Methodology Reflection

Methodology Reflection

Hi guys, this will be my final blog for this module!! I’m nearly finished with my first semester in college, crazy how time flies. Today I will be reflecting on my past mission in methodology.

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Overall I didn’t enjoy this mission, and I didn’t think it went too well. As a team, we worked well and I think we tried really hard, but it was just hard to actually make our vision come to life. We put a lot of effort and time into it. I edited the video and it was a real struggle that took me a long time and in the end, it didn’t even look good. I learned that editing is hard and I don’t know how people can do it as a living, maybe I’ll have to practise some more but it really just frustrated me. I have edited videos before using the same programme and I really didn’t find it as hard so I’m really not sure what happened. It’s probably down to the fact I wasn’t in the other video and I was in this. I just didn’t think it was great. Maybe the fact that this was for a grade too and the other was for fun and to upload to YouTube. I think the fact that I didn’t really enjoy the topic of digital journalism like I originally thought I would. I probably should’ve gone with mapping and did something fun with that. But at the time of picking a mission, I thought digital journalism would be best. I learned that digital journalism is hard, we were going to pick two real topics to report on but we couldn’t find two that were funny and yet interesting, that is why we made two up. I learned that my creative blocks are hard to get through and made it so hard to come up with good things to do for the video. I spent so long trying to come up with something we could do but I just couldn’t get it. We went very wrong with the video, I misread some things and didn’t realise we were meant to state some stuff at the start about our project and what it was and definitions. So that’s why they’re not there, I just didn’t realise. The success of the project was definitely finishing it and having a final video. I was stressed about it trying to finishing it and then editing it and adding music and everything. The failures, as I have stated, was also the finished video, it definitely wasn’t up to scratch for the assignment and watching some of the other videos made me realise that. But we did get it done and uploaded in time which not everyone did that so I am proud of that I guess. We really tried, it wasn’t our best work but we did try. I will definitely start any projects I get in the future as soon as I get them as stressing to get it done and put in the hours of work while leaving yourself short isn’t fun. 

That’s all from me now, this is the final blog so I probably won’t be back,

Thanks for reading,

Megan

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The Product of the Methodology Mission

Product

Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog, in this post I will be talking about the product from my methodology mission. As I had previously stated I’m in a group with Anna and Lougein! We started off well and we all hit it off well. We were struggling to come up with a good idea, we wanted to make it good but funny. We brainstormed for hours really, we just couldn’t figure it out, just as there were so many different routes we could take this. We narrowed it down to two ideas finally. It was between writing a news piece on the same story but everyone writes it in a different form of digital journalism and then we make the video showing this, or we parody a YouTube news video about celebrity gossip and we act to be the celebrities as well. We ended up picking the parody of the YouTube news video.

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Then we were left with picking the topics and if we were going to be real news or just made-up news. We thought it would be funnier if we picked fake news or news that we thought would happen in the future. So we had to make up the news stories then, we wanted funny ones that people would get straight away. We ended up choosing a story about the video coming online about Kylie Jenner being pregnant with her 9^th baby and Linsey Lohan breaking down and cutting her hair. We tried for funny but I don’t really think it came out through the video, but hey at least we tried.

When we finally decided on that we went on to think about how we were going to set the video up and even a script. We quickly scrapped most of the script as it didn’t seem genuine. So we talked about what each of us could say and just to keep going with it so it wouldn’t seem so fake. We had to use our own clips for the mission so Lougein offered to dress up as both Kylie Jenner and Linsey Lohan. On the day we were filming Lougein brought in wigs and extra clothes and I brought in my camera and we were all set to film. We found a free room in the college and set up in there. We borrowed a tripod from Danniella, this meant we could prop the camera up and we could sit in front of it around the table. We started with the scenes of Kylie and Linsey as we thought once we had them filmed we could actually react to them rather than trying to make it up beforehand. It would flow more naturally after we film it and have seen it. So we filmed the Kylie video outside and pretended she was leaving her house, and we filmed the Linsey video inside the room we were using. After we had that done we sat down to record the actual video. This was difficult as we kept messing up or after we had it filmed it didn’t seem right so we filmed it a few times and just hoping for the best at the end each time. Finally, we had one we were happy with and we decided to go with that.

