Somnifera

The hardest part about the work attachment, and the pathway to it, was a complete lack of desire or understanding of the concept. I did not quite understand why we needed to find, participate and finish a work attachment in a professional media environment without any assistance from the faculty, nor did I understand why this was a task required for us to graduate when there was absolutely no mark associated with it, nor this report. It seemed to me to be an exercise in networking and first-hand experience, but for those of us who did not want to move into the field, what option did we have? Apparently, none.

One of the primary issues that some people had with my choice of work attachment was the location where it would be taking place. Rather than trying to find an attachment down here in Melbourne, I elected to go to Brisbane, where I had a family contact with Hugh Whitehouse, the creative director of V-Play.tv, who offered me an attachment without any real hassle involved. Some people questioned whether a work attachment in Brisbane would really help me network and develop contacts within the professional spaces in which I could find work after graduation. However, the primary issue I take with that view is the simple fact that I do not wish to find work within the media sphere – at least, not in the area of production. The work attachment, to me, was a means to an end, with the end being graduation. It also offered me a chance for a small break from the hectic schedule I had found myself in during the final weeks of my graduating year, and a short sojourn to “Brisvegas” felt like a way for me to detach myself from the stresses of Melbourne and RMIT life, at least for a while.

The actual work attachment itself, while not meeting my future career aspirations, was certainly an informative experience. While my first week was spent in the offices of V-Play.tv, my second week was spent on the road and on shoots for TPD Media, a production house which creates multiple shows for Channel 7 Queensland.

During my time at V-Play.tv, I was introduced to several concepts that I had only perceived from a theoretical standpoint, as opposed to interacting with in hands-on. The organisation itself is primarily a digital distribution company, which means that they have a high level of involvement with digital rights management methods and protocols. That in and of itself was interesting to me, as I have long held a set of beliefs and opinions that were wholly anti-DRM, and here I was being shown and sold DRM by someone who I consider to be a family friend. It was certainly an educational experience, as I was shown and interacted with a form of DRM that I didn’t find myself vehemently opposing. While many DRM methods are incredibly restrictive, since V-Play.tv is primarily associated with the AFI, their method was more akin to a video rental service than a harsh and brutal dictator, telling you when and where to use your purchased media.

The time spent at V-Play.tv also required me to expand my editing knowledge from the Final Cut Pro software to that of Adobe Premiere, which was a small cognitive leap that wasn’t all that challenging. Part of my “responsibilities” for the week were to ingest, convert, and quality control the latest batch of films to come from the AFI that were to be loaded to their application. This certainly did teach me a batch of new skills, as I had never really before this point had to work with such large batches of files, and convert them to web-friendly Flash files. I was also given the task of the initial upload of the final video content to the DRM servers, which gave me an in-depth look at the way these things work from the backend.

While my time at V-Play.tv was short, it was a valuable experience in the ideas, concepts and physicalities I was exposed to throughout my time there. Obviously, I could only learn so much within the space of around five days – however, what I did learn was certainly valuable, if not from a career standpoint than from one of the general pursuit of knowledge and gaining footing in the concepts explored. The technical skills I learned may also prove useful in any future ventures I make into the media creation area, perhaps from a personal use perspective, if not that of a career.

The second week was spent at TPD Media, which was actually located within the offices of Channel 7 in Brisbane. My time was divided between the office spaces, editing suites, and on location, observing and assisting with multiple outdoor shoots for a local lifestyle show, ‘Great South East’. After having spent the better part of a month sitting in an editing suite, working on my own final semester film, it was interesting to sit in and watch multiple editors working (solo) on various projects, including an upcoming program on FOX8, as well as some other Queensland-based shows. Though I didn’t get to have any “hands on” experience with the technology in use, it was interesting to see the differences between the work ethic and processes that were used by these professional editors, as well as the different programs they used to edit. The fact that they had to work on half-hour length programs, often only starting work on the show two weeks before the final cut was due, was certainly a stark departure to the way in which I have worked as a student on my own projects.

