It is hard to believe that the semester has already come to an end. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we started. But now, having competed the twelve week semester, it is time to reflect upon the first chapter of my university experience.
When I think back, it has been quite a busy time. I have learnt, what I believe will be the foundations of my three year course. We looked at media theory, academic documents and writings, media technologies and mediums, audiences, media texts, and numerous other topics. Additionally, we have completed four different project briefs and have worked both individually and in groups. Lastly, we have learnt how to use different equipment borrowed from the university. As we did all this we also wrote numerous blog posts every week to document our learning.
The very first reading we were given was Cal Newport’s ‘How do people end up loving what they do for a living?’ I think this was a really great first reading as it was all about how we should go about finding a job that we will end up loving. It looked at a speech given to the graduating class in 2005 by Steve Jobs where he said “you’ve got to find what you love…If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle.” While Newport says this may not be the best advice, he uses Jobs as a role model for this readers. I believe the intention behind giving us this reading was to get us thinking more about how we want to go about our everyday life, and our quest to find something we are passionate about. From this reading I leant that I must be open to new possibilities and to try new things, and by doing so I could discover who I am and what I am passionate about.
Our first assignment was a creative self portrait which was a collection of photos, videos, text and audio which had to reflect ourselves in an abstract and poetic way. I think this was quite a good introductory project to begin the semester. It gave us a chance to become familiar with blogging and how to submit projects. Additionally, I found it a good starting point as this task lead into two subsequent projects.
The second project was another self project but this time was in the form of an edited video. While I liked my original concept for the video, I was not happy with the final result. I think I could have improved it if I had of had more time to workshop and develop the idea. However, because of this I was more determined to do better at the next task which was a portrait on someone else. I chose my friend Ben as my subject because of his success playing lacrosse. He is a national level lacrosse player and I wanted to show his loyalty and dedication to his team and the sport itself. I was quite pleased with how it turned out and I liked the challenge of using a new editing software (Premiere Pro CC). I did some some difficulties with the audio recordings and microphones I used, but these problems are things I can learn from for future projects.
Our final project (link to reflection blog) was to create one video and one audio essay on a given topic in groups of three. Our group’s topic was media technologies and mediums and I believe we worked very well. From the start we all had ideas that we could play around with and were all eager to make it a collaborative task, therefore ensuring we each did a little bit of everything as opposed to one person doing all the editing for example. I was pleased with the final result and think we did well in responding to the brief.
I think that looking back on all the project briefs is a great way to see my progress over the semester. I think the improvements from the first to the last task is quite significant. I definitely benefitted from the workshops where we viewed other peoples work and could gain feedback on our own projects. It was great to see other peoples work and to look at what worked well and what could be improved. From doing this, we could use other peoples work as inspiration for our own.
What I found most challenging was finding the time to learn new editing software while keeping up to date with my set work. I had not used Premiere Pro CC or Audition before this semester and I relied on video tutorials from lynda.com and Youtube to learn the programs. While this was helpful in getting started, I found myself wanting to do more complex things with the programs but was unsure on how to. I think I will definitely be spending some time over the holidays learning the programs in more detail.
I think what I learnt most about my own creative style is that I like storytelling. I love finding out peoples stories and sharing them with others through a video. I think thats I why I love documentaries so much, so it has been interesting exploring that in the projects this semester.
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