Project 4

For the final project I decided to drop the watercooler idea, its not because it was a bad idea, it is because I don't have the Ideas and resources to create another 10 video blogs for the site. Creating the 1st 10 was hard enough.

For my next project (working together with Jeff's Idea) I decided to create a new site, a site where people come together and complain. Complain about their stupid lives, complain about surroundings, complain about anything you want. For the site I am planning to launch a show aswell that will be on the group portal site. This show will consist of Me and other people complaining about the most random stuff. Sounds fun? it sure will be

Updated WaterCooler

The way I integrated my Video Blogs to the site is that I have added a Video Section, as well as an Upload a Video to the business gossip section, giving people a chance to upload their own videos.

When a user clicks on the video section the blogs are divided into 4 sections, all 4 sections are clearly explained before the user clicks on them.

The videos uploaded very between explaining my thoughts on water cooler, behind the scenes, history as well as examples of user submitted blogs (Confession Section) and a couple of video tutorials letting people know how to upload their own content (tutorial section).

All videos on watercooler can be commented on and also discussed.

All videos are up

All 10 video blogs + 1 Podcast are up on my site now, The video blogs are split into 4 parts, all 4 parts have a separate RSS feed.

The Section Orientation are supposed to be these crazy slides giving people in depth information about watercooler.

The section Tutorials are so people can learn how to use the site.

the section Promotions are little videos promoting the site

The section confessions is a place for user submission, but I made 2 example blogs of what they should look like.

I think making these 10 blogs were really tough compared with what I had to work with, I really want to change the concept for my next site if it is all possible

YAY

I seem to have figured out how to upload video blogs to multiple pages on water cooler, so they are all nicely split up and easy to navigate. All blogs are under the videos section of the site.

update

An update on my video blogs, I decided to split them up into 4 different blog types on my website, they are:

Tutorials

Commentaries

Confessions

Promotions

They are all different types of blogs, and users are all free to upload to any blog they wish to, all the blogs will have a different theme to keep them fresh and interesting, I wanted to make sure they don't become repetitive.

I am just not too sure I will be able to get 10 done before Monday, it will take a maricle.

If only I picked a better site to do blogs on : (, I wish I had a time machine, I have 100's of ideas that would suit video blogs, next time I should read ahead...

Project 3 Concept

It was very hard to come up with a concept, since it is very hard to actually crate video blogs for my project 2 site. At the end I decided to create a missive ad campaign for my site as the video blogs. Trying to create a brand name for my site.

This idea also goes well with my gossip satire concept, the reason is because now days making gossip and reading gossip is glamorized by TV ads and media.

Almost Finished

The sit is almost finished, the address is: http://ozosil.com/watercool/

Just a recap that the site is a cultural Satire on people's hunger and obsession on hearing about gossip on people they never met, the site is driven on user generated content.

Joomla it is!

after playing around with wordpress, I found that joomla is the best way to go to make my sit happen. The site is on track I added a forume and I also added a section where people can post their own work place stories!

This is getting a little crazy!

After Silverstripe failed on me 4 times I decided it was time to move on... 1st stop was Joomla, Joomla to me is a pretty solid platform, but due to the Limited possibility for user created content and also too much garbage on screen, I decided to move on and try word press. Wordpress is simple, but the main problem is that you cant have users creating blogs, you can only have 1 person posting blogs (the admin) and the community can only comment on what people have posted. Which just wont work for me.

I did some research and found this thing called WordPress MU, what this does it that it allows people to create new blogs on your blog, thus expanding the possibility of building a large community of users and blogs. I am going to research this further.

Change of concept

So last night I decided that I had no interest what so ever in my last concept, so i decided to come up with a new one that I have at least some interest in.

This new concept is called the "watercooler". The site is going to be a cultural satire on people's obsession when it comes to gossip on people we have never met especially celebrities. that will hopefully be made with user generated content.




The site is intended to be a place where people come to share gossip on workmates, companies and other work related back chat. So instead of hearing the crap that Paris Hilton been up to, why not hear about the crap your fellow workmates have been up. Even better yet, share your own work place back chat anonymously. Its all good!

Reading

From the reading I decided to write about the quote "In a world that has really been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood". This was the quote that made the most sense to me.

To me when you say "a world turned on its head" that usually refers to world in chaos or the confusion or war.

To me this quote refers to the confusion of war, where both sides have their own views and opinions about politics and other issues. Sometimes its hard to say who is right and who is wrong, which side is good and which one is evil. This is because both sides have propaganda and mass media it can sometimes be hard to find what is true and what is not.

This can be related to the IRAQ war today, where there are more than one opinions, like "should the invasion have taken place" and "has the war been justified". But from all these opinions its sometimes hard to find momentary truth.

The idea... now

My idea is a satire look at how people culturally precieved the future around 30+ years ago, and I will relate these perceptions on how they stand up today. This is too see how well people could predict the future.

Back on track

Ok after weeks of trouble with silver stripe I believe I am finally back on track. I decided to stick with silverstripe because i have suffered way too much with it to just completely give it up now!

Final Thoughts

Please read the post before this for detailed information about my video.

Overall I am really pleased with my video, I really like it, and I don't rally say that about all my projects. I think it stands up really well to other peoples submitted videos.

I am a little disappointed that due to the low video quality of Youtube, my video has lost some of its visual style on straycinema.com, I just wish i could of uploaded my DV quality movie, oh well.

All the movies submitted were really different and I think that is what straycinema is all about, different takes on the same raw material.

Thats a wrap!

I finally finished my short clip for project 1. Let me explain the movie a little, the movie is about exploring, experimenting and also our perception of our surrounding environments. I choose a more playful theme then the obvious horror that the raw footage might have suggested.

For the visuals I went for late 1800 and early 1900 cinema projection look, back than filming moving images was a brand new thing, so it was an era of experimenting with the potential of Film.

The movie is called "perspektíva egy másik nézetrol" which is in Hungarian. I would tell you what the title means in English, but I wont... The reason behind that is I really want to go against the western philosophy of dubbing cinema, When it comes to movies I think if we cant understand or read something, that was the way it was meant to be, but if we really want to know, we would get out and find out the meanings for ourselves. Also it adds a mysterious aspect to the film : ) So that is the story behind the title.

Well I could go on ALL DAY with other details about the movie, but I dont want to bore people any longer, here it is, Please Enjoy:



Also its wise to note that the quality of the footage took a big hit when I put it into Youtube, so it may have lost some of the visual appeal, its always best to view the FULL res version.

Response to "Remix and Remixability"

In the blog article "Remix and Remixability" by Lev Manovich, the concept behind "remixing media" is looked at in a modern and historical sense.

There was alot of things I found interesting about the article, one was looking at the concept of taking media from different sources to make something new. The other interesting aspect was looking at how "remixing" was used throughout history, and how it relates to new media of today.

I did feel that the article did not go in depth about remixing media and copyright issues, because these days of course almost every business and professional designer is trying to protect their intellectual property and re mixing can of course cause copyright infringements.

The pitch...

Here is the pitch for the visual style of my project 1 film.

First I want to state the inspirations I will use for the film so the reader can get a visual sense of what the film will look like.

My inspiration for the project is Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) which is a very inspirational short film made in 1903. This was one a very 1st films ever made that actually had narrative, and I really like the films visual style that was created by the limitations of film back in 1902 and the fact that the actions of the characters tell the movie's narrative and not the speech.

Below is the whole film, Really worth a Look!

Part1


Part2



For my straycinema project I will be using an old style film visual look, because since sound was not provided with the footage I think that people relate to silent films of early cinema where story was told by actions and music.

Without giving too much away, my film will be about exploration and people's perception of their surrounding environment.

Response to the article Data Wars

The article Data Wars by Josh Mchugh was interesting because it explored copyright issues and questions of ethics when it comes to "web2.0" and user generated content on the web.

Because the fact that the whole user generated content, scraping and also web 2.0 became popular in a very short amount of time, ethics, rules, and copyright has not been defined properly. While some sites do encourage using scraping to expand on the user experience and also to get more traffic, but on the other hand some sites condemn the whole idea and are prepared to fight for what is rightfully theirs.

Looking at the footage

I spent some time reviewing the raw footage from straycinema.com taking notes and trying to figure out what to do with the footage...

First Post

Last year we got an introduction to alot of software, some useful and some are not. While the time spent with using these software were quite minimal. This year I am hoping to build on the knowledge of some of the software learn last year and also to maybe learn about new software and also tools.