What can I say? This assignment has been a roller coast with a few downs, but overall, plenty of ups. The last minute factor was certainly a down but came with a number of up with it. During the later stages of our planning we eventually decided to present our topic along the lines of: ‘the effects of music on the brain’. We all agreed that this was going to be presented as a podcast format with a science theme to it. My group partner and I shared the workload pretty well, and worked together to help each other with our own respective parts.

At the start of the assessment it was fair to say that the group chemistry was not really there and morale was not high at all. Originally we had three group members, and there was not much communication between us to kickstart our project. This lack of communication definitely contributed to the low spirits of the initial stages of our assignment. Furthermore, the loss of a group member did not help either. So ultimately in the first two weeks our assignment we really had no sense direction and also confused about the condition of our lost member. However not delving into the lost member matter too much, we decided to make light of the situation by moving on and focus on our task at hand. I am glad that my group partner and I are able to talk about the assignment as well as on a personal level. This made the communication aspect of the assignment easier and a definite improvement from the first week of the assignment. Things looked promising after the first two weeks. Further examples of this progression included, much more frequent messaging and setting up a date and time to meet and plan the work.

There was a brief period during the middle of the assignment period that we stagnated and struggled to maintain the progress that we made. I do claim fault to this, as I was focussing on other different things. I figured that this was extremely unfair on my group partner and made a strong effort to improve every element that is necessary to form a successful collaborative work. These elements are a reference to Week 9’s Lectorial on collaborative work, where Dr Rachel Wilson highlights that: respect, consistency, clear objectives, good communications and support, are the many factors that result in good collaborations. I placed a huge emphasis on communication, respect and clear objectives to get the project moving. The motivation and the pressure behind completing the assignment was also a motive to really push ourselves to work together and finish. We tried our best not to rush it, despite the little amount of time we had left because we also wanted to do a good job at the same time.

The topic of Music and the Brain was a very scientific topic and most certainly related to the broader topic of ‘attention’. Although for the common folk, this topic can seem technical and dull, there is abundance of information that an be valuable to know, especially for your own psychological health. Music is found to be healthy for the mind, and we really take it for granted. Given the complexity in this field of neuroscience, researching was quite difficult as there was a lot of scientific jargon and complex vocabulary. However we managed to highlight the most relevant parts of our references and use it in our project. We split the topic into two parts. The first part explores the physical aspect of music and the brain; primarily in the context of entrainment. Myself, I decided to talk about the emotions that connect music and memory together. Both parts support each other and ultimately argue for the same thing, which was showing how the brain places a great amount of attention towards music.

In regards to the technical aspect of our project, my group partner, who has a background in music production was mainly editing the audio mix. We felt that it was better to have on person editing as there would be too much confusion between two different styles of editing. As my partner would finished the edit I would go over and listen to it, to give some feed back and refinement. This process worked really well for us and managed to achieve it in a very short period of time.

What I lacked in the contribution to editing was compensated with the direction and the formation of our talk. We all recorded our individual parts and then recorded together where necessary such as the introduction. My group partner was also apart of this process as well, as she pitched in ideas for music and experiments used in the audio.

The stress factor was somewhat helpful, but we still managed to complete the task in time. Overall I am very happy that I was able to partner up with Tianshu, my group partner, as she is someone who is critical and but giving at the same time. These are qualities I appreciate in a group member

Piled up with work, this week was the week to work hard and pump out the assignment. All of our references have been sorted out and now we know what to say. We have had multiple discussions on what to say and not what to say, in conjunction with the style of talk that we were going for. Given the time that we had we set aside our differences and focussed on working together and helping each other out. This proved to be successful and we got along really well. We made a continuous effort to communicate I am sure this will carry on for our last week before the due date. There is not much else to say but complete the project at all costs. How we were going to make this happen was:

• stay on top of booking studio rooms
• constant feedback and refinement of audio takes
• help guide the other person to talk
• stay on top of time and focus at all times
• constant communication
• establishing good team chemistry and morale

For our group, this week was hardly a workshop, but a lesson to be learnt at the same time. As my extracurricular activities got in the way of things I found it hard to prioritise our group audio project. This week there was a valuable opportunity for us to present our rough cuts to get feedback from the teachers. Unfortunately we have not yet finished ours. This moment was a wake up call to put everything else to the side and fully dedicate ourselves to the project. Since we could not make use of the time in the workshop, we decided to hit the basement and start wrapping our ideas around our heads and begin recording. Since this was a stressful time, it was quite understandable for my partner to be frustrated. For that night we stay in the basement we got a fair bit of work done and did most of our recordings that night.

