For me this semester has brought about mixed feelings. On the one hand I’ve begun university life and have had a lot of new experiences. However, to be 100% honest, the Media 1 course wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. I enjoyed (most of) the lectorial sessions and thought that the information given was generally fairly interesting. However (and this may be due to the new course structure) I couldn’t help but feel that the course wasn’t as organised and clear as it could be. For instance (in my opinion), the blogs weren’t explained very well in the opening weeks and the actual criteria sheet was only linked to me in week 6. Project 4 also started off roughly and for a while I was struggling to enjoy the making process; a lack of answers in the first few weeks of Project 4’s completion period certainly threw me off.
Anyways, I’m almost certain that future semesters will attract and maintain my interest more than this one and I completely understand that this was an introduction to media studies BUT I have still been left wondering whether I have achieved enough this semester. Below is the ‘learning graph’ I completed in our final workshop class.
Orange: What is my ability to work independently in unfamiliar ways or with new systems and tools?
Black: How much do I understand and think critically and creatively about what I make?
Blue: How much have I learnt about making media objects/stories?
Red: What is my understanding of the role/value of the blog?
Now I will share and summarise 5 blog posts from this semester that I feel best highlight the moments when I was most engaged with the key ideas and objectives. Click on the titles to be linked to each blog post. Enjoy.
Project 3: Reflection
Project 3 was my favourite practical task of Semester 1 and I think that through completing the 2 minute video & accompanying reflection piece I learnt a lot about how to create an interesting, engaging and ‘textured’ video experience. A key focus this semester was the use of ‘Found Footage’ and in this project I think my use of such footage really worked. This reflective blog post details many of the major lessons I have learnt so far and so it’s an important one (in my opinion).
Lectorial [Week 8]
I’m really interested in the area of Narrative, and the ideas behind effective storytelling (especially in film) so week 8’s lectorial certainly appealed to these interests. Dan’s presentations were always engaging and in my reflection of the session I think my interest in narrative can be seen. The Hero’s Journey is a fascinating concept so I reflected upon and discussed the ideas surrounding it. At the moment I want to become a filmmaker, and to have a solid grasp on the ideas of narrative is important in achieving this goal. In this reflection I also touch on knowledge from my Cinema Studies course, and I think this shows how I have attempted to combine the variety of information I have been given this semester at RMIT.
Crowdfunding [Week 9]
In week 9 we looked at Media Audiences and the roles that these audiences have in the production and consumption of media materials. We looked at the history of the ‘post-broadcast era’ and in this blog post I talked about Crowdfunding as another means for audience interactions. I’m fascinated by ‘new-media’ the future of media production so crowdfunding was naturally a topic I wanted to discuss and expand upon after our lectorial. I discussed a couple of successful crowdfunding campaigns that I had already researched and examined how success was achieved. This blog post continues to show my efforts to link existing knowledge with the lessons covered in Media 1.
Remix Methods & Forms [Week 11]
I thought that the lectorial session on ‘Remix Theory’ was really interesting and it was helpful in developing my understandings of the ethics and discourses surrounding remix products. I also enjoyed learning of the different techniques that can be used in creating remixes, and in this post I discussed a range of these techniques and gave examples from videos/music I enjoy. I think in this course it is important to link the information taught with existing knowledge and experiences and this is what I tried to achieve in this post.
Project 4: Reflection
I think that everything we covered in Media 1 paved the path towards the completion of our first group assignment. Having not worked collaboratively on a project for some time (seeing as VCE is pretty much a vicious free-for-all) this was a challenging but at the same time refreshing task. As noted in my introduction, P4 initially had be confused – but towards the end of the completion period my team really increased the quality and energy we put into our work and I’m really proud of that. Being the largest task we’ve been given so far, I feel that my reflection on p4 was one of my better ones.