Creative self-portrait (Project brief one)

Happy

If you’ve kept up with my blog, you’ll understand what my title is referring to. If you haven’t, let me briefly summarise.

The ‘creative self-portrait’ was our first project for our bachelor of communication course. The self-portrait comprises of different mediums of media (image, video, audio and text) that represent one’s identity. How we chose to represent ourselves was completely up to us and our creative imaginations (hence the ‘creative’ part). So without further ado, here is my creative self-portrait.

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It’s all around us…

Photo Credit: Jim Frazier via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: Jim Frazier via Compfight cc

Today’s lectorial covered two topics of interest. First of all we covered the importance of editing. We learned how the most minute changes can greatly affect the result. I will cover this topic in a later blog post, sometime during this week.

What I want to discuss today is the second topic; the importance of media. Today’s class began with a very important question – what is media? Upon hearing this question, I was actually stumped. You would think that a student undergoing a media course would know what falls under the umbrella of ‘media’. However, I found myself struggling to give a simple definition of the term ‘media’. As individuals, we were told to come up with the first five things that we think of when we hear the word ‘media’. As I did with a similar task that we did in the first lectorial, I ended up with less answers as was instructed. Oops. As a class, we discussed the different types of media and its effects on its audiences. As I jotted down the answers of the other students, my list of three media related things soon turned into twenty. By the end of it, one thing was made certain by this activity. Media is everywhere.

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I did not expect this…

As my first week of uni has come to an end, there is one word that is been constantly repeated in both my media and cinema studies classes to the point where I can’t think of anything but that single word, and that word, ladies and gentlemen is “blog”.

Blog. Blog. Blog. Blog.
It’s a weird word isn’t it? Keep saying it over and over again and eventually you’ll get to a point where you’ll doubt it’s validity as an English word. Such a short simple, 4-lettered word, and yet, it holds so much value for students undergoing this course. Our blog, is the basis of which our entire university results are based on. So it’s unsurprising how much our lecturers have emphasised the term. So much so, that our first reading was based on the importance of blogging, and why our entire curriculum is centred around blogging.

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Difficulties of the creative self-portrait

Photo Credit: Mark Sansom via Compfight cc

On Wednesday this week (02/03/2016 for those reading this at a later date), I had my first workshop for media one. As all first classes usually go, we were all introduced to one another and also engaged in activities that made us feel just that little bit more comfortable around each other. We were also tasked with an interesting; but spontaneous, mission – to capture a ‘Melbourne moment’ in 10 minutes. The first thought that ran through my head was,  “what the hell is a Melbourne moment?”. Continue reading

My first class and the need for deep attention

Monday 29th of February was many things to me; my first university class, my first media one class, my first lectorial ever – however it wasn’t the first time I have reflected upon my inability to focus.

We covered the topic of ‘deep attention vs hyper attention’; two opposite ends of the pole. To summarise – deep attention is a state of mind where the individual can focus on a single object for long periods of time, while blocking out all other forms of information. Hyper attention is the cognitive mode where focus is switched rapidly between multiple objects. Upon learning about the two cognitive modes, I immediately identified myself with being more hyper attentive.In theory, hyper attention sounds like the most advantageous of the two. The ability to focus on and complete multiple tasks in a period of time makes it sound as if it were a superpower. I wish it were as simple as that. Speaking personally, I know hyper attention is nothing like that. Continue reading