CONTEXTUAL ESSAY

Overview

Our digital artefact is a YouTube Channel and Instagram page titled ‘Textbook Recipes’. We developed this project because we wanted to make a YouTube series focused on recipes on a Uni budget and then use the Instagram as a content funnel. The YouTube channel has the video of how to recreate the meal taking inspiration from Buzzfeed. The Instagram has one post with bought food and a review of restaurant, the second post has ingredients and cost and the third post has the recreated version with the total savings. Based on our own personal experiences of living out of home and research on uni students budgeting, we decided to make Textbook Recipes because we thought this would be useful for many students. This is because many students live away from home find it tempting to eat out or get food delivered, which is expensive. Furthermore, they may not be used to cooking for themselves and need guidance. The idea for this is that it would show how much eating out was in comparison to making the same thing yourself in a simple and inexpensive way. We would develop this project by buying a meal out, buying the same ingredients and recreating the meal. The recreation would be filmed and provide as a recipe for the audience to use.

Analysis of important learning moments

Our first video we made was quite successful – we got comfortable experimenting with filming and lighting techniques, and made the video using the fast, inexpensive, simple and tiny method to gain good feedback.

Our second attempt at a video was the sushi video, which was an important learning curve in the iteration process. We received important feedback from our audience that the sushi video was too complex and too expensive in comparison to buying a sushi roll, which is relatively cheap. Furthermore, we all discussed our feedback for each other including using better lighting and angles to achieve higher quality videos, making sure all three of us are there to achieve this and choosing meals which will save money and achieve our aim.

The three videos that followed used this process. I think by this stage we had learned how to curate our content. Particularly in using the methods set out in three separate articles written by Wicks, Clark and Hudgens, the concept of ‘content curation’ was more put in place. We started sharing our content via twitter and Instagram, utilising the resources of Instagram stories for feedback from our niche. The particular group we focus on uses Instagram a lot, so it was important to use this as a content funnel and for feedback. As Hudgens describes it, “Framing” content using these outlets is an important element of content curation. Furthermore, we attempted to engage the audience with questions of what food we should to next and where we should go etc. in an attempt ‘listen socially (Clark, 2018).

CHURROS

PASTA

BURGERS

We found by implementing the lessons learnt, meant that we could curate content faster, once we got into a rhythm of structure to the content we made and continuous feedback we received.