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blogswithamelia · 6 months

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BCM114 Contextual Report

Over the course of the semester, I have managed to create a digital artefact that explores my love of film and interest in journal spreads. I was inspired with the idea to combine these two things by the many film journal videos/posts on TikTok or Instagram where they make aesthetic spreads as well as write their opinions on the movie.

I named my account “@journalsatthecinemas” because I thought it sounded catchy and easy to remember. In order to make my account unique, I came up with the idea to post a review every day, and allocated a certain genre to each day of the week. I pitched this idea at the start of the semester, you can read that here. The themes were Musical Mondays, Trash Tuesdays, Wholesome Wednesdays (I didn't have a good word that starts with W, but this vaguely meant family, romance or coming of age movies). Toon Thursdays, Fantasy Fridays, Spooky Saturdays, and Sporty Sundays. It was a really fun idea and it gave me an excuse to watch a bunch of movies that were on my watchlist for each genre, as well as rewatch some of my favourites after a long time.

Important Project Moments

Moment 1: Brainstorming And Account Setup

After coming up with the idea to post a different theme every day, I now had to figure out how I was going to produce the film review spreads. I had initially planned to create them on paper and post photos of them to Instagram, but after some thought I realised that would take a lot of time and money as I would have to buy scrapbooking supplies and a journal as well as hand write the reviews.

Instead, I decided to do online spreads using the photo editing app Picsart, which allows you to decorate a blank image with different ‘stickers’ as well as add photos and text. I have a lot of experience with this app as I used to use it to make collages for fun when I was younger. It is very easy to use which makes it easier to produce content faster every day as I could just create the spread while watching the film and then quickly write a review for it once finished.

To start with, I used Picsart to create a logo for my account as well as story highlights that tell my audience my posting schedule, what my account is about and the option for them to request a film for me to watch and review. I am really proud of how my account setup turned out and I think the purple theme makes my account somewhat calming and relaxing to look at. After my account was set up and ready to go, I started creating a list of what movies I wanted to watch for each theme, just so I know what to watch and don’t waste time browsing through streaming platforms trying to decide on a movie.

Moment 2: Prototype And Audience

Once my list was ready, it was time to watch the first movie. I created a somewhat schedule in my head, I would watch the movie the night before and edit the review spread and then post it the next morning. So, I watched Burlesque, my first musical movie on the account, on Sunday, and then posted the review on Monday August 21st 2023. This made it way easier as I only had time to watch movies at night time and only had a short amount of time to post during the day, so I would watch the movie the day before and post the review on the actual day when I woke up. It was a very fun way to unwind at the end of the day and I was really consistent with posting for the most part. My favourite post that I made was my first Fantasy Friday post, where I watched Ella Enchanted, one of my favourite movies as a kid. The spread I made for that was very aesthetic and very pretty. I also touched on how Fantasy Friday was my favourite day in my week 6 progress blog post. I also collaborated with one of my classmates on one of my Fantasy Friday posts, where I posted my review for the first Narnia movie as well as her review of the second Narnia movie.

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This was really fun and she also posted my review of the Australian movie The Sapphires on her account. It was really fun to collaborate with her.

In regards to engagement, I wasn’t really getting much interaction with my posts. A lot of accounts would visit my profile, but not many would follow or like my posts. The most followers I got were 29 people, with most of that being people I know like friends or family.

The most liked post on my account was my September 5th Tuesday post where I reviewed the infamous movie Tall Girl, and that got 11 likes. I think this post was the most popular because this movie is a rather big meme on the internet so I think that had a factor into why it was my most engaged post.

Because I was struggling with engagement, I posted to Twitter asking for any tips that could help, and got two responses. One person suggested that I follow other accounts similar to mine and interact with their posts in order to get mine noticed, and another suggested that I use popular hashtags on my posts in order to try to get more reach, which I had already been doing. I ended up following a few other accounts that reviewed movies and my engagement went up slightly, but mostly stayed the same. I did get my first comment from this however, as one person who I followed liked all my posts and commented on my first one. Despite this, my account wasn’t getting much reach still so I was very stuck on what to do.

Moment 3: Pivot

Unfortunately, after about a month of posting consistently every day, I began to realise how draining running this account every day was. I had initially ignored my tutors warning that it would be a lot of effort, I believed I would be able to handle it. And I was able to for the most part, it just got a bit repetitive and stressful having to do the same posting routine every day. Because of this, I stopped posting and started thinking of ways to reframe or pivot from my original idea. I came up with the idea to create weekly movie commentary videos on YouTube, keeping up the concept of watching and reviewing films, just in a different form. I touched on this in my week 9 progress post. This was a way better idea as I would have more time to watch the movie and have all week to edit the video, instead of rushing through editing a post every single day. I was inspired by what kinds of videos I could post to my reaction channel through a few other content creators I enjoy watching such as Ur Internet Mom Ash, Dylan is In Trouble, Trin Lovell and Caitlin Mckillop. Below are my tweets about the things that inspired me the most about these creators:

Conclusion

At the time of writing this report, I have yet to start my reaction channel as I am still researching how to screen record films and avoid copyright strikes on YouTube. I think this new idea however will get much better engagement as reaction videos are a very popular genre on YouTube. I am excited to see where this project takes me in the future.

#communications and media #bcm114 #Instagram

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