Again uniting with my hombres Sal and Dan, we cracked out the coloured textas and let our minds vomit onto butchers paper to get some of the ideas flowing for our fourth project brief.

We’ve now decided on a podcast as the medium through which we’ll be exploring the topic of mediums, which I’m pretty excited about considering I haven’t really had much experience with podcasts at all in the past, let alone the creation of one, a good old fashioned challenge as it were. We ran with academic Marshall McLuhan’s notion that “the medium is the message” as our jump-off point for the exploration of ideas and it all took place from there in wonderful, colourful fashion. I feel that our ideas all have begun to flow really naturally, that we’re beginning to grasp the concept of mediums now and that we’re already working really well as a collective.

There’s not much I can really say that captures the true essence of what we put together today so let me rather attach the product of our mad creativity to this post – see below. Enjoy!

I was admittedly pretty desperately late to this class due to a series of unfortunate events so I wasn’t able to see everybody’s project briefs and give them feedback which was disappointing, however I did see Seb’s (which I thoroughly enjoyed, shout out to my boy, bless xx <3) and was able to show some people in the class my own project brief which they responded really well to.

I think this most recent project brief has been the submission I’m most proud of so far as I feel I did, as I originally had hoped in early conceptions of the premise, capture the essence of Mum to a fairly successful degree. Hopefully Jasmine responds well to it!

I did make the class in time to be integrated into a group for the fourth project brief, dawning the collaborative efforts between myself, Sally Lewis and Daniel Bowden. We had a great introductory chat, uncovering a lot of common ground and establishing a like interest in film and audio which is always a good basis. We were given the topic of ‘mediums’ for our project brief, which I think we’ll all need to look into independently a little deeper as it had us somewhat stumped as we tried to pull apart what it could be asking us to explore, but I have no doubt we’ll get our heads around it soon enough.

Feeling good vibes from this group! Two really interesting people that I think I’ll gel well with (unintentional rhyme there but not complaining).

The introduction to this lectorial was focused on how to approach the use of the RMIT online library resource. I had already toyed with the navigation of this service so it wasn’t of much use to me but it was good to get some validation on the fact that I’ve been using it correctly.

Rachel then took over and delved into the ways to approach positive collaboration, touching on the all-too familiar experiences of bad collaboration (eg: doing all the work and having to deal with other people getting credit for it) to drive the point home. She listed the characteristics of positive collaborations, which I reckon I’ll do too because who doesn’t love a nice clear list:
– Clear Objectives
– Good Communication
– Consistency
– Respect
– Support
– Responsibility
– Equitable (Sharing Workload)

With these in mind for the eventual group project brief #4, hopefully I’ll be able to collaborate really effectively with some likeminded people and produce something that we’re all proud of.

Another truly practical class, we were given the opportunity to experiment with the use of Zoom H2N microphones. Sam, Seb, Jules and myself took to different locations on campus to experiment with different acoustics and environments via the performance of some impromptu, totally organic beats. While probably severely annoying several students around the university, I was able to gain a good understanding of how the device worked from this exercise and how I might be able to use it in my upcoming project brief.

I decided to finally sit down and watch The Tale Of Princess Kaguya this week – an ambitious Studio Ghibli film and the first following mastermind director Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement from feature-length filmmaking, with the torch instead being passed onto fellow longstanding Studio Ghibli genius Isao Takahata.

The film, while harbouring familiar Studio Ghibli charm and supernatural emphasis, felt really fresh. Immediately noticeable is the stunning, traditional Japanese watercolour animation style that the film adopts. The style perfectly compliments the film’s reference to the 10th century Japanese folktale upon which it is based, lending itself to artwork as early as the 15th century. I’ve never seen animation produced in this style before, it was exceptionally beautiful to watch and added so many additional layers of depth and made for a unique and honest viewing experience.

If you haven’t checked it out, don’t let its circumvention from the usual Ghibli presentation put you off – give it some time. It could very well be my favourite animated feature of all time, I guess time and a few more viewings will tell…