Category: Fun

I Don’t Want To Go

It is officially our final week of classes for semester 1 and I am not sure how to feel about everything. It was a long process getting here, and to be honest I can’t explain everything I’ve learnt in the past 12 weeks. My journey hasn’t been the best there is. Out of all students I still believe I am the laziest and least talented, but I do think I have improved a lot from what I was before I started the course.

IMG_1649

This is my progress graph for the last 12 weeks, or at least an estimate. As you can see I have improved heaps, from being behind the class to actually grasping ideas and concepts very easily now. I especially had a spike in week 8 for noticing the benefits of having this blog to help me catalogue everything I’ve learnt and my attitude towards certain subjects at that time.

This is also my farewell to the Monday Morning Crew. I know we were always suffering those early mornings together and for some it felt like we were disadvantaged for being before the lecture class, but I enjoyed my first day of uni with you guys and I have enjoyed every minute from then to now with everyone.

The things I learnt, from soundscape to the influence of social media, has helped me better understand why I am in this course. I started this journey in hopes of learning about the wonderful world of Media, not just directing or PR, but media overall, and these 12 weeks have shown how different and exciting everything in media can potentially be.

This is also my farewell to the Monday Morning Crew. I know we were always suffering those early mornings together and for some it felt like we were disadvantaged for being before the lecture class, but I enjoyed my first day of uni with you guys and I have enjoyed every minute from then to now with everyone.

The things I learnt, from soundscape to the influence of social media, has helped me better understand why I am in this course. I started this journey in hopes of learning about the wonderful world of Media, not just directing or PR, but media overall, and these 12 weeks have shown how different and exciting everything in media can potentially be. In these 12 weeks I have challenged myself to do new things, pushed bad habits, and gained new experiences in approaching a task in multiple ways.

 

Some highlights to for my year can be found below with a little description of why I chose them.

What Team? – This was the lecture on collaboration, and also when I truly got to understand how team-based the media industry is. It was an eye-opening day, because I never realised how much you relied on people to accomplish their goals so that the final product can work. Communication and teamwork is the key thing to bring when going into a group, and hopefully by now I have mastered that.

Happy Birthday to the Ground – This was about institutions, and my understanding of their presence in the media landscape has expanded tremendously after that. These few weeks I have noticed more often how much we are all institutionalised, and that it is naive to think that things can just exist without so much happening behind what is being presented.

Do You Hear the People [Sing] – This blog on audience truly fun for me to write. I personally found the topic of audiences and interaction between viewer and product to be an area I am comfortable discussing. This blog piece is one of the few I am proud to present my ideas, whereas others have been concepts that i borrowed this one had my legitimate concerns and predictions of the future ways of audience engagements.

All of The Stars – This blog post was one of the first passionate ones I wrote after a very entertaining line-up of lecturers. It was my first experience with being engaged and it’s a standout because I still remember my excitement after class as I was writing it.

The Final Me – It may be a post about my second project brief but it is the one I am most proud of. It encapsulates a lot of what I am, or was at the time. Looking at it now I can see so many things wrong and so many things right. The idea was great, the technique sloppy, but at the time I can see that past me thought it was quirky and hilarious, while present me sees it as lazy.

 

This reflection has been a real roller-coaster for me. I’ve realised that I still have a lot more to go and understand that after 3 months not everything can improve as I had imagined. I did have a lot of confidence issues in my work, but as I’ve started to share more and more work with peers it has become easier to create things I am happy with. I have learnt that what I create now may not impact what I am tomorrow, but it can still be a good stepping stone on my path to becoming that amazing media practitioner.

 

 

Sound Like Muzak

Continuing the theme of remixes, below I have compiled a list of remixes, mash-ups, medleys and well whatever you call this, that I rather enjoy and believe definitely worth their own post.

 

Pokemon Dubstep Remix – KHG & Lindsay Stirling

Kurt and Lindsey have been YouTube veterans for ages and I have been a massive fan of all their covers. This particular own re-imagines the iconic Pokemon theme song and truly is the very best.

Evolution of Beyonce – PTX

Pentatonix have compositions of songs that make you heard go crazy, but get this they do it all A Capella. So not only did they arrange the songs, but also practically recreate complete songs from scratch. It is the epitome of taking something that exists and making more awesome by making it your own.

Across the Universe – Andrew Huang

Now this is an original song, but the instrumental isn’t. The entire song was composed by sounds from the recording of Comet 67P. Andrew has been known to use unconventional instruments to cover songs, like balloons and meth lab equipment?, but this is by far the most interesting. He sampled the recording and mixed, remastered and toned out those sounds into such an out of this world song.

2015 Debut Mashup – The Ark

Okay so this may seem out of nowhere but hear me out. These girls are a South Korean girl group that just recently debuted, but I’m not here to advertise them. Well I am a bit, ever since I heard their first single I was hooked and found that they did amazing live covers and mashups. This particular mashup is my favourite because they don’t shy away from mixing Korean and English songs, and in all honesty the mix of languages doesn’t phase me as I thought it would. They mix the tunes so fluidly and they all take this art very seriously. They have fun and listening to them go UP, DOWN, UP, UP, DOWN is just too fun to not dance along too.

