6: Lecture Notes

The internet hasn't always been my best friend. We were merely acquaintances up until about 9th grade when we started staying up together all night talking about common interests. Now? We're inseparable.

I'm glad that there was a Dot Com crash in 2000 because it allowed Tim O'Reilly to steer the internet towards a more social avenue in a town called Web 2.0.

The common element is community and collaborations, with some of the main features of Web 2.0 being:

• Folksonomy
  - organising knowledge
  - using 'tags' on posts therefore the user is defining the category rather than an invisible authority
  
  
• User-generated content
  - people create content (photos, images, videos, text) and put it online
  
  
• Open API (Application Programming Interface)
  - sharing data openly between services on the internet

Where Web 1.0 was more of a "read only" web, 2.0 has been described as the "read-write web". Every second person you talk to has a blog and most likely all of your friends have a social network page of some sort. It's social suicide not to! If they are still living in the past and don't have a social network page, they can still participate in writing on the web. You don't even need an account to edit a Wikipedia page.

It is interesting to think of the content you post online though. We are always told to back up the hard drives on our computers so we don't lose all our documents and images, but what about if the content we post online just disappeared one day? I know that I rarely back up any of the content I post directly online. In the case of any photos I put up on Facebook, obviously I have copies of those, but I am typing this blog straight into Blogger without saving it in a document elsewhere. If my blogger account was somehow deleted I wouldn't be too happy trying to write up another blog before the assessment is due!

It's one thing to lose all your content on say, your Facebook page, but what about if you opened a magazine one day and saw a photo you had posted on your blog of you and your mates at Splendour In The Grass? Something worse than that would be if you kept reading and noticed that their review looked very similar to your review you had posted online... So similar in fact that they wrote the exact same thing! Nobody likes their ideas and images to be stolen, even worse is for those ideas and images to be passed off as someone else's.

A lecturer I had last semester told us a story about one of her friends who ran a blog. She discovered that a woman in South Africa was copying her exact blog posts and passing them off as her own... I think she contacted the woman and the work was removed, but it just shows that it does happen and it is something to be wary of.

One of the other ideas posed in this weeks lecture was whether there was such a thing as anti-social media. People (students especially!) waste a lot of precious time procrastinating on Facebook, refreshing every couple of minutes so they don't miss anything in one of their hundreds of friends' lives. If you're sick of wasting away your life on the internet, there is a website you can go to that allows you to commit "Web 2.0 Suicide". What this website does is allow you to delete all of your social networking pages with the simple click of a button. I have actually deactivated my Facebook account before (it didn't last long...) because I was sick of spending my time on there instead of doing assessments that were due but I'm not sure whether I could take the plunge.

A different side of the anti-social argument is one that Adam Ferrier makes in his blog post Massive fail - the anti-social world of social media. The post looks at the always hateful 'anonymous' comment... Ferrier believes that people are less likely to express their true opinions due to the fact that there is someone about to anonymously comment on their work with something rude, derogatory or a combination of both.

I like the fact that we have the ability to be anonymous on the internet but I'm not a fan of the negative and ignorant comments that can be posted under the pseudonym. It is nice to not have to leave your house but still be a 'good friend' and keep in touch with everyone but I think a lot of people need to check in with the real world from time to time...

6: Tute Task

Who owns the content you put on the internet on various sites (this includes pictures, video, text, etc)? Think about all the content you upload onto social networking sites - Do you own it? Who has the right to use your creations?
I had always assumed I owned everything I posted online. Apparently I'm wrong.

According to User Generated Content and Terms of Service - Who Owns Your Stuff?, a blog post on Digital Technology by founder Amit Agarwal, the content you post online may not be yours once it has been posted onto the web. The post looks at the ownership of content posted on some of the largest blogging, content sharing and social networking sites on the internet including Facebook and YouTube.

I have gone to the main sites and looked up their T&C's:

• Facebook
  You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition...
  
  The terms go on to basically say you give them permission to use all of your content, subject to your 'privacy and application settings', of course.
  
  
  
• YouTube
  For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, publish, adapt, make available online or electronically transmit..."
  
  Just another way of saying they have rights over your content... Scary, isn't it?
  
  
  
• Blogger
  Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.
  
