Eventually comes to the last week of Media 1, which means, I still have 3 semesters in total to cry through (really?), 2 different studios (hopefully being interesting) and the Media 6 which sounds quite industry related, with still having 3 blog posts each week. Where the classwork & homework this week, besides the final cut of audio-work, would be something called ‘Learning Graph’.
Learning Graph? I understand what ‘learning’ and ‘graph’ means, but still being very confused about what the graph could be when I first heard this term, where each of us had received a graph in class with only lines and the +ve & -ve value printed, then being told to draw a graph that could reflect your learning journey in this 12 weeks, in 4 different perspectives with 4 colourful colour pens. (Which I still kept being confused as those perspectives are pretty non-figurative). I had marked value -4 to 4 in terms to make the drawings straighter and tidier, as my bad line drawing skill (Yeah, I can’t trust my hand on writing lines).
Technical & Skills
Starting with the Green, my less favourite colour, after reading the slide again and again, I guess it should be the most straightforward one, blog writing skill, audio and video recording skill, etc., like how much extent of skills you had learnt through this course. In fact, I think this university wants us to discover these technical things in deep by ourselves with only some hints, like the very basics and some platforms like Lynda where we learn more from, that the ability of self-learning could be one of our biggest issue to deal with.
It’s true that I had kept improving my skills through those fully practical self-portrait series projects (a gradually increased), that taught me some simple tricks on video editing like how to organise our materials in a much tidy way, and colour grading by Lumteri (extremely important if I want dive in the video industry after graduate). As well as, how to use a camera in manual mode, with the importance of setting attributes, like exposure and focus carefully before every shooting process, where I had quite a lot of editing experiences and some shootings but always ignore it as feeling quite complicated.
How relieved I was
Why there’s a significant raised after week 7, then suddenly dropped? During week 7 and week 8, the Easter study break, I had kept finding tutorials on how to perfect my video by using only Premieres (lazy about move them all to After Effects), such as fixing shaky shots, cinematic colour grading and methods of making static interview shots being more interesting, which seems had paid all of my attention on the only video editing stuff (and fixing the lagging happened while running Premiere with too many tracks and effects). After submitting them, I gave myself a whole week break for a relief, which included writing blogs, in the other word, non-productive, entirely.
Conceptual & Theoretical
A more ‘conceptual’ aspect than the Technical, in purple, a more ‘conceptual’ colour I guess? With quite an amount of abstractive concepts like ‘Affordances’, one of the reasons why that purple line had continued moving upward. I think, I would rather consider only a few of them, like the ‘theoretical knowledge’ and the ability of having focused research.
Through these 11 Media lectures, we had got in touch with certain concepts in Media and related theories, where most of them, had a very close relationship with that week’s reading as well (Thanks for the blog task, which was my first time of kept reading things for a whole 3 month…quite an effective way to improve my reading skill?), which included a chapter of comic ‘Blood in the Gutter’ that for me it’s the most interesting and impressed me the most (Um…I guess images would be the first thing that being transferred from out short-term memories to the long-lastings), lots of book extracts, the online article: Did Media Literacy Backfire?, and a blog post by the scholar Henry Jenkins that I think it’s the most casual one with easier to understand, as contained real-life pictures that letting us being more involved with what his excitement during that Harry Potter fan event.
The picture that grabbed my attention when I first clicked that reading URL, artist: Nam June Paik
Have you realised that the purple line had remained stable once every few weeks? That must be the week before project submissions, where I had still done the reading continuously and attended lectures, but intended to put all the efforts on the more significant matter, the editing work definitely, that caused what I had learnt in that week’s lecture cannot be fully digested, which could it be treated as a kind of ‘Deep Attention’?
Way of Learning / Working
The third one, Way of Learning and Working, or should I called the ‘Spirit’ of learning and the understanding of what we had learned, which is the only one that started from a negative value in week 1, as I was feeling extremely nervous and worried at the very first week, that it’s turning to be my very first time to live in an unfamiliar place for a very long while, with I had to use a second language primarily to communicate with nearly anyone, in campus or on the street. Fortunately, after being through a certain amount of collaboration and real-life trainings, I could now ‘receive’ and provide feedbacks on most of the messages, in-class exercise and assignments with having less ‘decoding’ process.
Sender ⇒ Medium ⇒ Receiver
encoding › decoding › feedback
As well as, the red line would always have a 1-point dropped after a project had been submitted, for the same reason as I mentioned, that giving my own self a break after going through a terribly busy period, being as lazy as I could, only did one or two blog posts in those weeks, with having less feedback, talked less in class.
Media Practice
Lastly, the Practical, a relatively important aspect in Studying Media, which I had used pink, one of my favourite colour for it. The pink line was begun drew from the a positive value, since I had some experiences on different media already before I study in Melbourne (i.e. Had tried using most of the Adobe software in the Diploma course), as well as, I guess I could be classified as a non-linear thinking type of person (which might involve a bit elements of creative?).
Yeah… DRAINED cr. hobokengrace
Speaking of the passion of having media practice, the pink line had kept followed a pattern of ‘remained – raised – dropped’ for during the first 3 projects, which means, usually I would have more passion on Media when I am really using them, to present my thought and creativity to others by the medium of project briefs, with a completely non-productive week after it, perhaps I have more passion for watching/listening media rather than to actually make one, or perhaps it just because I had been fully drained by the unaccustomed environment that I am still facing, that I had pay too much attentions on dealing with it rather than my interest of producing Media.
Also, the huge dropped between week 8 to 10, could tell that I had been shocked by the next audio project, which it’s pretty unusual about using audio as the only media to present your researches and thoughts, and been embarrassed by the randomly grouping procedure as the anxiety of being a non-native speaker, and the overwhelmed widely research topic, ‘Media and Attention’.