Mission 1; Blog 2

Final Product

Within this broad topic there were many ideas and concepts that seemed interesting or enticing to me at first but each failed for their own different reasons ranging from a lack of motivation in the idea due to lack of interest or lack of resources to create them, though I did make a few attempts at most of them.

After A LOT of trial and error and experimenting and failing with multiple ideas and concepts I finally landed upon the idea of splicing scenes from some of my recent favourite media to spread their message and impact in a more condensed form which happened to align with the political media content that I had become interested in. My two main paths for this concept were to either create a striking mashup that juxtaposed the two medias such serious scenes from the Netflix Series "When They See Us" over a song such as Bo Burnham's parody country song "Pandering" or to create a serious piece to accentuate the message of both medias involved such as in the film "The Hate U Give" by placing it's scenes over Childish Gambino's "This is America". As seen from the presentation I chose to do the latter as though I found the former idea interesting the latter was more effective and appropriate.

Finalising my choice then led me to the slight problems of having little to no editing experience, a barely functioning laptop, and no editing software. The laptop problem didn't go away but it also didn't stop me and luckily I found a really good free editing software online called Lightworks.

Learning how to edit on this new software was quite difficult but through a mixture of the included tutorial, online searching and a lot of trial and error, I eventually mustered a basic enough understanding of the software to complete the task I had set for myself.

The next step in the process was to collect all the media I needed for the project. Due to the academic purpose of the project I sourced my media off of YouTube downloads. I gathered most of the media before beginning the editing process but due to the trial and error nature of my process I continually sourced media throughout the editing process.

Final Video

The Hate Given In America

This is the final cut of the Music Video which I titled "The Hate Given In America"

Presentation

The following images are the slides which I had created for the presentation and their Speaker Notes 

 This was just a quick definitions slide

Speaker Notes: With things such as protest art there is a problem with copyright  when pieces become too viral and are picked up by large companies or even individuals who monetise the designs of independent artists. Many of these artists actually share their designs online so that others can use them for protesting but are turned off by the risk of this monetisation.

Many of these artists are independent artists thus dealing with these copyright cases are a massive endeavor that could cost them A LOT. Difficult to contact foreign companies.

There's no direct laws to deal with the modern problems which these artists face. A bit of progress such as Free guide by Harvard University’s Cyberlaw Clinic and metaLAB for American Artists facing such problems.

Copyright is granted to the artist upon creation of their work and they have the right to exercise it from that point on

Fair Dealing is the generic exceptions that almost everyone knows surrounding copyright

1. Research/Private Study
2. Criticism/Review
3. Reporting Current events (Film/Broadcast)
4. Incidental inclusion
5. Public Pieces such as public sculptures

With all these exceptions sufficient credit must still be given.

 This slide stated the unused or failed ideas as to show the trial and error process of my project.

 This final slide was a preface before I showcased the final Video

Mission 1; Blog 1

Process

At the beginning of this mission I had initially decided to do Creative Coding but then became enticed by Adaptation, Mashups, & Remixes. I joined an existing group doing Adaptation, Mashups & Remixes but then encountered the challenge of narrowing down a specific task to take on within this broad topic.

As Cian and I discussed the Mission we seemed to land on a common ground of political media although we both also have our own unique ideas which we want to entertain. Our goal is to collaborate to expand our knowledge on Adaptation, Mashups, & Remixes and to create and experiment with many different forms of them.

I have been entertaining the idea of several different sub-genres of content and have been enticed by several of them such as:

• Pecha Kuchas, which fellow group member Cian introduced me to. Which are a form of editing which originated from presentations which involves composing your video/presentation of several unique slides/clips, each of restricted but equal length, and arranging them to fit within a certain time-frame, commonly one minute.
• Political Memes/Edits, especially Spongebob Squarepants edits due to their popularity and the availability of clips
• Remixing old War posters to highlight modern problems
• Using juxtaposing media to accentuate the impact or message of the other

I have trialled a few of these ideas but am yet to be completely satisfied with any of them so far though I am developing deeper interests in some of them. I have also encountered a few problems with resources such as some of my ideas being out of my own skill-set or a lack of assets in relation to and idea which I can access. Although, obviously, most of my time has been spent thinking of and trialling ideas, a fair amount of it was spent searching for assets that I could actually use for the ideas I was actually trying to create.

After quickly reviewing some laws on copyright I have come to the conclusion that I should be fine to employ some media from the internet such as YouTube clips or songs as long as I do not use them for monetary purposes or share them outside of the educational/classroom environment.

So far in my trialling I have become interested in the creation of political satire and may pursue it further but am completely open for my interest to develop and for my ideas to adapt to the resources that become available to me.