  Finally! Something that doesn't have control over the reproduction of personal content posted online! What? Keep reading? Hmm ok...
  
  By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services.
  
  So turns out Blogger is the same as all the other online companies that reserve the right to reproduce your content "royalty-free"...
  

Do we ever really know what we're agreeing to when we press "I Accept These Terms & Conditions"?

It is worrying to realise that these online companies can take our words and images and use them to increase their bottom-line. It is a good idea to check the privacy settings of your various social networking pages to limit the amount of personal information they have rights over.

Researching this topic I was reminded of a story I heard last year about an American family whose Christmas card family photo was used in a grocery store in Prague after being posted on a blogging site (image below). The owner of the store claimed he believed it to be a computer-generated image. The family said they will be adding a watermark to any future family photos...

5: Lecture Notes

The world is changing, it's always changing. Not just the world with things like climate change, but the way in which we live is evolving from society being merely consumers to becoming a hybrid of a consumer and producer through the introduction of new communication technologies and the rise of the internet.

Traditionally information and entertainment has been consumed on the big screens of:

• Cinema
  
• Television
  
• Computers

With the introduction and growing trend towards nanotechnology, the screens we consume media on are becoming smaller and more personal:

• Portable media players
  
• Mobile phones (smart phones)

The news corporations of the world have always been able to decide what they wanted the news to be by censoring certain stories and giving prominence to those that they had a vested interest in, but the internet has given a medium to those who want to be heard (E.g. the beheading of American Nick Berg in 2004).

This idea behind this is known as Citizen Journalism, when individuals act as journalists in news gathering and reporting. Mobile phones (and more recently smart phones) allow individuals to capture the news as it is happening via video, audio, photo or a combination of all three. A professional journalist will never be present at the scene of every breaking news story, so today they rely, to some extent, on citizen journalists to capture the critical images of the events unfolding with the immediacy they'll never have (E.g. Boxing Day Tsunami).

Consumers are also utilising the benefits of the small screens by changing the way they consume information from passive to actively seeking out news and entertainment that pertains to their particular interests (E.g. searching for information about NFL football that wouldn't normally get high coverage in the Australian media).

CNN has a dedicated section on their website solely for citizen journalism. iReport.com encourages citizen journalists to "Tell a story, offer an opinion, say what's important to you".

It is not only news that gets to utilise the small screen and new communication technologies. Entertainment throws its hat into the ring in a big way. The video posted below was showed in the lecture and I must admit, it brought a tear to my eye. "Mankind Is No Island" by Jason Van Genderen was shot entirely on mobile phone in the cities of Sydney and New York. It is simplistic in nature but packs a mighty big punch and just shows that with the development of these communication technologies, and the move towards smaller screens, everyone is able to have their say and be heard even if they don't own a newspaper or television station.


The internet makes it easier for all types of content to be distributed. It has also seen an increase and development of:

• Fan videos
  
• Short films
  
• Mash-ups
  
• Re-cuts
  
• Re-genres

It is these sorts of short films that mix and match content that the idea for the culture jam is looked at. The term was mentioned briefly in the lecture but has been explored further in the accompanying blog entries for week 5.

5: Tute§park

Engage with the term "Culture Jamming".

• First Culture Jam
  
• Most Influential Jam
  
• Most Damaging Jam

These 3 examples should be posted in your blog with an explanation of where and why they were found and used.
Culture Jam: the act of using existing mass media to comment on those very media themselves, using the original medium's communication method.

Culture jamming is an anti-corporate movement where the aim is to expose the corporation's agendas and get society to think about the propaganda they are fed. The jams usually use the corporation's ad-campaigns against them by changing one or two words or pictures to highlight their real agendas or ethics.



First Culture Jam
I had trouble finding the first culture jam and I'm sure that what I am about to write isn't the first.

Socialist Alternative writes about the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies), a revolutionary group that protested against conscription during the First World War. They culture jammed by composing new lyrics to popular religious songs and even parodied government recruitment posters.

The IWW leader, Tom Barker, was found guilty of distributing the material and faced jail time for his participation.

Most Influential Jam
The first person that came to mind when I read the tute*spark was Banksy. I have only known about Bansky since I went to Europe in 2008 and a friend showed me one of his works in Brick Lane, but he has been working as an underground graffiti artist since 1992 in the streets of London.

