Today, was the final class (wow has that come around fast)! I didn’t actually realise this until the end… but of course it’s the final class!

To celebrate, we had special guests in to give us feedback  on our rough-cuts. Alright, I’ll be honest… my group didn’t exactly have our rough-cut down. But we DID go and interview a few people when we met up during the week. While we knew it wasn’t exactly our final product, it was really good to get some tips!
We found out that we needed to be waaay more specific with our questions, and ask less people the more nitty-gritty stuff. We ended up re-doing the whole skeleton of our piece based on the feedback (hopefully for the better, but then – that’s the point of feedback isn’t it? To change for the better.)
I think after we really mapped out exactly what we were going to do, and how we were going to do it (after we’d heard what to change and what not to change), the project became a lot less daunting. We each left with our own jobs for our own segments to do before we meet back on Monday.  (Goodness me, we’re an efficient group… Monday?)

I also really liked to be able to hear what another group was doing for their project. I mean, we’re all given the same project and that same inspiration word (attention) and I always find it so fascinating the different way’s people take and angle their work. The group we listened to were talking about Game of Thrones. While I had zero idea of where they were taking it, it thought it was great!

I really think it was a great last class. A way for us to do a final reconnect and review of our ideas, and receive professional feedback on them, and then go forth, into the world (earlier than usual #win) and finish our final piece.

During this workshop we got to dabble with audio. I however have never worked with Audition at all, so before I could even begin looking at how to edit the audio we filmed in our groups I had to watch some serious tutorials. I’m still struggling a bit with it, but getting there!

It took a little bit of editing, but as we had really planned out what we wanted the sound to… sound like, it was easy to place everything once it was all cut.

During this assessment I learnt that while in a video you can just cut different angles to make the edits flow, you can’t do that with audio. You have to have a consistent background noise to work with.

I also learnt that the placement of different sounds is important, and changes the entire scene. I realise that these are the things that were gone over in our lecture, and I mean… It’s obvious. Of course, sound is different to video! But still, as I always find: you can’t learn everything by having someone tell it to you. Unfortunately… you’ve got to experience it.

This workshop we learnt how to use the small recording devices we will hopefully use during the recording of our projects. We interviewed in our groups where someone’s favourite place to get a coffee on campus was. While we were still inside the classroom with minimal resources, we tried to make it sounds as though someone was swirling their coffee and give some sort of locational context to the piece. In hind-sight, a coffee swirl doesn’t exactly mimic that of a 1L drink bottle… I think this piece was a great starting point in regards to editing and sound placement though. While I was editing this is was kind of a “Pin the tail on the Donkey” kind of deal. Less in the sense that I was physically blind when placing the sounds, but more that I was creatively blind – I had never edited just audio before and the best place to put the swirling sound to make the most sense wasn’t obvious.

I think there are definitely things to work on in this, but I don’t think not the worst first effort ever either.

This week we had a guest lecturer, Kyla Brettle. I thought she was really good because she brought some of her material to the lecture which gave us such a good insight into what could be considered ‘real world’ material (mostly because they weren’t uni-set projects).

There was one that was very cool. It was a mixed sound that sounded like everything was underwater. She then went through all of the sounds she had mixed in and I found it really opened my eyes to they way that sounds can merge together (again in a real-life context).

She gave us a huge array of tips, which I think are obvious – but only once you hear them. The tips were mainly just pointing out the different lessons she had learnt along her way (for example; ‘save drafts’ and ‘use more than one sound channel’). However, I think it is lesson’s like these that are extremely good to hear. Learning from other people’s mistakes is an extremely underrated task. I know for myself especially, I have to make a conscious effort to do this, especially when it seems so obvious. It is only when I make the mistake myself that I TRULY learn what I should have avoided…

Secondly, her 000 Ambulance recording is very powerful. It was only the other day that my family and I were walking to the theatre and we saw a homeless man collapse. My Mum is a nurse and she stopped to check him out, and almost immediately told my Dad to call the Ambulance. My mum kept telling my Dad what to say, as he had never had to call one before.

However, in regards to Media, I think what makes it most powerful is the combination of music and silence. In one of Kyla’s tips she points out how hearing music is just as important as not hearing it, and I think that is really highlighted by her recording.

The reading set this week “Did Media Literacy Backfire?” By Danah Boyd raises a lot of interesting ideas. It explains how as a society (particularly American, but I think there are elements of the discussion in the whole Western World) now question everything they read and hear, and as a result we are segregating ourselves from each other and moving towards tribalism. In the way that people will now google information about possible illness symptoms that they are and trust a general online forum, instead of the Family Doctor as it was in the ‘olden days’.