As said before, I was given the opportunity to observe and partially assist in the shoots over two separate days, involving travel and interaction with a variety of locations across Queensland. It was certainly a different experience to the filming I have done in recent times – the crew was often having to be in and out of a location within a few hours, and had to have obtained all relevant material (including interviews, static footage, etc) within that short time frame. There was also a strong level of improvisation and savvy production required from the skeleton crew – aside from myself, there was only a cameraman and producer (and presenter on one shoot) who had to deal with all aspects from the shoot themselves, the camera man taking on the majority of technical tasks. However, I learned from my time there that the producer has to have a very level head throughout the shoot, keeping in mind a lot of different things so that there’s coherence and versatility in the material they produce. They also need to have a good set of personal skills, as a lot of what they do regards speaking with and being friendly with strangers, often random people they meet on location and decide (spur of the moment) to interview as part of the show.

Did this work attachment meet the criteria I had previously established? I would think yes, if only because my real interest in this attachment was witnessing the “back room” of media production in a professional environment, as opposed to being lectured about it, or told second-hand from various sources. While I do not personally wish to make the area my career, I enjoy learning about these kind of things (theoretical aspects especially), and the discussions and frank honesty about the way things work that I had with the professionals I interacted with was an incredibly informative experience. Being involved with two large and professional organisations as I was, there was little opportunity for me to have any “hands on” experience and participation in their work (though I do believe I’ll be credited as “guy who held the reflector” in an upcoming episode of the show ‘Great South East’), but this did not really feel like a limitation or negative to the experience. I completely understand that, in their position, they can hardly afford to have a temporary kid there on some puffed up version of work experience doing much more than menial grunt work, perhaps observing some of the more technical work.

In the end, the most important thing to come out of this work attachment was the definite understanding that I do not want to make my career in the areas I witnessed. While I have previously held this to be my opinion, I did not have any first-hand experience of the workspaces I was condemning. Now, at least, I have seen the field up close and personal, and I can affirm within myself that I am making the right decision for myself and my future by pursuing a different line of work, and a different set of career ambitions. While this work attachment may have provided other people with networks, new skills, and knowledge that they would find incredibly applicable to their future careers, I find it has provided me with the most important knowledge of all – clarity, and self-assurance.

Let’s get this out of the way, first and foremost: the primary reason I signed up for the steering committee was because I had no interest in running a seminar. My own interests lie in very, very different places to where this course intends to run students to, and as such, I felt it would be better for me if I did a more generalist/overview role, as opposed to a focused seminar. The group we ended up with lost a member within a fortnight of initially organizing, and from that point on, we kicked into a series of events and issues that I still struggle to reason with myself to this day.

Problem-solving and discussion within the steering committee was very casual, for the most part. When a draft was submitted for the website or poster, we would weigh in, deliver comments or suggestions, and they would be acted upon in time. Whenever there was an issue, it really came down to people making their point and seeing who would agree with the other first. Of course, we never really had that many arguments, just the occasional panicky email asking where something was, why hadn’t so-and-so contacted anyone yet, etc etc. Really, I think we had all had too much experience in the past with highly domineering groups that eventually collapsed under the weight of themselves. My tasks, after falling out of the position as main point of contact, fell back into web design and discussion – with Glen running the backend of things, we discussed what needed to be fixed and changed around in order for stuff to function properly.

Although I positioned myself as a point of contact for groups, I do not think I ever thought of myself (nor wanted to) as a “leader” for the steering committee. However, it appeared that the others did think of me as the leader, and as such we seemed to suffer from a definitive “commissar” figurehead. When Leila reported what the tutors had said about our lack of leadership and took on the position for herself, I realized the folly of what I had done, but I do not think it was a mistake. I have always been more of a supporter of groupthink rather than following orders; by relying information, rather than demanding service, I thought the steering committee would function better. I was unfortunately mistaken.

Throughout the semester, I did attempt to improve my abilities as a “contact point”, despite Leila taking over the role in around week 6 or 7. I am a relatively shy person by nature, and thought taking on a position that forced me to remain in steady contact with people would help in breaking me out of the shell I appeared to have developed. Unfortunately, many members of the class treated their contact with me as something that was an annoyance, I suppose? I do not like bothering people, either. If nothing else, what I can take from this semester on the steering committee is that there is a reason communism failed and fell into pseudo-dictatorships. My inability to “take action” and lead the way was part of our initial downhill movement, though I am extremely glad that certain other members of the group were ready, willing and able to make up the ground we lost, and teach me a valuable lesson in how much I really should push myself.