As media practitioners we often make mistakes during collaborative work when it comes to communication and dedicating our time to the work. In our group assignment’s case, this was shown to be exactly that prior to week 12. We have also stagnated as things were left last minute. However we ultimately had one goal, and that was to finish the task. This incentive to finish really pulled us through to work as hard as we can. Doing work can last minute can be frowned upon, but quite often, depending on the individual there can always be a silver lining under all of the work we had to do in such a short amount of time.

This week was the time to plan a meet up with my group partner and select our references and ideas for our audio project. We are running short for time and we still have not figured out what we want to say. We made a priority to learn and understand our references through the structure of an annotated bibliography in order to make sense of what we are going to talk about it. My partner has decided to emphasise on the rhythmic side of music and how that affects the brain, and I my self decided to show the connection between the emotion in music and the brain.

Before our planned meet up, I wanted to research in the way I wanted to present my talk. I will be going for the elements of a podcast, but in terms of the pacing and tone I was inspired to approach it in this way:

link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5_APAxM5Lg

Although not directly related to our group topic, he draws on multiple elements of music in relation to brain and presents in the way that I want in my own section of the group talk.

Pens down, recorders out! This week was all about learning how to record and edit our audio tracks. To be honest I was not present at the time, but in terms of knowing the technical elements of this work, I am quite competent in. As an elective for the semester, I also study sound design. A number of the technical requirements mentioned in the task have been touched on in sound design. However what is more important is what I would actually record and mix to give my own audio take on the topic of “can I have your attention please?”

My first recording would be a conversation between a mother and her child who is roughly in his twenties on the dinner table. While the mother talks, she will mention about the son never coming home, ignoring her calls and never talking to her. Throughout the conversation, the mum will say ‘look up at me’, alluding to the fact that the son is always faced down and absorbed into applications on his phone.

The second recording will have a recording of the air conditioning to give the sound mix an ambient background to give a sense of depth to the narrative. Furthermore I would record unique social media notifications and beeps and add them to the mix to show that he is always on his phone.

In terms of editing, I would not put in any plugins, but rather just nice cutting of unwanted dialogue and constant adjustment of the gain to get a consistent loudness in the dialogue if required.

This week was a tough one for our group. Unfortunately one member had to leave for some unknown reason. Now there is only two. To be honest , the situation did not felt so dire as we thought we would be, because the work needed to be done regardless. Moving on from the unfortunate circumstance, my group partner and I knuckled down an devised a plan. We were going to meet up on the weekend to make time for brain storming. At this point we were still unsure of what theme we wanted to do and how to approach it.

At this point we had to think of something. We need a topic that is related to ‘attention’ and that it would form some kind of argument so that we can give our talk a direction and a side. Through conversations on our chat group, we were pretty set on the effects of music on the brain, as my group partner mentioned the idea of entrainment.

With not much long to go, we decided to research on this topic as much as we could and meet up again to discuss our ideas on our topic and forma and argument.

In this week’s workshop we explored Van Leeuwin’s reading on Perspective, which talks about the relationship between sound and the physical space in it and the kind of relationship between the emitter and receiver. Our tone of voice – pitch, loudness, frequency can determine whether we are very close and intimate with someone compared to someone who is far away and is a stranger to you. I guess the reading explores this concept to great detail, so that you can gain better perspective of sound and how a simple change can generally determine the relationship between individuals.

I can relate to the reading to some extent. When Van Leeuwin mentions about the change in tone of voice as the relationship goes from intimate to strangers, I felt that this was, for the most part, relatable. When I talk to my own mum, I do quite often speak in a voice that is low in pitch and soft. This is because we have already established a strong relationship since the day I was born, and there is no need to prove or hide anything.

