Netflix has opened up a world of content that I would of never discovered as I never used any platforms which had so much variety of films/TV shows. I never really got into anime as a kid, I wasn’t really into shows like Dragon Ball Z or Naruto. I was more into gaming or being obsessed by The Lord of the Rings. I guess this also followed into my teens as I just stuck with gaming and became really obsessed with YouTube and YouTube personalities.

But, as an adult now I’ve become more aware of artists and how shows like this are made and now gives me a whole new appreciation for anime’s and cartoons. I asked my friend which anime would be good to start with and he recommended Death Note as it was newly added to the streaming service Netflix. I started watching and fell in-love with the show and concept immediately and now understood why it was such a loved anime. When I finished the show, Netflix recommended the Netflix Original Death Note and I watched it immediately. This movie adaption was inspired by the anime but wasn’t as detailed because it was a film compared to a 37 episode anime.

But, what why was the anime so much more successful then its live adapted remake? Well, when it comes to a global audience, anime is one of the top viewed genres of content when it comes to film and television, statistics from The Anime Industry Database are great reports that show the growth of anime over the years and how much this genre is making financially. Death Note is one of the most popular anime’s made because of it’s gripping story, the main rivals and its unique characters. It was a show that not only Japan could enjoy, but a story that everyone could enjoy. Even with people who couldn’t get over watching a show in a different language, it came with an English dub so other cultures could enjoy it just as much. The global success of this show meant that a lot of corporations would get involved and make there own live version adaptions which would become very successful. “The first Death Note film earned US$25 million in Japan, and the sequel almost doubled that figure at $43 million, staying at number one in the Japanese box office for four weeks” (Goderie, 2010). This was include the streaming service Netflix.

The Netflix adaption was not received well by fans of the series. Mainly because it didn’t stick the original roots from the anime. The movie was to rushed with only running at 100 minutes, they got the characters wrong and felt like the show was to forced. This is best explained in an article from Looper.

This is mainly from Hollywood whitewashing beloved characters. Taking from a culture and then trying to enforce there own culture into a story. The live action may have been more successful if it focused more on sticking to the original characters and plot and not trying to make it up as they go. I’m not saying that this is bad way of making a film, but at least make it a compliment to its original predecessor.

Goderie, P. (2010) “Cultural Flows Beneath Death Note: Catching The Wave Of Popular Japanese Culture in China” [Available at] https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=daaa34e5-d777-4ed1-b0da-144c0ecdd0fc%40sessionmgr4007&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=poh&AN=53364458 [Accessed 2/9/19]

Adrenaline, sex, and drugs are the few words to describe this dark yet intriguing film. Trainspotting follows the life of a heroin addict Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) and the lifestyle that he is surrounded with by being an addict. Renton is joined by his group of useless mates as we follow there life choices and priorities of being addicts. Sickboy (Johnny Lee Miller) is one of Renton’s closest mates but abuses his kindness, Spud (Ewen Bremner) is the groups hopeless but caring friend, Tommy (Kevin Mckidd) who’s a good friend but ends up living the of and addict from the people he surrounded himself with, and Begbie (Robert Carlyle) who is not a heroin addict but who an aggressive alcoholic. It also introduces Rentons lover Diane (Kelly Macdonald) who he meets at a nightclub and goes home with, soon to find out she is underage.

The film follows these characters and how they rummage for money for there heroin abuse, this is done by petty crimes that usually involve theft. They all locate to an abandoned crack house where they shoot up and pass there time on being high on drugs. As this film may be seen as glorifying drug use as the scenes of the characters taking drugs look enjoyable and like they are on top of the world, it is soon followed by the dark underlay of the comedown and the mistakes made from abusing the substance.

Trainspotting was funded by the British studio Channel Four Films as this was a studio that funded independent films. The location for the film is set in the Scotland as this location complimented the films emptiness and bleakness. The intended audience for this film would be for anyone who is curious about how people live different lifestyles, but should know a lot about UK culture as its main focus is on the UK demographic as the dialogue and setting is highly influenced by UK culture. But, as it could of been seen that it’s intended audience was local, the film traveled internationally and was a big success! Winning multiple awards including best screenplay at the BAFTA Awards.

When it comes to films and the film industry, they’re are major differences when it comes to production. This is demonstrated in the North and South divide. “The rich North” is the more financially economic countries like United States, Australia and Canada. Where as the South is considered third world countries like Asia, Africa, South America. When it comes to the United Kingdom, they are on the north side as they are apart of the G8 Countries. Being apart of the north means they’re more financial opportunities for films as there countries are more developed, this funding allows films like Trainspotting to be made and to be as successful as it was because of the production opportunities, even being it was an independent film. I don’t think this film would be as successful if it was made in another country because it really captured the dark side of British culture instead of soap operas as explained in this article. This is further proven in a Film Review from Stanley Kauffmann explains that this film is such an original concept as he states ” A new voyeurism has arisen in the last two decades or so, and Trainspotting caters to it—an addiction to addiction-watching” (Kauffmann 1996).

