Analysis Blog Post, Evidence

For this task we chose Instagram as a platform. We did this because we all use it in our social and professional lives, it is the platform in which we are most literate. Michelle is also writing extensively on Instagram in her other subjects, making it an obvious choice. We chose to profile different events within Melbourne’s live music scene as Simon works in music and we were all attending different events that weekend.

We wanted to emulate a style of publishing video content on Instagram that is informal, but more polished than the short, personal videos Instagram was established for. Something sitting between the very slick Vogue magazine video we looked at earlier, and a personal video or story filmed and uploaded straight from the phone. We thought that to achieve this we would start an Instagram brand entitled @aboutlastnight.melbourne. We chose this name as it’s a play on the popular instagram hashtag #aboutlastnight, but also references our subject matter. We thought this would be suited to the platform itself.

We had seen similar accounts pop up in our feeds which show photos and videos from events. Most of these accounts were either quite amateur, using unedited smartphone footage (@melbourne.music, @festival_videos). Or, they were on the other end of the spectrum, using professional photographers, and very slick editing (@strawberryfields_festival, melbournemusicweek). We opted for a middle approach by adopting a much more colloquial tone, with all footage being taken by us, with our smartphones, and editing done simply using iMovie and Premiere Pro.

This approach was important for us, as this research journey has shown us that the most effective content on Instagram is in some way informal, or shows behind-the-scenes content. Even though Instagram content is becoming much more polished (and sponsored), the videos that resonate the most with us are the ones which show real people doing real things. This is why we chose a more “normal” lens through which to show these events. We included images of our friends, as well as behind-the-scenes footage of events being set up and decorated etc.