Chris Ang's Resume

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Chris Ang's Resume

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Media Industries 2 

Self Assestment

For This Seminar project, I've chosen to join the group that caters to the events industry. Having Previous experience in the Music and events industry and my interest to join the events industry in the future, this group proves to be the ideal group for me to work with. 

Contribution and collaboration

From the start I went around to discuss with school mates and previous group mates from Media Industries 1, my interest in the events sector and thus forming a dynamic group. Clare O'donnell was elected the executive producer for the group as she was the most proactive and vocal among the members, I went ahead and took on the role of Technical Director due to my previous experience in events management and also due to the fact that i own and run an events company back in singapore that deals with a lot of technical support relating to events. During the planning phase, I contributed to Ideas of organizing the main event itself, from the marketing, advertising and promotion of the seminar to the operations of the seminar itself. I also gave advice to other group members, especially clare, on how to manage and run an event and briefed the members on their roles and responsibilities of the event itself. The group was very dynamic to work with and my ideas were taken very positively and no disputes were present during all our meetings. 

One of my main responsibilities was to organize the equipment needed for the event itself, I came up with a list and ran through it with the Techs to work out equipment that is available for loan. I brought down my own equipment to reenforce the setup. 

I also aided Clair Renehan in the audio recording of the seminar, helping her setup the recording devices and wiring the entire setup on the day itself. 

I setup, sound-checked, mixed and coordinated all technical aspects relating to live sound , visuals , lights and sound recording on the day itself. 

I also Prepared the visual cues and designed all the slides that was shown on the seminar day itself as well as did the video playbacks of showreels. 

The lighting cues (stage and audience) were also coordinated by me.

The main issue for our group was the short time of 2weeks that we had to prepare the seminar. I believed my experience in events management helped eliminate all problems relating to the operations and I am happy that my group trusted this all on me. 

Proactive Learning

I've learnt a lot during the short process of organizing this seminar. Back in my company in singapore, I had the luxury and comfort of using state-of-the-art equipment for live shows and events. Most of the time I would have ample time for the planning and coordination of an event. In this case, a limited inventory of equipment was available from the tech store and i had to use what i have , access the situation and make the best out of it to produce a show with as much professionalism as we can achieve. In the process, I learnt to work with speed and accuracy, and learnt valuable communication skills with my group mates that allowed us to produce this seminar in such a short time. What we've learnt from this experience extends way beyond the four walls of the classroom as we have to get in though with industry professionals and apply our PR skills. Much my learning in this process was self motivated and unsupervised and had to take a lot of responsibility in delivering the work to my fellow group mates. A lot of good advice was given to us by out tutors but it was up to us to take the advice and transform it into reality.

Participation

During the planning stage, I participated in all the meetings and classes. I was there during the seminar itself to run the event. However I was not physically present during the postproduction as I was not needed to be physically present and my group mates involved in the post production was fully trustable to come up with a good job. I did give comments and inputs for the post production work and offered my assistance to any technical issues but it all was smooth sailing. During the meetings, I believe i contributed a fair amount and did engage thoroughly throughout the meetings. even though I was an international student and have limited contacts in melbourne, I contributed by contacting 2 of my contacts, Louis Chan from Fling Entertainment & Daniela Djuric from BigBang&Fuzz to attend the seminar. regretfully both of them were unable to attend due to commitments on the seminar days itself. I am glad that my effort was appreciated by my group mates. 

Lists of responsibilities:

-Organizing and booking of equipment with the Techs

-Setting up/ tearing down of All sound Equipment

-Mixing and running the sound during seminar

-Coordinating Lightings

-Visual cues

-Creation of Visual slides

-Music playback

-coordinating of event

-Recording of sound

-involvement in Planning and facilitating

-general operations

Connections & Intersections

The value of these seminar series lies in 3 things, The opportunity of meeting industry professionals, The opportunity to work with group mates that are potential industry partners int he future and the learning opportunity when placed with such tasks and responsibility. 

When in this process, I discovered the importance of People skills. One can be really good at what he/she does, but if no one wants to work with him/her, the chances of success are relatively low. Interactions within the group is very important as it is important to leave a good impression of good working attitude and strong sense of responsibility to your group mate as you might never know who you will be working with in the future. Networking is upmost important in this industry and also in almost any industry, it's people whom you want to impress and it's people tha will give you the opportunities you want in life. 

In this process i learnt that I have the confidence to manage things. I like to work with flair and failure is not an option. I learnt that I can work under pressure when i am confident and when i am not confident about something, I make sure I end up know enough to be efficient enough. In the future, I believe that this trait I have is important for development in career.

If I am confident in what i do, People tend to trust me more. And when someone trust me, I get that job.

Self Assessment Grade : 90% HD.