In regards to participation, I must admit there were a few classes and “meetings” (I use the term as loosely as possible, since we generally just planned to meet before/after a seminar) which I was unable to attend, primarily from the fact that I was not in the country during two weeks with seminars. It was unfortunate, but the bookings had been made well in advance. Otherwise, I engaged as fully as I could with the task at hand and the group – multiple email threads flew around between the group members, Facebook messages as well, all in order for us to make sure we had a centralized ability to understand who was doing what, who needed what, and what was coming up next. My engagement was high, despite some issues we encountered early on with the non-steering groups either “forgetting” or just not planning on getting into contact with us with regards to their session. Of course, this all changed after the first seminar passed and we realized the full extent of what we needed to do!

However, it must be said that the biggest issue we had in regards to communicating with each other was the fact that our workload was spread out across the entire semester, as opposed to a single session of presentation. Instead of being an overbearing, malevolent presence that loomed just ahead of us, we had to deal with a smaller beast that did not really “develop” until the end of the semester. In that regard, steering was harder than I thought it would be, as we didn’t have these defined dates and goals to the same extent as any other group.

Perhaps we suffered from the informality with which we treated our task. Aside from Leila, I do not think the rest of the steering committee took the task to be as “important” as many of our other tasks throughout the semester. We discussed things amongst ourselves, made deals and agreements, but there was never enough density to it for us to really view it as a “major” task until the very end.

The overall value of this course is something I am still considering. It certainly did give me a better idea of how much effort goes into the “behind the scenes” aspect of organizing, promoting and archiving an event. But in the end, as I’ve discovered through my personal networking report, this really isn’t what I want (or intend) to do with my life. I’m sure the lessons learned about my own awful nature will come in handy one day, perhaps on a research committee of some kind, but in the end, it must be said that I have had my fun in my last semester, and I do not see myself accessing the knowledge from it in any fundamental capacity in the future. I’m sure it will come up in certain events or structures, peripheral knowledge and understandings, but as a primary source of information, I am not sure it will ever rise up in my head.

The seminars were informative for the people who organized and viewed them; likewise, the steering committee was informative in the sense that it truly cemented what I do not want to do with my career and my life. With that in mind, I could have given up early on, but instead I tried to persevere, because I knew that my giving up would only cause everyone else to suffer the consequences. I may not have done the greatest job in the world, but I feel like I did everything I could.

With that, I think I will give myself the grade HD.

Not because we did a flawless job, but because I feel like we learned quickly, developed on our mistakes, and did not give up. Besides, we managed to pull together almost everyone’s shit before week 12 had technically finished – we have to have done something right.

Again, I have to put a question mark behind the theme of this week’s topic, because the same issue was present. The fact of the matter was that they seemed to almost be incertain of whether it was about dramatic film or documentary. With two of the five speakers being more associated with documentary than drama (indeed, Robyn Hughan and Ruth Cullent were advertised as documentary filmmakers), it seemed like they would have been off simply combining the two weeks guests into two obvious camps of “drama” and “documentary”, rather than a hodge-podge of both.

With that in mind, I think it’s safe to say that I am still incertain about the guest relevancy to the seminar. I suppose they all had valuable, even constructive, things to say, but I feel like it would have been better (for the speakers and the audience) if things had been more clearly divided.

Hosting was, to put a lid on it, not great. The choice of an international student as the MC was good in the sense that it was pushing someone out of their normal comfort zone (or out of the support roles which international students seem to be put into), but at the same time, was he the right choice? In my mind, at least, he had some trouble articulating and communicating with the speakers, ending up in a kind of stilted situation.

