Howard Gardner, 2007, ‘Minds Viewed Globally: A Personal Introduction’ in Five Minds For the Future, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, ch.1.

In Howard Gardner’s chapter ‘Five minds for the future’ he illuminates the five kinds of really necessary minds for people who want successfully work in society. Those five minds are the Disciplined Mind, the Synthesising Mind, the Creating Mind, the Respectful Mind and the Ethical Mind.

For the people who have disciplined Mind, is able to master the skills steadily, and solve the problem empirically. If the people do not have at least one, they are easily turned to be followers; they might be restricted in some tasks. The Synthesising Mind requires people be capable for grouping, analyzing and evaluating information from different sources. I think this mind is really useful, it enables us effectively and accurately to complete tasks in future. For the people who want to work in media, film or other artistic industry, undoubtedly, the creating Mind is inevitable and significant for them to have. Always thinking in a fresh way, putting new idea, being innovative.

And the last two, actually, I think respectful and Ethical Mind seem like really basic things for every people, no matter what the job we are doing, what ages we are. However, it is disappointed because there are few people, they might excel in one mind of the first three, but they do not have the last two minds. As result, although they are successful in their career, but they will never respected by others. So I deeply hope I can firstly have the respectful mind and the ethical mind, depending on theses two, keep working hard and endeavor to develop other minds.

Judy Wajcman, 2015, ‘Finding Time in a Digital Age’ in Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism, ch.7.

 “Finding time in a digital age”-a quit interesting topic. Depending on this topic, Judy Wajcman tries to introduce the idea about how to efficiently mange our work time, and how to be flexible. Firstly, Judy shows the idea of one economist John Maynard Keynes. John believed that people don’t have work too many hours to satisfy their needs, people is able to enjoy their leisure time. He also imagined the technology developments eventually would enable the productivity be higher, as a result, people can efficiently work with the digital machine. However, the high technology flailed to liberate us. The new technology acceleration forces us to be more rushed. Undoubtedly, we live in an even faster pace of life. We have to work with abundant resource. Learning the different types of technologies also ask us to pay more attention and more time.

There is no doubt that digital development benefits to society, also we both know the technology will keep developing in future. So it is important to know how to properly leverage the digital things to improve efficiency. Personally, I think a clear, reasonable and regular plan might be helpful.

In chapter four, Cal Newport discusses both the craftsman mindset and the passion mindset of working people. Simply to say craftsman mindset focus on what you can offer the world, and passion mindset focus on what the world can offer you. Depending on the experiences the author mentioned of Jordan and Martin, we may in further know the craftsman mindset. Jordan believes it is valuable if people can create some meaningful thing and present it to this world. Because, the work doesn’t lie, what work you did will directly show your ability. This is the people who have a craftsman mindset, they are willing to practice, attribute, also they are enjoying in the process.

However, the most of people, including myself, we are usually asking what we could get from the job? Do I like it? Is it suitable for me? Actually, it is so hard to get a right answer. So I feel confused in some time. I think I have to change my mindset. It is true if we put too much attention on return, we might be haperaware of what the things we don’t like in our job. There is no any job can be 100% perfect, especially for the fresh people like us, we may do a lots of entry-level works after we graduated. We have to consider what we can do for those jobs even it is entry-level.

Craftsman mindset enables people ignored the self-centered concerns, and instead keep finding a way to make them be better. As Martin said don’t always want to know what is the concrete way to be successful, we just have to be so good others can not ignore. No one owes we a good career, we have to earn it.

Cal Newport, 2012, ‘The Clarity of the Craftsman’ in So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work, NY Business Plus, ch.4.

Week 3 reading log

Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas, 2015, ‘Work’ in The Informal Media Economy, Polity Press, Cambridge UK, ch.3.

In The Informal Media Economy Lobato and Thomas point out the debates of labour in culture, creative and media industries. In modern society, the freelance workers become more and more in media and creative industries. Lobato and Thomas enable us to think will the freelance writing sites devalue the writing profeesion? Will it Provide a platforms for amateurs? What ethics should be considered and what problems will have in using non-professional labour? Those questions both can be considered in different perspectives. For example, depending on some professional or academic creative media workers perspective, they probably question about the professsion of them. For the freelancer, as amateurs, they got a chance to develop their hobby, they have flexible hours and freedom creativity.

However, the authors describe the main concerns of informal media industry, which is unpredictability, insecure and low pay for workers. Honestly, this is the cruel fact for all the media students who want to contribute to media industry in future. Actually the most of Chinese parents prefer their child to work in government, hospital and law office, rather than film, TV, Radio or other media industries. They assert there is the lack of stability of those jobs. But for the people who is really interested in those realms, like me, even we know the potential predictability, insecure of the job, we still want to try it. There is no any job is so easy to do in the beginning. And the passion we have for the job enables us have a spirit to conquer the problems. It is so lucky if we can do a thing we loved.