Bansky's identity is still unknown but that doesn't affect the impact his culture jams have had, with the term "The Banksy Effect" being coined to describe the impact his work has. His works usually deal with an array of political or social themes including anti-capitalism, anti-war, anarchism and anti-authoritarianism.

He is known for his facetiousness and is quoted as saying:

• Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world, I can't even finish my second apple pie.
  
• We don’t need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.
  
• We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.

Most Damaging Jam
For a culture jam to do some real damage it needs to be both seen and heard by a lot of people. When Morgan Spurlock set out to create a documentary in 2003, he had only one corporation in his sights: McDonald's.

Spurlock goes on a radical diet made up of only McDonald's food for 4 weeks to show the drastic effects it has on a person's physical and psychological well-being. He also explores the fast food industry's corporate influence including how it encourages poor nutrition just so they can increase their bottom line (no pun intended).

Throughout the documentary Spurlock is encouraged by his doctors and those closest to him to stop with his "McDiet" as they feared for his health, especially after he experienced heart palpitations in Day 21 of the experiment. His health deteriorated quite significantly and he put on approximately 11kg.

As a result of Spurlock's film, McDonald's discontinued their Super Size option (one of Spurlock's rules of the experiment was to Super Size his meal when offered) and created a healthier options menu with items such as salads and wraps.

5: Tute Exercise

You are to devise a plan to get noticed by 'normal' media. The tute task for week 5 consists of the planning and research you undertake to be ready to produce your news story/public report/local update (whatever it may end up being).
This was my least favourite of the tute sparks and exercises, and I think it shows in the quality of the piece. We spoke to a couple of the other groups and they had really good ideas which I think sort of put our group off a bit. Obviously we couldn't just steal their ideas and we wanted to get the filming/photography finalised in the week 6 tutorial as there was no other time we were able to meet.

Our culture jam was aimed at showing the growing dependence we have on the internet, specifically regarding academic studies, and the fact that we basically freak out if the internet isn't working. How does anyone survive without the internet?!

The slideshow is made up of still photos and 'statistics'. It is obviously a hoax and no media would ever pick the video up. I do think the story idea has potential but just wasn't executed very well.

We had trouble uploading the video to the CNN iReport website but I have uploaded it to YouTube and embedded it below.

4: Lecture Notes

I can't imagine a world without television or computers... We take so much for granted these days. I guess I hadn't really thought about when cinema was born. I had known that television was brought to Australia in 1956 as it is the year my Dad was born, but that is about the extent of my prior knowledge of the timeline of the big and small screens.

The big milestone birthdays in our 'Very Big Screen to the Very Small' timeline are:

1895 - The birth of cinema in France.
1906 - First full-length feature film titled "The Story Of The Kelly Gang".
1939 - Introduction of TV at the New York World's Fair.
1952 - 3D movie "Bwana Devil" was released to avoid losing the battle with television.
1955 - Movies on the television.
1963 - First practical videotape recorder (at the basement bargain price of $30,000).
1969 - VCR was released for home use by Sony.
1972 - Pay TV was first transmitted, surprisingly by HBO (which is still around today).
1985 - First Blockbuster Video was opened in Texas.
1985 - First film designed explicitly for the video market, "Blood Cult".
1986 - Pixar released the first fully computer-generated short film.
1997 - The wonderful world of DVD's was unleashed.
1998 - Online DVD movie rental service was established.
2005 - Blu-Ray was released as the evolution of DVD.
2006 - YouTube. No more needs to be said.

If all of this has happened in the last 150 years, I for one cannot wait to see where we are headed.

4: Tute§park

One
I found this film on YouTube by searching for Tropfest videos as it is the world's largest short film festival. It asks the question "is life something that happens to everyone else?"

One is a moving short film that features a single dice as the protagonist. The director is able to personify the dice by giving it the most basic of human emotions; loneliness. The dice is shown looking wistfully (well, as wistful as a dice can look) at families, lovers and animals as they all go about their day-to-day lives with their loved ones. At one point we see One shed a single tear. Heartbreaking.

