It’s finally that time of the year: the end of the first semester. This has been a semester filled with advancing my media skills, gaining knowledge and meeting wonderful people. So, for our final lectorial we were asked to reflect on the semester through a graph format. I mapped out how I think this semester was for me in relation to these four topics (see above). Let me reason with my graph:
A quick side note: I apologise profusely for this sad attempt at a graph, but I left the paper with my original hand-drawn graph at home, which is unattainable as I am currently in Paris.
TECHNICAL SKILLS
This semester began with me having some knowledge of Adobe PremierPro, filming, and recording after having studied Film and Television previously in High School. By the time I was editing my work in week 3 and 4, I began to feel that I had gained a personal style due to the task we were doing (self-portrait, Project Brief 1 and 2). My editing, rhythm, structure was getting better and better and I felt pleased with my end result.
Straight after we got our Project Brief 3 task (video-portrait), I interviewed my subject. Because the interview was filmed outside, the audio was terrible, while the b-roll was just as bad due to the lack of lighting in the studio. I was unable to film this again due to difficulties, but believed I overcame these issues with some ease. I said that between week 5 and 8 I improved greatly, and I genuinely believe this is because I was tested in ways I wasn’t in Project Brief 1 and 2.
From week 8 to 9, I once again decreased and skill. This is not due to any mistake, rather I was new to Adobe Audition. ALAS, I got better – great actually. By the time the rough cut for the audio segment was due, I was beaming with pride. Unlike my last work, I was genuinely happy with what had been done and how it had been created. My skills with Audition improved immensely over this period of time.
CONCEPTUAL SKILLS
I believe that the conceptual skills that I’ve learnt over the course of this semester is generally in relation to my practice as the way of thinking is very I paced this upwards scale, as over the course of the semester I don’t think I had any downfalls with my conceptual skills, and only gained new knowledge and understanding skills of tasks and topics discussed.
WORKING & LEARNING
Similarly to my conceptual skills, I don’t believe that I’ve really had any downfalls this semester. I’ve stayed pretty static in regards to my work ethic and desire to learn throughout the semester. The only time a downfall may be evident is when I completed Project Brief 3 and was very dissatisfied with the work that I had done. I particularly picked up my motivation towards the end of the course, as I was proud of what my group and I had done for Project Brief 4. I believe that working with other people who worked well creatively helped to gain momentum during those last few moments of the semester.
MY PRACTICE
The skills that I have gained throughout the semester had positively effected ‘my practice’ dramatically, as I feel I have been on a constant incline throughout the semester. I’ve gained so many skills and insights into my practice, particularly after listening to current industry workers in the lectorials. The only time that my practice decline was that one moment when my technical skills and working & learning declined along with it. This, once again, picked right back up and inclined.
Finally, as Elliot off Rollercoaster (ABC Kids) said, “goodbye for now, but not forever”.
