Creative Mobile Media

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Table and Figures
• Introduction

This chapter introduces you to the possibilities of creating media via your mobile phone. You are encouraged to be proactive in your approach and write your own manual. The chapter focuses on specifications relevant to the technology you own and guides you through a detailed examination. You will be introduced to key terms such as: format, aspect ratio, HD and applications (apps). You will look at how the limitations of technology can often be the starting point in producing creative work. You will be given tips on how to brainstorm ideas based around personal interests as well as being encouraged to develop work which becomes outward facing; moving from the ‘me’ to how ideas can be shaped for distribution to a wider audience and ultimately have meaning for others. As such, the scope of this book is to go beyond a ‘how to do’ manual and encourage a critical reflexive approach to producing mobile media projects…

Getting Started introduced you to the first things to consider when developing projects that use the functions of your mobile phone. This chapter builds on those suggestions through a discussion of ‘outputs’ with a critical focus on the aesthetics of creative photography, moving image work, sound and the archive…

In this chapter, we examine the range of platforms for dissemination of media and consider how to promote and exhibit work. The annual iPhone and Mobile Phone Film festivals and the Mobile Innovations Network Australasia (MINA) are just some of the physical and virtual spaces for screenings and networking on a global scale. Social media sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Tumblr and Instagram create possibilities through their distribution channels for sharing work with others across the globe. At a more local level, exhibiting in a pop-up gallery or producing work for a charity may be more appropriate for some practitioners. So, how do you begin to promote yourself, your ideas and develop your ‘brand’? This chapter examines what creating projects for an audience means and the variety of ways of getting visual and audio material into the public domain while keeping work legal…

Television advertising has the potential to be positioned as a derivative of anthropology, combining a visual emphasis on the human condition and its fundamental relationship to goods and services. If we study advertisements from any decade, the scenarios depicted signify problems and challenges faced by consumers in everyday life and how choices, in one brand’s favour over another, of course, allow for resolution. However, a recent ad for the Lexus NX F Sport (YouTube, 2016) introduces an alternative problem-based scenario: one in which the brand itself must seek resolution. The ad opens with a close-up shot of a female hand, texting on a smartphone which then opens out to a ubiquitous city street scene where the commuting masses are walking in all directions simultaneously glued to their mobiles. In the next shot we are in a restaurant where couples are on their mobiles whilst dining and then inside a boutique where the clothes being selected gain only a cursory glance compared with the consumers’ fixation with the small screen. What does this advertisement tell us about car production and consumption? As the tagline indicates, as “the striking Lexus NX” enters the frame, so it denotes eye-catching design whilst connoting that brands have to work extremely hard to be noticed in an eyes-down mobile culture…

May Days (2012) is a short film exploring memory, belonging and autobiography. Mobile phone technology is utilised in the film as a recordkeeping device but is also implicated in the formation of memory for one Alzheimer’s sufferer…

Who are Ya? is an early example of mobile-documentary making first screened at the Filmobile International Conference at the University of Westminster and exhibited at the London Gallery, West in 2008. It was made in collaboration with a group of young men aged 16–22. There were eight key members of the group and a much wider circle of friends who met exclusively through their shared passion of football and specifically as fans of Arsenal FC, UK. As a mobile film it forms an important reference for study as filming and editing over 4-year period encompassed new developments in camera phone capabilities and pixel size. The challenges of meeting such limitations in film quality embraced a style of edit that argued for a new aesthetic of production and reception which now can be viewed as occupying a particular historical moment in the technological evolution of mobile media. As demonstrated in the film the blurred aesthetic of the earliest filming was intercut and contrasted with the later scenes. The use of a split screen became a useful technique to overcome the limitations in picture size and format but provided a surprisingly new and unpredicted level of meaning on reading the finished work…

On November 19, 2013, Oxford Dictionaries announced the Selfie as their international Word of the Year. The editorial director at the time, Judy Pearsall, explained the phenomenal upward trend in the use of selfie across the year resulting in its selection. The decision to include the word in the dictionary, particularly as word-of-the-year, was not without controversy. Reports in the press and Internet media tended to fall into opposing camps, polarising the debates regarding the merits of the selfie that continue to this day…

Smartphone filmmaking and mobile media has become a regular feature in broadcast news and there are more than a dozen mobile, smartphone and pocket film festivals around the world. Following the accessibility of video production cameras, now post-production is becoming more accessible. Major software companies are producing nonlinear editing software; Adobe, Apple and AVID launched mobile and/or tablet versions for nonlinear editing software. Last year, the British Broadcasting Corporation started offering training courses for journalists in ‘mobile journalism’ (mojo). Mojo is the current umbrella terminology that includes mobile content creation on the move and encompasses mobile filmmaking, mobile-mentaries (Schleser, 2011), mobile photography (or iphonography) and digital storytelling. As a novel cultural form, this phenomenon is said to have extended the public sphere, not only by opening new venues for ordinary people and alternative voices, but also by paving the way for a more reflexive culture in discursive spaces (Goode, 2009)…

'Socrates, the 'father' of philosophy, proposed that people will naturally do 'good' if they know what is right. But this point might only lead us to yet another question: how do we know what is right?' (Fox and Caruana, 2012: 171).

This final chapter of the book investigates the complexities of creating ethnographic, documentary and photography projects where the human subject is the object of analysis. It will examine particular case studies by way of illustration and encourage students to focus on their responsibilities as photographers and creators of media. Creative mobile media and the use of smartphones to create project work can occasionally give rise to specific ethical questions related to the technology but, by and large, when considering how to work ethically we are considering the framework for all kinds of practice. This chapter therefore engages with the wider questions regarding ethics that inform what we do. Ethical considerations encompass questions around choice, values and morality. A starting place is to consider some ideas around these terms and their usage and how this may be relevant when thinking about the construction and reception of the creative work being produced. We consider the responsibilities we, as practitioners/producers of work for a public facing audience, have to the human subjects at the centre of any of our projects. When we speak about ethics and working within an ethical framework, it is important to consider what exactly that means in terms of practice and our everyday encounters…

The following sections are included:

• Bibliography
• Index