 

Follower

So after our class on post-broadcast era audiences, I wanted to reflect on the amount of media content I consume daily. To help liven it up I was going to just retrace my steps for today and comment on what I was doing. This is just an exercise for myself to see how much time I really do spend on the internet.

1130 – Woke up and instantly checked phone. Apps used

  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Email

1255 – Got out of bed, got ready while still using my phone

1330 – Had “Breakfast”, still had phone

  • Netflix
  • YouTube

1348 – Took shower, used phone

1430 – Opened laptop to do “work”

  • Facebook
  • Email
  • YouTube
  • Tumblr

1724 – Toilet break, had my phone like every other person in the world

  • Facebook

1739 – Dinner, still got my phone

  • Netflix
  • YouTube
  • Facebook

1804 – More quality laptop time

  • Facebook
  • YouTube

2134 – “Bedtime” which means I’m still on my laptop but I have moved to my bed

  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Netflix
  • Email

 

Seeing all this has made me realise how much I actually use online media, and social media specifically. I check Facebook constantly, and although I use a lot of YouTube mainly for music I swear, it’s still really concerning how much time is used up on those things when I could put it towards completing actual work (like that popular culture group project or the annotated bibliography).

Don’t Blink

This is a short film that asks the audience to interpret the film however they please. There is no definite answer, only what is said and seen in the short. Gilbert himself says that it’s a short scene in something huge that only we as an audience can create in our minds. Since this week we talked about audiences and how they view things differently, this is a task that seemed relevant. What did you think happened in the film? My interpretation is that the protagonist has been involved with some alien gang that was introduced to him through the diner waiter. After losing all him money the aliens take his liver and he wakes up angry at the world. He then goes to the diner waiter and shoots him in rage, but soon afterwards dies because he has no lover. It may sound outrageous but like we discussed, it is whatever the audience perceives the text as that is true.

An Open Door

We has a special visit from our school library liaison Amy Saunders who educated us on the various way we can access so many resources online and through the library. It wasn’t the first time I had had a lecture with her, but to be honest the first time I blanked out and didn’t pay attention at all. This second time around though, you can bet I listened everything she said because I knew with the research task ahead of us in project brief 4 I was going to need all the help I could get. There really wasn’t much you could say about her lecture aside from how much information you can access without ever having to leave your bedroom. In the past I only used the internet to access wikipedia pages and tumblr, but now I don’t even physically need to go into a library to get articles or papers on about almost anything.

What Team?

This week we explored the aspect of collaboration in media and come of the ways we can avoid bad teamwork. Rachel covered the good and bad of group work saying many things that were pretty obvious but definitely needed to be stated. She reminded us that the media industry is predominantly a collaborative area, with most jobs forcing us to work with complete strangers at times. Because of this, the program is very teamwork based as to give us the experience to figure out how to work in different types of group dynamics.

Some key points to having good teamwork in groups is to have a lot of contact with all members on a regular basis. Whether it be to update members on information you’ve found, or to just catch up over the weekend, having communication between all participants helps develop an understanding of everyone’s capabilities, and also encourages us to be more comfortable in each others presence, which would overall improve the final product.

Another obvious but important factor in collaboration is to help each other out with problems and difficulties that anyone faces, especially if you want all members to be able to understand the final product that you create. It is not okay to just dump work onto people if you don’t understand or if you feel lazy. Everyone will most likely be getting the same mark, so might as well pull your weight and contribute as much as you can so that you get that HD.

The last factor I wanted to stress within groups is to have a solid conflict plan. In previous years I had never used this process before, but after using this a few times in my other classes I found it very beneficial in avoiding conflict within groups. If you have a solid plan of action, then when a problem arises you are free to implement the rules that the group had established and follow through with the actions necessary to complete the project. We’re all in this together, and we need to start approaching projects with more professionalism and understanding that not all members just want to chill and pass. Having a group collaboration contract helps in outlining what each members goals are and overall forces all members to be held accountable for their actions.

Life Goals

What I hope for in class
What I hope to achieve this year

– Image taken from the anime Daily Life of Highschool Boys

 

And 10 things I wish to accomplish and be able to accomplish by the end of my course

  • I want to actually know what I want in life
  • I want to be able to live and support myself independently through a job in the media world
  • I want to be a better filmmaker and producer that engages with the current market
  • I want to be able to make a film of any genre or have at least experienced making them
  • I was to travel the world and work in films across the globe in all areas
  • I want to be able to confidently edit and produce a film
  • I want to have acted and directed in any film
  • I want to create a network of friends, in my industry or not
  • I want to be able to effectively put across a narrative to any audience
  • Be able to adapt to multiple platforms of storytelling i.e. – YouTube, short film, feature film, animation, television

And the final big goal

  • Marry Jennifer Lawrence, with Meryl Streep as my maid of honor and Jackie Chan as the pastor.