Editing the video proved very difficult and the three of us weren’t too knowledgeable on editing. I seemed to have the most knowledge which isn’t a lot so we all tried to do our bits, I did a lot of it and hopefully, it came out okay. We added all the clips together and then added backing music and intro music to make it seem like a news show. We recorded a bit of the process during editing and we added that to the video too and even added a little voiceover over the editing part. That is basically the whole video!

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I hope everyone enjoyed this blog post, I will not be posting the video as I’m far too embarrassed, hahaha sorry. 

Thanks for reading

Talk soon,

Megan

Process of Methodology

Process

Hello and welcome to my blog!! This post I’m going to talk about the process for my latest and final mission for Intro to Digital Media which is Methodology.

I’m not too sure what to expect from this mission. None of the choices jumps out of me like the last two missions. With the last two, each time one jumped out at me each time, because I enjoyed the topic. I ended up going with Digital Journalism as I thought it would be the best for me. I am in a group with two girls from group 5, Anna and Lougein. We had all picked Digital Journalism and had similar ideas so we said we’d go together and see what we came up with. My goals for this mission is to do the best I can. I don’t have much experience editing videos and Digital Journalism isn’t my best subject but I hope I can make it work. Another goal of mine is to learn all about Digital Journalism. I think this would be good knowledge to have as you never know when you could use it again. I hope we make a good video and I hope it’s entertaining and funny. I think it is going to be hard to achieve this, I have many ideas in my head but to actually have it come alive is going to be hard. I’ve seen so many YouTube videos with cool editing and would love to be able to add that to the video as I think it would really stand out. I’m not sure how to do anything like that though, so we will see what I can learn quickly. It would be great if one of the other girls I’m in the group with could edit, that way we would be able to add cool things and she would know what she’s doing. There are loads of different recourses we can use for this mission. Obviously, Premiere Pro to make the video, then there are so many different things at the tips of our fingers. YouTube would have so many videos on digital journalism and examples of digital journalism. We could go with that kind of route for our video, or maybe even write up a piece each on the same news story from different angles. There really are loads of ways we can go at this, I’m very excited to get into it fully and see what we come up with. I am very nervous though as I have said it’s definitely not in my comfort zone, but I will just have to push on and hopefully produce the best that I can. I’m excited to work with two new people that I haven’t worked with before, it’s very interesting to see how close you can get to someone by doing a project with them. Every group I have been with have all been completely different, so it’s good to explore this and get used to working with people! 

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Overall I’m very excited to do this mission and I hope everything works out for us and we can figure this out and produce the best video we are capable of.

Thanks for reading, 

Talk soon,

Megan :)

Culture Mission Reflection

 Hi, guys!

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This mission really did open my eyes, especially about the downsides to YouTube. I knew there were downsides, as every social media has but I didn’t think much into it.  Overall though, I think I did learn a lot doing this research and presentation. I did actually research into vlog styles too and seeing about cameras and everything. I decided to just use my phone to vlog as I didn’t want to carry around my big camera, it was very big and I was afraid I would’ve dropped it. I also learned that these types of things are much easier when you actually have an interest and a previous knowledge on the topic! 

As I researched the downside to YouTube is the whole situation of monetization. YouTube really need to find a better technique to sort out what is “advertiser” friendly and what is not! Some of the words that get you instantly demonetized are very strange. Obviously, some make sense and that’s fine but words like Brazil, Gays and New Zealand are just a bit strange. I don’t see why they would be instantly flagged as not advertiser-friendly. But this is down to the software (bot) they use, it sees a word and instantly thinks it’s bad. Obviously, you can get this problem looked at if you think your video is advertiser-friendly, but you have to hit a certain amount of views in the next 24 hours for an actual person to look at this. 