I give myself this grade because I believe I not only did my part as a Technical Director, I went beyond my responsibilities to ensure a smooth sailing seminar. 

and also in the words of Clare , "we couldn't have done it without you"

PS:I hope i didn't sound too over the top like trying to sell myself as a product.

Media Industries 2 , Seminar Critique.

Seminar #2 - Melbourne Hub.

Firstly I must say that our own group did set a bench mark for other groups to follow, we're very proud of that and had indeed worked hard for it. 

The Publicity material for this group is quite good. It enticed me to actually turn up and the facebook group was quite informative. As I am interested in events management and music festivals, the guest speaker from  Future Entertainment attracted me alot and i feel that what he had to say was very relevant to my interests. There is a very nice spread across the media industry, in terms of choice of guests invited: TV, Events and Digital media. Thumbs up for that one!

Upon approaching the Seminar room, We were greeted by an assortment of refreshments and sweets for us to eat during the seminar. There was even a Channel 9 Pen for everyone to write with! that was very thoughtful of the group and also helped channel 9 to do a little bit of product placement. 

The flow of the Seminar went pretty well, with the guest each coming up individually to introduce themselves and showcase their work and after that sit down together for a panel discussion about the different industries. I must say that all the guests speak with upmost relevancy to the topic of the seminar and the MC was very professional in asking questions. It was an enjoyable seminar and very informative. 

How ever, The Sound setup was rather sloppy , with messy wires crossing the stage. The Tech provided   Dynamic microphones together with small table top mic-stands which caused a distant between the speaker and the mic resulting in a bad pickup. there were a number of feedback sounds during the seminar but it did not really compromise with the clarity of the dialogues. 

All and all i gave this seminar a Distinction, for the appropriate guests and relevant topics and the professional MC. 

Seminar #5 - Indie Online

The Indie Online group have the nicest Poster ever. It suits the theme too, the drawing being very "indie" looking. It definitely caught my attention and interest to attend!

This group too, has a Facebook event Page that is Linked to the main "Media Industries Seminars" page.  I feel that the area that this group explored into is very important and interesting. Alot of Us choose Media studies because we want to get out of the 9-5 job routine. Alot of us want to be different and want to create our own things. whats better than starting an independent lable or production company and be self-employed. This seminar really caters to the budding entrepreneurs that are within our cohort, and the Panel is impressive too!

I am upmost impressed by the group's ability to interview Zack Klein or Vimeo, although it's only a recorded webcam interview, it's an honor to listen to what he has to say in our context. it is very informative to listen to what this successful entrepreneur has got to say for us.

The Seminar itself was pretty smooth flowing. with the panel engaged in a light hearted , yet informative conversation about the happenings in the independent media industry. Lots of tips and tricks to starting a business were given and it is really inspiring to learn that we can be our own bosses and creat our own content someday!

Once again the sound was not fantastic, but i can see ample effort put in to keep the quality of the seminar up. This Group deserves a High Distinction for the smoothness of the seminar and the excellent choice of Speakers and the nice publicity pior to the seminar.

Seminar #6 - Film & TV

Firstly I must say that the Poster is very eye catching an loud. The fancy colours and bold words gives an impression that the seminar will be fun and interesting to attend. This group also made use of social media to promote their seminar on top of just using posters and word of mouth. Facebook was once a gain proven to be the best medium for advertising, much of their seminar details could be found on their event site, which i was politely asked to attend. Although I'm most likely not looking into joining The film and TV industry when i graduate, i was enticed to attend this seminar to broaden my horizons. 

One of the reasons why i choose to attend is the impressive guest list of filmmakers and directors. The International guest, Jeremiah Oh, a director from singapore that was interviewed via a recorded webcast is one of my personal friends! The out look of the seminar itself was good. The refreshments were good and ample. Light music was played prior to the commencement of the seminar helps lighten the mood a little. 

However, when the seminar proper started, it was not as excellent as i thought it would be. The MC was inefficient and the guests seem to ramble on on insignificant topics. we can;t blame the guests as it's up to the group to brief the guests on what the seminar was about and it;s the MC's job to steer the guests back to the main topic of discussion. I wouldn't say they did a bad job, but i can see some room for improvement. The sound was bad though. most of the time I could not really make out what some of the softer speakers were saying and the feedback situation was quite bad. but all in all, they manage to pull it off and nothing seriously bad happened. However the lights in the room were too dim and it was impossible to take down notes during the seminar. 

I would give this group a Distinction, despite the setbacks. I can see effort being put in the pre-seminar activities and the effort to keep the seminar as interesting as it can be. 

PP2 Self assessment :Sonic profile, Sonic Exploration.

Throughout the course of PP2, I've definitely Learnt alot.
Some of these things I've learnt are academic and some of them are life skills and some stuff i didn't even expect I would learn!

