Genre Research

For the genre of our group, we chose historical. We narrowed the presentation onto the evolution of Chinese (language). And below is my research on this genre, as I am the visual and sound manager, most materials I found is pictures and music.

This is the picture shows the entire transformation of Chinese character during different dynasties. At the beginning, Chinese character was written like a picture. For example, the character “mountain” (the sixth one), the original one is the picture of peaks.

 Chinese characters are also strongly associated with traditional culture; this is a picture which only used in traditional Chinese wedding. It’s the combine of two same character “happy”, which means the new couple will have a happy life together.

The group decided to use cartoon to create the video, I think this video below can be a good model. In this video, traditional Chinese characters played the role of story. And this video is in ink-and-wash style, which can easily be connected with historical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0mMCo15JuE

Sound is also an important element; I found this instrumental music which is played in Chinese traditional instrument. I think it can attract the audeince and give them the atmosphere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtnJfOJGBUw

Technical data- Australian women suffering from PTSD

Do you know what PTSD is? It’s a metal disease, which is called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This disease is often cause by awful experience and can occur at any age, repeated nightmares and feeling of detached are common symptoms. And for most people, PTSD can last for the whole lifetime!

In one studies conducted across the United States, it was found that approximately 7.8% of the people interviewed had PTSD at some point in their lifetime. Therefore 23 millions people in U.S used to or are suffering from PTSD, which are more than the whole population of Australia.

Do you also know PTSD is twice as common in woman as in man! Specifically, 10.4% of women and 5% of men were found to have PTSD at one time or another in their past.Why might this be? It’s the terrible sexual treatment to women in relations!

A lot of traumas can cause PTSD; one is man-made events. The most common ones are domestic abuse and rape, and their victims are mostly females.

In the history, male’s and female’s positions in their relationships is unequal. For example, Rape in marriage only began to be considered a crime recently in1981 in the state of New South Wales in Australia. A woman had no legal protection for the crime of rape by her husband during the 80 years before this action, which is 3/4 of Australian history (there has been only 111 years since Australian became independent).

Rape carries one of the highest risks for producing PTSD. In the women’s safety survey published in 1996 in Australia, 1.5% of the sample which is 100,000 females experienced a sexual assault in the latest 12 months, and 99% of the offenders were male. About 1.2 million, in another way, one in six Australia women who are above 18 in Australia had experienced sexual assault or been threaten since 15.

Violence abuse is also more commonly associated with PTSD when compared with natural disaster or other accidents. More than 34% of Australia women had experienced violence from their partners. Also, Indigenous women reported higher levels of both physical and sexual violence than was reported by non-Indigenous women.

I think government and society need give more support to women who have PTSD. The government should crisis line number for women need help and funding to research center and support programs. Women with PTSD should get more sympathy from the society instead of being judged!

Buyer or designer? It’s up to you

Every girl has a dream dress in her mind, but it’s always hard to find it in the shop. Now, sketch it out, and Sketch Street can make your dream come true!

Sketch Street is a shopping website, unlike other websites such as ASOS or Bluefly, Sketch Street is a platform for fashion-lovers, especially people who love designs, to have their say in fashion, to create their unique designs and shop it at affordable prices.

How to be a designer

At Sketch Street, it doesn’t matter that you are a professional or never been trained in fashion, all you need to be a designer is to sketch the dress you want and submit it. Once the design is put into production, the original designer can receive 5% of profit.

Want to be a buyer

Once the designers’ sketches submitted into the design campaigns, you can make your voice by voting and pre-ordering the design you love. The vote will be counted as 40% when deciding the winning designs. Once there are more than 20 pre-orders for one design, Sketch Street would put it into production.

Lovely price

When Sketch Street produces these designs, quality fabrics and experienced markers will be used without middlemen. Customers who pre-ordered will also receive up to 50% of traditional retail prices.

Keep it fresh

Want to wear the new design right now? Sketch Street’s fashion cycle is only 8 weeks, while traditional fashion brands are 6 months. And every design will be limited in 500 worldwide. Sketch Street also provide personalized hand-made option, the design you get will always be fitted, unique and fresh!

 Start it now

Visit their website http://www.sketchstreet.com/ or Facebook http://www.facebook.com/sketchstreet

COMU 1152 Media Conference 3

Luke Royes is this week’s guest; he is an ABC online Journalist. The topic he came to talk is the use of social networking. Most of people have been using social networking such as Facebook or Twitter, but the key is how to use it as a tool in public relations? Luke shared his ideas with us on this question.

Firstly, he talked that back to 2008, his boss didn’t allow employees to post things about their work and life on social networking websites. After about 2 years, they started to realize that social networking is very helpful on the business, as it can connect the company with its audience more closely! Then he listed some popular social networking in the last decade, and talked about their unique strengths.

