The main focus for this weeks workshop was to look at our haiku videos we were previously working on, and a couple of students shared their videos to the class. What I liked about these videos was that these students were already thinking about how to edit properly and how the editing of their Haiku videos created meaning or enhanced their idea behind the video. To relate back to this weeks reading, we had a discussion in the workshop about how we could edit our Project Brief 2 short videos, this enabled me to further think about ways I could edit my short video, and where I could perhaps make gaps in my footage to make meaning and fit my editing into my sound clips as well.

To be able to get another persons perspective on my idea for my Project Brief video, me and another student shared the drafts for our videos of what he have done so far, using the coloured hat exercise we gave each other constructive feedback. Overall, this weeks workshop was beneficial, as it got me thinking about ways I can physically edit and how I can edit effectively whilst making my short video.

I have also included in this post a couple of screenshots of my Haiku, which shows me getting involved with Premier Pro and learning more about the software.

Newport’s idea of the ‘passion mindset and ‘deep work’, was the video we watched in this weeks lecture. I really liked Newport’s idea in the sense that sometimes we don’t actually need to follow our passion, as most of the time we perhaps put a lot of pressure on ourselves to need to be in a career that we are passionate about, and if we think we won’t be able to find that career, we won’t be happy in life.

I want to take on Newport’s advice, as I do worry that I am not following my passion, however Newport’s 3 rules or ideas are encouraging and seem accurate. The first rule is ‘don’t follow your passion’, as perhaps the passion will come to a person as a person learns and gets good at a specific work or craft in their career or study. This motivates me in this course, to want to continue to work hard and strive to be a better and more creative media practitioner, as perhaps this will lead me to find my true passion and love for media.

Newport’s second idea or rule is to ‘be so good they can’t ignore you’, which also stems from this weeks reading, which suggests we should continue to improve our area of study in whatever we are doing, to be the best we can be, in order to find a passion and a purpose.

The last idea is ‘go deep’, go deep meaning, that if we work hard and do not get distracted by exterior stimuli, we will achieve skill in our practice. As people who love what they do in life did not all follow their passion, they stumbled upon that passion, and through hard work and determination, a passion was realised in their work. Newport therefore suggests this, as he believes Steve Jobs did not find passion, but passion found him.

What I found interesting in this weeks reading was the idea of editing in relation to both film, and comics. I thought that the reading was an excellent way to introduce the idea of editing, as it explained framing in a comic, and the different ways in which frames can be surrounded by gutters (meaning gaps). To write a comic, means the writer trusts the reader to interpret the story or make meaning of the story. The gutters in between the frames help to achieve this, as it breaks apart the story and creates gaps for the reader to make assumptions as to what has occurred during the gutter in the page.

Liam in his lecture also spoke about how gaps in a story can make meaning, through the use of editing when making a film. This ties in nicely to both the reading, and the workshop we did as we work on editing our Project Brief 2 short video. Whether it is gutters on a page, in-between frames in a comic book, or a cut to a new scene in a film, editing creates suspense, provokes a mood within a film, and allows the audience to make meaning of a scene. The question then is, how big can I gutter or a gap in a comic or film actually be? In the lecture, I discovered that there is no limit to how big a gap in a film van be, as long as there is some kind of link to the previous scene be big or small, the gap size itself doesn’t matter.