I started out with confidence, thinking and knowing that I can kope with any situation with regards to Audio. Though my diploma trained me in Studio and recording sound, I worked in the Live sound field mostly; seldom touching the process of studio sound.
But, I was confident.
over confident.

Confidence can be a good thing, but when you fail to perform to your own expectations, it can be devastating.
I hate to blame it on equipment but i got no choice but to blame the zoom H2 and the dynamic mic i was issued. well, the fault was entirely mine as i could have put in more effort in booking out equipment that i'm more comfortable with, but instead, i was relaxed with the equipment as i was confident of my skills to use any equipment to record good sound. the one thing i've learnt is to not be over confident.
I should step back abit, take my time to access the situation and tighten loose ends.

My strengths are that I can produce content fast. solve problems fast.
but sometimes in that speed, i create more problems to solve.
Thats the characteristics of live sound engineers, to fix problems within a short period of time and to create a good show at face value, whereas a studio engineer's job is to nick pick at the very fine details to produce the finest job.

Lucky for me I realized it in time for sonic exploration. I believe I grew in the process of learning , to produce content that has a deeper meaning than just technical work.

After all the emotions and trail and error, I manage to produce a piece that had good reception from the class and Robbie. Taking in the advice of everyone and applying it to my work,  I believe that my work has touched the essence of this course.

This project means alot to me. Not only do i want to get a good grade and pass all the criteria of this project, I'm using this as a platform of self exploration and as a learning journey. I want to produce something that i can keep. something that is different from my other work. and this has motivated me to an extend.

Looking at fellow student's work, they all impressed me to a certain degree, how they put in ideas and methods that i would never think of in a million years. How they could grasp the intricacies of sound editing in such a short period. I am inspired to learn more and explore more.

Right now I'm still at the process of fine tuning the Sonic Exploration piece, and together with michelle and her unrestricted methods of doing things, I believe I've achieved what i've set out for. The goal of this piece is within sight and i'm proud of what i've done.

I would give myself a 8/10 for this course work. a HD.  judging from the effort i've put in and the emotions i've gone through and the feedback i've had from fellow students. Most importantly, from what i've learnt. A good project means nothing if i don't learn anything out of it.

thank you!

Sonic Explorations.

So, now We've done a rough cut of the sonic exploration piece and I've ventured deeper into the journey of "what is art."

During a previous discussion with robbie and Jess, I realised where my direction of the sound piece is going. Previously, I was quite, upset , by the notion of art . I wanted to Prove my point that There are no rules involved in art and that the results are based on the judgements of others.
Having talked to Robbie, I realized that by trying to break the conventional rules of sound and music, I boxed myself in with rules that i've written myself. I would have been working with the rule that i "have to break all the rule" that would not have made my piece flexible and i would cease to explore more into the subject matter.

In stead, i decided to have a through listen to all the fellow student's recordings and searched with an open mind on what inspires me. I did have an agenda, it is to extract each artist's notion of 'art' their explanation and justification of what art is in their own theory.

From the exercise, i realized that that is no empirical answer to "What is Art?". Art is not a thing, but i can be a thing. Art is not a subject, but it can be a Subject.
Art is any thing you want it to be and yet it can move away from what you want to define it to be.

Just like the questions "What is the meaning of life?" and "Why do we exist?" , "What is Art?" is not the correct question to ask.
As the Author , Douglas Adams , wrote in his books
 " Before you want to understand what the ultimate Answer is, You got to know what the Question is."

It is not the Answer I am searching for.
it's the question.

So, from here These are the revised ACTS within the Sonic exploration Project.

ACT1 - An experimental Music Piece set out to explore the percussive nature of tools and the studio enviroments.
ACT2 - Working on the Experimental music piece, Bits and piece of Artist's Take on 'Art' is edited in sequence in an attempt to search for the question that defines art.
ACT3 - And Abstract Soundscape of Percussive and vocally driven piece at an attempt to create a piece in search of Artistic value. This is not an attempt to answer the question posted, but an attempt to let listeners question this piece and formulate their own answers.

Chris & Michelle

OUTLINE

ACT 1

Ambient sounds and SFX taken from the recordings by fellow students to create a musical piece.

ACT 2

editing of interviews of artists , using their words as puzzle pieces and stringing it together and editing it to form other sentences. while using SFX as a backing track.

ACT 3

Using a combination of ALL possible sound in our sound bank and trying as much to NOT follow any rules of conventional sound editing. problems such as distortion, feedback, poping, sibilance, Haas effects, phasing, bad EQ, abrupt cutting , Lo-fi, basically every possible "mistakes" in the sound world will be incorporated together with a message; but still maintaining listenability. 

OBJECTIVE OF PIECE

In this piece we want to challenge what people think of 'Art' or 'music'. what do we call an artistic piece? and what do we discard of as junk? is there any line drawn between a bad piece of audio work and an experimental piece? 

