1.6180-Lecture #4

Today's lecture was on telling a story with images, be they moving or still. I really enjoyed this lecture, which was great, because I was exhausted.
Anyway.
I found my self agreeing with pretty much everything I was being told, which was interesting for me, because I don't often do that. I think it's because of this Golden Mean thing, which Bruce called the Rule of Thirds.

The Golden Mean-conveniently golden.

 I had never heard of the Rule of Thirds, and the only reason I had heard of the Golden Mean is because my dad does design work for his building company, and I think the reason I agreed with everything was because it's a human thing, not a cultural thing. Humans are wired for symmetry, for mathematical perfection.
Bruce was talking about 'the moment', and that's all well and good, but if you can't get that shot and incorporate the Rule of Thirds, it's still not going to be a great photo.
I had a look at some of the photographs that won the Pulitzer prize, and I wasn't surprised to find that now that I knew what I was looking for, I could see that the Rule of Thirds was being utilised very well as well as capturing 'the moment'.
Here's one of the less depressing Pulitzer Prize winning photographs. This was taken in 1958 by  William C. Beall of Washington (DC) Daily News.

Not only has Beall captured the moment, but scope of the picture makes the officer and the boy on separate thirds of the picture. Another interesting thing about it, besides the fact that that child somehow knows how to gesture like an adult, is that the focus point isn't either of them, it's the point in between their heads, which happens to be the middle of the photo. Cool, huh?
In the lecture, we learnt that along with 'the moment' and The Rule of Thirds, there were some other factors that, when combined, make a great photo.

• Framing
• Angle and Point of View
• Exposure and
• Timing (shutter speed)

So, to use a very cool expression I learnt at a cool place, I wasn't taught anything today, but my reality was described to me instead. The Rule of Thirds, the Golden Mean, they've always existed. It didn't spring into existence when Bruce told me about it this afternoon, it's always been there, but it was shown to me. I always knew what a good photo looked like, I just couldn't tell you why it was a good photograph.
But now I can.

When I was young...

When I was young, say 7 or 8, I wished that I was adopted.
This wasn't because I hated my parents, I love my family, I think they're great. But they're my family. I know them. They're a bit boring, really.There's no mysteries surrounding them, no secrets.
 The truth is, I desperately wanted an adventure, and as all kids know, because all the children's fiction tells them, you can't have an super-dooper adventure if you have parents.
Narnia is a prime example.

Why am I telling you this?
I'd say I've lost my spark for adventure, but I don't think I really know how to have an adventure.
Do you remember that clip in the first Transformers film, where Shia LaBeouf turns to Megan Fox and says '50 years from now, when you look back on your life, don't you want to say you had the guts to get in the car?'?
Those kind of moments don't happen in real life. You never get alien cars, you never get clear cut, "choose certain death and excitement or a long life full of drudgery" moments.
What you do get, though, are moments of the same importance, disguised as the weird thing that happened to you that day. I've never realised that they're happening, but every time I act sensibly, every time I decide not to be spontaneous, I choose boring.
The weird thing that happened to me today happened only a few hours ago. I was at a bus stop, heading towards an ill-fated rendezvous with a cinema, when an old Asian couple approached me and asked me if my name was Sean/Shaun/Shawn (however you want to spell it). I instantly said no, they said thank you, and proceeded to ask every other male at the stop.

My question is...what would have happened if I'd said yes?
I know it sounds crazy, it sounds stupid and a good way to get in a lot of trouble and be really annoying, but I think adventure must be taken. A giant alien car, or a wardrobe to another world isn't going to appear in most of our lives, but what are the odds of someone asking you if you're someone else at least once in your life?
Who knows, maybe that couple were undercover agents, looking for their Australian connection. Perhaps they were going to whisk me away overseas to uncover drug plots and foil terrorists, get ripped and learn to shoot people.
Perhaps they were late to a concert that I...I mean Sean, was going to see with them.
But perhaps they were trying to get to the airport, and I either had to cough up the taxi fair or confess to my un-Sean-ness.
 I dunno, what is better, a life with no useless taxi fairs, or a life filled with free concerts and drug busts?

