I believe that the Social Cost Tracker project has seen some very interesting twists this quarter. The updates to the Good Guide and release of Red Laser and Reel Director have made some of our stated goals reality. This week the release of Google Goggles brings the ability to read barcodes even closer within our reach. The question still remains as to where we fit into these developments. Perhaps a set of media creation tools is still our niche in this market. My research into effective short form media this quarter has led me to believe that this is still a viable option although it has presented me with a set of questions that still need to be answered.
Based on Sig’s ability to easily link You Tube? videos into the Social Cost Tracker iPhone app, I began to search for meaningful and relevant You Tube? video content that might be useful for our project. This search turned out to be very informative. While relevant content does already exist, a large majority of the videos suffer from amateur filmmaking skills that often result in what I consider boring or ineffective attempts. I realize that I am looking at these clips from the perspective of professional video, but I believe that audience expectations are similar due to the amount of quality video consumed on a daily basis. I believe that we are somewhat media savvy when it comes to expectations about what constitutes “good” media. While it would be easy to acknowledge this plethora of “bad” video and simply say we can’t expect people to make interesting content, I will look at this as a challenge to create better media. That said, I do not have an exact formula for the creation of effective media at this point. I believe that the best way to proceed is through a series of experiments that invites participant users to create their own videos. This is what I intend to do over the next quarter.
I intend to design a MAX/MSP/JITTER patch that will allow participant users to create short form videos based on a set of issues. The MAX patch will use the built in acquisition tools found on a Mac Book Pro to record, edit, and share short videos. The MAX patch will play the role of an investigative reporter that asks participant users a series of questions. Ideally the interrogative method employed in the design of the patch will also serve as a template that will allow participant users to create their own sets of questions for other users. In this way the tool becomes a catalyst for ongoing discussion about issues of concern to participant users.
Perhaps our niche is the ability for our app to generate discussion on a set of issues. It is still unclear whether objective statistical data or subjective personal reporting will be more effective in persuading participant users to alter their purchasing practices. When it comes to complex social factors that are multifaceted, more nuanced discussion between participant users may be the way to convince conflicted consumers.
I used Zeb’s research model of plugging in UPC codes as a departure point for some research into You Tube video resources. We have discussed how this type of content may be used to populate our media database. I was surprised to see how many people are already creating first person reviews of products such as Alba Botanica beauty products. The opinions presented are completely subjective and not based on facts.
Most of them are too long to maintain my interest. The people reviewing the products are often not concise. Templates that require time limited responses could possibly enhance this type of reporting. I also noticed a stylistic trend in supplemental text being added to these short videos. This seems to fall in line with the ideas I have about templates that mix title cards and first person reporting. I am also wondering if we should design templates for interview templates that allow users to create their own sets of questions for others to answer. This leads us into the possibility of a social networking environment in the Social Cost Tracker.
Perhaps user responses and personal reports could be used to place people in a spectrum on certain issues. We have discussed how some issues are more relevant to people and that people will not necessarily agree across the board on issues of labor, personal health, or the environment. Perhaps we can create clusters of people with similar interests. People can discuss issues with people that have similar ideas in their clusters or be directed to other clusters where people may not feel as strongly about the specific issues. Maybe someone is sympathetic to the environmental aspects of veganism but still believes that fish is an important part of their personal diet. Perhaps discussions with people that share their beliefs on some issues but disagree on veganism will help everyone develop a deeper understanding of the issue. We may assume that people who choose to use this app already have an interest in the social cost of products. Forums created among users may allow for deeper and more nuanced discussions that go beyond simple direct social cost ratings.
Now that the Good Guide has added barcode scanning, I believe we have to take a serious look at what we have to offer that is unique and goes beyond the Good Guide system. Perhaps social networking is one way to expand on their model. The Good Guide has created an effective tool for individual users in the shopping aisle. We need to add another dimension that promotes activism in reporting and public discussion.
