Digital Artefact: Contextual essay

My digital artefact is a YouTube channel where I post videos that range from travel, beauty, challenges and vlogs. I have also used my personal Instagram and twitter account to collect and interact with my audience. I use polls and screenshots of my YouTube channel to promote my DA.

During my ideating process I have considered other DA’s such as an Instagram page where I post fashion styles through the decades or a Pinterest page where I post beauty related looks. However, I stuck to making a YouTube channel because I’m more familiar with it. I decided to do a YouTube channel because I got inspired by other famous YouTubers and always been interested and entertained in the YouTube community, mostly beauty. I have been intrigued in vloggers that do that as their job and make a living out of it.

The editing software I use is iMovie, either on my phone or laptop. I am more familiar with using iMovie because I have been using it on my phone for a while and It’s really simple to use and it comes with the basic edits that most youtubers use. When it comes to uploading in HD you really would have to invest in a good camera however, since I wanted my DA to be FIST (fast, inexpensive, simple, tiny) I decided to work with what I have and use my iPhone camera or an old Canon DSLR camera. The quality on the iPhone isn’t great but not that bad, whenever I film with the old DSLR camera it has scratching noises in the background and makes the videos have a blue hue to them. I also didn’t want to invest in a microphone because they are pricy. Also, when making thumbnails for my YouTube videos I use the website called PicMonkey, it’s free to edit but you have to pay in order to save and download it onto your laptop. I usually just screenshot the end results of my thumbnail and that automatically saves itself on my laptop, no payment needed.  The target audience I decided to aim for are mainly people my age or younger (15-18) mostly females but I do have some male audiences.

During my prototyping stage I realised I didn’t really change much about my DA, I was thinking about changing my DA to one of my other ideas I had, which was and Instagram page but that was too basic and I’ve already created my YouTube account and made videos so it would have been a waste. One of my FEFO (fail early, fail often) moments is when I would ask for video ideas on twitter, but no one would respond, and when I posted a video, I wouldn’t get much views or feedback.

Furthermore, my digital artefact project has become a learning experience for me because even though my DA was not so successful, I’ve learnt that you need to be consistent with being online and being more open minded with your audience.

Mia Manuel #bcm114

Making DA

Coming almost to an end with our digital artefacts, I have seen many good and successful ones that have put in a lot of effort and work. Comparing theirs to mine i’ve come to a realisation that my DA is quite plain and boring and not consistent with content and my online presence. I posted a tweet saying…..

I got two positive comments that made me feel not so much of a failure. Getting feedback from others really help me feel better about my DA and how I am able to share my experiences with others. Even though my DA was not that successful I still learnt and pointed out my weak spots which are…lacking in uploading videos and posting more polls and trying to keep up with the trends. So far these are the videos i have up on my YouTube channel.

I promote my videos on twitter but I still don’t get much viewers. Fun fact for the most recent video, it was actually filmed last year when I was still in high school. I decided to upload it because I thought it was entertaining and it also adds content for my YouTube channel. I made a lot of random video challenges with my friend and edited them on iMovie, but never posted it anywhere. Luckily I still have them and i can post them for my DA.

My progress with my DA isn’t all that successful only because I wasn’t prepared or inspired enough to post videos and also I ask for video ideas on twitter but no one gives responses, so it is kind of hard to interact with my audience.

Overall, this DA project has taught me to branch out more and be more active on social media when it comes to promoting videos and asking for feedback. My Youtube channel currently has 6 videos but not many views. My videos range from travel, beauty, vlogs and challenges which I thought was good because there are different choices my audience can choose from. I don’t find filming and editing difficult but I do find that finding new viewers engaging in my videos quite hard.

Prototyping

For my DA I didn’t really change much, I stuck to my idea from the beginning which was the YouTube channel. I had many moments when I wanted to change it to the Instagram account where I posted 90’s inspired fashion trends or early 2000’s nostalgia. The reasons I didn’t change much is because I feel like it’s harder to gain more followers on Instagram, also I am more familiar with how the YouTube community works.

