Unit 3
1.1
With technology evolving at a tremendous rate, creative media industries have the constant battle of keeping up with the latest and greatest devices and software. Having the latest tech doesn't only help an industry itself out, it also helps with the communication between the industries. For example, in the photography industry it is very beneficial to have the new, high quality cameras to capture your content. However if you don't have a computer that has software on it allowing you to edit and send said content to a publisher/client there's not going to be much profit to be made. From this you could conclude that digital technology affects the whole creative process in an industry from creating/capturing, to editing and then finally distributing.
DSLRs, video cameras, audio equipment and lighting equipment are all technologies that affect various creative industries such as film or radio. They affect the initial creating/capturing stage of the creative process.
Software such as Premiere Pro, Photoshop, FCPX, Audition all help with the editing process when creating something. These editing programs are very powerful and are constantly undergoing change to make them quicker and more intuitive to use. There is also software that's used in the initial creating stage. Illustrator is an example of this as you're able to create vector graphics from scratch to be used alongside other media.
For distribution there are things such as YouTube and Vimeo which are video hosting sites where people can view created content. Vimeo allows a client to download a video too. Tools such as skype and email allow communication between a company and the client.
1.2
Intellectual property is something someone has created. It has to be a physical and unique entity and cannot just be an idea. Things such as product names, the design of a product or things you have written or made are all eligible for intellectual property protection. There are various types of protection. Some types you have to apply for and some you automatically get. The automatic ones are Copyright © and Design Right. Copyright protection is valid when the © symbol, your name and the year are added to something you have created. Different types of work are protected for different lengths of time. The Design Right protects a design for 10 years after it was sold or 15 years after it was created. As proof of ownership when making a claim, a copy must have been sent to yourself, dated and left unopened. Protection you need to apply for can be; Trade Mark ™, Registered Designs ® and Patents. Trade Marks protect product names and logos, Registered Designs protect the appearance of a product like it's shape or its pattern of colours and patents protect inventions and products and the implementation of an idea. Trade Marks last 10 years. Registered designs are valid for up to 25 years with renewal every 5 years. Patents are expensive and take a long time to put in place. They also need to be renewed each year.
Copyright is the easiest to obtain in digital media. If you create something that is entirely your own then you're able to protect it via the © symbol and name and a year. Even if you release a video or photograph to the public domain, you still have ownership of that product due to it being your creation. If the owner decides to license their copyright, they can do so and this allows the owner to set what a user can or can't do with the material. There are various consequences to infringing copyright;
- Infringer has to pay for the damages and profits caused by the infringement.
- Infringer pays for all attorney fees and court costs
- The court can impound the illegal content
- The infringer can go to jail.
This can obviously be very serious if you are to break the copyright law so it is always wise to obtain a valid copyright license. There are however exceptions to the copyright law such as using content for non-commercial research, criticism, and teaching/educational purposes. Aside from the above UK copyright laws, there are international treaties and are in place to protect creative works. The Berne Convention states that all creative work in a fixed medium (excluding photography and cinematography) has protection for at least 50 years after the authors death. There is also another convention called Buenos Aires which protects creative work as long as copyright has be claimed on the work. There are also things called Orphan works that are creative works which have an unknown owner. Orphan works copyright lasts up to 7 years and is available for both commercial and non-commercial use. It also only applies in the UK.
2.1
Converging technology is basically a term used to describe two or more technological products working together to perform a new task they weren't originally designed for. The most obvious product would be your smartphone. There are numerous tasks you can do on a single smartphone which would have had to have been done separately with various other technologies if they hadn't joined into one convenient device. Things such as emailing, photographing, voice communication and even using a calculator all once required separate devices to perform said tasks but due to converging technology they can all be used in unison. Skype is another example of converging technology as it is a communication platform that provides instant messaging, voice calls and video calls over the internet in one convenient piece of software. Another interesting piece of technology are powerline adapters. These devices send data from the internet through the powerlines in your house to a computer. This data can be anything from voice over Skype, video from a website like youtube or even word documents. Overall, converging technologies is evolving a system to perform more than one task for convenience.
2.2
Converging technology has had a huge impact on the creative media industry. The entire concept of sharing content and the internet has driven different creative industries to expand and work together or compete. The idea of sharing video within minutes, if not seconds, would have been laughed at years ago but the fact that the processing power of computers and the speed of the internet is increasing as years go by means that content can be shared between a company and client faster and more efficiently. Gone are the days of sending DVDs by post, instead you can upload a video or photo to a file sharing site and a client can access it instantly. Not only that but feedback can be given quickly thanks to instant messaging on social media or platforms such as skype. This means amendments can be made as soon as possible and the client can get their product faster. Almost all the creative industries such as film, photography, publishing, animation and radio will be tied to the internet is some form. Whether it be advertising for something in that particular industry or to access the content or a product that industry provides, the internet could be considered the biggest converging technology. Some forms of publishing such as newspapers have had to adapt to the increase of free news content on the internet. Because of the convenience of being able to get news on your phone, newspapers are becoming less and less popular. News on the internet is generally free meaning people are less inclined to go out and buy a paper. This means that newspapers have had to change platforms and attempt to offer their news services on the internet. The Sun has it's own website now in response to the decrease in customers buying their newspaper. Not only are the newspaper employees in danger of losing their job but also are the journalists that provide photos for them. This is not directly a result of people buying less newspapers, it is due to the influx of user content that is distributed. Companies like the BBC use content that the public have produced in their news articles. Not only is it cheaper, it can also be a lot faster to get together an article because the amount of user generated content is massive and can be available within minutes of a newsworthy event taking place.
