January 28, 2012

My Master's Thesis - Activism with Video Editing

Finally I have decided topic for my master's thesis! Last wednesday I did 1st presentation so now it's real and (hopefully) I'm going to graduate next christmas. So what's the idea? Working title is now 'Activism with Video Editing'.

My personal motivation behind my thesis' idea is that I've been editing television promos professionally for seven years. And while I think there's nothing wrong with entertainment promotion, there are times when I found myself thinking how could I utilize my skills to do something 'good'. Maybe to promote some concept I really deeply believe on.

Falling price of digital technology and the capacity to distribute information rapidly have created the conditions for millions of people to record and exchange moving images. And one important genre in this realm is video remix. To take existing material, edit it and that way communicate some new meaning. For example some fans are paying tributes with video remix to their favorite football players but also activists have found remix very powerful way to communicate political and other messages.

What I try to do with my thesis is to found out by analyzing some successful video remixes if there are some general elements etc. what makes video remix effective. And based on these findings and my former knowledge create 1-3 minutes long 'how to create effective video remix' video. My written part will be of course academic but I target how-to video for novice creators who just want some simple instructions for making effective video remixes.

January 16, 2012

It's a Party - Our MediaBizLab project

So as I've said before I'm on this one year MediaBizLab minor subject studies where we're creating new media services. Before christmas we formed groups and chose our projects. I was lucky because my media service idea of It's a party mobile application was chosen to be one of the projects which will be continued this spring. So I'm in this great group of four developing It's a party mobile application further. We have created new blog for It's a party so you can follow our development here.

Also our MediaBizLab crew made a visit to Copenhagen right at the start of the 2012. It was great! Here's one picture of one morning session where the teams had to describe the projects and their statuses. Also more information about our Copenhagen kickoff in It's a Party blog.


Photo credit goes to Lauri Hassi.