media comm

I struggled to set myself the guidelines within which I would begin to develop my media for this first exercise.
However, faced with the prospect of having to focus in and notice things around me sparked an existing interest in light, shadows, movement, stillness and reflection.
Creating boundaries was and is still difficult for me but I  decided to set alarms on my phone to remind myself to notice.
Already quite an observant person, I found that the act of actively noticing was something that I had to adjust to, as most things tend to go ‘unnoticed’ in that I don’t document all my findings by taking a photo or recording them.

10am:
I found myself on my way to work as my first buzzer went off, cutting through to the park near my house to avoid the icy wind. I saw a puddle of water on the cobble below and noticed that by looking down how I could delve deeper into my environment and take in more of my surrounds.
It was a glimmer of light that first caught my eye as soon as the alarm went off.
I used my dslr to frame different shots, noticing angles of the houses around me that took on a new perspective now that I was focusing.
The light breeze created ripples that looked to charge the reflection with a surge of power, creating new dimensions and perspectives – it was just so simple and captivating.
The process of elimination is another element of noticing that interests me. What is it that we deem interesting, worth noticing and worthy of accumulating or sharing?
I feel noticing is an intrinsically personal a thing. Why did I notice this puddle and opt to ignore something else?

I’m also drawn to shadows and lights that take their narrative and cast it onto a new surface to create an entirely new one.
Take a tree on Cardigan street, the wind rustling through its branches. I can see the textures of the wood clearly, the grain and the coarseness of its branches, their wirey tendrils reach out across the road, making pathways for the birds that perch themselves high up there. Their plumage is clearly visible from where I stand, I can take in the textures, sounds, movements and the infinite three-dimensional details of the scene.

When you add sunlight to the equation, it trickles through the branches and casts a silhuouette onto the wall opposite, painted soft pink, the branches are simplified to a soft grey shadow – the entire scene is now a two-dimensional, un-choreographed shadow puppet show.
By no means reduced in that it is lesser than 3D, just simplified, opening up a new avenue for exploration.
The branches dance across the wall, now appearing a soft custard yellow, bathed in sunlight, the colours and story begins to evolve, adapt and change.
It becomes a poetic display of nature, without texture or detail, it’s now a rhythm and dance of the branches and birds. The lights and shadows perform a ritual of day to day – therein lies my interest in the intricacies of simplicity.

I think the most recent podcast that I had listened to was The Ricky Gervais Show with Karl Pilkington.
I remember my ex boyfriend would play it in the car on long drives. Romantic.
Karl would be the butt of every joke and I’d just love the real laughter that Ricky would bust out at the sheer disbelief of the density of his co-host/martyr.

I don’t think I’ve listened to many other podcasts, to tell you the truth.
The sheer thought of making one has confused me a little.

I’ve forced myself to listen to one now on the BBC.
I love the English. I just feel they do comedy so well because they’re often so warped, similar to Australians but then completely different, if that makes sense. Probably not.
Anyway, it’s called The Listening Project and there’s a little girl interviewing her father. She sounds about 8 years old (specific) and she just asked him if he likes mummy better than any of his ex-girlfriends.
Kids are brilliant.

Podcasts have this incredible creative freedom to launch and translate information accumulated in any direction.
The issue I think lies in the information found, the creative efforts of your group and the shared direction – let’s also not forget that there are a tonne of other deadlines that we all respectively have to get done, amidst the podcast flurry.
We opted for a simplistic format to kick things off.

I think now that the podcast has been done (yes, I was late with my blog posts), I liked constructing it all and watching it come to fruition.
Grasping each member of the groups strengths and weaknesses helps to gauage what they can tackle as their parts and then bring it all together and make a podcast pasta.
I think we did a fairly good job for our first try, to be honest.
We had a good laugh too.

I had the most fun tackling the first recording exercise ‘do I have your attention’, forming a narrative, which I believe may have actually been the idea that Ben, one of group members, was hoping the podcast, was hoping our podcast would have become.
In hindsight, could’ve been pretty great but it’s a learning curve that’s only just begun.

I considered not coming to the Thursday class, having to endure the film I had made for my first assessment.
Subjecting the class to my ‘girl gone abstract’ production.
#eyeroll

My themes were so bleak that I now look back and chuckle now that the nausea has subsided.

I’ve always had a problem with turning things on myself and then sharing it.
I don’t keep a journal, my hand gets tired from writing and I don’t like to type my feels because I find it too impersonal.
So I don’t write about my feelings, but I do take pictures of others who emulate the way I feel.
It’s my chosen form of introspection.

How many times have you had to share something personal with people?
How many times have you had to share something personal with a room of people you don’t know well?
It’s said that we find it easier to share with those we don’t know, as opposed to those we do.
I find it easier to talk to people I am close to because I feel it will be understood better than someone judging me on face value.

