Consumption and Production

Hi all,

Firstly, uni is definitely starting to become very busy! The upcoming hectic work load is already bringing on the realities of soon to be increased stress leves, caffeine consumption for all night cram sessions (for people who are victims of the evil habit of procrastination like me ha) leading to severe sleep deprivation and finally the social calander will unfortunately become subortinated. The joys of uni life-although we really can't complain when we are rewarded with a lovely 4month break at the end of this semester:) Anyway enough of that, onto things related with new com.

Once again I really enjoyed last week's (week 6) lecture, with the topic being 'consumption and production'. From studying the subject 'intro to screen analysis' last sem, this made the lecture content easy to understand and follow. With most of us in today's society being avid mobile phone users, this also made the content engaging and relatable. Additionally, i also studied 'styles and generes of journalism' last sem so the idea of 'citizen journalists' or where members of the public capture news footage/images on their mobile phones and provide news web sites (lecture example was 'ireport.com') and sometimes news channels with this material. Therefore, the lecture as a whole was advocating the point that citizens of society consume content (that is generaly professionally produced) and can then go on to become involved in the process of producing their own material for community consumption. So the cycle goes from consumer, producer back to consumer. The example for 'mash-ups, re-genres & re-cuts' (being 'thetrailermash.com site) where films such as The Shining and Marry Poppins had their geners (e.g horror to romance, children to horror) completely re-produced by consumers for public consumption were really entertaining, clever and gave us a good laugh.
Here is the example of Marry Poppins being edited as horror film:




Finally we had an example of a short film that was made entirely from mobile phone footage and I though it was not just a really insightful film (due to the strong messages) but you wouldn't have thought it to be produced from a small phone camera. The fast edited clips were put together really well, I was quite impressed!

Here is the film below. Reference: Tropfest NY Winner: 'Mankind is no island'