Both of Us( Michelle and Chris) came with a background experience in editing sound. From the first day we learnt how to edit sound, we were taught a set of rules. Stepping outside the boundaries of those rule were deemed taboo , getting "good sound" and having a "good edit" has always been imbedded and drilled into us to an extend that we will discard most of these "bad sound" by instinct, without exploring weather these so called "mistakes" can actually become the essence of a piece. 

Throughout history many popular sound effect came from faulty equipment and 'mistakes' people make. The most popular guitar effect heard in rock songs all over the world came from an over driven signal which most engineers would regard as 'noise' back then. 

POSSIBLE OUTCOMES.

The piece will be broken down into 3 segments (or 'ACTS') which can be listened in anyorder as there are no rules , no structure.  

The Objective of this piece is to let the listeners judge it on weather this is 'Art' or 'junk'.We want them to Judge us because everyone's opinion and stand is different. 'Art' is how people judge the piece and to some it may be considered a good piece and to others they might think its a bad one. 

The outcome might differ for every listener and hopefully evoke a thought from there. 'what is considered art'

EPISODE 6

Thusdays With Chrisp!

(WOOOOooooOOOOoooOOOOooooOOOO)

This Thursday 2nd September 2010

9Pm Singapore time, 

11pm Melbourne time.

Broadcasting Live from Melbourne!

Playlist:

Impromptu.

Err.....I'm Atheist. Happy hungry ghost festival anyway!

By Chris Ang (yeah that homeclub guy...)

Download Podcast!

PP2 SONIC PORTRAITS

Since my last blog post, heaps of stuff had happened for PP2 Sonic portraits! I've met Geoffrey Barlett and he turned out to be an amazing person. outside the actual recording and interview, i talked to him about his views on art and he was interested in Singapore's political scene, so we had a long chat. 

During the chat, Geoff actually inspired me back to art. I was quite jaded for the longest time and actually proclaimed that i "hated" art or anything artistic. When i was young, i used to be in the singapore's young artist's club and was one of their student leaders, i paved my way to become an artist and was very interested in anything creative;thats why i enrolled for a diploma in film after high school. But somewhere along the way, I got too caught up in the technical aspects of stuff and got interested in sound. Also, in singapore, despite the massive amount of money spent in the arts, artists don't get the respect they deserve, yes people do respect and appreciate them but artists in singapore were not seen as doing anything 'real' 

I grew to believe that too but fail to realize that art plays avery very important role in society, culture and being human. 

After the chat with Robbie and Geoff, I learnt to embrace what i like again. to see things beyond their surface. This, of course, helped with my sonic portraits.

The recording for the interview was not fantastic. I was overconfident, despite the fact that i had not did field recording for over a year now. I used the zoom H2 and my own Sennheiser Dynamic microphone with a XLR to 3.5mm TRS adaptor that i made myself. the problem with the adaptor is that it's actually for use in events to send a stereo signals over an XLR cable to be converted back to a  stereo TRS  connection. that means for the XLR :pin 1 is gnu, pin 2 is left and pin 3 is right. but for a microphone's balanced signal , pin 1 is gnu, pin 2 is positive signal and pin 3 is a return terminal, which is usually a phase inverted signal to cancel out noise picked up.  to cut a long story short, my recording is out of phase. I knew i could solve this by taking out the right channel so i went ahead. haha. BUT, it could have been so so so so much better if the techs would have let me booked out the zoom H4, which have XLR inputs and a much better mic preamp.

Also, During the recording, i sound checked the signal using my voice and I was more worried about clipping than a bad signal. In fact, the levels on the H2 showed up good and i didn't think the floor waxing upstairs would serve as a problem as i'm only using a dynamic mic. furthermore, Geoff didn't apper to like having a mic near his face, so he talked away from it, it was quite fun trying to point the mic at his mouth ; like a game. 

The recording was not fantastic , but it was useable.

During the edit, I was thinking about how i could bring out the beauty of Geoff's work through this sound piece. So i have the idea of converting pictures of his sculptures into sound! By using a spectrogram we can view this images as a waveform. basically the sound waves will show up as something like this. 

original picture:

Spectrogram screen capture:

By doing this, the listeners subconsciously 'listens' to his works. Furthermore, The sounds produced by pictures have a random, futuristic sound , and fits nicely into the look of his works. 

All of us had already present our work in class and received plentiful of feedback from Robbie and the class. I does make me realize where i have gone wrong and in which areas i need improvement. One thing is , i added too much reverb to Geoff's dialogue and should chill on the effects, another thing is that i have to cut down the background music (which is basically the Am and Em chords on keyboard.) and use the music to compliment the narrative rather than to drive the emotions of it. I don't want to augment the original emotions that was already in Geoff's voice. I've got a bit of editing to do and need to remix the piece and clean up the edit and sound. 

I was advised to concentrate more on the Spectrogram sounds and use it as the main theme of the piece and work on it. now i got to find a way to vend it in so that it will be obvious when run through a spectrogram, but not obvious enough to overthrow the narrative. It's both challenging and fun and i sure learnt a lot from this project!

EPISODE 5 

Thusdays With Chrisp!

(The Patriot)

This Thursday 5th August 2010

9Pm Singapore time, 

11pm Melbourne time.

Broadcasting Live from Melbourne!

Playlist:

Impromptu.

We all <3 singapore for that one day don't we?.....

By Chris Ang (yeah that homeclub guy...)

Click here to listen!

Production Project 2 , Blog Reflection – Objectives

As we leave PP1 and Embark on a new journey into PP2, certain questions were raised as we venture through out learning journey.

This semester proves to be en exciting one as we are not being taught in the conventional "lecture-tutorial-exams" , instead we would be working hand in had with the McClelland Gallery 2010 Sculpture Survey Awards, this will be more like a job than a project and there is no room for failures! I can see that the gallery trust RMIT students enough to endorse us with such a personal encounter with the artists themselves.

Some of the areas that wish to look into are actually the Questions i need to ask the artists. I believe there doesn't seem to be a template around that we can follow and everything pretty much seems to depend on us to come up with. Well there are grey areas in this project, but also a lot of free space for us to expand on the creative side. Well most (in fact all) of the class have concerns on the technical side, like miking techniques and software, My concern is on the content side. I do hope we can work something out. while my classmates are taking crash courses on sound, I do wish to expand on the creative side of this project, I also wish to use a software that i am comfortable with, in fact, this may sound like a joke, but i am rather proficient in garageband. I like it so much that i stopped using cuebase and reason4 for my music production! HAHA All software works the same, you just gotta get used to the tools. 

Honestly, I have no idea what the final product would be like. I hope it will not be as boring as the audio projects i've came across online, there must be a way to make this vibrant and yet we must work bearing in mind that this project is not to show case our work, but to showcase the artists themselves. 

right now i'm recording sounds around the house as the first assignment. lets see what where we can go from here!

PP1 Final refections.

When we first enrolled into production project 1, I learnt what it is to be a social media producer.
we were asked questions about what social media is, what's new media, and learnt about  convergence culture. we were asked what a social media producer is and i reflected my thoughts in this blogpost http://pop-the-cherry.blogspot.com/2010/03/social-media-producer.html .

throughout the course, I start to get a better grasp of what being a social media producer is all about.
We were tasked to set out to promote a content site called pool.org.au featuring a creative group themed "MYTRIBE" which all of you must have heard about.

My initial goals were to find musicians to post content up on pool as my tutorial group's task is to create an audio clip to be featured on ABC's 360 documentary radio show. I thought that it would be a creative outlet for people to post their work, but i did not understand that what they were looking for is an interesting story, not music. a write up on my initial goals can be found here :
 http://pop-the-cherry.blogspot.com/2010/04/assignment-1-job-plan-what-network-or.html

initially, i was unclear of what this course will teach me, as i was suddenly tasked with alot of things to do and not many lessons. it's just like working. but after a while i come to realized that this is good. what i learnt from this course cannot be thought from school. we set out to create something together and learn how the social media world works and how fast it is changing. gone are the days where students sit in classrooms and wait for teachers to spoon feed them.  we are all preparing ourselves for a future that is unpredictable, jobs that yet to exist and to solve problems that are not yet problems. Hack, the term "social media producer" was not even heard of 5 years ago! many of the most sought after jobs now were not even around 10 years ago! So, my point is, I like what i learnt from this course, and that i see myself being more intune with the current media technology.

Another big assignment we have is 'Content Producer"

Many of you have probably heard about my flashmob event that is used to create awareness about our boardgaming project. Yes i know it's irrelevant. But isn't that life? Life itself is irrelevant. without the flashmob, not many people would know what we are doing. Content is a very important aspect of social media and viral marketing. thats how things or "memes" as richard dawkins (which i am a fan of) coined, get passed down by people. it's a people generated marketing tool. We needed something that people would care to share with their friends. not everybody is interested in looking at a buch of guys playing boardgames. I mean, they might get interested, but it;s not eye catching.
a flashmob is.
in two weeks, our video had generated over 100 views, and thats only on youtube, the video has been uploaded to many sites like pool, facebook, friendster, myspace video and personal blogs. It's the awareness that counts.
In this content producer project, I'm grouped with scott mitchell and elliot heatwole. though i dare say that most of the work is delegated and spearheaded by me. As all of you know, our project revolves around boardgaming in melbourne, shedding light on a group of dudes that get together every thursday to play boardgames.
I went down on many occasions to play boardgames with them as well as to interact with them to understand the boardgaming scene better. This helped me alot is gaining PR skills as i have to choose my words correctly and get them to like me and accept me as one of them before they get comfortable to share with me their thoughts.

