Museum’s Digital Presence/Online Course

One digital story telling piece that I found to be compelling was “Why babies in medieval paintings look like ugly old men” by Vox. I enjoyed the video because it clearly broke down a topic that you didn’t realize you wanted to know more about. It did this in a clear way in less then 3 minutes and I can honestly say that I learned something from it. Also the fact that the editing was really well done and the motion graphics gave it a modern and clean aesthetic added to my enjoyment as a viewer. I see far to many informational videos with interesting topics being ruined by being overly lengthy and poorly executed.

While the Vox video is coming from a media site, I do think videos similar to that have a place in museums digital presence. Not only can the videos be used to act as digital archives of important visuals and interviews, they can also bring traffic and attention to the museums themselves. Museums at times do take on a business model, and branding through video or other digital tools should be an avenue taken very seriously. The Tate is an example of a museum that does very well at documenting themselves through video in an entertaining way.

I don’t usually take online classes unless there is a specific skill that I want to learn that would further advance me in some career field that I am interested in. For example, I currently go through Lynda classes to learn various Adobe programs that I can’t completely learn at theory based classes at UCLA. If I had to pitch a class it would be on motion graphics and the curriculum would be skill based over theory. The course would probably involve creating a project by the end so that you students fully learn the process.