3.1
Audiences within the film industry are constantly demanding bigger and better. With the ever developing high quality equipment studios are using now, the consumer expects no less than a polished and widely available product and because of this, those working in the industry have had to provide this to stay competitive. In terms of availability, a lot has changed over the years on how we view content. Satellite and cable have brought around new ways to watch media on your devices at home whether they be a TV, smart phone or computer. Subscriptions to services like SKY or Virgin Media offer a variety of different channels and apps that can be used to watch TV live or catch up with shows on demand. This on demand service has become increasingly popular due to it's ease of use and functionality. Consumers are able to record or catch up with any program they want, whenever they want and on various different internet enabled devices. We are no longer constrained to have to watch a TV show live because otherwise we would never have been able to view it again. This means we can be doing other things like working or going out for social events. The ability to access this content at a later date is what's most appealing to the general public. Having availability on various devices also expands your user base. More people have phones and stream video on them nowadays so if your service is compatible with the smartphone platform then you have an even more desirable product. Having access to content is important; however if this content isn't high quality then people are less inclined to be using the service. This is where fast streaming capabilities and good bitrates come in. If your service offers HD quality content it is much more desirable for the consumer to use your service compared to one that only offers 480p or 360p quality video. To top it all off, a company needs to be able to offer theses services at competitive prices. Services like Netflix offer extremely competitive prices for a huge amount of high quality content and this is why their user base has over 81 million subscribers.
3.2
Multi-platform content is content that is available in several different mediums, some of these mediums being; film, television, web, mobile and print. Some companies offer their products on many different platforms to maximise their user base and therefore possible profit. Some examples of this are things like including interactive content on Blu-rays that link to websites, or having a digital copy of a Blu-ray film available for download onto a portable device. Having this synergy between different platforms means that a viewer isn't locked into one platform that they may or may not have access to and they can then still buy and access the content on their desired device. Many websites have a mobile and desktop version. This can provide a much better viewing experience for smart phone users as it will condense the site to function easier on a smaller screen. Fewer images will also load to restrict the amount of data that has to be downloaded, benefiting the users that have mobile data caps.
3.3
At Page One there are a few different ways we try and commission jobs from a client. More often than not we get jobs through word of mouth. Clients we have worked with previously have recommended us to other similar companies that might need photography or video from us. In relation to converging technology, we have used other methods to market ourselves and try and win potential jobs. Presence on social media can be really influential due to more and more people and companies using it. We advertise work we have done previously on Facebook and also on Twitter. From here we hope people share and like so it can reach possible clients. This is an example of using web technology, however we have also mailed DVDs and USBs containing video we have done as part of our marketing. We also include print case studies of photos we have taken to showcase our photography as well as our video.
4.1
I personally have a YouTube account that I upload to every now and again. If I were to look into and try to exploit converging technology in order to gain more views, I might look at Google analytics that YouTube provides. I would be able to see how many minutes are watched on average, what age range and gender and viewing my videos and from what device they're being viewed from. With this information I would be able to tailor the content of my videos to suit the most interested demographic.4.2
For my own personal test I will be looking at the analytics from my YouTube videos. I will look at the age range that are viewing my videos, whether they're male or female and how long the videos are being watched for.
4.3
Here are some statistics that I have pulled from my YouTube. I took the top 3 videos and looked at the average viewer retention.
All three videos are entertainment based with the content featuring either music, an activity or a challenge. The top video features a music festival so it may be an idea to include more content orientated around this as it seems quite popular.
Here are some audience statistics.
From this you can see that the most popular age range for males is 25-34 and for females is 18-24. It would seem that adults are more likely to view my content. This could be due to YouTube's user base generally consisting of older users or that my content attracts a more adult audience.
Here is the analysis for what devices are used to view my videos.
Users on mobile phones have watched to most minutes but their average view duration is rated 2nd to last. It may be an idea to reduce the length of my videos so that people are less inclined to leave before the video ends. To further back up this point I could create a survey/questionnaire that asks how long people generally view videos on their phone at any one time. This survey/questionnaire data may/may not confirm my conclusion that I should reduce the video length to be more appealing to mobile phone users.
So I went ahead and made a google form for people to answer to see if my analytics data matched the data people gave themselves. Here are the questions.
I shared the questionnaire on Facebook asking people to answer and share it themselves to maximise the amount of data I could gather. Here is the data that was gathered.
So from the data collected we can see that the users who use YouTube the most are young adults. This has a slight correlation with Google analytics with it being the second highest viewer age range for said data. I didn't feel asking a gender was necessary because we would always want to appeal to the both genders to maximise viewers. Everyone agreed that YouTube was a good platform for viewing video content. What I could have done here would be to give an alternative like Vimeo which would have showed me if anyone viewed videos elsewhere. Music was the highest rated answer for what type of content people looked for. Gaming and comedy came joint second. These three types of content are all entertainment based which seems to be what people look for the most according to the Google analytics data. Half of the people who answered what device they use YouTube on said PC followed closely by smartphone / tablet. Surprisingly almost half of the results said they viewed videos for more 10 minutes at a time which dismisses my conclusion that I should make my videos shorter. The final answers were interesting because it was difficult to see a general consensus. If I were to make a conclusion it would be to have more interesting and exciting content.
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