you can check out our site here : http://boardgamersproject.wordpress.com/

My overall assestment for myself in PP1 is around 75% . I tried my best to pitch MYTRIBE on various radio programs , adopting the role of a social media producer. infact , i have to be a social media producer as well as a content producer for my own webcast. pool had been fun, and i posted some of my work on pool, the feed back i got was generally positive and constructive. But i realised that my original work is more popular than my remixes or other's work.
One of my song that got the most feedback, was featured in SIM -RMIT communication design's graduation showcase promo video.
you can see this video here : http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1348094056175&ref=mf
and their website: http://www.imquisitive.com/

you can also see my other works on pool here : http://www.pool.org.au/users/chrisp

getting my work used, (paid or not) is signs of success at being a content producer or a social media producer.

we are in a non-stop learning process in this ever changing industry. lets see what PP2 can bring us!

Production Project 2 Task description One – Studio Research and Development


KCSN 88.5fm art news interview with Robert Williams

Robert Williams is a very popular artist and cartoonist. He is famous for his provocative paintings about the modern world painting things that most people are not proud of which is what he calls "conceptual realism". His works are mainly psychedelic and underground and founded the "juxtapose magazine"

The interview is very light hearted and the interview questions seem impromptu and only a few questions seem to be scripted. the interview sounds more like a conversation discussing on why the artist decided to go into a different type of art and his road to success. The interview seem to be unedited. 

Music was very well used in the interview, with a subtle psychedelic music in the playground , giving a very good feel about his story on doing psychedelic art. while he was talking about his younger days, a soft rock music was played at the background , seems to lets us immerse more comfortably into the interview and puts a feel of nostalgia as the old soft rock was played signifying his wild younger days which the audiences can associate with.

This is one of the better interviews and i would make my own interview a littlebit more formal but learn to make use of music and sound effects to better enhance the feeling of the interview, to let the listeners immerse themselves comfortably into the artist's stories.

Link to interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzIjadLdLfc

Production Project 2 Task description One – Studio Research and Development

ABC interview with Australian Artist Kaye Green

Kaye Green, a young artist 30 years ago, left tasmania for new mexico, USA to pursue her dreams in art by studying in the university of new mexico. She was responsible for the revival of traditional printmaking art, which i personally did before. 

The interview generaly revolves around how she started her career as an artist, her younger life and reasons of why she left australia for america.

once again music was used very minimally, as the artist talked, there is no music , no effects and nothing interesting other than a whimsical tune played before and after the interview as intro and outros.

The questions structured in the interview are very very open-ended and ensured the artist to tell a long story about herself rather than the need for the interviewer to keep asking question. the setting is casual too , as if it was a conversation over coffee and cigarettes. with this techniques, we can milk more information from the artist as she is relaxed and willing to share more.

Link to the interview:

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2010/02/aks_20100221_1037.mp3

Production Project 2 Task description One – Studio Research and Development


1: BBC's Interview with Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol, one of the most renowned pop artists in the world, famous for his vectored work and iconic paintings of Campbell's soup cans and coke bottles. This modern artist needs no introduction when his name is heard.

In 1981, BBC 3 did a radio interview with Andy Warhol and The interview was done in a rather causal way (if you ignore the thick british accent), asking Andy about his thoughts and feelings about his work. The interview seems personal and the questions revolve around the philosophical and social issues surrounding his works rather than questioning his skills and techniques. 

The interview is simple and almost un-edited. Even if it was edited, one cannot tell that it is as the interviews seemed seamless. Minimal music were used, and as it was done in 1981 on BBC, the interview was rather prim and proper with no frills and fancy riff raffs. From this work, i learn how to structure my questions, to understand the artist from within, to try to findout what the artist is trying to tell the world through his works, the inner feels and background story to his works.

Link to the interview:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/warhola1.shtml 

MEDIA INDUSTRIES ONE.

Personal reflection on research project.

When i first ventured into RMIT University, I thought to myself, "why did I take up a media course?" That was a question I ought to ask myself seven years ago when i opted for film school back in Singapore. The obvious answer is that I have always found the media industry fascinating. Things are ever changing, fast paced. People in the media industry are always at the forefront of current affairs, knowing what is popular and Being popular them selves. There is so much creativity in the air.

And so taking up a media degree for me, is to learn how to get a better footing within the media industry.

and well, On my first week of school, I was introduced this course "Media Industries 1" The name of this course itself seem to hold the key to whatever I seek to learn from the university. I pictured this course to be filled with cameras, and technicalities, to be abundant with learning the intricacies of how a media company works. but i came to realize that i was wrong as i learn more about this course, and of course, my role in the research project change.

