craig's work: argument, everyone needs a montage. fantastic acting, video clips fit in really well, appropriate length. development: working high quality, little more space in between some videos

Steven's work: argument, what is like in the dark? What do friends do as they wander around the town, having fun looking for a good time, not really anything else. Pros: great cinematography, solid camera shots, music fit great with the piece, clips fit smoothly together. Cons: I could see how some people having trouble following the work.

Ronnie/Stevie: argument, actions speak louder than words, everyone's different from what they say they are and how they act. Pros: funny, the video splicing is very well done, I like the chapters split up. Cons: maybe language? some sound quality is a little bad in spots, not a lot of people know what the MICUP program is.

Sarah's work: Argument, the will to live? Maybe to keep running and trying even if you're tired. Pros: good song choice, fit the visual elements. Cons: wasn't really sure what she was doing in the beginning of the video, message was a little unclear.

Greg: argument, getting out knowledge about bills in house. Pros: very well broken down for many different generations, friendly looking, easy to navigate. Cons: scroll buttons didnt highlight on my browser, could just be the computer though.

Kay's video: argument, kindergartner development? pros: good shot transitions. cons: hard to tell what exactly we were looking at, not sure if that was the best song choice, seemed a little heavy for this type of video but it is her style, maybe add some before/after shots to help show his progress? Best quote: "When I grow up I want to be a green crayon."

Kyle's website: argument, showing off his portfolio and his website. Pros: easy on the eyes, quote in the center is inspiring and not threatening, easy to navigate. Cons: older browsers make the page look like crap, image didn't scale well.

Jifu's video: argument, save me from myself? Pros: different song than I would have expected, good intro, I liked the different view points from different players, using cs instead of css was a good chance of pace. Cons: the argument was a little unclear, video was rather long and ended abruptly.

-Comrade Chris

Digital Media project update

So Saturday I went out with my friend Craig and got a ton of video from the area, then yesterday I wrote the text of what I'm going to read! Expect that I'll be posting my video pretty soon here, either tonight or tomorrow night. After I post the video I'll post the text from it too, should be awesome!

Now that I have all the clips it shouldn't be to difficult to slide all of these clips together. I think the biggest problem is finding an open source song, once I have a pretty low key song I can overlay that on the video while I talk for a better enveloping experience.

Song 1 It's a concert, so I think that makes it open source. I also just found this, from here.

UPDATE: Alright so I think I got the project all finished! Tomorrow I'll be doing a little testing with my instructor and my classmates before I post the video online. It turned out wayyyyy sweeter than I expected, even exported it in 1080p for maximum YouTube power.

Boom. Snacks on snacks.


-Comrade Chris

Digital Media Production: Control.

The statement of purpose for this piece:

The goal of this piece is to build up the strengths and accomplishments of mankind, then remind my audience that we are not in control of all points of our lives, and that’s alright. This will be accomplished by taking short video clips of the local city (Houghton) and of Tech’s campus; this will build up the accomplishments, then film nature, to show the lack of control. Then I will write, record, and overlay myself speaking the overall message to the video. I can test these parts separately, by showing someone the video with no audio to one audience, then later read the dialog to a different audience. This will allow me to revise the separate parts without over complication.

I think this solid idea can be laced with all sorts of meanings and ideas. Should be fun to do as well!  

-Comrade Chris