As globalization becomes household world, the intercultural agenda is becoming the world’s agenda. Interculturalists have been improved intercultural understanding. The intercultural field must be ready for new responsibilities in facilitating mutually beneficial interactions among the wide range of cultures that inhabit the globe. The outcome of this blog will be reflected on the project that I have done in this semester. I would like to reflect on the process of the project that we collaborated the promotion videos for our client Jessica Atieno with Kenya crews. This is the first time we collaborated with organization, which is from different culture and geographical boundaries. There are some issues that I had met during the pre-production, production and post production stages. Firstly, I would like to reflect on the issues of inter-cultural and communication between artist Jessica, Kenya producer Sabine and my crews at RMIT. At the meanwhile, we have also met another two issues in pre-production stage. For example, the problems of building trust and a good relationship with our clients and etc. Secondly, I will reflect on the issues happened on production stage that Kenya producer Sabine did this for us even though my crews and I did not do too much on this stage. Thirdly, I also would like to reflect on issues of the effective teamwork between my crews and I even though all of us has different background and culture.

Background:

This semester we are fortunate to work for a charitable organization based in Nairobi Kenya called Kuona Trust.  Our client Jessica is a successful artist whose work has been presented at prestigious art exhibitions such as the British High Commission and the Barclays L’atelier Finalists Exhibition. Her art has themes surrounding feminism, women’s rights and political justice. My crew Brian, Hsham, Alex, Shawn and I, we are response to develop one promotional video for resident artist Jessica Atieno. The video we were going to make for Jessica and Kuona would promote Jessica’s work and women’s rights. Femininity, the subjugation of women and female empowerment are topics that Jessica is very passionate about and this is reflected through her work.

Pre-Production Stage:

During the whole semester studying the subject of International media collaboration. We were collaborating a promotional video for our client with Kenya crews who are response to shoot the video in Kenya. My crews and I are response to keep connect with Kenya producer Sabine, she would like to manage the meeting time between Jessica and my group. Simultaneously, we also need to prepare all the question lists and shooting lists in pre-production stage. There were three issues that we met in Jessica project. It would include the issues of inter-cultural and communication, Trust between our client and my group, and how could we meet client’s needs.

 Inter-cultural and communication:

“current approaches to intercultural communication involve a degree of defamiliarization, or making strange the subject position and assumptions that seem “natural” but in fact are culturally constructed and bound by geography and social position.” [O’Brien 2008] As above said, because of cultures around the world value our individual traditions, beliefs, and norms that make us unique, social media links Jessica and my group members around the world regardless of differences and geographical boundaries, but in fact we never known and met each others before we started working together. In order to work effectively and avoid any problems of culture, my crews and I started with searching the background of Kenya, profile of Jessica and get a better understanding of her arts.

Trust:

“A large body of research has indicated that trust is critical in all stages of relationships, from their initial development to breakdown and reestablishment. Research across a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, and economics, has found that trust serves vital functions. It promotes cooperation and teamwork.” [Sycara, Gelfand & Abbe 2013] Building a good relationship with your clients is the first thing to start your collaborative project.  As I said before, we never known our client Jessica Atieno and met each other before we started working together. When we first time connected with Jessica by using skype call, she does not even know who are we and what are we going to do about her and her arts. She felt like very stressed when we asked the story of herself, but she does not want to talk with us too much of herself. After that, it was becoming a big challenge to change existing state of Jessica even though we did lots of efforts.  What I have learnt from Jessica is, we should build trust with her firstly such as catch up with her in first few weeks before we are getting access into working position, and then deeply understand what is her expectations for promotion videos, keep things in her perspective.