The simple score only adds to the empathy you feel for the dice, that loneliness that we have all felt at one point or another. I am not surprised at all that this film was a Tropfest Finalist in 2010. It is amazing that a short film with no dialogue, based solely on a dice and clocking in at just over 7 minutes can engage with the audience so well.



For The Birds This Oscar-award winning short film by Pixar (Best Short Animated Film) was released in 2000 but its themes are still current a decade later.

This film once again has no dialogue but is able to personify the characters to give them human qualities. 'For The Birds' looks at being the odd one out and the clique mentality that one can face at all points during their life, whether it be in high school or starting a new job.

'For The Birds' is brilliantly animated as any Pixar film is. I think the reason why the film is so popular is partially because everyone likes to see the underdog come out victorious.



Facebook Manners & YouI chose this film as Facebook is one of those new communication technologies that all of us can relate to. Everyone knows someone who has broken one (or all) of the Facebook rules described in the film.

This film is now an Official Webby Award Honoree for Best Writing and Comedy: Individual Short or Episode and I think that is due to the fact that people can relate to the themes that are explored. The Facebook group that Alice makes in the film is actually active on Facebook, with 398 members, allowing people to interact with other fans of the film.

4: Tute Exercise

1. Where and when did usable online video start?
When: 2004. An increase in broadband speed allowed 15 frames per second to be downloaded, the magic number of frames that allows almost all humans to see a video as fluid.

Where: I haven't been able to find the exact origin of online video, however at the start of 2005 a group of online video enthusiasts created the Vloggercon conference.

YouTube is obviously the largest video-sharing website now.

2. What recent innovations are being used to lure us in the movies? What are they luring us from?
Since the 1930's the film industry has been under threat by technologies luring people away from the cinema such as television, VCR & DVD, pay TV, home theatres and of course the internet. To combat these innovations, the film industry are using a combination of 3D technology, blockbuster special effects and utilising certain genres.

While we have all realised there has been a big increase in 3D movies, most of us don't realise the other sneaky tactic being used to tempt us into the cinema; creating movies in genres that aren't seen on any television programs such as the new popular genre of Romantic Action films (E.g. Knight & Day and Killers - pictured).

3. Are short films still being made? Why? Who pays for them to be made?
Short films are still being made and will continue to be made. Not everyone has the attention span necessary to watch a feature-length film so there will always be a market there.

The main maker of short films are emerging filmmakers and students trying to get their big break. There is a trend towards businesses using short films as a form of advertising and promotion as a short film is easy to distribute on the internet and comparatively inexpensive to make.

4. The term viral is thrown about adhoc but what does it mean in film/movie arena?
To promote a film or movie virally, it needs a buzz to be created which usually starts online. The first viral film was The Blair Witch Project, with chat sites buzzing about the footage 'found' before they even realised it was being released in cinemas.

Viral videos are slightly different as they achieve millions of hits in a very short time due to being passed around via email and social-networking sites.

One of the most successful viral videos of all time is known as 'Star Wars Kid' which has since been parodied on shows such as Arrested Development.



And how could we forget old Rick...



5. We are now starting to see television styled shows made solely for internet release (webisodes). Find an example of this style of content and discuss how viewing television content in this way can positively and negatively affect the viewer's experience.
Clark & Michael
Clark & Michael is an example of a webisode series that I have watched. The 10-part mockumentry, released in 2007 by CBS Internet Television, follows Clark Duke and Michael Cera as they try to write and sell a pilot for a television series.

The show features guest stars Tony Hale, Mitch Hurwitz, David Cross (all of who Cera know from starring on Arrested Development) and also Jonah Hill (who Cera co-starred with in Superbad).

Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
This series was created by the guy who brought you Buffy, Angel and Firefly, Mr. Joss Whedon.

Whedon created Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog in 2008 during the Writers Guild of America strike. Not a lot of television programs were being made and Whedon chose to create Dr Horrible as a web series as it was small and inexpensive. The series is professionally done and even stars Hollywood actor Neil Patrick Harris.

+ Positives +
I think the big positives for webisodes are the fact that they are able to be watched at the convenience of the viewer. You don't have to worry about staying up late to watch it on tv, instead it is able to be downloaded onto your computer and watched whenever you please.

