1. FAILING: GOOD OR BAD?: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/matthew-manning/2015/03/04/failing-good-or-bad

2. HIGHLY IMPORTANT PLEASE READ:: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/matthew-manning/2015/04/02/highly-important-please-read

3.AUDIENCES:           http://www.mediafactory.org.au/matthew-manning/2015/05/05/audiences/

4. NEW MONTH, NEW POST. BRIEF 4 IS GETTING CLOSER TO THE END. (THIS IS ONE OF THE POSTS ABOUT THE PROGRESS OF THE BRIEF): http://www.mediafactory.org.au/matthew-manning/2015/06/01/new-month-new-post-brief-4/

5. MEDIA CLASS 27.04.2015 (ANOTHER ONE ABOUT PROJECT BRIEF 4):http://www.mediafactory.org.au/matthew-manning/2015/04/28/lecture-27-04-2015/

Ah friends. It’s all over. I know you must be crying as you read this. There there.

Anyway, The curation of these 5 blog posts and the learning graph hopefully show the versatile and broad range of responses to the ideas that arose within the course. The blog posts range from responses to ideas that were discussed in lectorials, classes and also go over how I was going with assignments. This range, I feel, reflects my presonality to an extent, and hopefully you are also entertained by them. I wanted them to quirky, and hopefully I combined that value with some ideas properly.

Moving on, throughout this course, I feel like I’ve learnt a fair few things about the technical aspect in media production, such as using equipment such as the Zoom H3, and I’ve definitely heard some interesting ideas within the lectures which could lead to some head scratching. I think the one major thing I’ve learnt this semester however, is to push myself to try new things, and to be yourself. I have to admit, the first few briefs presenting were nervous ones, seeing as I was showing almost complete strangers, things about me. That has subsided however when I realised that the others are in the same boat. I think the key things I’ve learnt in the semester is the independent drive to push myself and also to be myself and I feel like this course encourages that, whereas other, more content heavy courses could cause other things.

I tend to be a very visual learner which this course, and its hands on approach, tends to accommodate. However, within the last brief, incorporating ideas which I haven’t properly understood was a bit of a challenge at times. Otherwise, my visual learning style has been comforted by the course.

I feel like the biggest challenge throughout this new chapter would be motivation. I think I took for granted the times in high school that teachers followed things up, and I can also say I was prepared for this change. The difference being that the pressure that had built over the last few years of school is now a lot less drastic. However, I also feel as if this helped me, to make me push myself harder to stay on top of things and for me to be a lot more independant.

Finally, I feel as if this course has emphasised the importance of collaboration and independence. Two complimentary things, but two things which we’ll all definitely be using in the world of media production and other areas also. It also is valuable as in working with acquaintances, it’s also helped with my communicating skills. I hope.

And that dear friend, is it.

So. Another Brief has finished (almost as of writing this piece) and a lot of different things learnt. Working within a group environment certainly has allowed me to experience something which I’m fairly sure will be a large element of my future employment. It definitely had it’s fair share of excitement, gunfights, explosions, and cars driving between multiple skyscrapers in Dubai… that might have been slight exaggerating, it wasn’t like Fast and Furious 7 that much. What it was like however, was initial confusion to the project, but eventual cohesion towards the final outcome we’ve worked towards for mediums.

The first thing I have to say is that the project from my point of view had initial conflict. At first, I think all three of us struggled with the idea of how we could convey the idea of mediums, and also play to all of our strengths. We decided early on to create something, which would consist of writing, as all three of us had little experience in creating videos. I feel like that was a strength that we had in ourselves choosing. The initial idea within our group was to consist upon the recreation of films from previous mediums like books or short stories into another medium. I feel as if this idea would have had some interesting ideas, but I feel as if this would have become a struggle for us to have three different people working on to create a strong argument for it, or against it. We were fairly open in reflecting as we were going, and were able to realize that we should not only play to our strengths, but have an artifact which reflected diverse view points and ideas. That’s how we decided to evolve the adaption of films, to the adaption of mediums between written word, film and the internet/social media.

I feel that this idea helped us launch into a better argument than what we may have gotten. Also, the idea to interpret ideas about mediums into a website allowed us to make a very interactive artifact which would include videos and photos much more easily than our other idea to have our piece on a PDF. Also, when push came to shove, we were also able to communicate honestly, especially in selecting a video, photo and written extract. I had one and so did James, but we were able to agree upon James’ due to it’s more diverse form compared to mine which was of my dog running into a camera at slow motion speed. Which I’ve got to admit, was awesome, but we were right in choosing the other for this assignment. Another example was when we were compiling our pieces together. James had a piece which initially lacked many other intellectual’s argument. I told him it would help all our pieces if he incorporated some more external arguments from intellectuals, which I felt help consolidate all the pieces and he did that. In short, I feel as if the strengths were that we as a group played to our own strength of writers and were honest when the time came to give each other feedback and compromise.