Kauffmann, S. (1996) “Scotland now, English then” [Online] available at https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=5479dc56-d6c9-434c-a048-3ac284c97bb1%40sdc-v-sessmgr02 [Accessed 2/9/19]

When it comes to music and culture, a specific organisation stands out the most for me. Exploring the Asian culture and how it is displayed in the western world, 88rising is the brand that does this with ease. 88rising is an Asian record label that focus on Asian and Asian-American artists, their music is not set to one genre as they are one of the most diverse record labels to date. The genres that are associated with this group are Rap, Rnb/soul, trap, indie folk and many more, The most noticeable artists signed to this label are Joji, Rich Brian, NIKI and Higher Brothers. What really makes 88 stand out is the ability to bring in a western audience as some of the musicians in the record label rap in Mandarin but still making it enjoyable for English listeners.

The ways 88rising got there name on the map is interesting. This project was made by Sean Miyashiro in 2015 and was used to reach out to up and coming artists in the Asian scene. He got in contact with Rich Brain (Formally Rich Chigga) and they worked on the project ‘Dat $tick’ which was Rich Brian’s first music video. To gain more exposure to this song, Sean invited already established rappers to come and review the music video and let them discuss there thoughts on this style of rap and culture. These artists consisted of 21 Savage, Goldlink, Flastbush Zombies and Ghostface Killah who would eventually end up collaborating with Rich Brian on the ‘Dat $tick remix’ featuring Pouya. This comical video yet smart technique to expose the Asian rap scene was one of many smart ideas from Sean Miyashiro.

Cultural Appropriation

“Cultural appropriation refers to the ways people adopt or adapt an aspect of another’s culture and make it their own” (Han 2019). There have been a lot of articles talking about 88rising and the cultural appropriation surrounding the brand. For example, articles like NBC News talk about how Asian culture have always struggled going in main stream hip hop because they apparently “Do not belong” (Para 9) But, Sean Miyashiro states in an article from The Hundreds “Every immigrant has the same kind of experience, from Latino Americans to Jews to Italian Americans, It’s all the same and we’re trying to embody that dream.” (Lee 2018) This is Sean defending the idea that Asians and everyone belong in hip-hop because everyone has a story to tell. There have been some instances where one of the artists went over the line. In Rich Brian’s song ‘Dat $tick’ he uses the N word at the beginning of the song. He states that “He wasn’t trying to offend anyone” but trying to take the power out of the word, but soon realizing that he is not in a position to make those calls. This is shown in his Genius interview.

I really love 88rising and love everything they are doing with the label. I think this label is doing a great job of showing the world that different cultures can have there take on genres of music and what there culture can bring to it.

Reference

Han, H. (2019) ” Moving From Cultural Appropriation to Cultural Appreciation” [online] Available at https://eds-a-ebscohost com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=f9756d82-af5a-47a5-b046-42953203b47d%40sessionmgr4007 [Accessed 2/9/2019]

Lee, C. (2018) “As Asian rappers rise, some must face questions about race and hip-hop” [online] Available at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/asian-rappers-rise-some-must-face-questions-about-race-hip-n843416 [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]

The idea of making a DA is exciting as you can pursue something you love and hoping you can share your interest to like minded individuals .

So, my DA is focusing on the Dubstep/Riddim scene and how I can basically get involved with it. What inspired me to do this as my DA is the community in the Dubstep/bass scene. Recap videographers like Infinite.Frames and Leighton Clarke do awesome jobs of capturing an event which really inspired me to get try get into this industry as it would be something that has both of my interests, Dubstep and filming.

My main objective was to was mainly focusing on the filming and editing side of it making recap videos for artists which would of go onto my Instagram, but I have realized that this goal might be hard to achieve as i might not be uploading enough content for my project as this may happen every few often. I started to explore new ideas and how I could improve my project to be able to upload more content and to connect to more people.

Networking!

I went and messaged clubs and people who were in the scene on social media asking questions involving my project. I messaged Heyday which is a nightclub in Wollongong that has a weekly bass night on Fridays hosted by 404. I asked if it was possible to come in and film acts for experience and that i would do it for free. They ended up replying and gave me the okay to do so! I’ll hopefully be able to go and film an act at Heyday and make recap video as I intended for my DA.

I messaged Infinite.Frames on Instagram who is in the scene as an event Videographer as he was doing an AMA on his story. I just asked how he got where he is now and he gave me a good answer on how got there and some advice that i will take on board with my project.

I even made a tweet asking if someone could me a logo for my project but was bombarded by bot accounts saying they could make me logos.