Lecture #3, in a round-about fashion

So...I can't help feeling a bit peeved about today's lecture (which was on text). I'm hoping I missed the point of the lecture, and that it was actually very helpful, because otherwise I really did spend half of the lecture being told that words in every context are text. I know this fact already, because text means words.
Aside from that irritating piece of information, I did find the rest of the lecture quite interesting. I particularly like our guest lecturer Skye's depiction of text as fast, flexible and portable. In an world with an increasing focus on other media like pictures and video, where stereotypes suggest shorter attention spans due to a higher expectation for sensory stimulation ( The $100 Billion Market-Elissa Moses. P.44), it's nice to know text still dominates the online world.
I wonder how long that will last, though. Video blogs are one thing that spring to mind when I think of things that could replace text. At the moment, they many consist of people showing clips of people falling off bikes or dancing naked, and then making a witty remark about it, but is there potential for news or journalistic video blogs? I am willing to bet that it wont be long before there is a young-person-focused video news blog. And I bet they'll be rolling in the cash.

But I'm getting side-tracked. Back to the lecture topic.
I didn't know that very senior journalists write the tiny 3 to 5 word tab-like headlines at the top of The Australian newspaper. Imagine having that for a job?! Surely that's not all they do, though, right? Can you imagine the conversation? 'Oh, you're a journalist, what's a normal day for you?' 'Well, I write about 10 to 12 words a day...'
They obviously can't fit the inverted triangle we were taught today into those little tabs, and I wonder if they have a basic framework to help them. If you missed today's lecture (tut tut) the inverted triangle is a giant triangle upside down. It represents the way a reporter is supposed to structure his/her article. The most important things go at the top, so basically who, what, when, where, why and how, and then it goes down towards least important news. Pretty basic stuff, really.
Honestly, if the first thing you report about the AFL player Liam Jurrah machete attack story is that Hawthorn defeated Melbourne by 80 points, you deserve to fail.

Simple, but effective

So, I just read a fascinating article (well, I thought so) on the ABC News online website about, of all things, the Kony phenomenon. It's titled Kony 2012 director answers critics of video
I think it's a really interesting article, for a few reasons.

1. Jason Russel, the director of the Kony 2012 video, actually had no idea how big this video was going to get and...
2. He deliberately made it oversimplified

I think both of these things speak a lot into what has already unfolded in the few days this film has been on the internet.
The article said that 'Initially, he aimed for 500,000 YouTube viewers.' Thats freaking nuts!!! This means that this phenomena is a hundred times bigger than what he expected. Even he, with all his plans, his pre-film marketing and preperation, underestimated the power of social media.
The second is the more political, and possibly more relevant, considering the amount of critisism that is bound to come with fame and popularity. A lot of talk has gone into questioning the practicality of Russel's goal, which is basically to make Joseph Kony so famous that politicians will have to option but to act by...wait for it...graffiti.
But Russel apparently is completly aware that's the film is overly simple, and infact made it that way. Perhaps that is why the film is so popular.

What is Journalism?

Well, it's two weeks into Uni life, and it's been ok so far. I haven't been lost, or arrived too late to anything, so I'm going to go ahead and call it a success.

I've loved all my courses, and setting up a Twitter account (officially making me a Twat...old joke, I know, but totally called for) and a blog was quite exciting. It's been interesting reading some blogs, and also my tute (T2) and the general idea that there isn't really a solid description for what journalism is. The Oxford Dictionary (online, because as if I would own a real dictionary) defines journalism as:

 the activity or profession of writing for newspapers or magazines or of broadcasting news on radio or television.

Well, if that's all it is, then I'm definitely NOT a journalist, which is contrary to the thoughts of some of my lecturers.  So, I guess the question is, is that all journalism is? That definition of journalism only covers the profession of journalism, or the act of being employed to write/broadcast for a media source, which gets me thinking, if that's journalism, what do we call the job that all the others do? The bloggers, the video bloggers, the tweeters, the students at UQ just beginning 3-4 years of learning how to be employed by a media source; what do we call what they do?

And then what about the volunteers? The writers of the school newsletter, the monthly car club leaflet, is that journalism? On a very local level, that isn't a lot different to a newspaper, albeit a very niche market newspaper.

I went over the PowerPoint presentation for week 1, and all the quotes that I assume Dr Bruce Redman found and put up there, they are all, with the exception of two, are talking about the job.
The other two are these:

Journalism is the first rough draft of history - Philip Graham, Publisher, Washington Post
Journalism is organised gossip - Edward Eggleston, American Historian/Novelist

So clearly, most people think of journalism as the job. Therefore, the only conclusion I can make is...I should be paid for this shit!