 

Summary of the Chinese Film Industry’s Policy Environment 2007, Penske Business Media, New York, N. Y.

 This article talks about the policy of Chinese film industry, which provided by government. Reform and opening up have brought about great changes for China’s film industry. In order to deepen film industry and establish new mode of it, the government and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has released a series of policies.

The first major one is joint production policy. The Chinese government believes the diversity of world culture will benefit to Chinese film industry. So they are willing to cooperate with filmmakers from all countries. There are three ways of joint production policy, which are co-production, assisted production and entrusted production.

The second policy is film import policy. The basic principles of this policy are high quality, high intellectual and artistic merit, and excellent technologies. Depending on those principles, the Chinese government importing more than 20 foreign films per year. It is important component of cultural exchange. The third one is theater investment policy. Foreign capital is able to build, renovate, and operate movie theaters, with a maximum share of 49%. The last one is film distribution policy. The entry barrier has been lowered by government, because of the developing needs of promoting the domestic films market, and encouraging private enterprises to contribute the distribution and sales.

Wu, X. 1992, The Chinese film industry since 1977, University of Oregon.

 The author mainly comprehensively analyses the Chinese film industry connecting with Chinese policy and economy. In chapter1 the author clearly sates the Chinese film history. After the Lumiere Brothers formally exhibited movies in Paris, on 11 August 1896, Shanghai, saw its first films. In that time, the Chinese people saw the most of films in foreigner’s various rented fairgrounds and teahouse.

The first commercial movie theater Permanent Movie Theater was built in 1908 by a Spaniard. This theater was the symbol of the emerging Chinese film industry. However, actually the film industry of China almost controlled by foreigners, some Chinese people failed in attempting to participate in it. The first Chinese film, Diniunshan. was shot by Fengta Photography Shop with a French camera and German raw film in 1905 in Beijing. The first co-production mod of Chinese film happened in 1912, when In 1912, two Americans, Essler and Lehrmann, bought the Asia Film Company, they invited two Chinese, Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu to make films together. However, this cooperation was interrupted by World War I. Generally, due to the lack of extensive investment and complex technology during 1896 to 1914, the development of Chinese film industry was so slow.

 

Reference

China Focus: Chinese film industry slumps after opening up to Hollywood 2012, woodside.

Development issues as Chinese film industry booms: official 2015, Woodside.

Summary of the Chinese Film Industry’s Policy Environment 2007, Penske Business Media, New York, N. Y.

Wu, X. 1992, The Chinese film industry since 1977, University of Oregon.

 

Media 6, week 2 reading log

 The reading A World of Differences mainly focuses on the changing entertainment & market industry. And the biggest shifts are occurring in five dimensions of the global E&M landscape: demography, competition, consumption, geography, and business models.

According to this article, the demographic data shows that younger people consume more media than old people, they are easily create profits for media industry. And as Chris asserts youth will propel E&M growth through 2020. I think it is a reasonable prediction, because as we can see in society the majority of young people are open to adapt new technology, and more efficiently to leverage the different types of media. So for the media workers, they have to understand the needs and hobby for spending media on digital content.

However, the interesting question for me is: will the older consumers feel alienate by pushing new technology to hard? For example, there are lots of young people might feel gaps between them to their parents or grandparents. Whereas, this problem can be slightly lighten by companies and people. For instance, the companies are able to consider the needs of old people, and write a clear and simple instruction for them. Also, as a younger people, it is good to be patient when we teaching old people how to spend new media technology.

Chris Lederer & Megan Brownlow, ‘’A World of Differences’: Special Report: Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2016-2020’. Price Waterhouse Cooper

In last semester, we mainly learned the mythologies of drama, and in this semester we put more attention on documentary. In other word, this semester provide us a chance to learn how to apply the methodologies of drama production to documentary making. So when I planning my final project, I decided to do not limited with the types of film, instead, creating my own film which both have the features of documentary and drama. I am an overseas student who came alone to Melbourne to achieve dream. Melbourne has different meaning for me, it bring lots of things to me, such as the beauty, challenge, lonely and so on. So I want to show this city and show the relationship between the strangers with this city in a personal perspective to viewers. Also, because I want to illuminate the impression about this city, so I will film varies of scenery in this city. Generally, the scenery of Melbourne must had been filmed numbers of times by other people, so I have chosen a special visual way to present it in my own film, this special way is the design of split screen. I really interested in split screen when I watching some films. So I investigated some usages of split screen, and tried to suitably and reasonably apply them in my project.