 Client’s needs across culture:

The other thing that I would like to reflection on client needs across the culture. Working with clients from different cultural backgrounds can be challenging. With vastly different experience than your own, it can be difficult to understand why they want the project that they have asked for. Firstly, we should deeply understand what are they looking for and how could we satisfy their needs. Our client Jessica is an artist in Kenya, so my crews and I started with searching her arts. We obtained an important information that her art has themes surrounding feminism, women’s rights and political justice. In order to satisfy her expectation on promotional video, my group aimed to capture the picture of the women’s rights and feminism. Secondly, we also avoided some details that Jessica does not like to share with audience. For example, we have suggested Jessica to talk about her life on the video in order to increase the range of audience who has not known her before. We would like Jessica to tell audience about her childhood, the inspiration of her arts and etc. However, she does not like to talk about private personal question because she thought it’s not related to her arts. In order to achieve the client needs, we can not attempt to imprint our own cultural expectations on the client. We should listen carefully to our clients of what she or he wants to present their ideas.

Production Stage:

Kenya producer Sabine arranged everything things during production stage. She was responsible for connected with each artist and managed their shooting time, location and etc. My crews and I we were only responsible for providing the question list, which we want get more details from Jessica and her arts as well.  In additional, we also provided the shooting list to Santa who is director in Kenya. For example, we listed some questions into different sections like personal questions of Jessica, questions on her arts, questions on femininity, women’s rights and feminism. However, not all of our questions about women’s right were asked and Jessica did not talk a lot about women of women’s rights. So we had to change the video and focus it more on Jessica as artist. We have not been connected with producer and director as much since we emailed them once before shooting. Insufficient connection and discussion was a big problem that we met during production stage. We should catch up with them in every single detail, and request them to get the footage seems like exactly what we expected it to be.

Post-Production Stage:

Clients’ Aesthetic:

We got all the footage from Kenya producer Sabine on the beginning of October. There were three weeks’ time period for us to provide the rough cuts and final cuts. we got the feedback from Kenya after we submitted the rough cut one week later, and then we took other steps to achieve our client Jessica’s expectation and perspective.  This section I would like to reflect on clients’ aesthetic. Different clients have their own aesthetic idea, which is different to others. Our editor Alex has already been studying in media industry for awhile. So he has already got more professional aesthetic than normal. This was the first time for Jessica to do the promotional video for her arts. She was looking for the conventional video, but conventional documentary might find boring for Alex. If Alex is trying to present Jessica with aesthetic ideas of him, it is very likely to backfire and alienate Jessica. What we should do was, listening carefully of Jessica needs and keep things on her perspective.

 Effective group conversation cross culture:

All of our members are from different countries. One of my crew Alex, he is from China and he was responsible for editing the footage in the post production stage. Since we got the feedback of rough cuts from Kenya, all of us were sitting on the table and got into a deeply discussion of this project. Everyone has their own point of view for Jessica project because of we have different background and culture. In order to work effectively and smoothly, we were respected on what has Alex done in post-production stage, and then we would take the other positions to make it change for final cut regards on the feedback from Kenya. On the other hand, I was really proud of my crews because of everyone respected on the culture of each other. It was made the conversation to getting effectively because of every got respect from others.

 Conclusion:

In conclusion, I was very glad to collaborated a promotional video on Jessica arts with Kenya producer Sabine. It was a fantastic opportunity to work across the culture and I have learnt a lot from them. Firstly, I have learnt to how to build a good relationship with client and how do I work with them effectively even though we have different background. Secondly, I have learnt how to achieve our clients’ expectation and keep things in their perspective. Finally, the other thing that I have learnt from my crews, it was be passion on working position and working hard. I’m really enjoyable to work with my crews.

Reference:

O’Brian, AJ & Eriksson A 2010, ‘Cross-cultural connections: intercultural learning for global citizenship’, Stanford University, pg1-20.

Sawyer, R 2011, ‘The Impact of New Social Media on Intercultural Adaptation’, Honors Program at the University of Rhode Island, pg1-19.

