Come Visit North Korea!
My process: I started with the music. I'm not sure where the initial impulse came from, but once I saw how restricting the themes can be (which can absolutely dominate the content of the images), I recognized that for those 30 seconds, at least the sound was totally in my control.
The music: The song is a clip from Motherland Megamix from the album Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from the Hermit Kingdom. It is released through a record company that specializes in field recordings from remote locations around the world. On this particular album, Christiaan Virant, compiles recordings from his visit to North Korea in an "audio collage:" "Captured within are rare live recordings from various performances and mass games demonstrations, sounds lifted from People’s Army television dramas, samples from hard-to-find CD releases obtained in the capital, and of course, news reports from the “real” Radio Pyongyang..."
I thought the first track from this CD (but I downloaded it, so what I call it?) was sufficiently surprising. As I listened more closely, I realized that the chorus sings Kim Jong Ill several times. It actually wasn't my intention to use any form of propaganda. But it seems it may be hard to separate what is the propaganda and what is coming from the people. And: I really don't know anything about this. I used Audacity to cut the track to start and end where I wanted it too.
The images: All of the images come from a series from Boston.com's The Big Picture, titled: A Glimpse of North Korea (photography by: Carlos Barria, Goh Chai Hin, Ng Han Guan, and David Guttenfelder). The series examines North Korea's interest in expanding tourism.
My text: I was reluctant at first to use music and images related to a subject I know almost nothing about. But I liked the images and the music, and I felt the combination would produce an Animoto I would want to watch. So I tried to be honest. And in the process of making this, reading about the images and looking closely, reading about the music and listening closely, I learned a lot more than I knew when I started.
My thoughts on Animoto: I have very mixed feelings about this application. In Lankshear and Knoble's Web 1.0 v 2.0 chart, Animoto is 1.0. They are selling a product. It seemed that every feature for the 30 second free version was designed to highlight everything that was missing, and could be found with the pay version. Beyond that, the business format is traditional. We submit our photos, and they supply the product back to us: "Your photos. Our Magic."
The Themes: From a Visual Culture perspective, the quick flashy display of the photos, chopped up and flying around, prohibits any deeper understanding of the image content. I spent a lot of time choosing my images. And I don't know if the viewer can see what I saw in them, when each one drops onto the screen for 2 seconds.
However: I still like my slide show. I hate the format. I hate the lack of control. I really hate the flashy and distracting themes. But I like my slide show. And I really enjoyed the other slide shows from our class. And in fact, it was Patrick who really motivated me to try this. I loved that he could use Animoto to bring attention to the format, and made something that was thought-provoking and really funny.
Animoto in the classroom: We had a great discussion in class. Alexis pointed out that while Animoto has many limitations, those limitations can serve as a “scaffold” for video making, introducing students to the process, using video clips, editing, adding music, sequencing, etc.
Patrick asked some important questions: Couldn’t this exploration of new tech be done in media lit class? This is shiny and fun, and kids want to play with it, but what about important stuff?
As Alex pointed out, Animoto has potential and limitations. If we want students to think critically about texts, and represent their positions, students must be able to identify the potential and limitations with text. “Text can do this _______, but this text I’m reading doesn’t do this.” Or, "Text can do this ______, and I want my text to do this _______."
Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media, notes that because text has been the vehicle for communicating culture for the last 2000, it's almost impossible to look at it critically (89). But looking closely at other media can help. Animoto has many limitations, but what can it do?
- quickly forms associations between images, video and text
- makes text visual, through animation
- makes images more flexible: we see that they can be manipulated, moved around, cut-up and animated
I still don't know if I would use Animoto in a class.
OMG i'm in the class right now so I can't laugh much, but this looks really entertaining even w/o hitting the play button. awesome job!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteso i'm home now and playing it and reading the description thoroughly, and my previous comment seems to understate the complexity of your work (although i never meant to do that!). when i was skimming through your post in the classroom, i was amazed and amused at how random the topic seemed (but somehow kind of relevant to me in the sense that i'm korean) - that was the sheer excitement (?) i felt in the beginning.
ReplyDeletebut after checking everything, i see the reason behind your careful selection of photos and music and i could tell that you understood the underlying sentiment of the propaganda even though you didn't speak korean (the lyrics were all about kim jong il as you guessed right - how all citizens in north korea should be loyal and devoted to him, etc).
i feel the same way about using animoto in the classroom. students can't do much in the setting and the 30-sec restriction is too restraining for projects that will require higher-ordered thinking.
overall, this is a really great post that combines (your) personal creativity and reflections from all the points we've mentioned in the class!
Thanks so much Kleio! I wasn't sure how this slide show would come off. My favorite aspects of the "Radio Pyongyang" album, and The Big Picture photo series, were that they could show a human element to North Korea. When I think of North Korea, usually what comes to mind is Kim Jong Ill, threat of nuclear weapons, and starving civilians. But people still dance and sing and record music, and children still dress in costume and perform.
DeleteEric,
ReplyDeleteA number of things.
1) Those pictures, like most pictures of North Korea, are at once pictures of North Korea and not pictures of North Korea since whenever anyone is given access to North Korea by the regime they're basically given a strict guided tour of the country. And not even that, really. Most journalists never get to leave Pyongyang. The "real" pictures of "real" North Korea--that is, ones that show the true impoverishment and depravity the Kim family has lowered the Koreans into--would be very much not something you'd want to make an Animoto slide show out of. It'd turn your stomach, if not boil your blood. If you want to know more about North Korea, there are a number of great books out there that I'd recommend to you, the first one of which is called "Nothing to Envy" by Barbara Demick (or something?). It's fantastic, so instructive, so entertaining, such a rapid read. She does a pretty good job, also, of giving the 20th century history of the Korean peninsula, which is really really sad (thanks US and Soviet intervention!) and, at times, hilariously absurd. Honestly, check it out.
Patrick,
DeleteFirst, thanks for the recommendation. I would like to check it out.
I think there was a huge gap between my intentions and the results. And I think my intentions were mixed.
Intentions-- I wanted to learn a something about a topic through playing with some of the artifacts associated: In this case, music originally intended for a North Korean audience, and the photos of journalists intended for an international audience. In both cases, the influence of N Korean government is undeniable and overt. I believed that the music and photos were showing a human side of a culture that is often represented quite flatly: there are warlords and there are victims. Why should we only see the people of N Korea as starving and powerless? (I wanted to say that doing this would "rob them of their humanity", but it's something different, that I can't quite articulate.) I still believe in this intention, to show another side of a one-sided story.
My other contradicting intention, now that I am being honest with myself, was to make a a dramatic video. And here, I think the media directed my ideas.
The results-- The music, I realized is propaganda. With the photos, you're right about the strict guided tour. Each photographer was assigned a chaperone of sorts. And in fact, the adults dancing are not N Korean, they are Chinese tourists, on a cruise ship headed to N Korea.
I was aware that the source material was "inauthentic" in some way, because I gave the video the ironic title: "Visit North Korea!" Was I mocking the attempts of N Korean officials in promoting tourism to the country they have devastated? Or was I trying to show something new about N Korean people? I was trying to do both, and I don't think an Animoto can. I don't know if I did either.
Ultimately, Animoto dictates the results. And there is no time for the viewer to really digest the content of the images. The result is not useful for instructing any one about the topic. And actually, I don't think it's even about N Korea, N Korean people, or Kim Jong Ill. I think it's about me, trying to learn something about these topics and finding questionable degrees of success.