Boyd talks about how ‘Fake News’ spreads around the internet, and suggests that it is mostly educated people sharing it as fake news and telling everyone how appalled they are that it’s spreading around the internet.

Now this is a point that really clicked. I have seen this in action and it’s only when it’s pointed out do you realise how ‘everywhere’ it is. My feed on Facebook is always filled with Fake News, and more often than not it’s shared by a someone I am friends with talking about how ridiculous it is that something like that could be on the internet…. The irony kills me.

I found myself only finding a few reputable sources that I have in my news feed that I can trust consistently. When I see a headline in my feed, before I even think about clicking on it and reading it I see where it has come from.
According to Boyd’s article, I’m somewhere in the middle of both extremes. On one end is someone that believes everything they read, and at the other is someone who questions every single bit of information out there.
I think I’m doing okay here in the middle. I mean, you can’t believe everything you hear or read, that’s not how society works. But you can’t exactly questions everything either, or you’d never actually be certain of anything. I’m not sure which is worse, to think you have all the answers but you don’t, or to have access to all the answers but you don’t use them.

This class we went through half of the class’s interviews. I do like watching how everyone interprets the idea and chooses to present their talent. I also found each person’s story interesting.

This kind of project is always amazing. It’s a special thing to be able to turn a story or person that would normally be considered relatively ordinary, into something worth watching. I really like seeing what people pair with what the interviewee is saying, whether is directly corresponds or not.

I think that there were a few left to the last minute, but overall the quality was fairly consistent despite the diverse range of styles.

We were then divided into our groups for the final assignment – of course it’s a group assignment…
We were then given the chance to muck around with (to a degree) recording devices. Last year during my Diploma of screen and media I studied how to use technical sound equipment and shotgun microphones, so it was good to be able to apply that knowledge to a more casual and everyday device. I remembered how cool it was listening to the world through the microphone, especially when the sensitivity is set really high. To be able to hear the sound of a pen scrape on paper or typing on a computer as loud and as clear as the microphone makes it is a weird experience.

Despite the notorious reputation around group projects, I think this one will be good. Hopefully it will find a way to all come together in a timely manner!

Here is a link to my Portrait of Ted Hatty as part of my Project Brief 3.

Unfortunately, I was sick this week and just like the lecture was unable to attend the workshop.
(As I live out of home I’ve have endless lectures from my mum about eating enough veggies so hopefully news of this illness doesn’t get back to her…)

I’ve decided to compensate with another initiative post! (Yay that means I get to watch movies and tell everyone it’s homework)

Since starting this course I have taken a liking to watching movies and interviews and thinking about what I have learnt in class, it makes me feel like I’m a part of a bigger group of general media-makers out in the big wide world, a sort of “I see what you did there and I understand why you did it” vibe.

Most recently I was watching ‘Friends with Benefits’ (great film) and it stood out the way the movie goes onto a whole new dimension of movie-magic. Like most life-like films, they make you forget you’re watching a film by referencing the real world in their world. For example in ‘Friends with Benefits’ they mention George Clooney, and talk about all the great things about New York City – as it is in the real world. It’s a way to bring the audience with it, for them to be like “I know George Clooney, I get that reference” and “Omg NYC is exactly like that!”. I guess this is a way for film-makers to drag people into the world of their film without them even realising it.

Once that thought struck, I started thinking about the endless lists of films that do this. Every rom-com out there has elements of this phenomenon.

This week I was editing my portrait. It was difficult to decide which bits of footage not only best matched what Ted was saying during his interview, but also what would be most interesting to watch for an audience. It was difficult deciding when to put in the background sounds of the cutaway footage and when not to.

All of these different elements can change the entire outlook of your video, it can make it more emotionally appealing, or it can make it more factual and informative. Deciding which angle I preferred was easy. Films that pull at your emotions are always more entertaining.

When you look at specific documentaries, the most successful ones are those that bring emotions into what they are talking about. Specifically referencing David Attenborough’s nature documentaries. The detailed shots of a mother penguin returning to it’s mother, or a seal struggling to out manoeuvre the jaws of a great white make you feel something. That’s the essence I hope to be able to capture one day

Unfortunately I was sick over this week and was unable to attend the lecture. However the reading “The Night Of a Thousand Wizards” kind of touched on and built on what I was thinking regarding Game of Thrones last week. It’s amazing how something so fake can seem so real to some people. How the way things are created and described, and the way characters each have their own personality despite (particularly in books) only having one person create them. How something can seem – in reference to Harry Potter – “So Ron”, or “Classic Hermione”. I’ve always been fascinated how authors transform words into worlds.

I’d love to be able to master that art, because of course it’s an art. Anyone can write a story, but it takes a master to bring it to life.