Weight J <jenny.weight@rmit.edu.au> 2015, ‘COMM2539 International media collaboration’, weblog post, 31 August, Module 8 working with clients, viewed 15 October, 2016 <https://intmedcollab.wordpress.com >

Q:How might you use a simulation as part of your digital narrative? Here are some possibilities:

I’m going to use two or three digital tool in my digital narrative.  Firstly, YouTube is one of tool that I’m going to delivery the message to my audiences.  What I am going to do is, I will create a new account on YouTube or Vimeo channel for the project of ‘Busking in Melbourne CBD’, and then I will upload all the videos on those two platforms. Obviously, YouTube is big platform and it’s also a first choice for Young people to search the video.

Secondly, Wix.com will be the important tool that I’m going to create an official website. I will create an official website by using Wix.com, upload all the relevant images (I will take the photos of each buskers and their works in black and white color, and then combine them into different type of music, or different categories of performance that they active on the street) on homepage and add a link to each image, because it will be quiet convenient for the users if they could be brought to the pages they are interested in by simply clicking on the image. Moreover, when users play the video, they can find the small icon on the right top corner, which means if they are interest in the video, or they want to share the video for their own purpose, they can click on the icon and share the video directly to social medias like Facebook, twitter, or they can also click on the mail icon and email the address of video to their own account. At same time, I will also create new accounts on the Instagram and Facebook, and I will upload all the videos and images on these platforms to promote my project ‘Busking in Melbourne CBD’ online.

Thirdly, I will create the account on Twitter and Facebook for my digital narrative after post-productio stage because I’m planning to use those tool for promote my story. The reason that I’m going to do this because it will be easier to get results come up when audiences searches “Busking Melbourne” with hashtag on Twitter.

Narrative outline:

The project of ‘Busking in Melbourne CBD’ will a web-series documentary, it involves 5-6 episodes of documentary. Each episode is talk about the story of one type of busker. For example, there are lots of type street entertainment around city’s heart such as street singer, street painting artist, people who play instruments, living statute, balloon animal makers and other performers.

The first episode of documentary that I am planning to interview a statute artist if he is still available in next semester. Firstly, I will give audience some the background of Melbourne, such as how Melbourne looks like, and the environment of people live in here. Secondly, I would like to show audiences about buskers that how does the statute man dressing up, set up the tools and ready for busking. There will be involved several scenes of this performance from his preparation to the end of the performance. It may be a collection of different locations to shoot such as in the restroom for dressing up, the preparation of setting up the tools on the street and more.  Thirdly, there are some scenes of the main character talking about his story. For example, it can be the background of how to become a busker or might be any challenges of being a busker.

The second episode of documentary that I am interested in will be one of the balloon animal maker. There will be not much different for this episode compare to the s last one, the main part of this documentary will be the process of performer making balloon animal in front of a group of audiences. For example, how does he or she twist balloon and make a balloon animal out. The other contents of this story will be also similar, such as the background or the story or buskers. The target audiences of this episode may be the parents and their children. The other four documentaries will be very much similar to the first two episodes.

1. Why are you creating this story? Goals, rationale, purpose, premise? What do you want your audience to experience or understand?

I live in Carlton, one of the suburbs only a few minutes away for Melbourne CBD. Every time when I go out for shopping, I will stop and watch artists’ performance on the street. Back my hometown in China, we do not have the culture of busking, so I want to get a better understanding of street entertainment and present more stories of buskers to audiences who are also interest in the busking just like me.

2. What is your story? In what way will it be original, surprising, human, passionate, truthful or relevant to your audience?

My project ‘Busking in Melbourne’ will be a series of stories about entertainers who are actively providing public performances around Melbourne CBD area. Busking performance may include the solo performance of an instrument or instruments in a band. Busking also can be performances of singing, dancing, portraiture, or painting and etc. I would like to present all the stories about busking artists as a web-series documentary, and the footages of the documentary will be uploaded into a website. This means my project will also include developing an official website.

3. Where will you publish your story? What platform/s and hardware are suited to your audience? E-books, blogs, videos, photos, podcasts, tweets, status updates, apps, games, forums, websites?