For example, Instagram (I used everyday!) is used to post photos and helpful for brand recognition in business. This year, EKKA has used Instagram to show people their activites and food to attract more visitors (which can be seen in the second picture).

  

ABC started to use social networking five to seven years ago, Facebook and Twitter were used as platforms to communicate with their audience and show a variety of activities. As an online journalist, Luke uses all social networking, and the most used one is Twitter as he thinks it’s more professional compared with others.

For the advises on how to use social networking professionally, Luke said was “Don’t be a dickhead”—When using the social networking for public relations, we need to be conscious about what to post on these websites. Once things are out there, our professional quality would be reflected, and the entire company’s reputation can be affected.

Luke also mentioned that importance of making contacts. It’s helpful when you have network to use, as people are always willing to help those they know. So it’s important and necessary to follow up and build a good relationship with your contacts.

COMU 1152 Media Conference 4

In today’s lecture, our guest speaker Peter Milne talked to us on an interesting topic – cultural jamming. He said "As a professional communicator, it is important to understand how to operate visual."

The first thing he talked on culture jamming is iconic. And the iconic pictures are created from icons. Icon is something when you see it, then you know what it for. When he explained, he used the example Mona Lisa, which was knew by everyone in the lecture. Icon means most people have seen it, and can identify it immediately; even it was changed to other forms. Here is one of the examples he used.

Besides those masterpieces, news photos and commercial advertisements can also be iconic.

This is a photo taken during the Vietnam War, the little girl was running naked and she was screaming. This historic photo make people realized what was happening in Vietnam.

And an artist changed it into this picture.

Can you still recognize the Vietnam girl? For me, yes. In this photo, the images of Mickey mouse and McDonald were used, which can be strongly associated with U.S by most people. By using the visual language “culture jamming”, this photo successfully criticized the U.S government on Vietnam War. 

Peter used many pictures to make this topic easy to understand and interesting. For me, this media conference is my favorite in this semester. I also searched some culture jam pictures after this conference, below are some I like.

Tree of life

This is the project I am doing for my course COMU1999 in UQ. Basically, this assessment asked us to choose any topic that we interested in, and I chose tree as my topic.

For someone, trees are everywhere, there are tress in the park, in the school campus, in front of the building they work, and the path they walked everyday. In this modern society, most people just ignored their beauty. However, millions of years ago, humans used to have a strong connection with trees. They picked their food from trees, they hewed trees to light a fire, and they shelter under trees from rain and danger. Tree was the beginning of everything.

Why did I choose this topic? In my eyes, the tree represents life and slow, steady growth; it can even grow in the desert or precipice. And I believe if people want to protect the environment, they should stop letting these green lives disappear anymore. All these points are what my photos try to deliver to my audience.

For my audience, I shoot these photos for people who have the same feeling, who love nature and know who to find beauty in normal life. I hope the audience can feel the strength of life, and realize they should cherish this environment. The followings are the seven pictures that I have accomplished by now.

COMU 1152 Media Conference 2

In this week’s COMU 1152 lecture, our guest speaker was Frances Whiting, who is an author, journalist and public speaker. 

According to her, our generation is the lucky one as we are able to choose our own carrier and have many opportunities. Before she became a journalist, she used to teach in a primary school, and she think it was a wonderful experience while she don’t think “that’s what I want to do forever”. Therefore she started to write for a local newspaper called Sunshine Coast Extra, and this “small” job led her into the whole industry. The suggestion she gave to us is “Think about what you want to do”, “What you begin is not what you end with”.

The first column Frances got is about EKKA, she gave her best into it and had success. She said the high pressure give her chance to lean things and improve. Now she writes her own column for the Sunday Mail, she said it’s essential to know your readers; it helped her to adjust the writings. During the time she wrote columns, she received lots of mails from readers, who loved her writings and felt like know her personally.

She also writes for the Q weekend magazine, in that column it requires a totally different writing style as the readers want to be guided and feel. The advice she gave is to be flexible and versatile in writing for different audience. “Don't copy another person's style.  Do it your own way, and if you do it with passion and enthusiasm, you will succeed." For the secret of her success, she said is “Find your own voice”.

In Frances’s following talk, she mentioned the basic rules in the PR filed is building contacts with any potential customers, and be professional in every form of communication you can. When getting into PR industry, first of all is having good relationship with the journalist. And it’s also important to find your own way as the industry is always changing with opportunities!

Summary
- Do something you love, and do it with passion
- Know the basics rules and do it your way
- Build good relationships with people
- the most important one, FIND YOUR OWN VOICE

I also found a website of Fraces's columns, here is the link:  http://www.couriermail.com.au/spike/columnists/frances-whiting