 

In order to make this film more clear and logic, I divided it to three different parts. First one is the basic impression of Melbourne, second one is the normal daily life of people in this city, and the last one is the experiences in this city. Actually, the fist part is close to the genre of documentary. From this part I deeply realized the importance of “ time” and the necessary of proficient skills in documentary filming. Having an ability to capture the luck is same important with having a good luck in filming process. Also, the split screen design in this part is mainly focus on visual effects of scenery, so I mostly use a special way that divided one shot to few parts, adding color effect for each part. The second part, I used the comparison usage of split screen to show the life routine of different people. It comprehensively and interestingly shows varies life styles of people who live in this city. Comparing with the first one, it is unnecessary to add any color effect of it. And the third part is close to drama, so the split screen design in this part has to be logical and clear to understand. Using one screen to show different perspectives shots is a suitable style for this part. So that viewers are able to know the situation in a comprehensive way.

To sum up, the split screen have different usages, when we using it, we should depending on content of our project. In this producing process, I deeply felt the difficulties of split screen film in filming and in editing area. The consistency of lighting, frame, subject size, level both are so important. Also, the complicated audio design makes me feel struggle. Obviously, I gave my self an interesting challenge in this semester. But I am so happy that finally I tried my best to complete it. Expecting next semester studio.

 

Collaboration post of FILM 3

Actually, the process of creating a whole film is a fantastic journey with other people. However, it also might be a “nightmare”. Every one should cooperate with others in the filming process, the most important thing is understand the role we played, and keeping listening others suggestions. However, in some class exercises, I thought we did not achieve it. Some times, people cannot do their own job in a professional way, but it is not a big deal, because they might lack of some experiences. But the bad thing is in one exercise, one people refused to listen others suggestion, it directly leads communication problems, and finally make the project looks not good. Also, I think respect to each other is a basic thing in teamwork. No matter you paly the role of director or the actor, when you need other people to do something, you should be polite and be nice, rather than impolitely ask them to do it. I feel disappointed this situation happened in this semester, because, there isn’t similar situation in last semester studio exercises. I hope every one including myself can learn how to respect each other, receiving useful suggestions, and responsible for the roles they paly.

 

In my final individual project, I have a fantastic and wonderful journey with my partner Mona and Xiaochen, and two more actors, they help me to complete my plan in a perfect way. They both give me some useful suggestions, and patiently, passionately work with me. Also, Xiaochen always help us to carry the heavy tripod. Thanks to him! In lighting exercise, I think every one have a improvement in collaboration. Everyone clearly know their roles in filming process, and communicate with each other in a good way. Joel and me responsible for the lighting, he is so nice to quickly move the light together with me. In conclusion, I meet some wonderful and talented people in this class, and get one well with the them, through working with them I learn something. I expect to meet most of them again in future.

Week12, new shooting

To be honest, the third part of my film is the most difficult one, because there are concrete plots in this part. I want to use split screen to instead of frequent cutting in drama, and ensure that viewer won’t feel confused about it. Because it is complicated and I do not have enough time, so I only filmed three scenes. First one is Xiaochen arrived in Melbourne. He dragging his luggage and walking in the street. I want to show his action in details. So I used one low angel close up for his foot and luggage, one close up for his hand, one wide shot showing he walking on the street and curiously looking around. The second scene is that he takes a bus, and looking outside, this is the first time he see the appearance of this city. In order to achieve this script, I purposely took my friend’s car, and hand held the camera to shoot outside street in driving process. The third scene shows how Xaiochen practice his English in daily life. I chosen one place have a best view in our apartment. And use several shots to show he reading English with different posture around this place in different perspectives. I hope it is able to emphasize the time he used in this thing is pretty long through this design.

In addition, I make those shots in this part slowly changing from black white to color one, because this is the memory of Xiaochen, so I think maybe this design is suitable.

 

 

Week11 development

Robin gave me some suggestion about my project. First one is the order of the shots. When I filming the scenery of Melbourne in each part, I have not considered the concrete sequence of those shots. I just tried to film the beautiful scenerys as many as possible. Then I changed the order of those shots depending on Robin’s suggestion. I found those shot became more meaningful and logical in a new sequence. For example, the unexpected shot which the man says, “ what’s that?” moved a little bit forward, so the meaning of it has been changed. This shots looks like an introduction of the content of first part.

Xiaochen recorded voiceover for the project, he slowly, softly talk about his internal idea about this city and his experience in this city. According to this voiceover, viewers may used a personal perspective of XIaochen to feel this city, it is really different.

The sound design is pretty hard to do in split screen film. As the suggestion from Robin, I layered different soundtrack together in some shot, also used fade in and fade out to make it natural. The environment sound, spot effect, music and voice-over should cooperate with each other. So I clearly observe every shots, and add the suitable sounds for it. I hope I did it in a good way.