Communities and Social Media

Vlog: converging image and audio, linking web and life

The purpose of this essay is to explain the Reflective Web Media Creation (RWMC) and to explore the integration of video and audio in online media by explaining the creative process, creative issues, and creative thinking. Media is all around us (Cheng& Paul, 2017). And everyone can participate in it. Therefore, in this assignment, I will start from a short video (vlog) that I shot and edited, combine the short video I shot on a walk with the audio of my favorite musician, and create a second creation, from creation to completion and analyze the convergence of online media with theory. The essay is divided into four parts, the first of which is a description of the theory and methodology underlying the creation of this short video and the ideas that I want to convey. The second part will explain the social media platform through which this short video will be distributed. The third part explains the editing resources and copyright issues. Finally, I will share the timeline of my video creation.

Rationale, Approach and Argument

First of all, RWMC aims to illustrate the convergence between media and that this convergence will bring the general public closer to the media. These can be achieved by reducing the technical cost of creation, equipment cost, and production cost. The essence of media convergence is the integration of technology, people, media and society. This time, I will use short video clips as the material, and create a second time through simple video clips, adding music and using camera transitions. I prefer to describe this short video as a vlog, as a kind of video-mediated blog, the visualization of daily life brought by vlogging has become a media landscape of great interest, and presents three distinctive media characteristics. Vlogs are a unique metaphor for identity, technology, and scenario, as the number of users and content grows (Carral et al, 2019). Wikipedia defines it as a type of video-based blog that distinguishes itself from the text-based blogs that were popular in the late 20th century. It is a form of video that combines text, images, and audio, and when edited and embellished, can be turned into a video diary that expresses the persona of the creator and showcases his or her daily life (Gao et al, 2010). With the change of communication carriers, the form of people’s records has changed from static to dynamic presentation, from graphic representation to visual and audio communication. This precisely reflects the integration and digitization of various communication elements in the network media environment.

Second, the purpose of this RWMC creation will be described below. The advancement of media technology has not only affected people’s lifestyles, but also changed the overall media ecology of society (van Nuenen & Scarles, 2021). The development path from blogs to video blogs echoes the important shift from language to images in the cultural field. By restoring the environment in which vlogs are born and developed, we can gain insight and grasp their essential properties through phenomenal representations. The purpose behind the production of this short video vlog is to explore the trend of gradual integration and digitization from image to video, and to illustrate the principle that web media is becoming more and more popular and everyone is a creator (Ellingsen, 2014).

Finally, the source of inspiration for this creation. This video was taken from a personal moment in my life. Once I was not in a good mood, so I was listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto‘s music and walking and relaxing in the forest path. When I heard Merry Christmas, Mr. Laurence, my mood of looking at the surrounding scenery changed with the beating of the notes, the change of rhythm and the direction of the music’s mood. So I used my phone to take pictures of the surrounding scenery while listening to the music. I usually walk a lot along this road, but never pay attention to these subtle scenery, after the shooting is completed I thought whether I can also be like a movie clip to stitch them together into their own microfilm it? So, this idea took root in my mind.

Media Format

First, the presentation of RWMC. As mentioned above, this RWMC creation will take short video (vlog) as the presentation form, combining video clips with editing techniques and adding favorite theme music to make a short video integrating emotions and recording the environment and mood at that time. In this creation, I will point the camera at my real self and real-life environment, and show my real-life clips by combining images, words, music and other elements in a scene style.

Second, the reason for choosing the secondary creation method of combining video shooting and audio is that I want to use this opportunity to explore the trend of digitalization of daily life and convergence of web media. Vloggers known as Digital Natives, they, or more aptly, we, have both the proficiency and mastery of various video shooting equipment and video editing techniques, and the desire to express the feelings of loneliness, social alienation and anxiety that arise in the context of social atomization (Thomas, 2011). From travel, fitness, food to the daily life of isolation at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and dating, the vlogs present the creators’ real daily life and their perceptions and emotions of life. These daily life scenes are recorded without deliberate plotting or scripting, and are more compelling because they are real. In the process of constructing a new order of communication, the richness of social cues and the multiplicity of interpersonal communication have become increasingly distinctive features of online interpersonal communication. Therefore, it is more appropriate to choose this way to express my views (Ibrahim, 2021).