ROLE

At the Beginning, god created the universe. This was highly frowned upon and was widely regarded as a bad move.(Douglas Adams, The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, penguin books, 1987 ,p1) this , is besides the point, much much later, at the beginning of this semester,  we were tasked to form groups to research into area of interest. Having a background in events management, and also running an events production company back in Singapore, I decided quite firmly that i should research into something that will greatly benefit both my school work and my career; Events was the way to go. but first, i got to find people who would research the same topic as i would, and that was not easy ; as i have to explain how "events" can fall under the media industry. and Thus, my first role was born. The 'hustler'. I had to go around the classroom, preying on aimless souls that look somewhat responsible, then i would pitch my idea to them. It all went well, i got 2 group mates   and went right into brainstorming for ideas. Having the most experience in the events sector among the three of us, My role evolved into a role of 'the leader'. Primary ideas of the research was made by me , when i guided the trio in the direction i envision our group to go to. Heaps of useful contributions were given and where we finally settled for our research questions. From then, our group grew bigger with the addition of llhoon , daniel and elyn, who did not have a group for various reasons and joined our group. Then, i encouraged Leonard, who have a neutral point of view on situations, to be the group leader. His responsible attitude and the keenness on the research proved that he can be a much better leader than me while i concentrate on the research topic. From there i evolved into the motivator of the group, where i would constantly share new findings and motivate others to contribute to the group research. As the project progressed, I seem to take on the role of the Group's Public Relations or Liaison personnel, Having to explain the fundamental ideas of our research at every meeting and every presentation. I wouldn't say that i'm eloquent but well, I’m the most outspoken member in the group. So, in the end I believe that I had led the group in this research journey with the help of Leonard who we all can't do without.

PROGRESS

When The research journey started, we didn't really know what we were going in for. All we knew was that we were researching on new ways to do events. Ideas were everywhere and we did not have a certain diction we were heading to. slowly, after initial research, we started to see some progress as we narrowed down the topic of research. We all came into agreement that we were going to research on something along the lines of "Events being held online" and "incorporating new media into events".  This was good and tasks were delegated to members that

have a specific ability in the task.  (much like the fantastic 4). Elyn, with her social powers and her relations with the Melbourne club scene, was sent to collect information and interviews of how local clubs run their events with the aid of Social media. IIHoon, with his extraordinary pebbling skills was tasked the same job and including attending festivals to find out more. Julian , with his extreme knowledge of the internet was tasked with creating and conducting an online survey to do a  quantitative  analysis  of what people think of our research. Leonard and I  , armed with our experience with events, set out on a journey to seek the answers behind virtual events and how to make money out of them. Daniel…. well, daniel was not around most of the time and he left the course shortly. so lets leave him out of the picture from now on.

    As we progress, we can see the strength and capabilities of each member blossom as we understand the topic more and more. Personally, I feel that it is a breeze to research this topic as it is something I’m truly interested in. and by doing so i have greatly benefited from it.

STRATEGIES

Ah, Strategies, the cornerstone of every successful research project. from the start, we had been cooking up a strategy that will be the most effective for our group. for our research, the strategy was to separate the work load equally amongst the members ;according to each individual's strengths. (as explained above). having broken up the workload, saves us time and energy and of course it can widen the horizons of our research. After gathering the information, we would then relay it to the members in the meetings and we will try to piece the information together, making them relate to one another. This is a collaborative strategy too, as though we were researching different things, we were collectively working towards the same primary objective ('primary question' in this case). Personally, my earning strategy is to search the internet. where else better to look for virtual events than in a virtual environment? I set my self a few keywords and i went ahead, looking from sites that have a history of holding a virtual event. I also asked my net savvy friends if they had heard of anything relating to my research and too learnt from them. I believe all our strategies worked well and did not come across much hiccups during the research.

PROBLEMS

once again, other than my chronic lateness, and Daniel’s problems and absence, our group faced little or no problems. Initially, Our group faced a little problem with communication, as our group was relatively large.  These problems had have been resolved by tightening communication lines between group members, setting up a communication platform where all members can access frequently (facebook).

CONNECTIONS & INTERSECTIONS

The research information i learnt from this course is useful. But the experience i gathered is priceless. I think the way this course is designed to teach students is very effective. Gone are the days where the teacher just teaches out of theory, and the students just absorb like robots. We have to learn how to be independent learners to better prepare ourselves for jobs that yet to exist, to solve problems that are not yet problems. as the saying goes, "instead of giving a man a fish, teach him how to fish." Now it's not enough to teach him how to fish. you got to teach him how to find out how to catch a fish that has yet to exist.