GoodGuide PanelPersonal health products are their top searches, not climate change. They found that keeping kids free from toxins in products was perhaps the greatest concern of their users. I would add to this that beauty care products are the biggest sellers at Whole Foods.
Self DestructionSomewhat cheesy didactic video that addresses some of the issues we have been discussing in regards to products. The video is an example of a low tech, self produced video that we might hope to see produced for the Social Cost Tracker. The question remains if this is an effective method of communication. Is the clip persuasive?
Bionaturae - An Autism Hangout "Recommended Brand" – Gluten freePersonal report direct from the grocery store aisle about the health benefits of an organic gluten free pasta product.
Company code does not appear on list distributed by Zeb Good Guide said it was from the Hain Celestial Group which appears to be a mistake. This specific product doesn’t exist on Good Guide although other Alba lip balms do There are about 50 first person reviews of Alba Products on You Tube Most are between 3- 8 minutes A You Tube search on Alba Botanica Labor Issues returned no results A You Tube search on Alba Botanica health returned a short video called self-destruction that addresses some of the issues we are discussing.
Self DestructionGood guide found it and gave it a 10 out of 10 UPC Database did not find it A You Tube search on Bionaturae Organic Lasagna did not return any related clips. I reduced the search to Bionaturae Organic and found a lot of clips with Organic in the title. A You Tube search on Bionaturae returned a related clip shot in a grocery store.
Bionaturae - An Autism Hangout "Recommended Brand" – Gluten freeSurprisingly the company does not appear on Good Guide or on the UPC website
Several Celestial Seasonings joke commercials found on You Tube. How can we filter these results out?
Amazon Mechanical Turk?
other returns o Celestial Seasonings
Boring reviewYouth Interview of rep from Celestial Seasonings on early Green CompaniesMy day at Celestial Seasonings factory1st person report on the Celestial Seasonings factory that doesn't have any footage of the factory.
Good Guide had it You Tube search yields news story– Bears like Nature’s Path too
News interview with president of Nature’s PathPresident’s response to UK study on organicsBig Green LiesSeries dedicated to debunking overstated “green” claims that doesn’t always get to debunk.
Seventh GenerationChannel for manufacturer of green products.
GreenScreen TVYouth generated content on green issues. A green parody of MTV Cribs was entertaining but I felt it left out important issues. It claimed that their swimming pool was green because it used solar power to heat it.
Smart powerShort videos on sustainable power sources, facts about car emissions.
How we discovered Virgin Coconut OilShort narrative infomercial on "how we do it" with occasional titles that reinforce the words in the commercial.
App Vee review of GoodGuideThey concluded that it works well but won’t convince you if you aren’t already on the green path.
The footage I discuss below may be found under my
iReport profile
Very fast response to uploaded work when the clip is new but then newer clips that continue to push it down in a queue sorted by date essentially bury it.
Unfiltered clips make it into the media stream where they have equal ground with other news clips. This status does change, as reports that make it to TV are fact checked and receive an “On CNN” tag that seems to validate their content.
Media clips are searchable by keyword tags that group along subjects so iReport could potentially be a good source for media content.
Not easy to upload… An 80MB clip constantly bombed with my wireless connection on campus although the limit is 200MB. This would create problems for people with even slower connections speeds.
I was surprised to find that differences in quality of image resolution had very little impact on the viewer. 7MB highly compressed video clips were as effective as HD 70MB clips. Content over format.
Rights of use... You basically surrender your rights by uploading clips to the site. I could not find a way to easily remove a clip once I had posted it. I was successful in removing a clip through a written email request to my contact at CNN.
Obviously this is problematic as this type of information may used to the detriment of potential media makers yet this information will provide valuable background that may influence whether or not viewers perceive the media as valid.
This info can be used to geo tag the location where the media was produced.
Should be limited to one line of text. Perhaps a text-formatting template that limits characters similar to Twitter can impose this limitation. This could be presented as an intro title card. Additional text could be added later in the piece but the text on this initial title card should also serve as the keyword tags for the piece.
