Media magazine conference

 The media magazine student conference 

On Friday 24th January, media students from across the country came together at the BFI Southbank Centre to listen to inspiring talks from a vast range of media industry professionals. The speakers covered topics such as AI, newspaper editing, fan culture, the making of music videos, cultural aspects of media and the writing of hit TV shows. Despite these talks exploring such wildly different aspects of the media, they were all equally interesting and thought-provoking.  

 

Chris Hogg 

The first speaker was Chris Hogg, a professor of media arts from Royal Holloway University. Hogg described AI as ‘magic and loss’, and wanted to find a way to perfectly convey this. He decided to host an event called ‘The Speakaisy Live’, in which he invited a number of poets to come and perform their work to an audience. Meanwhile, Hogg instructed AI software to listen to these poets and create artwork out of it. The results of this event perfectly summarised his point: although some amazing artwork was created, it couldn’t have been done without the human influence behind the spoken word. At the conference, Hogg decided to recreate a version of this for us to watch live. A student was invited to the stage to give a speech about the power of language, while AI created images from what he was saying. While certain images were impressive, many of them felt slightly random or inaccurate to the speech as a whole; as well as there being a 30 second delay between the speech and the images. This further cemented Hogg’s message to us all, which is that while AI may appear to be ‘taking over’ the creative world, we are in fact a long way off this. The hopeful nature of his talk left students and teachers feeling a lot more informed about AI. 

 

Alison Phillips 

The next speaker was Alison Phillips, the former editor of The Mirror newspaper. Phillips began her talk by speaking about the way the news industry has shifted from print to digital media, and the impact this has had. This has resulted in less loyalty to specific news outlets, as many people will now read the same news story from multiple websites rather than just one. Previously, people would buy newspapers as a form of identification – for example, somebody walking down the street holding a copy of The Mirror was making a statement to the rest of the world about what they stood for. Phillips argues that while people obtaining their news from multiple sources can be a positive thing, it also has its’ dangers. For instance, some people may have trouble distinguishing between different newspapers online, and end up reading news from sources they would have never have bought a physical copy of. Phillips ended the talk with her advice to aspiring journalists, which was to ‘talk to people, be curious, be interested’. She highlighted the fact that curiosity is the essence of journalism, and almost everything else can be learnt along the way. This was another very informative and eye-opening talk, and could easily be applied to the newspapers topic covered at A-level. 

 

 

Hannah Ewen 

After a short break, the next speaker we heard from was Hannah Ewen, music journalist and author of ‘Fangirls’, speaking about fandom and the way it has evolved. Ewen began by recalling how on her commute she would pass by dozens of girls queuing outside music venues as early as 7am, with some even camping overnight. This sparked an interest, leading to her speaking to these girls and eventually to her work in music journalism and profile writing. Ewen went on to tell us about getting to sit down and speak to a Beatles fan who was now in her 60s, reminiscing on the ‘Beatlemania’ phenomenon. This fan emphasised how important these concerts were for her as a young girl, and how she believed they were a healthy form of expression for teenagers. Despite the uplifting nature of fandoms, Ewen also explored some of the darker and more negative aspects. There has been a shift towards a more invasive fan culture which negatively impacts artists, with those such as Phoebe Bridgers and Chappell Roan publicly speaking on how ‘weird’ and ‘dehumanising’ certain fan interactions could be. Ewen still recognises that even though fandom has changed greatly in recent years, there is a ‘special kind of passion’ that lies at the heart of it all. This was my personal favourite talk, as fan culture and music journalism are areas I am particularly interested in, and Ewen spoke about them in such an inspiring way. 

 

Harv Frost 

The following speaker was Harv Frost, a filmmaker who specifically works within directing music videos. Frost recently worked on a project with The Last Dinner Party for their album ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’, helping to create a short film compiled of a sequence of music videos. We got the chance to watch this piece, and it was absolutely mesmerising. She briefly explained ‘world-building’, a concept which has become popular within the music industry in recent years. This involves bands and artists aiming to create an entire visual world around the music for audiences to truly immerse themselves in. Frost also highlighted how much of a collaborative process this was, and how important it is for her to listen to all of the bands’ ideas and suggestions. This offered a fresh new perspective to the direction of music videos we study, which was previously thought to be minimally influenced by the musicians. She also touched on some of the creative challenges faced when combining structures of films and music videos together, for example deciding whether a linear sequence is necessary. This talk was a great opportunity for us to understand more about the creative choices behind music videos. 

 

David Hesmondhalgh and Anamik Saha 

The next talk was delivered by David Hesmondhalgh, who is one of our set theorists, alongside Anamik Saha, Professor of Race and Media at the University of Leeds. This was a particularly unique opportunity, as it is very rare for students to get to hear from theorists first-hand. Hesmondhalgh was asked by Anamik Saha about a range of cultural products currently within the media, ranging from newspapers to hip-hop artists. He spoke to us about the increase in ‘cultural imperialism’, which involves the most powerful cultures (such as America) dominating the world with their products. Hesmondhalgh also touched on TV shows such as Squid Games or The Traitors, which tend to represent people in a dark way and emphasise the mistrust within society. He argues that imitations of these products done on Youtube or other platforms depend greatly on the spirit in which they are done, which is the case for almost all media products. When asked about his thoughts on growing diversity in the media, Hesmondhalgh concluded that it was ‘very welcome, long overdue and still insufficient’. This was an informative and exciting talk, which helped further our understanding of Hesmondhalgh’s ideas and better apply them to essays. 

 

Nida Manzoor 

The final speaker of the day was Nida Manzoor, writer and director of both ‘We are Ladyparts’ and ‘Polite Society’. Manzoor detailed how she originally began working as a runner despite studying politics at university, and slowly built her career up from there. After working as a writer on CBBC, she began to receive many requests to write for others. However, these requests, much to Manzoor’s annoyance, would often be to write ‘a story about an honour killing’ or ‘about being married to a terrorist’. She felt she was being forced to represent the Muslim community in a way that seemed harrowing and inauthentic to her creative style. So instead, she decided to start writing her own comedy show, which followed a fictional all-female-punk-rock-Muslim band. By writing in the way she truly wanted to, Manzoor was able to use comedy as a vehicle to touch on more serious issues, while still keeping a light hearted energy overall. She also talked about her film ‘Polite Society’, which was inspired by her teenage love of martial arts, Bollywood and action movies. We watched a fight scene from this film between two sisters, which Manzoor admits was heavily influenced by how it felt to fight with her own sister growing up. The talk concluded with Manzoor reminding us all that right now was ‘a very important time to create authentic art’. This was yet another greatly inspiring and engaging talk, which I felt I learned a lot from. 

 

The day as a whole was an amazing experience, and one which I’m sure everyone in attendance will have gained a lot from. Not only were the talks informative and useful as part of our education, they were also deeply inspiring and helpful for future endeavours, and something to be remembered for a long time.  

 

By Martha Callaghan, student at Southend High School for Girls