I don’t think that there has been a time where I’ve felt like my skills where too far behind or very negative. Thankfully, this whole course has been very well organised and regulated so that people like me (with little media experience) are able to fully understand and learn new skills without falling behind. As you can see in my graph, I have had a wonderful start to the year where I have been able to learn about the course and myself all at once.
I started this course feeling confident yet cautious. After withdrawing from a strenuous and complicated law degree (which aren’t they all?) I felt like I was ready to bounce into my element in the creative industry. My hypothesis of this course was right and wrong all at the same time. I started week 1 with the tiniest ounce of knowledge on blogging… as you can see in the mediocrity of my first post. Week 1 was nerve-racking, daunting and altogether exciting! But with the continuation of the weeks came the technical challenges of what the course proposed: media.
Media is something we have been learning about for 12 weeks (most likely the shortest 12 weeks of my life). With all the deadlines we were exposed to in the first few weeks I worked out a structure on how to blog, what to blog about and when to blog. Thankfully, this structure has dissipated and I now blog at my (very frequent) leisure. I utilise this blog as a way to take notes and gather my thoughts about the course readings, lectures and workshops and even my everyday interaction with media: visual and auditory. I even regularly blog about things that are interesting yet relevant to this course.
Through discussion with other students throughout this course I was faced with some unsettling feelings: am I in the right course? I want to be a presenter and a journalist whereas the majority of my classmates want to produce or create film and documentaries. However, I feel like this course has a deeper understanding of the field that I want to work in (as opposed to journalism for example). I am really enjoying learning about new things. I had no idea about filming and recording sound before I began this course but now am very comfortable with editing in Adobe. I was able to achieve PB2 without any prior knowledge and I’m pretty proud of that!
Prior to this course, I think my strengths were focused on writing and expressing myself, but I’ve come to love the editing process and being able to manipulate footage to create a piece of work that I’m proud to call my own.
Probably the happiest I’ve felt about a piece of footage is PB3. I’m happy with what I’ve been able to achieve with basic and developing skills. I have now developed harsher judgement towards PB3 and I’m not as happy with it as I once was, but I believe that this is good because I’m progressing and I can actually see this and reflect on it. PB3 would have never been possible without the guidance of my peers and Seth throughout workshop exercises: Sound Workshop and our Week 5 Interviews. Through working on these exercises through the semester I have been able to clarify to myself that I am a very Kinesthetic learner and through practicing and playing with programs I am able to process and retain information more than if some one is telling me or showing me what to do.
While my technical skills have grown throughout this semester, my writing has also improved. I have come to love blogging and being able to record my thoughts and reflections, although my work does have room to progress. I felt very cautious about the blogging and writing in an online platform to begin with, but I can actually admit that I am enjoying it. I’ve also learnt many new things through practicing blogging in this course and Networked Media. Simple things like ’embedding’ no longer seem so hard. As long as I don’t breach copyright – which is a scary prospect we have been warned about. But aside from being terrified of copyright infringement, I have really enjoyed being able to reflect personally on our course readings and find examples which link to my personal life thus making them more understandable.
At first, I was really challenged by the video editing and audio editing process. I’d previously never had the opportunity to edit footage and I guess I was never really interested in editing audio. As a singer, I was a diva. I wanted to be recorded and some one else would always edit it. Or someone else would 
control my microphone, so being on the other end of the process was an extremely different experience – yet surprisingly rewarding. In terms of video production I think one of the hardest things was ensuring that I had a set structure which of course was difficult in an interview format. However, I tried to stay organised through creating rough story-boards just so I had an idea of where i wanted to venture creatively and to move ergonomically with the audio recordings. I’m not sure I succeeded in properly organising my audio and visuals in PB3, but it was definitely a learning experience for me.
I’m looking forward to leaping into learning in semester 2 – let’s hope that I’m in the perfect course for my ambitious career goals.
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