Finally, there is the presentation platform. As we all know, Instagram is a famous social media with pictures as the main form of recording and sharing, basically every internet user has an Instagram. given that Instagram tends to be more of a lifestyle expression and has a limit of 1-3 minutes for videos, I think this social platform is more suitable than YouTube for me to post my short videos than YouTube. In terms of image processing, video functions, social operations, and brand marketing, Instagram presents its usual mature model, giving users the most comprehensive and integrated experience. The editing tool I use is a niche mobile video editing software, VUE, which is easy to use.

Media Sources and Copyright

Since all the material for this video creation came from my own filming, it was difficult to have the problem of copyright infringement. The only problem is the selection of music. In order to avoid copyright infringement, I complied with the Internet Music Copyright Convention and purchased all the songs of Mr. Sakamoto’s album on music platforms, so that I could avoid using pirated music to infringe copyright, and also to have high-quality music materials. And at the end of the video production and at the title, it is marked that this video creation is a personal work, and the scope of use is limited to personal, not commercial.

Production Process and Timeline

Since I already had the idea and theme I wanted to express in this creation, the creation process was smooth and took less time. Below I will show the flow and timeline of my creation.

Week1: Established the theme – the expression of daily life and the integration of natural scenery

I decided on a theme first, and then looked for suitable music and materials around that theme. It may also be that you see the material first and then decide on a theme. In short, it’s about defining a main line, what emotion you want to express and what kind of story you want to tell. If you have a theme, you won’t deviate too much, and this step is very important, so you can get twice the result with half the effort.

Week2: Organize the material

During this week, I repeatedly looked at and filtered all the clips that I shot. A more complete process of organizing the material will greatly reduce the amount of repetitive work I have to do. During the creation process, I categorized the material, which material is suitable for long shot expression, which material is suitable for slow motion expression, all these are categorized one by one. In order to make transitions, or to explain events, etc., I made segments in advance. And in this week I bought music material and established it as the background music for this video editing and creation.

Week3: Start editing

Generally speaking, whether it is a whole movie or a partial paragraph, the narrative always contains four stages: beginning, development, climax and ending, which is both the requirement of the narrative logic itself and the requirement of the psychological rhythm when the audience watches the video. For the rhythm of editing, I expressed in this creation according to the emotional direction of the music and the length of the shot. Based on the previous documentation and the content in my head, I can probably sort out a creative idea. Then I will start with the audio (arrange the music, add subtitles, etc.), then match the picture (depending on experience and understanding of the picture, each person is different), and finally adjust the order and rhythm of the picture.

References:

Carral, D., goste, I., González, L., Jacobs, C., Krötzsch, M., Urbani, J., Ghidini, C., Maleshkova, M., Cruz, I., Song, J., Gandon, F., Hartig, O., Svátek, V., Hogan, A., & Lefrançois, M. (2019). VLog: A Rule Engine for Knowledge Graphs. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2, 19–35.

Ellingsen, S. (2014). Seismic shifts: Platforms, content creators and spreadable media. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture & Policy, 150(150), 106–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X1415000121.

Gao, W., Tian, Y., Huang, T., & Yang, Q. (2010). Vlogging: A survey of videoblogging technology on the web. ACM Computing Surveys, 42(4), 1–57. https://doi.org/10.1145/1749603.1749606.

Ibrahim, Y. (2021). Accounting the “self”: From diarization to life vlogs. Convergence (London, England), 27(2), 330–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856520947618.

Ming-Ming Cheng Qi-Bin Hou Song-Hai Zhang Paul L. Rosin. (2017). Intelligent Visual Media Processing: When Graphics Meets Vision. Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 32(1), 110–121. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-017-1681-7.

Thomas, M. (2011). Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology, and the New Literacies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203818848.

van Nuenen, T., & Scarles, C. (2021). Advancements in technology and digital media in tourism. Tourist Studies, 21(1), 119–132. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468797621990410.

One thought on “Vlog: converging image and audio, linking web and life

  1. Hello Peiqian,

    After reading your paper I can see you have taken a great interest in the production of video clips, or vlogs as you call them, for sharing on social media platforms. I see you believe that Instagram is a better fit for the style and length of vlog you create rather than other platforms such as YouTube. The creation and uploading of vlogs and longer forms of video clips seems to be gaining momentum with an ever-growing number of clips being uploaded on a daily basis to a plethora of social media platforms including Instagram and YouTube.
    I believe there are a number of online tools available to assist the less gifted of us in this process, making it even more accessible to a greater number of less experienced users to participate in producing videos for sharing online.
    You are correct in stating that media is all around us and I hope that your paper can enlighten others on the importance of sharing some of the things we see and experience in our daily lives via video.
    Thank you Peiqian for an interesting paper.

    Regards,
    Bernie.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *