When
I first started out in making my Web Presence, I was doing so after a prolonged
duration of time. Initially in 2008, I had a blog on the political landscape of
my home country Malaysia, courtesy of blogspot.com. Largely due to unwanted
attention, ironically generated from comments on other blogs rather than my
own, coupled with apathy left it derelict until I chose to delete it quite
recently, in favour of a less controversial and admittedly more pragmatic part
of my life; voice acting and amateur singing.
To
my chagrin, I discovered that in the past several years since my inactivity,
blogspot.com had greatly revamped their operating system, confusing me a great
deal. Nonetheless I quickly accustomed myself to these changes and set out to
create my web presence. My goal was simple: to present myself via video clips
uploaded onto various sites as a voice actor, amateur singer, and
non-professional thespian. Realizing the potentially distracting nature that my
central node could risk becoming, I chose the template to be as simple as
possible, using a crimson background already available for selection from
Simple.
Given
the theme of my web presence, I utilized three primary Web 2.0 tools to my
advantage; namely the video hosting websites Vimeo and DailyMotion but also the
shared bookmarking website Delicious. I refrained from using YouTube, in part
because I wanted to reach a more professional audience (although I’ll upload my
videos there in the coming future as well) but also because I had trouble uploading
my videos onto my YouTube account. In particular, Delicious proved itself to be
an unusually valuable tool to share my various interests in vocal acting,
ranging from links to other voice actors / musicians, to topics of general
interest. In turn, Vimeo helped to mirror the impression that I sought out; one
of professionalism and as much amateur proficiency as possible. It also helped
in many respects that Vimeo’s video quality is by far superior to YouTube, with
DailyMotion somewhere in between the two.
One concern that occurred to me in this period was the necessity of copyright, in relation to my cover of The Moldy Tome, taken from Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo II. Naturally, I saw no problem with my monologue from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, given that Shakespeare’s works are in the public domain. (Leaver, 24 April 2012) Being a fan of the Diablo series, I undertook the voiceover as a sort of fan service on my part, without seeking to profit from the recording in itself (merely a display of my ability in voice acting) (Leaver, 24 April 2012) To ensure that no miscommunication can or would occur, I placed a disclaimer in the description box stating my intent thereof. Similarly, although unrelated to copyrights, my application of Delicious.com served a dual purpose as both content sharing and social networking. It is my wish that over time, any traffic that passes through my blog will be interested enough take a gander at my blog list and click on the Delicious link. In so doing they’ll come across other voice actors around the world whom I’ve followed in various ways (primarily on YouTube); essentially a catalogue of other social networking / content sharing users with whom I have a connection with via our passion for voice acting. Granted that Delicious is somewhat obscure from popular consciousness, nonetheless it’s an effective albeit slightly complicated form of social networking. (Leaver, 17 April 2012)
One concern that occurred to me in this period was the necessity of copyright, in relation to my cover of The Moldy Tome, taken from Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo II. Naturally, I saw no problem with my monologue from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, given that Shakespeare’s works are in the public domain. (Leaver, 24 April 2012) Being a fan of the Diablo series, I undertook the voiceover as a sort of fan service on my part, without seeking to profit from the recording in itself (merely a display of my ability in voice acting) (Leaver, 24 April 2012) To ensure that no miscommunication can or would occur, I placed a disclaimer in the description box stating my intent thereof. Similarly, although unrelated to copyrights, my application of Delicious.com served a dual purpose as both content sharing and social networking. It is my wish that over time, any traffic that passes through my blog will be interested enough take a gander at my blog list and click on the Delicious link. In so doing they’ll come across other voice actors around the world whom I’ve followed in various ways (primarily on YouTube); essentially a catalogue of other social networking / content sharing users with whom I have a connection with via our passion for voice acting. Granted that Delicious is somewhat obscure from popular consciousness, nonetheless it’s an effective albeit slightly complicated form of social networking. (Leaver, 17 April 2012)
I’d also like to take the opportunity to discuss my aforementioned blog on Malaysian politics. It has nothing to do with my current one, but the blog had elements of citizen journalism, along the lines of Dr. Tama Leaver’s lecture in week five. In it he mentions that citizen journalism is not a substitute for conventional media, rather it filters through via gate watching. (Leaver, 27 March 2012) But I’ve noticed in turn that blogs focusing on socio-political issues tend to take a partiality over time, usually in favour of opposing sides to the established norm. If that’s the case then it would be an explicit defeat of blogging and citizen journalism’s purpose as guarding the interests of the community. I hazard that within the voice acting context, one runs at the risk of becoming (for a lack of a better descriptive term) a corporate pawn, rather than pursuing voice acting out of passion. But this is all speculation, and I digress.
In
conclusion, this has been a surprisingly enjoyable task, and one that has
reignited my interest in blogging, this time in a less contentious direction.
My thanks to Dr. Elanor Sandry for her patience in reading this to the end.
References:
Leaver, T. (27 March, 2012). Lecture 5: Blogs. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from
http://dbs.ilectures.curtin.edu.au/lectopia/downloadrelatedmedia.lasso?-FormContentType=charset%3Dutf-8&file=%2Flectopia_data%2Fdelivery%2Frelated_media%2Fmisc%2F6437.ppt
Leaver, T. (17 April, 2012). Lecture 7: Social Networks. [PowerPoint
slides]. Retrieved from
http://dbs.ilectures.curtin.edu.au/lectopia/downloadrelatedmedia.lasso?-FormContentType=charset%3Dutf-8&file=%2Flectopia_data%2Fdelivery%2Frelated_media%2Fmisc%2F6477.ppt
Leaver, T. (24 April, 2012). Lecture 8: Content Sharing. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from