My DA progress is coming along quite slowly, I have been forgetting to interact with my audience through Instagram. I find myself more active on twitter when it comes to creating polls and asking questions, even though I get more votes than people commenting and giving me feedback. It’s kind of easy coming up with video ideas and filming and editing them it’s just that I get fussy if I should post it or not. I have a bunch of videos filmed I just wait it out to post when I have more free time.

I sort of changed up my editing style because the more I use iMovie the more I find out about the different features it comes with. I used Windows Live Movie Maker on my old laptop to edit my videos, but that editing software was just too basic, and I couldn’t do more advanced editing with it. iMovie was tricky to use at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. I think the way you edit your videos and the quality really brings your audience’s attention, also having a thumbnail on your YouTube videos impacts how many people watch your videos because people would rather watch a video with a customised thumbnail than just a random, irrelevant thumbnail. At the moment I have 35 subscribers, not many but still something. The most viewed video I have is still my DA pitch. My views have not been great that’s because I need to work on promoting my videos on other social media platforms.

BETA BCM114

For my beta video i created a poll because as part of my DA I did mention that I was going to interact with my audience by creating polls. I came up with the idea by just observing what people liked to watch and thats when i thought to do a mukbang. A mukbang is basically a trending live streaming fad in South Korea wherein somebody prepares and/or eats on camera. It quickly became popular within the YouTube community. I also didn’t want to just sit in front of the camera talking because i find that a bit boring.

I did’t really change anything at all with my DA, although I did realise that whenever I film with a DSLR camera I actually need a mic because you can hear in my beta video these scratching noises which could potentially be annoying to my audience. I was also looking at “vlogging” cameras but the one I wanted is fairly expensive, so I probably have to stick with my phone and Dad’s old DSLR camera.

So far I have been struggling to film and create more videos, mainly from laziness but also I can’t think of any video ideas. Whenever i try to ask fellow students on twitter i get no feedback… I guess that would be a FEFO (Fail Early Fail Often).

My views on youtube are not that high, which is fine and I don’t really expect much. Is it because my videos aren’t interesting or maybe i don’t promote my youtube channel/videos much?

Although this is only a start to my DA surely I can improve my video quality/ audio and also posting as often as I can. I find it quite hard trying to balance my DA with work, uni, assignments and exams. That probably comes from my lack of preparation, I definitely need to pick up my act and make room for improvement.

Ideating was an easier process for me because it was easy for me to pick a DA idea, simply because I knew I had a passion for filming and editing videos and constantly using YouTube. This made me think that I was going to film a lot and get a lot of views and feedback, but obviously I encountered FEFO. However I get inspired easily with YouTubers and how they make a career out of it and how they started out small and then becoming a YouTube sensation, for example The Ace Family.

Prototyping is important to see where your DA is at and how you can fix or change some things to make your DA better or satisfying enough for you and your audience.

IDEATE

For my Digital artefact i chose to do a Youtube Channel. This is my first semester at UOW, so i was a little bit confused with the whole DA concept. I created a brainstorm of ideas and it was pretty easy for me to decide on an idea. From looking at the BCM114 tweets I saw many great ideas, and i thought mine was quite basic and boring. But in the end i chose to do a Youtube channel creating vlogs, challenges and beauty related videos.

I chose to do a YouTube channel as my platform because I enjoy watching Youtube channels like Bretman Rock, The ACE Family, Desi Perkins, Jeffree Star and many more successful YouTubers. I wasn’t really sure if I would have that much of an audience that would be interested in my DA… but i stuck with it anyway because it’s what I enjoy doing in regards to filming, editing and watching other YouTube videos. I have always wanted to be “YouTuber” as cringe as that sounds, I actually made a YouTube channel back when I was in year 8/9 creating videos that I enjoyed watching from morning routines, makeup tutorials, vlogs and challenges. I had some videos up and gained a small amount of viewers and subscribers, but people from school started to watch them and I eventually got embarrassed so I took my whole channel down. However, that inspired me to do this DA because now i have a reason to make a YouTube channel to be myself in front of a camera and do what I enjoy doing.

This is my YouTube channel and I have only posted 3 videos but I did notice my viewers and subscribers grew as I promoted my channel on Instagram, Twitter and told family and friends. After posting on Instagram I definitely gained more subscribers and viewers compared to Twitter where I maybe don’t have as much people that are interested.

