Monthly Archives: September 2015

MEDIA INDUSTRIES: Final Reflections

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As always, regardless of how well organised and prepared you think you may be, there are always little things that stray from the original plan, go horribly wrong, or take longer than expected than the original allocated timeframe.  Thankfully, major disasters were avoided, though the half hour we had to prepare the room before our seminar began passed in the blink of an eye.

Our guests appeared well before we were due to begin, first being Clayton Jacobson, director of Kenny, which starred his brother Shane as a plumber who works for a portable toilet rental company.  It’s rather funny upon reflection that I ran into him in the bathrooms just before we were due to meet in the building’s foyer.  Renowned editor Alicia Gleeson and 2014 Tropfest Winner Julian Lucas completed our guest list.  All our guests were lovely, talkative and despite their successes, still very relatable, which relieved a lot of the stress I had built up over the hours before.

Still, the time I had spent waiting for and speaking with them did make me feel as though I was letting the rest of the team down by not helping them prepare directly.  Like the hours before, our seminar passed even quicker.  All our speakers gave some excellent informative advice, and I was incredibly proud we had managed to attract such distinguished guests.

I was however, really disappointed that we were not allowed more time to set up beforehand, with some of the finer details unable to be tweaked to achieve what could have been a flawless performance from our entire group.  Though I understand that the room and allotted time frame was set in stone before the semester even began, I would strongly recommend that for future year levels, the room is booked for a longer period of time before the seminar, so that we may begin setting up in the room at least an hour before.

That said, I’m still very proud of not only the grade that we achieved, but the quality our seminar displayed.  It was a fantastic group of people to work with, and I gained many new friends and potentially future colleagues along the way.

MEDIA INDUSTRIES: A New Hope

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The title and theme of our seminar fell into place relatively quickly, and one that I am unashamed to take the credit for!  Media VI; A New Hope.  (I had brainstormed some other title suggestions to tie in with the Star Wars theme, such as ‘The (Work) Force Awakens’, or ‘The Phantom Graduate’, but they just didn’t have the same ring as the original.)

That contribution aside, it’s somewhat embarrassing that we’re less than three weeks away from our presentation, and I have been unsuccessful in finding any guests either willing or available to participate in our seminar.  It’s a nervous waiting game, sending out no more than three emails at a time so that we don’t double-book, but the first wave of emails was unsuccessful.  After finally landing a well known Australian Producer, I was immediately relieved, only to be cruelly thrust back to square one after they cancelled.

I’m really starting to feel the pressure after watching the previous seminars, particularly the Social Media group, who managed to put on a wonderful event, despite having less than two weeks to fully prepare.  I have a lot of faith in the rest of our team, but the success of our seminar may very well be dependent on who I can contact that isn’t out of the country in three weeks time.