Improving my DA

Focusing on my YouTube channel, i’m going to make a visualizer. I’ll be doing this through Adobe After Effects as this is the program used for animated visualizers. This will be similar to what Trap Nation and The Dub Rebellion use for there channels when they are promoting a song from an artist. For mine it will be for mixes, getting artists to send me there mix files and I can make a visualizer for there mix which will be surrounding my brand and the Artist who’s mix is being uploaded. My friend who has a mix to send me and has let me know he can make me more in the future for my project. Using him as an example, i am hoping to get more underground artist to send me there mixes which I can upload to my channel.

For my overall DA i’m hoping to upload content every week where it either be a new EDM mix or a recap video from an artist at a nightclub.

I’m looking forward to start making content for this DA as I feel like there is a lot to learn and new skills that I could gain by working on this project.

For my interview I wanted to focus on a revealing story. This would be about my brother who is a police officer and letting him talk about what motivated him to join the force, his perspective and the reality of being a police officer.

For my Digital Artefact I will be making a brand focusing on the underground EDM scene (mainly dubstep) which will be covered on my multi social media platforms. What I am hoping to do with this project is to reach out to artists who are in this scene and help make content for them. I will be doing this by filming them performing and making recap videos for them.
I made a SoundCloud which I’m hoping to get artists to make mixes which I can upload that will go under my brand.
My YouTube channel will also be a platform where I will be making updates on the dubstep scene and talking about new albums.

I will be doing this by messaging clubs/club promoters and artists offering to do freelancing work for them as this is a project I am hoping to pursue in my career. I am also after getting some logos/banners made so I will be messaging classmates who are doing graphic design for their project.

This project is relevant to users because artists need people to film and edit videos for them.

Twitter – https://twitter.com/WillAiken_
Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLtYDPMCpXssSpSaAG5g_gw?view_as=subscriber
Soundcloud – https://soundcloud.com/mirrorsinc
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mirrors_inc/

For the motion picture task I wanted to do an interview which focused on three individuals who would be asked multiple questions about being a “rebel” and letting them answer in there own words on different perspectives on rebelling. This was heavily inspired by ABC’s ‘You Can’t Ask That‘.

Kurt Docker who is the producer of ‘You Can’t Ask That’ inspired me to do this type of video as I am a fan of his work. He has done previous work for abc1 with videos showing drug addiction and other relating topics which I found related to the ‘Rebel’ topic.

For the interviewees, I wanted to get people who were different ages and experienced different types of rebelling. This would consist of my school friend Tom (20 years old) my work friend Jerome (31 years old) and my mum Penny (45 years old). This was to give a variety of answers of rebelling and how different age groups may have experienced it.

The three interviewers were asked 4 questions which consisted of:
– Are you a rebel?
– How do you rebel?
– Why did you rebel?
– Do you regret being a rebel?

The set up of the studio consisted of
– 2 DSLR cameras (one for close up) (second for a medium shot)
– Studio softbox lighting
– Rode Smart Lapel Microphone
– Blue yeti studio microphone

For this set-up I used two cameras which were placed on top of each other with tripods; this was so the framing of the shot would still be centered and not look off when switching between a close up and medium shot. I used two cameras because i wanted a close up when the interviewee would start talking about an experience which would engage the viewer when watching as it becomes more engaging. A lapel microphone was attached to the interviewee which would plug into an Iphone where I could store the audio files from the Lapel. A blue yeti was also on set as back up audio just in case the audio with the lapel couldn’t be recorded. The Softbox lighting was placed on the right side of the room as it was the best location for the light to be distributed onto the subject. When in production I clapped before the scene would commence as it would allow me in the editing stage to line up the Lapel audio with the two cameras so it could all be in sync.

Overall, i’m happy with how this video turned out.

Directed, edited and sound design done by Will Aiken

In today’s society, we are heavily influenced to media and what is happening around the world, whether it comes to politics, death or war. But, the question can be asked, who owns the media, and how is the media portraying these topics? Because we don’t know if there is a puppeteer controlling the media and if there are two sides of a story, which side of the story is being favored over the other.

This is where I introduce Rupert Murdoch.

Rupert Murdoch is an Australian-born businessman who’s company success and exploits are nothing short of phenomenal. He is the owner of media giants like Fox news, The Wall Street Journal, The Times and many more international businesses. He’s a man who has interests globally and a business prowess second to none. With all this success there will always be confrontation and this is mainly shown by other media sources. This media that isn’t related to Rupert’s businesses are always showing examples of how he can favor one side of a party over the other. This is shown in many sources like The Trump and Murdoch Relationship and the Liberal vs Labor controversy.

This begs the question, is Rupert manipulating his media to suit his views and is it becoming a conflict of interest?