To interact with my audience i created polls to have an idea of what videos they prefer watching. (I also mentioned that in my DA pitch) This gives me the chance to know what my audience actually prefer watching rather me posting random videos. I film with my Iphone 8 but if I want better quality I use my dad’s Canon DSLR camera, I find it quite hard trying to find the best lighting I either use my desk lamp, but that makes me look too orange and for my most recent video “my everyday makeup” I used natural lighting but that just added a blue hue, although now that I think about it, it was a pretty gloomy day and really cloudy. I still have yet to film and edit what got voted most on my Twitter account (stay tuned). Also since my Instagram poll was 50/50 i have decided to post the beauty related video first and then eventually I will post a challenge video.

I have considered changing my DA to the Instagram page but I feel like I wouldn’t have as much followers and people wouldn’t be as interested in just posting random photos of ‘Fashion trends throughout the decades’. So I guess a YouTube channel is a little bit more interesting and entertaining. My FEFO moment would probably have to be not coming up with name for my channel (it’s literally my first and middle name) but I can’t really come up with a name when my videos are just about vlogs, beauty related etc videos, I would rather have my name than a weird username. Also I wish I had more feedback or comments to kind of see where i’m at with my whole YouTube channel. I should also start to post more videos… BUT we shall see how my DA goes.

Follow me on twitter 🙂

Cultural Appropriation: Bruno Mars debate.

Cultural appropriation is the doing of someone taking or exploiting things from a culture that is not their own. This is quite predictable in a modern-day culture of music, which has created an atmosphere of continual exchange, mixing old styles of music with latest ones. This is what has made the pop-culture industry as it is today.

Discussions about how artists such as Miley Cyrus twerks to a trap beat or when Katy Perry incorporates braids and cornrows in her music video ‘This is How We Do’ and when Selena Gomez appropriated Indian culture when she performed at the MTV Movie awards while wearing an Indian-inspired dress, are examples of cultural appropriation and how it can cause debates.

However, I was interested in this controversy about “Is Bruno Mars a culture appropriator”?

I thought this heated discussion was very interesting because me personally, I love Bruno Mars I think he’s a talented singer/songwriter and he produces great music that I grew up listening to, from when I was in Primary school to now. However, Mars’s unique references to funk and R&B have started gossips of cultural appropriation because he is not black. Although, Mars’s background includes Filipino, Puerto Rican, Spanish, and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, there’s anger against the fact that Bruno won Grammys over black artists who are original.

Seren Sensei argued in the video, “Bruno Mars 100 percent is a cultural appropriator. He is racially ambiguous. He is not Black, at all, and he plays up his racial ambiguity to cross genres.” She expands, saying that Michael Jackson would suffer today because of artists like Bruno Mars.

“I don’t even think that Michael Jackson in this day and age would be able to get to the point that he got to previously,” she says. “Because people have realised that they prefer their black music and their black culture from a non-black face”

I think Sensei’s take is ahistorical because she presumes that appropriation is now more frequent and prominent when white folks making Black music is not really a new phenomenon. Back in the 70’s through to the 90’s there were many white artists whose music was deliberately influenced by Black music and artists. Madonna’s early hits were so R&B-flavoured that singles like “Borderline” were played on Black radio, and some early fans primarily didn’t know she was white. Daryl Hall and John Oates shot to the top of the charts with a mix of soul and pop that was a MTV-era version of the sound coming out in the ‘70s, much like how Michael Jackson, Prince and Lionel Richie merged soul and pop in the 1980s. White rappers the Beastie Boys had the best-selling hip-hop album of the 1980s.  I think some people forget the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation and automatically point fingers and hold grudges on artists that do respect and consider the culture they’re portraying and inspired by compared to the artists who don’t.

