Look At This Graph

So, with the semester finally coming to an end, we were given one last task for our blogs; to reflect on everything we’ve done. I have to say, even though this isn’t exactly my first year here at RMIT, I’ve definitely felt like this semester was a completely new experience. In comparison to my previous course, I actually feel like I’m learning about content that actually interests me, and in comparison to school, I actually feel like I’m learning. I heard from my friends in second year that the first year, (especially the first semester) of this course is that annoying section that you have to get out of the way before you can do some ‘real’ work. And yeah, sometimes I felt that the content in some of the weeks was a little dry, but I do see that understanding all of that stuff would be important in the future.

In our lectorial, we were given this graph thing to mark our progression through the past twelve weeks. We were asked to draw out the development on a line graph in regards to our technical growth, conceptual growth, professional growth, and practical growth.

Seeing other people’s graphs, I noticed that something about mine looked kind of plain. After sitting there for a while, I noticed that it’s because there aren’t any dips in mine. I guess it’s because I made the Y axis represent the amount of content I’ve gathered in total, rather than the amount of content I learned that week.

(Sorry for the terrible quality)

According to the graph, my competence grew steeply in the first half of the semester, but slowly flattened out towards the end. A lot of the growth was during the weeks of Project Brief 2 and Project Brief 3. I just felt that these were better opportunities to learn and practice with the technical components, such as using recording equipment, as well as using Adobe programs.

Technical:

So, in regards to technical competence, I already had some experience. The course I did last year was literally everything technical about this area, plus I had already spent time playing around with Adobe programs in the past. Even though I already had this experience, the amount of time I spent applying my knowledge to the course, I definitely improved. In my course last year, we learned how to use cameras, lighting, and sound mixing, but we didn’t really practice it, considering all of the equipment could only stay at RMIT.
In the first half of the graphs, the slopes are mainly during the last weeks of the two project briefs. At this point, I wasn’t exactly getting immediately started on assignments as soon as we got them, but in the second half, when we were actually in groups for Project Brief 4, I felt that I had to be more consistent so that I could keep up with the group, and they could keep up with me. So I upped my game, and that explains the sudden slope at the end.

Conceptual:

The gradient of this part of the graph is probably the most consistent one out of all of them, but still has a couple of flat lines somewhere in there. This shows that my ideas of concepts slowly grew throughout, as there were many different topics in the industry that I had never learned about, but there were a couple of weeks where my brain literally didn’t process anything. Much of this conceptual learning came from the readings, and further discussion of them in the lectorials and seminars, but occasionally, I actually did some of my own research.

Professional:

Okay, so obviously, professionalism isn’t exactly my strong point. I tend to have my own personal way of doing things that doesn’t exactly agree with orthodox methods. When I was shooting the videos for Project Brief 2 and Project Brief 3, my friends kept on questioning the way that I was going about things. I noticed that, I had difficulty explaining what I wanted to my cast, and why I wanted things specifically like that. I found myself having to say “look, just trust me on this one, I know what I’m doing”.
There were some weeks where I actually felt myself learning about professionalism. The most memorable one for me was the legal aspect (getting permission, and all of the right paperwork signed and stuff like that). While it did make me freak out a little bit about the industry, it really felt like that was the difference between making a stupid little video for YouTube with your friends, and making an actual professional short film.

Practice:

This part of the graph doesn’t really explain how good I was getting at practicing, considering practicing is literally the act of getting good at something. But instead, it portrays the amount of time I was putting into it. There weren’t any dips in this because I felt that the course was pretty much a constant practice, and each week became more intense than the previous one.
Similarly to the technical aspect, most of the slopes in the first half were at the ends of the project briefs, while there was a sudden and constant one in the second half. The technical and practical aspects show similar shapes because the my technical competence reflects off of my practice.

I started a little series of blog posts called “The Edit”, in which I documented most of my practice throughout the small projects in the semester. Here they are:

Is this

Death Grips?

Look At This Graph

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