So, overall, I've learnt the importance of good communication, networking and people skills. Communication is so important now that things cannot be done without it. The need to stay connected, the need to relay a message properly to another, is so important; i cannot stress how important it is. Next, i've learnt that networking is paramount to the success of any venture or individual. It's not about what you can do, how good you are or what your qualifications are. It's all about the people you know. Having a good network of contacts ensures that you are at the forefront of information, and in this fast paced dog-eat-dog world, information is your best weapon. Having good contacts can open the doors to many wonderful opportunities that you won't even dream of, be it the media industry or any industry, networking is the key to success. And yup, in doing a group research too, if we knew no one, we would not have gotten a lot of information and interviews. Another thing is people skills. You can have the best contacts in the world through networking, but if you don't have the right people skills, it like having a body odor, no one will be around for you.

From what i have learnt in the research project, i can say that it will greatly benefit my personal research project for business opportunities for my Events Company back in Singapore. The research done can help me break into the Online market and also help me get a better understanding of the Melbourne events industry giving me a foot-in-the door to penetrate this immense and vibrant market. The research on the use of new media on traditional events is very relevant on my events project where I can learn effective ways of applying  social media networks, blogs, online advertising, instant messaging etc. to help promote future events.

In conclusion, this project Topic and research question is beneficial for me in both academic and business fields. The project workflow is now healthy with workload spreader efficiently among members and a great deal has been learnt through our current research. And also, the experience gathered from this research journey, the social skills, people skills, communication skills and networking, will greatly empower my ability to succeed in my venture and life. The research journey never ends as we learn more an more about the future of virtual events.

PP2 studio Project reflections.

For the Next semester, I will be embarking on Production Project 2, after

completing Production Project 1.

I will be doing:

Sound Studio Project,

Headed by and with guidance from Robbie Rowlands, we  will be concentrating on a selection of  

artist participating in the McClelland Gallery 2010 Sculpture Survey &  

Award. This is one of the richest sculpture awards in Australia with  

the main prize valued at $100,000. The show displays a wide range of  

contemporary artworks in different media and styles by both  

established and emerging artists. and also, under the guidance of the gallery will have direct  

access to these artists and their studio environments. The aim is to  

create a series of short audio profile documentaries that give insight  

into the artists practice and their studio environments.(source: PP2 Course Guide, RMIT 2001)

Towards this Project, I have no worries at all. Having come from a sound engineering back ground, I've alot of experience with sound equipment, miking techniques and sound editing. Though my experience is mainly on live sound and any recording experience i have is either with Film or music production. This is something new. It has to be creative profile on the artists. It may sound boring and limited, but we will explore on what we can do. 

In the last lesson, all of us had agreed on individual works, which i am happy for, since i am quite an effective lone worker due to my erratic schedules. there is one particular artist i take interest to and would like to do the profile on him. Well, my interest is on his Artwork. here is one example:

I like the futuristic and minimalistic look of his work. this particular one is named "Turbine in black" and  is part of a series of "turbines" and other artwork done using acrylic. I should be fun to compose some futuristic music to go with his profile. But first I'll have to find an interview with him.

We were given some ideas like recording the sculpting sounds, e.g the buzzing or the saw or sander.

we can find music relevant to artist's theme, or in my case, i rather produce the music myself. But i do have to bear in mind that this is the Artist's showcase. not mine. My job is to bask him in the light of glamour, then hide my self in the shadow. haha.

The topic of the profile does not need to be confined to the gallery, can extend to anything related to the artist or his artwork.Other than the artwork it self, the artist might be involved in other issues, spreading messages. can tap into that.

I will learn more about them as i get to interview the artists.

I believe i have to interview the artists with a layman point of view, in order for the profile to be more understandable to the general public, capturing their interest into the world of art :pretty much like a foot in the door method before throwing artistic jargons like "neo-realist" or "juxtaposing through cubism" at them.

To facilitate this project, RMIT had put together alot of advanced skills workshop. I choose the sound workshops as i expected the world "advanced" to be.... well, "advanced." the first workshop touched on the basics of sound, something i learnt some 7 years ago. Not to say that i am competent, but i asked to leave the class as i have nothing much to learn there.

the next 2 lessons were on protools. I was an avid user of protools (pun not intended), Cuebase, logic, reason and garageband. but I stopped using protools some 5 years back. as it was really expensive to buy back then. i saw this as a chance for me to brush up my protools skills. The lesson was quite basic though. but the tech that was teaching us know his stuff very well, i learnt quite a few tips and tricks and got the hang of protools now. everything's coming back.

I would be more comfortable with cuebase, but protools will do just fine and besides,it's free equipment from school, might as well make use of it. All in all, I am anticipating a fun and enriching project and i'm sure i can ace this.

Sources:
all images and information on the artist are from http://www.geoffreybartlett.com/