Effective images or video should express the basic concept of the tagline without the use of text.
This should explain why the tagline matters. In this section the media maker should explain the relevance to the social cost of a product. If possible this should be stated in relation to the perceived end user.
Media Makers should have the ability to relate their uploaded content to other products or social issues through keywords.
I am questioning the need for concise edited media. My online iReport profile provides clips that tell a story by watching them individually. Only one of these clips was edited. I am interested in the possibility that small unedited clips will allow users to draw their own conclusions by pulling together fragments of media from various sources. I think this is a natural process for web users that unconsciously compile millions of media fragments into ideas. One question I have about unedited media is if it is possible to achieve some form of documentary “truth” in a short clip without narration or other contextualizing elements. One can obviously argue that no such truth exists due to the fact that we cannot escape the framing and imposed perspective of the person recording the clip.
Is there a way to create clips that cannot easily be altered or manipulated to the point of misinterpretation? I think it is an impossible task, but based on my experience with CNN I want to find a way to produce media that speaks for itself. The clip that drew the attention of CNN to my work in Brazil was shot by the cinema teacher not the students.
The clip was easier to watch because it was guided by the hands of a filmmaker. In that clip some of the living conditions of the neighborhood are revealed. It is also clear that the youth are enjoying the Flip cameras. I think there is some level of visual truth in the clip even if it is only superficial and does nothing to reveal the underlying social factors that make an image of under privileged children with cameras an internationally news worthy event.
In my attempt to find channels of distribution of media that bypass traditional standards, I found CNN’s iReport. The tagline on the website at the time of my posting, “Unfiltered News”, has disappeared from the site in the past week as the new look of the site appears even more officially associated with CNN. I was excited about the potential for distributing stories created by the youth I was working with in Rocinha over a major worldwide network of users. I hoped that seeing their stories on the site would encourage them to make more reports from their community. It remains to be seen if this will generate more interest in creating personal narratives for the students at the Two Brothers Foundation in Rocinha.
In the meantime I am trying to determine if the method of distribution was successful in achieving one of my other primary goals of contradicting mass media stereotypes about youth violence in Brazilian favelas. Although I excluded all references to violence in my notes, the host that interviewed me went directly to the point of safety in the favelas. The story was told from my perspective as an outsider going in to the community with cameras.
My opinions on the subject were heard while the actual voices of the students in the videos were excluded. The story was advertised on CNN with the tagline “poor kids in Brazil film their lives”. Somehow my intent to provide youth with the opportunity to represent themselves in a way that would challenge the status quo fell right back into the traditional news formula of the foreign other relating their experiences from an outsider perspective.
The other question my experience with iReport raised was the effectiveness of web distribution. I acknowledge that a story about youth in Rio de Janeiro does not have the widespread appeal of a cat playing a piano or other forms of humorous oddities found on the web. It is not my intent to appeal to a massive audience or to compete with the web’s most viral videos.
I am interested in producing short clips that can easily be uploaded by people not trained in media production. One concept of the Social Cost Tracker could be said to rely on the assumption that this type of meaningful media exists and can be easily created and uploaded. My research into this question makes me wonder if this is the most efficient concept of the project. Perhaps we will have to rely on the work of professional media makers to tell the stories of the products. That said, I am not ready to abandon the idea that short format media created by people not trained in the creation of media can be effective in distributing messages effectively on a global scale.
According to Wikipedia my iReport on CNN International had the potential of reaching more than 200 million households in over 200 countries. Even if these numbers are sensationalized, the ability to reach even half as many people while sitting at home in front of a a web cam on the campus at UCSC is a bit astonishing.
In the terms of what we are discussing as stated goals of the Social Cost Tracker this type of widespread dissemination of information seems to be ideal. We propose that if we send effective short messages out about certain products that end users will have an inclination to learn more about the product and the social cost of production through media rich content.
We have suggested that Social Cost Tracker users will have the opportunity to click on a link or icon that will take them to this media rich content. We tend to agree that it does not seem likely that these app users will not take the time to watch this media content in the aisle of the store. It seems logical that a link or email could easily direct them to this content on the web.
