Media One was different to say the least. It was different from high school, it was different from what I expected university to be like, it was different from how I thought my media communications degree would run. It defiantly caught me off guard, which led me astray for a couple weeks into the semester. If I could use one word to define it, in my eyes it’d be “unique”. Going into the course I had some pre-conceived thoughts on if it would be like, with half conceptual and half technical or even more conceptual, and in these technical parts I could use my knowledge of the camera to my advantage. However, in our first project much more nervousness came out of me rather than excitement, which put me behind the 8 ball.
As I continued my studies in the semester, I found that I learnt a lot more about myself than I had originally known. During the projects we had to complete, straight away the teachers really narrowed down on planning, organising, and developing our ideas fully before we start any technical or written work. This especially triggered a marker for me, because I’m a person to search the web for hours to find inspiration and or ideas that have been successful and then compare it to my own to see what I should or shouldn’t do. Therefore, when we had to plan each part of our portraits I felt a lot more comfortable (completing Year 12 VCD also helped in that area). The times that I learnt a lot from was during our lectures and workshops. An example is when we had to complete a reading about the idea of “noticing” by Mason, and it talked about three elements; noticing, marking and recording. Unknowingly I mirrored these three actions in the planning process of PB3 and made me realise that I’m more of a visual learner. Thus, letting me see that when I create content for Media One to think less about talent and more about the direction the project should take. After each project we had to complete a evaluation/reflection, this is where I learnt (through workshops) to implement certain techniques like De Bono’s Thinking Hat’s and PMI (Plus, Minus, Interesting).
Influenced by The Discipline of Noticing
Evaluation Techniques – Put into Practice
I have always been the one who learns independently, throughout school I liked to sit on my own listening to music and study in piece and quite. However, Media One is all about the collaboration process and working together to understand concepts and information. Through workshops were we would bring up an idea, and everyone would give their opinion and discuss what they reckon the reading or extract meant, was very beneficial and helped me to explore the different ways of how to learn. Now that this way of learning has been a constant event in my life, I feel as though I’ve taken on the characteristics of a collaborator.
The Creative Power of Collaboration
The most challenging part of the course (and I reckon a lot of the students would agree with me) is completing the weekly blogs. As someone who likes to keep to myself when I don’t know many people in the course, blogging was a step out of the comfort zone. Having to continually express my feelings and opinions to a keyboard and anyone for the wide web to read was very hard. Not just that, but actually thinking up what to say on the spot was difficult too. I’d watch friends of mine in lectorials just type out blog after blog whilst the lecturer was talking, where as I couldn’t do that. As I said I like to plan my blogs and do in the peace and quiet. So I guess being able to think on my feet and type out blogs with distractions occurring simultaneously is something that I need to get better at. (However this is a blog I did in class) >
What I’ve discovered during my own creative practice is that I’ve been using a lot of what I had learned theoretically in the course and my electives Cinema Studies and Music in Popular Culture. Lately I’ve been writing a screenplay for my own personal work, and found that I’ve been implementing parts that I’ve been influenced from, typically in Cinema. For example, we learnt about space within the frame and how it can have a emotional affect on audience by just shooting a body part in plain view without anything else in the background. This idea helped me get through a tricky scene that I created and now makes me realise the positive effects this course is having on my development as a digital producer. I look forward to whatever lies ahead, such as the other contextual studies and STUDIOS, and i thank all the tutors help in the lectures and workshops.
Its all about the amount of time you give yourself