In reference to audio and our project, it is important to understand a concept like Van Leeuwin’s take on sound and perspective in order to do a project like this. The way we talk to each other in our project will assume a number of different things as our tone gives off a certain perspective. It is important to practice the proper tone of voice so that we can cater and present to our audience the way we want them to understand.

This week we have been shown and given everything that we needed in order to prepare and execute the audio project. It is now completely down to us to be able to work together as a group, share ideas in a diplomatic approach and come up with a plan to give us a sense of direction. Having one team member present at the time of the workshop, I tried to take this opportunity to bond with him and make him more comfortable talking with me. He was a bit shy and distant but I eventually got him to open up and explore some ideas. I later contacted my other group member to get her say on the project and establishing a messaging group on Face Book for our main source of communication.

In this chat group we would set up date and times to meet and reference any ideas that came to mind. This instant form of messaging is a very useful tool because we can easily share our thoughts at anytime and anywhere. A google doc will also be created for our annotated bibliography so that we can all see what references we are using to get a sense of where your references fit in with the others.

Link: https://pics.me.me/every-group-project-says-hes-does-99-going-to-help-14486417.png

As I would hate to admit, most of the times that I have been in group assignment, has resulted in group members falling into these categories. This is something I am trying to avoid, but also guilty of in the pass. Sharing the workload and helping each other out will be heavily emphasised in the weeks to come prior to the due date.

This week we get hands get a grasp on audio in order to prepare ourselves for PB4. Focussing on mainly the pre-production phase of our audio project, our objective during the workshop was to wrap out heads around the equipment that is going to be used (H2n Zoom Mic), understanding the collaborative documentation and start brainstorming ideas.

After all this talk about teamwork and collaborating with one another in the week’s lecture, I really wanted to focus on building the team that I was selected to be in. Our group had a diverse set of people and it would prove to be a difficult task, but hopefully manageable.

This week was just only just the beginning of our project and there is nothing much to say about our group, nor our project. To be honest I was not sure of what to expect with the group I was assigned to and it was definitely exciting to see what we could come up with.

Audio Set Up

Link: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=podcast+setup&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU704AU704&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwinhsLAsJ3UAhWCKpQKHRhjBXwQ_AUIBigB&biw=1223&bih=732#imgrc=WF4r6QruXT0lZM:

The image above, is the set up I would have imagined for our group or at-least try to imitate it to give that podcast vibe of a bunch of people listening to ideas and making conversation.

We have finally reached to an end to the semester, well… in the context of lectures that is! This week’s lecture was design to self reflect and observe the progress that has been made since day one of entering into the course. As I look back, my style of work has improved but my conceptual and theoretical skills has had a much more dramatic improvement. Since the start of PB1/Pb2 the ideas that I had initially presented were not so creative and lacked complexity in the narrative side of things.

When it came to academic research and understanding readings, it was something that did not really interest me at all. Theory and Research were elements of media that I could not appreciate as much as I did for technical and the creative side of the job. Later down the track I realised doing the ‘dull’ work was very important to my understanding of our course in general. Understanding different perspectives and the considerations that are taken when creating media is vital to me as a content creator. Putting in the hard work, regardless of it being ‘dull’, will be nothing more than a gateway to more creativity and better content.

Other elements of my learning such as technique and sense of media are features that I feel very confident in. Since I have a background in this field work, prior to entering the course, understanding and applying them was more of a refreshment of what I have learnt a few months back. Despite already knowing most of the content in the context of the two just mentioned learning elements, it was good that I was still able to learn something new from the 12 weeks of workshops and lectures.

In our lecture we were told to plot a graph of how we felt about our learning. I blocked the weeks into groups to indicate the time which weeks focused on which assignment. This is an important aspect of the graph because most of the changes occur during the end of an assignment where I have done the work and self-reflected on ways to improve for the upcoming project. Progress, despite being slow or fast, is still progress!

My Learning Graph