Here’s something about second week’s lectorial. (The chart on our assessment has clarified my confusions. Great!)
The first thing this week is a small lesson on editing given by an invited alumni, Jeremy Bowtell. “Editing”, for me usually indicates the last stage of making of movies, so the quality of it decides the film’s final presentation; whereas Jeremy defined that “editing is evident across a range of different platforms and media.” I suppose he’s right. No matter which form of media, it needs editing to embellish the artworks. So how can we be better at editing? Jeremy listed some useful suggestions made by experts, which I conclude that it all depends on the function of one edit. Through editing, we try to achieve a certain effect, like, developing the story or showing a character’s emotion; meanwhile, on a boarder perspective, editing determines the length or pace of the film. Therefore, before every edit, we need it to be a useful cut rather than just cutting the start and the end of one clip—”Never make a cut without a good reason (by Edward Dmytryk)”. I think this week’s reading also in a way demonstrates the significance of editing from page 84. It illustrates four different editing versions of one story and the feeling really is quite different in terms of its completeness and coherence; so the amount of editing should be handled within a reasonable range.
“What is Media,” question posed in class. “Journalism”, “film”, “photos”, “social internet”, I typed these words in. Apparently, media is made up of all those things, but what really is media about? With many other students starting to speak up about their ideas, I realised that media is about ourselves. Some said it’s a bridge between the public and individuals; some suggested that its role of shaping the public opinion; some claimed that it was used for government censorship; some pointed out it’s for cultural representation. Then I thought, since media is for communication, for representation, it can be a platform for self expression. To explore the “self” is like one of the ultimate missions for everyone. So media is really about “me”; and as a whole, it’s about humanity—a self-portrait for humanity. When Brian also showed us the concept of “me-dia”, I was more sure of that.
Moving on to the next topic, it’s “imagined community”. It is a phenomenon that youngsters tends to enjoy online friend-making and communication. Take myself as an example, I’m not into making friends online, but I mostly chat with my friends online. Actually, I myself find it more comfortable than the direct face-to-face conversation when I need to talk to someone who I’m not too familiar with. The problem arises when I got used to it, which makes me sometimes speechless among unfamiliar, real people; though I can talk too much online. A group of people like me do exist and I guess many does not have such issues; some may have worse conditions than me. The imagined community is like the shelter, the place where introverted group tries to express themselves. So it is hard to decide whether it’s helpful or a bad thing. For introverts, they just need to push themselves out of their comfort zone; as for youngsters who are indulging in such fantasy, I hope they will realise the beauty of actual real people connections.
(Thinking really takes up a lot of time! )
The end…
[Photoshop work: planet]