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I think I could’ve done a bit more, especially down to the fact I kept forgetting to vlog. I think if I was to vlog more of my day and give better content. Hopefully, though our class will enjoy our video and think it’s good. It’s hard to tell how a video will do until you actually see how it does. I think this is down to being your own worst critique. I think if I started a bit earlier it would’ve been better and I wouldn’t have rushed. I didn’t rush too much but still at points I was stressed trying to do everything at once. 

I think the three of us in the group worked well together. We didn’t argue about anything and everything was clear on what to do from the get-go! We all agreed on what to do straight away, so I’m very happy about that. It honestly could’ve gone horribly as none of us was friends before this started and I really didn’t know anything about them apart from their names before this. I think this is a great opportunity to get to know people. 

Although there are downsides to YouTube it obviously has its perks, getting paid to post a video of you having fun and just showing people your day really is great. It’s not the best money but what do you expect? I also learned a lot about the history of YouTube, I use the app daily but really didn’t know much about it's passed except for YouTubers who have been posting for years, almost since the beginning of it. 

Overall, I am very happy with all the work and I hope you can see the hard work I’ve put in between the blogs, the slides, the video and the reflection. I do think I have done better in this than the last mission and hopefully, in the next mission, I can do even better again!  

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Thanks for reading!!

Talk soon, 

Megan

YouTube Update

Hi Guys!

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A little update about the YouTube presentation. So we decided as a group that we would each film a day in our lives at college and make a video with all three of us in it. So this post will be all about the video and what we did and what we're gonna do. 

So I started off my day as normal but of course, I had to vlog every minute of it, well, try to anyway. A vlog is a genre of YouTube videos, it is short for a video blog. You can have a sit-down vlog, a daily vlog, and many others! Basically, you’re just telling the camera about stuff that happened or you’re bringing your camera around with you and filming your day. This is what we decided to do, we thought it would be very interesting to show our daily lives to people. Even for each other to see how our day varies. Yes, we are in the same course and class so all our classes are the same but that could be the only thing we have in common. 

I wasn’t very good at vlogging, I kept forgetting to film. When I did remember to film it was usually in places I couldn’t just whip my phone out and start talking to it. I really think though this mission brought me out of my comfort zone. Before doing this I would never even think about vlogging in public. It is a scary concept to me, people look at you like you’re crazy just sitting/walking-talking to your phone and filming yourself hahaha. So the times I did vlog was in the morning, as I was leaving for the bus, at lunch, on the train home and when I got home that evening. Thursday (which was when I filmed the vlog) was the busiest day I could’ve picked, we were off Friday in college due to the graduations being held so I was going back home to Roscommon straight after college. So, of course, I forgot to vlog after college and didn’t remember to vlog again until I was on the train home. I tried to get a bit of footage while on the train and it was packed with people so it was the best I could do hahaha.

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I did gain a bit of confidence while doing it though, I just had to realize who cares what people think. You’re doing this and you’re having fun which I think is the main thing. I also kind of felt like what it would be like to be an actual YouTuber. Obviously on a smaller scale but still felt it. 

I’m very happy I picked this topic and I’m happy I had to pair up with people I didn’t speak to before this as it added something different to it. I’m nervous but excited to see how the presentation goes on Wednesday morning. I’m very nervous to see how the video turns out and if people like it or think it’s silly. But hey, we tried our best and put our all into it and that’s all that matters. 

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Thanks for reading,

Talk soon,

Megan.

YouTube Presentation

Hi guys!!

This is a little blog post about our new intro to digital media mission!! This mission is "culture", I decided to pick the topic YouTube. I decided this because I love YouTube and I watch many videos on the platform daily, far too many to actually count hahaha! I love how you can connect with people over a simple video, it is honestly amazing. I also love how people can literally go from nothing to being one of the biggest people on the planet. You can post a simple video on YouTube of you singing and the next thing you know your new album is top of the charts. This has happened to so many people including Justin Bieber. It is such a powerful platform. The quality of videos on it nowadays is incredible some are basically like Hollywood films, people are so talented and it's great they have a platform to show this off in. So because of all this, this is why I chose this mission. 