Referencing

11 celebrity examples who have been accused of cultural appropriation by Carolyn Twersky 2019 https://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/g22363821/cultural-appropriation-examples-celebrities/ [viewed august 26]

The ‘Vicious Competition for Credit’ Over Launching Madonna’s Career By Chris Williams 2013 https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/the-vicious-competition-for-credit-over-launching-madonnas-career/277974/ [Viewed August 26]

The 7 best Hall & Oates songs 2019 https://www.smoothradio.com/features/top-songs/hall-oates-best-songs/ [viewed August 26]

10 essential Beastie Boys songs by Rock Hall 2015 https://www.rockhall.com/10-essential-beastie-boys-songs [viewed August 26]

The 5 hardest questions in pop music By Chris Richards 2018 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2018/07/02/feature/separate-art-from-artist-cultural-appropriation/ [Viewed August 26]

Digital Artefact Ideas

This is the instagram page where i got the idea to make an instagram where i post different fashion trends and editing them to keep a consistent theme on my page to make it look aesthetic to interested audience.

I decided to take inspiration from different instagram pages to play around with the different pictures. Although making an instagram page is very generic I chose to do a YouTube channel where I can post videos of me and with friends and sibling, vlogging, challenges and makeup and fashion videos. I have had an interest in videography and editing so i think it would be easier for me to start my digital artefact on something i enjoy doing.

Romeo & Juliet Baz Luhrmann

One of my favourite versions of Romeo & Juliet is the one directed by Baz Luhrmann. His version is a 1996 American film that was based on the William Shakespeare’s tragedy, the original ‘Romeo & Juliet’. Luhrmann modernized this film to bring back Shakespeare’s extremely well-known play to audiences in a modern-day day environment while still using Elizabethan era language. I personally really like this film due to the use of actors like Leonardo DiCaprio who I found very attractive during his 90’s looks and I’m sure many ladies do too and also because how Luhrmann made this film suitable for younger & older people by reminding us a classic love story/tragedy written by the famous William Shakespeare.

This movie is a good example of cultural homogenisation because of Luhrmann’s use of props, setting and costumes. What is cultural homogenisation you ask? It’s the process where local cultures are altered or adjusted by external culture. In this case Luhrmann altered Romeo & Juliet to emulate classic American culture instead of the Elizabethan era. The film’s setting however has a sly adjustment on the original, instead of it being placed in Verona, Italy Luhrmann has appropriated the film to be set in Mexico City, Veracruz and Texcoco (other areas as well), some parts were filmed in Verona Beach, Miami. Verona Beach draws on pop-culture images that portrays urban glamour and crime. Luhrmann selects a modern city to present a hectic metropolitan world familiar to a 20th century audience.

Since the 1990’s era is much more advanced compared to the late 1500’s, Luhrmann’s choice of weapons transformed the atmosphere of the film by replacing swords and daggers with guns. The final scene where Romeo & Juliet both die, Juliet originally stabs herself with a dagger however Luhrmann substituted it by shooting herself with a gun. This clearly shows the that the use of guns is much more relevant to the audience since it is modernised to their understanding.

Instead of underclothing, ruffled sleeves, elaborate collars, corsets, and heavy gowns Luhrmann’s choice of clothing was highly updated where in the opening scene you would find the Montague boys strutting in Hawaiian shirts and different coloured hair, while the Capulet boys are dresses in black leather and metal-heeled boots. The clothing used in the film was very loose and simple in comparison to what people used to wear in the late 1500’s.

Romeo and Juliet, as a Shakespeare play, would typically draw an audience of older, sophisticated men and women. But in the 1996 version of the movie intentionally turned the tables on this audience expectation and targeted a younger audience with the choice of Luhrmann’s cast, Leonardo DiCaprio (Romeo) and Claire Danes (Juliet). Some references to drugs are also a part of what Luhrmann uses to take teenagers interest, by using common trends during the 1990’s when drug use by teens was rising.

Referencing

Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” compared with Shakespeare’s Original Work By Tori E. Godfree 2010 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/236/baz-luhrmanns-romeo-juliet-compared-with-shakespeares-original-work [viewed August 22]

Guns and Violence in Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” By Brittany Rowland 2016 https://reelrundown.com/movies/Guns-and-Violence-in-Baz-Luhrmanns-Romeo-Juliet [viewed August 22]

Do Film adaptations of Romeo and Juliet enhance Shakespeare in contemporary society or undermine his cultural status? By Laura Hammond 2013 http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/brightonline/issue-number-four/do-film-adaptations-of-romeo-and-juliet-enhance-shakespeare-in-contemporary-society-or-undermine-his-cultural-status [viewed 22 august]

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