In the case of my iReport with a potential of over 200 million viewers, I estimate the number of people that followed up the broadcast on the web site around 20-50. The actual number is probably even less due to the fact that I simultaneously promoted the story via email and social networking.
Granted there are some obvious differences in what we are proposing with the Social Cost Tracker. Perhaps the biggest difference is the audience. In the case of the Social Cost Tracker we have a target audience that is already concerned about the social cost of products. People with a preexisting interest in the subject will naturally be more inclined to follow up more than a random audience of passive news viewers.
That said, the web’s great promise of transmitting information globally does need to be questioned. A message’s ability to communicate effectively in short format cannot be measured if it is not received on the other end. I believe that one of our greatest challenges is correctly identifying the perceived end user’s relationship to short form media content. Will this person even take the time to watch the media that provides information on the complex factors that result in social cost?
I propose to create a MAX/MSP/JITTER patch as a working prototype of the Media Creator for iPhone app. The MAX patch will include the template for “meaningful short form video content”. I will use this patch as a tool in my ongoing thesis work dealing with pedagogy for technology. I will research short form media on the web and look for successful examples as models for my educational template. I am currently seeking programmers interested in developing The Media Creator editing tool for the iPhone.
The Media Creator is an iPhone app designed as a practical tool with the educational goal of assisting participant users in the creation of short form media projects and first person narratives. The Media Creator will provide a tutorial that guides users through short basic steps to create effective short form media with the iPhone’s built in camera. Media projects will combine video and still images shot with the built in camera, narration recorded through the built in mic, and text typed on the keypad. The app will include a template that provides basic narrative components to help guide media creators. Media components will be easily rearranged visually to create new narrative structures. The short media projects will be shared with other app users and searchable by keyword tags. Other users will be able to add comments that can be accessed when watching media in tag mode. User comments will create open forums for the type of dialog necessary to confirm data validity. Searches through video, audio, and textual data will promote interdisciplinary inquiry into social issues.
For example, a video would play the first 30 seconds of content provided by one media creator, followed by a text graphic associated by a keyword search, followed by a still image shot by one media creator and narrated by another. This method of playback through keyword association is not intended to provide a linear narrative. It is intended to present the media in a manner that demonstrates how complex social issues are interconnected.
Media creators will be provided with channels of communication to respond to other media creators who have made comments about their docs. This dialog may also take the form of short form video or audio exchanges. Edited videos will be easily converted and uploaded to popular video networks.
Use the existing iPhone camera to capture audio and video clips
The camera should work within the app so users can easily click on a specific window or icon to record a voice over, video, or a photo.
Media component reference files should be able to be clicked and dragged around the screen to rearrange their order in the narrative. (I do not know if these media files should be stored on the phone or on a server, I think drive access times will favor media stored on the phone)
Must have the ability to trim and edit clips
An audio normalization feature would be a big plus to increase low audio levels
Text typed into the keypad will form title cards
Uploaded media will be tagged with keywords
Once the clips have been arranged in order using one of the apps narrative templates they may be uploaded to our server
10/13 Research and development of an iReport for CNN as a model of 1st person short format media /research into other examples of effective short format media content
10/20 Completion of and distribution of iReport in multiple formats /continued research into other examples of effective short format media content
10/27 Identification of components needed to effectively communicate via short form media
11/3 Keynote presentation of 1st Draft of new media creation tutorial template
11/10 revised Keynote presentation
11/17 1st draft of MAX Prototype of iPhone Media Creator app
11/24 Development of MAX prototype
12/1 MAX Prototype of iPhone Media Creator app completed
The iReport feature is a simple video upload tool that connects User with the existing web interface. I do not think that it has any editing capabilities.
An example of a tutorial for media technology
Interesting interface for image editing tools that assist users in the creation of storyboards
See also
http://redlaser.com/
twitter
flickr
facebook
Equipment