We also had our fair share of shortcomings though. Our main method of communicating was Facebook Messenger, which does allow instant messaging in theory, however our different schedules often meant some of us didn’t look at things for hours, and confusion and frustration could happen often. I think one way in which we could have improved upon this, is meeting face to face. We did get some valuable minutes through Facebook, but I feel our communicating process would have been less confusing if we met face to face. Also, I feel we left a lot of key communicating, in which we were compiling our Production Dossier, to the last minute as well, and that didn’t help with the stress levels one bit. In all, one of our big weaknesses was perhaps time management, I feel like we left too much to do in the last few days, as well as choosing to communicate in a digital medium which could cause each other to be confused.

Finally, this project has better taught me about the value of communicating and compromise, especially with people you don’t know too well. I was still quite used to the school situation. Either way, it was really beneficial I’m sure, Media practices almost always have some form of collaborating with people you barely know, and I think that was the biggest strength of our piece. Despite the sometimes difficult communicating, we found a way. I feel as if all three of us compromised at some point, and that we found a good way to convey mediums. Hopefully.

Also, heres the link to that site and the final artefact:

– http://projectbrieffour.weebly.com/

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Anyway, I want to upload the satisfaction graph that I’ve found over the semester which looks at the way in which I’ve reacted towards the four questions about my learning of new ideas, self criticism and the reaction of this blog week by week. It’s very hard to gauge the precise feelings between very positive, neutral and very negative accurately when you weren’t aware that you’d be needing to remember them. Also it’s hard when your very tired on a Monday which, as it happens, is the day I have to wake up the earliest, hence the tiredness. I think it accurately reflects how I feel now, not necessarily how I was feeling 8 weeks ago for instance. I was pretty confused at some of the ideas behind things at the start of the course. Again, this post looks over how I was satisfied or not. And here in the above image, are the highly unscientific and most likely. innacurate results. I think if one thing has come about from this graph it’s that I’m getting used to the system of learning and communicating that’s found in this course. And I’m hoping that means I’m more adaptable. Anyway, whilst I show you this, perhaps you can think of a better definition, or for that matter, spelling of this new, record breaking word:

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This image, (which is one of few on this blog post) shows our ideas branching out from the ideas of mediums. As this image is going to go down in history as one of the most sought after art pieces buy collectors, I feel that it should do the talking.

But just in case you can’t hear anything from a piece of butcher’s paper, it my, James, and Liv’s thought process in approaching mediums and what we could be discussing.

That’s right my dear, multi-million following friends, its a new month. You heard it first from Matt. The Project Briefs are finishing up. The group work is something that has so much potential for learning its blowing my mind. In any sort of working situation I’ll end up in one day, collaborating with varying minds about something is very valuable.

The initial brainstorming too was valuable. There were plenty of things that came about that I don’t think I would have considered. We had one idea for our medium assignment to consist of something to do with the film adaptions over time. That’s pretty interesting in seeing the changing of interpretations, for instance between the 7 Harry Potter books and the subsequent 8 movies. One interesting adaption, according to somebody who has actually read the books about it, is Seventh Son. Apparently the filmmakers changed the values of the story and adapted it into a mystical setting, something which greatly annoyed this friend of mine. Another interesting adaption is Battlefield Earth. A Science Fiction classic was also adapted into a film… which turned out to be one of the worst of all time. It’s interesting to see within this argument that between books and film especially, value can be lost. They can also be captured perfectly, just look at The Lord of The Rings film trilogy… and once you’ve seen those watch the extended versions with up to 45 hours of special features.

But anyway, this brought up some issues also. Researching this idea could have been slightly challenging. The intellectuals who have PHD’s in book to film adaptions are quite scarce I’d imagine. I have the feeling there may be no PHD in that… Anyway, I’d previously done study on the effects of audiences to media artefacts in High School, so that’s something I knew could create an interesting idea for the assignment.

Anyway, In this last 2 weeks of assignment time, I’ve found that the communication has improved to be much more effective. Our website idea has allowed for a more flexible format, and seeing as we’re all (as far as I know) somewhat beginners in creating videos, it allows us to have a form of pressure be lifted. I hope we’re able to get everything compiled and handed in.