It has been a month since I was assigned to work with Jen and Aisha for the project brief 4. I consider this project as my first product for my media practitioner career. We started everything from the bottom. Our objective is to find a way to present media “text” which is such a general era theoretically and practically. The 4 key phases for the pre-production are: who will be with me – what we want to do – why we want to do it that way – how to do it.

Phase 1:
I did not attend the day Jasmine assigned group members so I had no idea who would be my teammate. Even when I received an email of collaboration from Jen, I still have no idea who they are.
Phase 2:
The first step is always the hardest. My very first and biggest question at that time was: “what is text?” .Thanks to the lecture of Brian Morris in week 9, I finally got the idea of how broad the media “text” is. Doing individual research did improve my reading skill a lot, but it was hard to decide which academic documents would fit in the project. During our researching and debating, we discussed a lot about how social media, particularly news media, delivers a huge impact on our society in an era of technology. Finally, our group decided to focus on the context of how false statements made by a wide range of media affects negatively to the community after running through case studies. More importantly, we worked and came up together a fake story about a false missing case of Izzy Varis.
Phase 3:
We as a group aim to propose that social media has changed the way people approach via a diversity of media platforms. In addition, we also suggest how social media contents are being exploited as a source of news by news producers.
Phase 4:
We made a decision to create a blog roll to present our project. The blog is designed to follow the case day by day including news report on TV and radio, newspaper and social media. It contains all the description of reasons why we decided to create a specific medium. Moreover, the descriptions are strengthened by academic materials.  Although the blog is not perfect as we wanted because we did not manage to find a template which allows us to add details on the side, I am so proud of it. We even wrote scripts and shot the news reports as well as recorded radio shows to make it more visual and more realistic. I did enjoy this phase the most. I learned so many practical experiences and had so much fun during our shooting days.

For the post-production, I was in charge of editing and writing descriptions the radio show. I had never edited anything like this before but I managed to do quite a good job. More importantly, I realised the strong bond between pre-production and post-production. Indeed, if I do not do the shooting or recording correctly, I will not be able to create a high quality product no matter how good my editing skill is. A small mistake during the pre-production can make a big difficulty for the post-production. Recording distance/atmosphere and the light setting on our shooting days are typical examples. On the other hand, I find the writing part is the most challenging task.  It took me over 2 hours to finish 2 small descriptions based on the document which I had already annotated. Seriously, I have to improve my writing skill to catch up with the media course. I wonder if my English writing skill was better, my team would not have to wait for my text to complete everything.

Frankly speaking, it is a pleasure for me to work with Aisha and Jen. We all know what we want achieve from this project. During the process, we encountered only a few difficulties in timetable. However, we overcame all the problems because we were willing to share our ideas and our difficulties. I think communicating and responsibility are the 2 key elements of our success. This project not only enhances both my practical skills and theoretical skills, but also teaches me how to work as a team. We cannot expect a media product with a great quality without the collaboration because everyone has their own week points and strong points. Essentially, to become a future practitioner, we have to learn how to identify a clearer picture of ourselves and other people.
https://izzyvarisproject.wordpress.com/