The shows are usually shorter (around 7 to 15 minutes in length), so there is no chance of the audience drifting off. Also, there are no ads (when viewed in full screen of course)!

- Negatives -
Downloading takes up precious bandwidth.

Watching a web series isn't the communal event watching a show on television is - it really takes out the social side of entertainment.

3: Lecture Notes

To be honest the history behind the internet and computers doesn't really interest me... I know it's important and I should be thankful but it just isn't very interesting.

Computers are integral to all forms of communication today. They add an immediacy to information and allow this information to be transmitted to the other side of the world in seconds (quite literally).

3: Tute§park

The Tutespark for week 3 is to find at least three examples of digital devices that are not electronic. Preferably they should be communication technologies.
Before starting the search for digital devices that are not electronic, I have tried to find definitions of the key words in simplistic terms to help me on my quest.

Digital: Information is stored using a series of ones and zeros known as the binary system. Digital devices estimate auditory and visual signals using ones and zeros.

Analog: Information is received in a continuous transmission.

Electronic: Of, implemented on, or controlled by a computer or computer network.

Communication: The technology employed in transmitting messages.

Digital Devices That Are Not Electronic
1. Beacon: perhaps the simplest non-electronic digital signal, with just two states. It's either illuminated, or not.


2. Braille: can be seen as the world's first binary encoding scheme for representing the characters of a writing system.


3. Telegraph: relies on binary code, demonstrating the ease with which binary numbers can be translated into electrical impulses.

3: Treasure Hunt

When asked to find out the answer to the below questions without the assistance of Google or Wikipedia, a friend asked "Well, how do you search without Google?". I suggested she Google the term "search engines"... Oh, how reliant on Google we are.

I used Yahoo for my treasure hunt as it used to be my default web browser before I made the switch to Google. All answers were found on August 20. I have linked the URL where I found the answers to the applicable question. All images were found via Yahoo.

1. What is the weight of the world’s biggest machine? How much did it cost to build?
What: CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
Weight: 38,000 tonnes.
Cost: $10,000,000,000.

2. What is the best way (quickest, most reliable) to contact Ozzy Osbourne?
How: Twitter.
Osbourne's account has been verified by Twitter and while he may not reply, it is certainly a more effective method than getting in contact with his management.

3. When and what was the first example of global digital communication?
What: Morse Code developed in 1835 by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail.
Morse Code uses two states (on and off) composed into five symbols:

• dit (·)
  
• dah (-)
  
• short gap (between letters)
  
• medium gap (between words)
  
• long gap (between sentences)

4. What is the cheapest form of travel from the Gold Coast to Melbourne?
While some people may say that the cheapest way to get from the Gold Coast to Melbourne is by walking/hitchiking as it doesn't cost anything, I disagree. The distance between the two cities is 1,840km and an estimated travel time of 22hrs. This would most likely be spread out over 3 days of travel, and even if you aren't paying for petrol, you will still need somewhere to spend the night, along with food and water costs. That's why I think that flying is the cheapest method of transport.

By booking flights on sale, and in advance you can get a fare for under $50 and a fraction of the travelling time. Fares start at $46.24 with Tiger Airways (as of 20 August).

5. Who is Hatsune Miku? What company does she belong to? What is her birthday?
Who: Hatsune Miku (初音ミク).
What: "The first and most popular installment in the Vocaloid Character Vocal Series (a singing synthesizer application)".
Company: Yamaha.
Birthday: 31 August 2007.

6. Find a live webcam in Antarctica. Find a place to stay in Antarctica.
Webcam: Palmer Station, Antarctica.
Travel: The best (albeit expensive) way to see Antarctica is by cruise ship. This link is for an 11-day tour on the cruise ship Svetaeva (pictured).

7. What song was top of the Australian pop charts this week in 1980?
9 Aug 1980: "Funky Town" - Lipps Inc.


8. How would you define the term 'nanotechnology'? In your own words, what does it really mean?
N is for Nanotechnology: A theoretical and experimental field of applied science and technology. It covers a broad range of topics and is focused on controlling and exploiting the structure of matter on a scale below 100 nanometers.

This video describes it in terms I can understand, that nanotechnology relates to "the study of things less than 1/1000th of the width of a human hair". Now THAT is tiny!



