Brian talked a little bit about narrative today, specifically about what narrative is and why it matters. I’m just going to summarize the information I jotted down during the talk for starters. In it’s simplest explanation, narrative is a story. It’s a way of structuring meaning to form a – you guessed it – narrative.

Key elements of a story include controlling idea, character, conflict, structure and character change/growth. In a typical 3 Act structure a character will experience a conflict and resolution, to which they have learned or grown as a person by the end credits. This type of narrative formula is most common in Hollywood films – browse a Video Ezy (do those even exist anymore?) and pretty much everything you find will follow this example. It’s only the indie and more alternative films that shy away from this – of course that’s a generalisation, but you get the idea.

Personally, I’m a fan of the predictable formula – not in the sense that I necessarily need a Happily Ever After or cliché tropes to be overused in every film I see (if anything, please god no I don’t want that). Just in the way that I find this to be the best way of creating a good story that is engaging all the way through. As was explained by Brian, narrative codes such as this can generate or control the flow of suspense, provide setting and engage viewers attention to reveal character or further the plot. It is, ‘a creative demonstration of the truth’. The truth being of course – that people experience ups and downs and people grow.

In today’s Lectorial we got a little bit of a pep talk about blogging from Rachel. Although it was a little confronting to hear we weren’t putting in enough work or effort to impress our tuts – a lot of us (myself included) are barely making the minimum.

I was actually struggling with this, trying to figure out how to make 4 posts let alone more! So the lecture slides were helpful to give me ideas and I guess, inspire me. For starters, I need to remember these posts don’t have to be essays. Also, we’re totally allowed to split to different ideas into 2 posts about the same topic – which would have given me more posts in the past, that’s for sure.

I also made the mistake of forgetting I am a Media student after all (or as Rachel put it, ‘for crying out loud’) and the use of videos, photos and other elements along with text (or instead of!) is entirely optional.

Some of the ideas she gave us were things you’ll be seeing a lot more of on my blog starting now. Things like ‘noticing’ media, lectorial and reading reflections, workshops and even discussing my personal media consumption.

The reading written by Alan McKee, along with the latest Lectorial, was one big year 12 throwback. Even though I’ve been finding it pretty hard to read the texts online rather than having a physical copy, I managed with McKee’s work because it wasn’t totally new information for me. He basically was talking about how we analyse the texts that we read and make bias interpretations of them based on our own experiences and past. This also goes along with the notion that no two people will interpret a text the same – and that there truly is no right or wrong way to do so either.

We did study this sort of thinking in year 12 with the media influence theories – things like semiotic constructivist theory, the bullet theory and so on – any other year 12 Media students know what I’m talking about I’m sure. These theories also suggested ways in which people are influenced, from mass media to family and friends. In a way, this is what McKee is talking about – that our own belief systems and morals will help us decide whether we think a text is accurate and if it represents our perception of reality.

I’ve been a little slow with updating my blog this past week, but we all have a lazy week here and there! I’m back on track now though. Last Thursday we had a workshop as per usual. I thought I was running late, after having a near fainting experience the morning before, I was a little nervous on the train over. But I seemed to get there 10 minutes early, and the class was virtually empty.

We had a discussion about Project 3, which was very helpful. I got to hear other peoples ideas and who they were planning to interview, and I got to jot down some notes for my own piece. I tried to be silent, same as I will here, because I don’t really want to give much away before I’ve even started. But I am going to interview my dad, whose an artist!

Seth made a really good point about collecting ‘atmos’ (atmosphere) recordings for this project too, which I would never have thought of. Audio has never been my strong point, so it’ll be interesting trying to figure out the mic and stuff – especially since we have to borrow equipment from the uni.

Toward the end of the class we were told to get into groups of three to do a little recording task. Unfortunately one of my friends was sick, which meant myself and my other friend had to stay in a pair while some people were in 4’s. That made it a little difficult for us to complete the task, but we tried our best. We were given a camera and mic and asked to create a simple ‘how to survive the first 6 weeks of uni’ guide. Both of us were awkward and unhappy to be in front of the camera, which I think is funny – considering we’re all trying to get into the media industry. We are big fans of being BEHIND the camera…

Okay, so I’ve never actually seen Paranormal Activity (because it looks really f**king scary), but I figured the title sort of fit. Maybe it doesn’t? I don’t know.

So last Thursday was my first day back at Uni after Easter Break. I expected the Workshop to go slow (it is 3 hours after all), but this week was a little different. Firstly, we watched all our second projects and of course mine went first. It was okay though, because then I wasn’t anxious while watching literally everyone else’s. I guess what I noticed was how different everyone’s was despite having the same restrictions and even sometimes, the same themes and shots. I thought that was a really positive sign, because we all clearly had very different visions which is always good in the Media industry.

Then we were given a workshop activity (the blog post title making anymore sense yet?) which was to split off into partners and record ambiance sounds and interview each other. Me and my friend messed around with that at first, answering the set questions sarcastically, but eventually we did the task. It’s surprisingly hard to ask and answer a question without stumbling over your words, let me tell you.

I guess next workshop will be dedicated to trying to edit and use that audio we recorded and make something new.

One of the things we touched on in the lectorial yesterday was a listening exercise that had me very confused, though I guess that was the point. We listened to a piece John Cage style – in other words, it wasn’t a piece at all. Until yesterday I didn’t know anything about this man, but now I know he’s an avant grade performer who would sit in front of an audience for a solid 5 minutes and not do a thing. The intention I guess was to make people feel uncomfortable and confused – like Rebecca demonstrated with us on Monday – but more importantly, to try and get the audience to really be alert to the sounds around them.

So after that, it got me thinking about what sounds I hear and what sounds I listen to. As someone whose perpetually wearing headphones, whether I’m listening to music or not (like right now…) I tend to miss a lot of the little sounds around me. This isn’t from a lack of appreciation (although maybe that plays a part to an extent), but I have always been very tuned in to noise and sound and easily distracted as a result. I remember shutting doors and telling my mum to turn off the radio at the other end of the house because I was being distracted while trying to read my book in silence.

Without getting too deep here, I want to mention that as a toddler I almost lost my hearing. I had to have surgery to prevent from going deaf (hence the sensitive ears) and additionally, I’ve grown up with a grandmother who was completely deaf. So really, sound has always been pretty prevalent for me. For as long as I remember I’ve been sensitive to sound – just last week I went to see the Force Awakens and I had to stuff tissue in my ears because it was too loud!

I think what John Cage was trying to do with his piece ‘4, 33” was incredibly obscure and clever. It made me listen to the little things around me for the rest of the day. I considered how I could tune in and out of conversations a meter, two meters away from me and really tested the lengths to which I could hear things most people overlook.

I’m incredibly late to the party, considering this was meant to be done several days ago but… Anyway. We were meant to make a Haiku inspired short clip using footage collected by fellow students to try and experiment with Premiere Pro. Considering I know a lot of the basics, I decided to play around with some weird and cool affects. This was the result.

Haiku exercise from Lucy Wadelton on Vimeo.