I think I was stuck in the middle of wanting to share myself with the class but also not wanting to share myself at all.
Adding insult to injury, I use an RMIT laptop which experiences separation anxiety from the campus server once I open it at home and proceeds to shut down my Adobe programs.
‘End program’ is the dialogue box from hell and has been the bane of my entire scholastic existence.
My project was shut down in excess of 5 separate times, forcing my soul to be crushed 3 out of those 5 times, my files to be lost, forcing me to recover and regroup.
I eventually ran out of steam and ended up submitting something I wasn’t proud of out of pure frustration, coupled with lack of motivational drive.

As I sat in class and watched others share themselves with us, I realised we have a diverse mix of creatives, each individually interesting and each video served as a teaser or trailer.
A lot of people were left to be continued and in a strange way, regardless of how each of our videos turned out, it did familiarise us all with each other a lot more.

Brian put us into groups again and showed us how to use the filming equipment.
I felt like a kid again, the cam-corder reminded me of the family recorder we’d take out on special occasions/everyday.
I’d never used the video recorders from RMIT, opting for a Canon 5D3 for all my filming work, I prefer the Canon glass, the film quality and the smooth auto focus.

I suggested to the group that we take to level 12 of building 8 to film, as they wanted somewhere sound tight.
We decided who would be interviewed, what the questions were and how we were going to frame it.
It was a quick job with the little time we had and we took the mickey out of it, as was to be expected.

It was great to put filming into practise as my contextual class is Cinema studies and we’re discussing mise en scene, editing and cinematography on a weekly basis.
I began to notice the 180 degree rule when we had to film the ‘nodding’ reaction cut-away shots, making sure we stayed on the same side of the imaginary line, so as not to distort perspective when it came time to edit.

Looking forward to editing the footage (on campus, as close to a server as humanly possible)

Today’s workshop was centred around getting us to network within our class and become more comfortable with sharing personal work.
Brian mentioned in the lectorial on Wednesday that he doesn’t expect that people will ever really become comfortable with sharing work but that it’s good practice and I agree.

I still remember the first few times I presented in interior design to my classes.
It was frightening and I remember getting choked up, my face flushed red, I was in shambles and I forgot my name and what year it was.
More than once.
<— me

We sat in groups, playing the game of hats again, offering garlands of compliments to our classmates who had taken to blog writing like fish to water.
I felt the blog I shared was too formal but I persevered and went head first into the pit of compliments and helpful criticism.
We took a quick full format picture to mark the occasion of the second coming of the hats, pictured below.

My writing style is much more relaxed and playful and this feels a lot more natural to me but I’m so accustomed to writing formally (plus I’m getting older..) that I struggle with the transitions.

I thought the blogs were really informative and the general consensus was that we were all enjoying the content and the course as a whole.
We were waiting with bated breath to see one of the group members’ videos but it wasn’t exporting properly, so we decided we’d just have to wait until the film festival next week.

This week’s lectorial had us look at the fundamentals of becoming professionals in the Media Industry.
Brian referenced various articles and quotes from those who had turned their passions into careers, like an ex-media communications student who had turned their blogging rituals from this course into a profession; reviewing movies they had seen.

The importance of blogging was reiterated and it’s importance defined; blogging helps form a routine of reflection and helps us to learn how to explain our ideas.
As someone who writes on occasion, I’ve always found it difficult to do something creative when I’m being told to.

We were shown a video by Cal Newport, focusing on deep work, success, productivity and work-life balance.
Cal spoke intently of passion and how one comes upon it, stating that there is very little evidence stating that we begin with a passion in life and then follow suit.
He stated that evidence we do have actually supports the opposite.
An example was given, akin to my experiences of undertaking piano lessons – someone takes piano lessons and their teacher happens to be a pleasant person who makes learning enjoyable, even though it may be somewhat difficult.
The apprentice comes back for another lesson and continues to play and then slowly realises that they are a little bit better than someone else.
This increases their drive and pushes them to continue to practice.
More time passes and they continue to grow stronger at the art and the gap widens.
Their motivation and passion increases with the positive affirmation and soon they reach world class status.

The pupil did not begin with this level of motivation but instead acquired it as they steadily progressed.
For me, the opposite occurred; my teachers were unenthusiastic and bland.
I had talent but I wasn’t in an inspiring environment. I am therefore, not a concert pianist.

The talk perfectly articulated how I felt about passion and have discussed at length with many friends over the course of the years.
So many people I know struggle with the ideas of following their passions and dreams, wondering what they should be doing with their time and how do they know if they’re on the right track.

It seems fairly simple when it’s laid out in a video for us – find something you’re good at and work hard at honing those skills and opportunities may very well arise.