Convergence
10/15/15
Prof Cacoilo
Now You Can Do It Too!!
Take a moment to think back what had to go into the work to make something like a film. It required very expensive pieces of equipment, usually heavy pieces of equipment and a lot of it, a large crew each designed and specialized for years to tackle a specific job such as lighting or audio, and finally someone to edit it all together. Before the digital age it's almost unthinkable to even think how films like The Godfather, Tron, and a lot more were edited back in their days. Those don't count when film began its early days far back in the earlier 20th century. Professional films of course still require millions of dollars of funding to be made, but we call them professional films because they are made by specialized people who have studied the subject for years and only they could create such works of art. You can't just give a camera to anybody now and expect them to make something halfway decent........oh wait.
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| I guess even Grandma can do it too huh? Taken from this website |
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| A photo of a mother filming a video of her two children on her iPhone that will most likely be posted on her social media platform. Fittingly it comes from this instructional website to help teach amateurs how some functions work. |
In order to get a better idea of how Mass Amateurization changed up how things used to be, let's discuss how media used to be consumed as Shirky writes about in Chapter 4. How it use to be involving the creation and consumption of media was a one way communication from the sender/creator to the audience. The sender chooses what message they wish to get out to the world ranging from local news to serious topics. They then choose the medium or "vessel" to publish this news in such as TV, Newspaper, etc. Finally it then goes to the audience who receives the message. For a long time it was a one way communication, meaning the audience has no interaction with the media they receive. Now however with the Internet, it can be a two way communication with comment sections on social media websites, Youtube videos, and even newspaper articles have comment sections below where people can share their thoughts on the media they just consumed. As Shirky states, "Because we now have media that support both making and sharing, as well as consuming, those capabilities are reappearing, after a century mainly given over to consumption" (Shirky 104). Shirky establishes that this one way path of absorbing media has been the status quo for about 100 years. It's only been even a tenth of that now where the change in structure of allowing 2 way communication is a reality. It is because of this 2 way path of sharing and consuming media is what has brought forth this big surge of Mass Amateurization. "People like to consume media, of course, but they also like to produce it ("Look at what I made!") and they like to share it ("Look what I found!") (Shirky 104). The idea of regular people wanting to make their own media and share what they find or create isn't the phenomenon occuring in Mass Amateurization; these desires have been in all of us throughout the years. However now that it's much easier to publish any kind of work you want to do and then filter it is what gives the phenomenon the name Mass Amateurization when a professional work is filtered and then published.
To show an example of Mass Amateurization, I'm going to use an old video I made in Junior Year of High School as an example. The video here is a spoof of a Life Insurance PSA done from using Video Game humor to get the point across. You would NEVER see a silly video like this on TV all over the world or even made by a professional in this kind of manner. But because of Youtube, I can post this kind of video and it can be viewed by an audience, even if small. I have now become a producer of media just as I am a consumer of media.
While we've identified the mass in Mass Amateurization, the Amateurization simply refers to the fact that everyone has access to these tools of sharing media worldwide, not that the media produced by the average person is bad. While of course we filter our own Internet experience with stuff we want to see, that option to do so is allowed and not forced in our faces. We desire to share our work with people close to us or that have similar interests just like professionals do. Shirky gives insight into this in Chapter 3. "A profession becomes for it's members, a way of understanding their world. Professionals see the world through a lens created by other members of their profession; for journalists, the rewards of a Pulitzer Prize are largely about recognition from other professionals" (Shirky 58). While this quote refers to the professional world, we as everyday consumers fall in exactly with these same beliefs. The media we produce from simple home videos shows how we understand the world and how we see it giving great insight into who we are as a person. You get a general impression of somebody who has their photos consist of selfies and partying just as you would someone who reblogs/retweets art or jokes. Ultimately as well we put up this media because we desire recognition of some kind, or at the very least the idea of recognition. You see it all the time on Youtube. A video gets posted and what's the first comment?
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| Humorous picture to get the point across of the desire of attention. Picture from this website |
With Mass Amateurization in full force in our time era, it could be what shapes the foundation for new stories to be told. Some fan fiction or fan stories amass so much popularity and a fanbase it almost rivals the original stories they came from. An example of this is a very old video series made by one person combining the video game worlds of Mario and Sonic with the fighting style from the anime Dragon Ball Z. This is not something you'd see in mainstream professional media, but it's something that had its own following from the early days of Youtube. Sometimes things get very popular on Youtube to the point where someone can make an honest living producing content for Youtube and massing their fanbase here. Some of these people were an inspiration for me to persue video editing as more than just a side hobby.
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| Rudy as I've mentioned multiple times is someone who started off producing short Vines as his Mass Amateurization, and now he's a media professional on Vine doing commericals. Picture from this website |
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| 1 of my said role models being James Rolfe as his character the "Angry Video Game Nerd" who became popular reviewing bad video games being informative and very humorous. He's been at it for nearly 10 years and made a full fledged feature film released in theaters. Picture from this website |
In our day and age someone can go from humble beginnings of Mass Amateurization to being the future of a media professional different from the professionals that come before them. As we put ourselves and our media out there, we wait for that spotlight to eventually hit us, so that we may become the Spectacle someday.
Works Cited
Classroom discussion. Convergence. Doris Cacoilo October 1st 2015.
Shirky, Clay. "Everyone Is A Media Outlet." The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
Shirky, Clay. "Here Comes Everybody." Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin, 2008. N. pag. Print.
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