A conflict of interest is when someone has the potential to influence the outcome or the direction of a situation, be it on a personal level or business deal where their vote can result in personal gain. For example, in the media there could be people who control news or an important matter which could lead them to be granted to special access, money, first rights to report on a breaking story as long as it was reported favorable. The conflict there is that it is a misrepresentation of the true facts if the person did not disclose the finer details. Many people have had to step aside politically due to conflicts that have not been disclosed, it has seen the end of many a successful careers once the facts have been reported.

The conflicts of interests that Rupert Murdoch finds himself in is mainly political. He uses his media as a way to promote a party that he favors and this is shown countless times with Australian politicians. Labor have reported that them as a political party have been targeted by the Murdoch media as a way to favor liberal.

A quote stated by The Conversation says that when Rupert Murdoch was asked what is his favorite part about running a media empire is, his answer was “being involved with the editor of a paper in a day-to-day campaign…trying to influence people” (McKnight, 2013). This quote (if true) shows the deep intent that Rupert wants the power to lead an election.

To add to this, Rupert is not shy to voice his opinion on topics as shown on social media. His twitter is a prime example of his unethical views and it goes to question if his input is the final say that gets published on the media giants he owns.

This way of media ownership and conflict of interest is unethical because we’re letting a man who owns all of these corporations have a say when it comes to governments, political topics and elections because he has so much power when it comes to media.

When journalists work for such a large corporation they need to follow ethical guidelines that stop them from siding with parties and just reporting the evidence to avoid a conflict of interest. A quote from a CNN Article state “It has left some journalists inside the Murdoch empire complaining about softball treatment and a pro-Trump tilt.” (Louis, 2017). This is an example of how journalists have to question there own ethics when reporting on these topics and feeling like they have to side with a party.

Journalists would follow the The MEAA code of ethics for this type of journalism. In the MEAA code of ethics state that journalists need to “disclose conflicts of interests that affect, or could be seen to affect, the accuracy, fairness or independence of your journalism. Do not improperly use a journalistic position for personal gain” (MEAA Code of ethics 2019)
and
“Do not allow personal interest, or any belief, commitment, payment, gift or benefit, to undermine your accuracy, fairness or independence” (MEAA Code of ethics 2019) These two standards that the MEAA provide are examples of how to ethically report in journalism and where Rupert Murdoch oversteps these codes.

In journalism reporting the truth void of conflict is the basis of good reporting. It is their mantra. Journalists over the world have found themselves jailed, made redundant and lost careers at the expense of reporting the truth. Peter Greste is a good example of this. It comes down to dignity and integrity versus making a living. The real problem for a die hard journalist would be finding themselves working for a global conglomerate who had a one sided view on an political matter, international crisis or inept leader and having to report against their own beliefs and core values.

When a person or a Company can have so much success that it can affect lives, stock markets and political influence, there comes a massive moral responsibility with this amount of power. Whether people in power choose to follow this is up to them. Hence the question could be asked, who is governing personal success, should it be governed at all? Can it ever be monitored or then do we enter into the areas of the to right free speech? When media power can have so much impact at an International level, where do governments stand on this unknown when the front page of a newspaper can make or break a prime minister or president and have the ability to effect millions of people.

References:
Louis, E., 2017 “Trump-Murdoch relationship raises conflict-of-interest questions” Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/06/opinions/trump-murdoch-conflicts-opinion-errol-louis/index.html Viewed 24 May 2019
McKnight, D., 2013 “Murdoch and his influence on Australian political life” Available at:
https://theconversation.com/murdoch-and-his-influence-on-australian-political-life-16752 Viewed 24 May 2019
MEAA Journalists code of ethics, 2019 Available at: https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/ viewed 25 May 2019

William Aiken 6464488

For this Rebel topic I asked my dad to tell me a story from his youth days. I wanted to focus on story telling and adding sounds to accompany the story to capture the scenes he was describing. I wanted the audience to feel like they were there. This story suits the ‘rebel’ theme as it’s a story about teens being young and reckless and being rebellious by being in dangerous situations.

For some Foley examples, I had to record the suitable sounds to fit the scenes being described. The vibrating sounds of the train track were recorded from a metal poll after being hit with a stick. The jumping into the river water effect was moving water around in the pool and showing movement was recorded from leaning against a wall.

The only problems I came across when recording was recording good atmosphere. I live near a main road and was always picking up car sounds or other unnecessary sounds in the background so I had to drive away and find a new location to record. I also wanted to add more dialogue for his mates in the story as background dialogue to help set up scenes he was describing.

Foley/original fx – Bike riding, bike dropping, bike skidding, walking on grass, rope swing motion, water splashing, walking on rocks, sitting against a wall, vibrating poll.

Atmosphere/Ambiance – Atmos near water, cricket ambiance, atmos outside, train, train horn.

Voice – Gerard telling the story

Research:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO3N_PRIgX0&t=4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4NBKiJ33Ag
Influenced by story telling and the added fx to accompany the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqa8p1xbjds