9. What type of camera is used to make ‘Google Street View’?
Camera: Dodeca 2360 from Immersive Media (pictured).
Info: 100 million pixels at 30 frames per second.

10. Translate these questions into Klingon.
Klingon: a constructed language created by Marc Okrand for Paramount Pictures and spoken by Klingons in the fictional Star Trek universe.

I translated the questions via Tweet in Klingon.

(1) wa'. nuq ghaH yov vo' qo'’cha'DIch biggest chenmoH? chay' 'ar ta'ta' 'oH taH Daqchen?
(2) cha'. nuq ghaH qIp Da (quickest, HochHom yuDHa') DaqSIch Ozzy Osbourne?
(3) wej. DI'je nuq ghaHta' wa'Dich example vo' global digital vang?
(4) loS. nuq ghaH cheapest form vo' leng vo' SuD baS vIH DaqMelbourne?
(5) vagh. boghghaH Hatsune Miku? nuq tlhej ta'taH ghaH jaH ? Daqnuq ghaH DajqoS?
(6) jav. tu' yIn webcam DaqAntarctica. tu' Daq Daqratlh DaqAntarctica.
(7) Soch. nuq bom ghaHta' juS vo' ngan bIng nab vamHogh Daq1980?
(8) chorgh. chay' would SoH define ja' 'nano Sun'? Daq lIjghaj mu'mey, nuq ta'taH 'oH really qej?
(9) Hut. nuq ngu' vo' camera ghaH lo' DaqchenmoH ‘Qul SuD View’?
(10) wa'maH. mugh Dochvammey yu' Daq tlhIngan.

pItlh.

2: Lecture Notes

Movies allow us to escape our life and also to enjoy world's unlike our own. Films are divided into categories known as 'genres'. A person is usually drawn to a particular of genre of film that they prefer to watch. I personally am terrified of horror movies so avoid them at all cost, preferring to indulge in light-hearted romantic comedies and the occasional thriller.

I usually prefer to read a review of a movie than go to the cinemas and watch it. But I made an exception for Inception. In fact, I saw it twice within the first three days of it's Australian release. I love it.

There are many different reasons why I think this movie is appealing. It's quite rare to find a movie these days with an original storyline for a start. Also, the special effects are flawless; you feel like you are in the dream with them. It also doesn't hurt that they have an all-star cast, but I think what personally draws me into this film is the storyline between Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his family which is effectively depicted through the director's choice of shots.

Cine-Speak is the term given for the jargon of cinema. A variety of different shots are used to convey the all important W's and H and the character's emotions:

• Who: Close up, Extreme close up
  
• What: Mid shot
  
• When: Close up, Very long shot/wide shot
  
• Where: Long shot, Medium long shot
  
• Why: Big close up, Extreme close up
  
• How: Medium close up

The camera shots aren't the only thing taken into consideration when telling a story by film. Things such as making sure the character has enough head and talking room, the rule of thirds, inserts and cutaways to provide extra information and the all importance of making a statement all combine to tell the story of the world's we'll never experience... at least until technology catches up.

2: 30-Still Video

Long Lost Friends


Our short film titled "Long Lost Friends" is about two university friends, Kirra and Liz, and their experience of being apart when Kirra studies abroad for a semester.

We have tried to make the best use of cine-speak as possible. I was the photographer and I tried to keep in mind the rules of:

• Head room
  
• Talking room
  
• Rule of thirds
  
• The 180° rule

Close-ups and mid-shots were used to establish the characters in the film and the fact that they were university friends. A big close-up of the email was used to convey critical information to the story that may not have been able to be shown through a simple photo of the characters, including the fact they had to say goodbye straight away, hence why there was no farewell at an airport or something similar.

Time is always a difficult thing to convey on film, especially when we shot the photos all in one day and they were wearing the same clothes... I took some photos of my university wallplanner with the dates crossed out to show the passing of time. The Facebook mesages were to try to show that they were close friends and the 6 months that Kirra was to be gone for is a long time to them.

I think our film is effective in conveying our chosen theme of "Long Lost Friends" because of the shots chosen and the storyline. Also I find that the song "Nowhere Without You" by Bob Evans really complements the film.