David Dobrik - Famous Youtuber with 14.7 million subscribers. image from dailydot

As I have said I adore YouTube, but not everything about it is a good thing. The main thing in this mission that I want to look into and do my part of the presentation is about monetization. Monetization is basically making money by posting videos on YouTube. YouTube puts advertisements onto the videos you post and that generates money. But they can also take the advertisements off, this is called demonetization. This happens when YouTube think your video isn't suitable for advertisements. This has been known to cause a lot of controversies as it is a software that decides if your video is suitable or not. Of course, we know you can’t always trust computers to do human work. So what has happened is that the software is demonetizing videos that shouldn’t be demonetized including a lot of LGBTQ+ videos. This has come under a lot of fire. So I wanted to bring more attention on this and research more into it and I thought this was the perfect opportunity. So I researched a lot into this and of course since the topic is on YouTube a lot of them were YouTube videos that I watched. I came across this video of a guy who went and tested all the words that can get you monetized or demonetized. The list of words are very strange, using words like North Carolina and South Carolina in your title or description will get your demonetized whereas North Korea won’t. Which to be fair doesn’t really make sense. Not sure what North or South Carolina ever did to YouTube hahaha. This guy tested so many words and he put them all into an Excel type of document and listed them below the video, so I did go through the whole list which was a lot of words. I just found it very interesting to read and try to understand why this is happening.

It wasn’t too hard to find the research because of the YouTube algorithm suggests videos like ones you’ve watched as to watch next. So without realizing I was in a binge-watching of all these videos but were all very interesting and brought up very valid points. So yes, YouTube can be used as a new way of expressing your creativity but it does have a bad side and of course this is only a minor thing really there is also the whole algorithm, where YouTube hasn’t been showing people new videos from certain topics at all, frankly they’re topics that need to be discussed too, like mental health and LGBTQ+ topics to name a few. I do believe though that this can get better and I really think it will, especially when people are raising their voices about the topic!

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Thanks for reading, and as always I’ll update you all soon on how this is going!!

Talk soon, 

Megan

Creativity Reflection

Hi guys!! 

This is the reflection of my creativity mission!! 

Overall I’m happy with how we did, I think we worked well as a team and did good work. I think I probably could’ve put a bit more of creativity into it but as it was my first I was unsure of different ways to do it. I did really like the GIFS I made and how I put everything together. I think maybe if we just did a little more with GIFs or even just the layout it would’ve been better! I did actually learn a lot from doing this presentation. For example, I didn’t know anything about the legal status of a GIF until doing research into it. Reading all about it actually made it interesting and usually I wouldn’t have much of an interest in anything like the legal status but because it was to do with GIFs, which I use and really enjoy I think that’s why I actually enjoyed learning about it and actually took it in. I didn’t realise how easy GIFs were to make, obviously, it’s way different than a few years ago but websites literally do it for you all you have to do is get a video and select the seconds. I’m sure when they were first made it wasn’t even close to how easy it is now. The success of the project was definitely how good all three of us worked together. It was so natural and we didn’t fight or argue and everyone really pulled their own weight which was nice! We definitely make a good team and if I get to pick who I work with in the future I would definitely consider working with Lauren and Danniella again! Another success would have to be learning a lot about GIFs but also using my existing knowledge especially how they’re used on social media sites. It was very useful having existing knowledge about GIFs as I was able to use it a lot and even to help Lauren and Danniella out with their slides and point them in the right direction. As I said I would’ve loved to do something more creative and added more to the presentation but I did struggle with ideas, but this is my first mission so I will use everything I learned in this mission for the future ones in hopes it’ll make them all much better. My friend's group are adding a video and I think that is such a good idea and I’d say it’ll work very well if only I had thought of that first. But again it is the first presentation and first proper written and research involved assignment of college so it is a big step and overall very proud of it all, hopefully, by the end of this four-year course, I can come back to this, my first presentation and still be proud of it but have lots more ideas on how I could improve it. It would be great to see and it would really be a tell on how far I’ve come and how much I’ve learned!! 

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Thanks for reading!! Talk soon,

Megan