Firstly, I will create a new account on YouTube or Vimeo channel for the project of ‘Busking in Melbourne CBD’, and then I will upload all the videos onto those two platforms. Secondly, I will create an official website by using Wix.com, upload all the relevant images on homepage and add a link to each image, because it will be quiet convenient for the users if they could be brought to the pages they are interested in by simply clicking on the image.

4. Who is your audience? Who is your target viewer/user – i.e. the group you will target in promoting the work?

My target audiences will be focus on young-age group who are interested in modern street arts. The target audiences of ‘Busking in ‘Melbourne CBD’ can also be someone who are planning to travel to Melbourne from other cities in Australia or overseas. It will give them some sense of traveling in Melbourne.

5. When will you create the content and start to engage your audience? What is the production process and publishing schedule?

After I done all the post production, I would like to upload the footage on the social media platform such as YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram and etc.  My next step will be follow some of my audiences who have a larger of number followers, and send the tweets with hashtag and links of videos on YouTube or Vimeo.

6. How will your audience participate in the narrative? Will they be able to contribute to the narrative, alter the narrative, respond to the narrative?

I will create an official website by using Wix.com, upload all the relevant images on homepage and add a link to each image, because it will be quiet convenient for the users if they could be brought to the pages they are interested in by simply clicking on the image. Moreover, when users play the video, they can find the small icon on the right top corner, which means if they are interest in the video, or they want to share the video for their own purpose, they can click on the icon and share the video directly to social medias like Facebook, twitter, or they can also click on the mail icon and email the address of video to their own account.

Choose A Different Ending are series of digital narrative video that give us opportunities to decide what happens in next. We can interact the video with others after we choose what to do and decide how it ends. This story is talking about the boy friend goes out with his friends, but there are different options we can decide that he goes out by carry a knife or not, so it would decide what happens of story in the end. In Choose A Different Ending you decide whether to live or die.

Narrative Elements:

There are different sections that we should make a decision of what happens in next. Each choice is interacting with other videos.

Therefore, the first decision I did was going out with friends by carrying a knife. The reason I did it because I cannot imagine what happens in the next, so I picked the first answer on the top.

In the next step, I picked the protagonist went to his friend party, and then he was arrested in prison for four years.

What I want say is, if you make a wrong decision, you would be getting terrible. If you are doing right thing, happy ending. These series of interactive videos are deliver the main message to the audience by using short duration. For example, the time of telling was real time. it gives audience the feeling of getting involved in the story.

Traditional Narrative Features:

Normally there are three acts in classic narrative story structure, set up, the development and the resolution. For example, if we do the same story as above in classic narrative, it may only one video to demonstrate the story about how does the boy get into the prison. There is only one resolution of story. However, compare to the classic narrative, the interactive videos provide different ending by making different decisions. Therefore, we should provide the positive way and the negative way for the audience to make a choice of the story. Furthermore, it also the audiences would have fun when they make a selection, rather than just sitting there and watching the videos. Otherwise, it could easier be getting a boring abrupt ending.

During pre-production stage of film making, I have learnt time management skills. This is the most important part of film making because of it will save a lot of time if we manage our stuff properly. For example, we should provide a time list of what will we do step by step. If we don’t do it, everything would out of control. Moreover, everyone was involved as a whole so everyone should know what will go in next. Furthermore, I’ve also learnt about how to draw the story board as well, it was a kind of manage our stuff before we shooting.

Secondly, I have learnt how important of collaborative in the production stage of Lenny Book and documentary that we made about home. Everyone wants done this job as well as possible, so they were concentrated on their own works, and everyone was working hardly. I was so proud of working with them, and very enjoyable my working experience. Actually, I can’t do all of stuffs by myself, we were working as a group, everyone has their responsibility as a group, such as DOP only operate the camera, and he/she doesn’t response on setting up the camera.

In the post production stage, I learnt how to organize my footage properly and keep it nice by using Adobe Premiere CC 2015. It helps me to figure out the problem of how to find my footage quickly, and also save a lots of time. and then I’ve also learnt color correction of footage, such as the footage about home, I would like using warm color.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed working with my group mates, all of us have done a great job in this semester.

(specifically – Premiere-Pro-tutorials/Three-Way-Color-Corrector & Premiere-Pro-tutorials/Three-Way-Color-Corrector proxy). In a sequence you’ve called ‘colour’ of whatever project you’re working on, you will have clips that are indicative of a particular colour or lighting state.  To the right of that clip you will have that same clip repeated 3 or more times with different colour grades on it.  Take screenshots of each clip then upload to your blog the series of stills that show us ‘before and afters’ of your colour grading. Hint – google – before and after colour grade
Each with a description of what you did to the clip and why. Provide at least 3 clips with 3 grades on each and include the original.  This is a learning exercise, not a qualitative one, don’t stress – it is the act of doing it and the reflection on that, that is important

One of abstract was about the tall building during night time. The colour of the building was a bit dark, Therefore, I was increased the exposure, give more details on the building. The background of colour was all black, we actually can not see the cloud on the sky, so I increased the highlight to 100%. It brings the back colour out from dark to bright. In additional, I also edited the temperature from 0 to negative 21.4 because the frame was shooting at outside of QV in the night time. Therefore, the image should be edited to cool colour at night time rather than warm colour. We can find out more details of image after I done all the steps of colour correction.

the other one clip that I did colour correction was one of clips for interviewee Shu. According to the original image of Shu, we can find out the backboard was quiet grey. Therefore, I brought out the contrast from 0 to 74.4, and also increased the exposure of image. We could see a shadow on face of interviewee so I adjusted some options from the 0 to 33.3 on highlights and 23 on shadows.  It brought more bright on her face.

Finally, I adjusted the clip of vox-pops that we shot on the street. This clip was shot on the day time, the colour of the frame was quiet warm so I decreased the temperature. And then looked at the lumetri scopes, there was too much highlights and exposure, Therefore, I adjusted the highlights from 0 to negative 44, and shadows from 0 to negative 31. The most important part I did was brought out the red and yellow colour in hue saturation curve, which I picked the colour from her clothes and the building from the back.

In the pre-production stage, my group mates and I, we were considered the question what we should ask for, and how the question related to the theme that we will shooting for.

After that we also considered the location, where was suitable for us to do interview. However, we didn’t know there was a small music live in here when we went out to do the vox-pops in front of the state library. The quality of footage that we recorded was a litter bit poor, the volume of song was higher than interviewee’s voice. Therefore, I would consider to go somewhere that is not that much noisy in next time.

I would like to reflect three problems was happened during in production stage. Firstly, when the director said standing by, everyone should keep quiet and concentrate on the project. For example, when I went through all footages, I could hear the back voices that had been recorded in the footage. Therefore, it caused a low quality of documentary.

Secondly, I would give some advices to people who operate the camera, don’t move the focus and zoom during the shooting process. I would suggest to capture the frame by using the same length. Furthermore, the camera operator should move the camera by following the interviewees talking. For example, when interviewee A finished talking, the camera operator should ready to move the camera next to the interviewee B. It would make the video go through smoothly. Thirdly, I would like to reflect on the light. It’s better to give some lights from the back. If not, it will see the shadow on the left face or right face.

In the post production stage, I was labelled all the questions and answers out at first, because it’s easier for me to find out the answers that related to the theme of documentary. However, it would take a bit time to go through all footages. Once a documentary goes over the 3 minutes point it starts to become more complex so we should organize all the stuff properly. If not, you will find it out that how important of keep everything organized, how difficult and confused about the footages.  Finally, I would like to say that everything was going well. I was really enjoyed working with my group mates. Thanks Paul.