Refreshments weren’t as great as the previous week, some serious mark deduction there

Technical issues were barely present, aside from some apparent inexperience with the lighting rigs. The return of the pre-recorded interview was awful, possibly the worst part of the seminar as a whole. It just felt as though somebody, anybody along the pathway to this seminar would have gone, “You know what, the quality of this isn’t good enough, it’ll make us look amateurish. Let’s dump it.” But they didn’t, and it felt like a huge mistake on their end. Regardless of whether or not the person was vitally relevant to their topic, they had five professionals sitting there, eager to talk – surely they could have just skimmed over their pre-recorded segment and stay with the physical speakers instead.

If nothing else, this group demonstrated the problems that can occur when you have too much time to prepare, and get overloaded with potential guests, material, waiting, etc. It felt to me like they had over-thought a lot of things. The number of guests, as well, seemed a bit too high – three or four seemed like a good, intimate number from previous weeks, and pushing it to five (plus pre-recorded ones) almost made the stage feel cramped, less like a seminar. The fun was gone, I suppose? That may sound a bit too harsh, though.

Overall, these guys were about the same as last week, maybe a little worse. The fact that it was essentially the same group doing both weeks further complicated my assessment, because it feels like they should have either learned or otherwise known better after last week’s assessment. In the end, though, they pulled off a seminar that was informative, if not a little awkward to try and reason out.

The reason I am putting a question mark behind the name for this seminar is because I was (and still am) slightly confused over whether this week was meant to be about documentaries or about drama. I know from the listings that they were meant to be seperate events – however, it appeared to me that half of the guests present (Rohan Spong, Brian McKenzie) were clearly documentary filmmakers, while the others (Michael Robinson, Rob George) appeared to be more heavily focused on dramatic filmmaking. I am a little confused, and therefore incertain of just how relevant the guests were to the topic.

All the guests had things to say, do not get me wrong, but it appeared that there was a genuine lack of focus on the behalf of the seminar organisers – perhaps if they had more clearly defined which week was which topic, they could have prepared a slew of guests who could answer questions directly relating to the (documentary?) theme. As it stands, however, this didn’t exactly come to fruition – many of the questions asked by the host were open to both dramatic and documentary film, which left me even more perplexed as to what I had actually attended.

Perhaps the more worrying/confusing part was the pre-recorded interviews they had. With an obvious mark of the “free” recording service they used, incredibly bad sound, and grainy footage, I almost think it would have been better if they had simply not included the pre-recorded interviews at all. It certainly would have improved things – I am pretty sure I saw the guests themselves grimace when Ray Argall’s giant, distorted head pop into existence.

Putting that asidem, there were some technical issues, certainly, and if we ignore the vagueness of the seminar topic, then the hosting was fine – not wonderful, but it was certainly an improvement on some of the other seminars I had attended. There was a certain lack of flow, however, perhaps stemming from the topic issues. Even the guests seemed to hesitate at times, question what they were meant to be answering.

There was a gigantic amount of fruit available, and for that, I give this group the highest refreshment mark I can.

Ultimately, the group putting on this seminar may have suffered from too many people working on the project, letting some bad ideas through all the way until the presentation itself. Whatever the reason for their issues, however, I feel as though there were some fundamental problems that they should have rectified well before the event itself. I gave this group a Distinction, overall, but I almost feel as though they deserve slightly less.

The Write Way was an interesting exploration of writing as a working field and career pathway, though I did have some issues with the overall presentation of the event.

The hosting was weak, to say the least, at least from my impressions at the beginning – the moderator (Gabriel, I believe?) wasn’t that endearing, nor did he seem to have prepared well for the task at hand. Losing his notes, and being unable to ad-lib an introduction for the guest he had forgotten to remember the notes for, didn’t set up a strong beginning for the talk. Likewise, his questioning throughout the discussion was often loose and stammering, though he did attempt to try and “herd” the converation in certain directions. I didn’t give them great marks in this area, but their issues may have simply come down to a lack of confidence and preparation in their host, rather than any overall problems with the group itself.

The guests were very relevant to the topic at hand, and the topics discussed were also very relevant. Tom Cowrie seemed like the odd man out in the mix, since he espoused himself as being a journalist rather than a “writer”, but no harm was really done to the area. They all had good ways of talking about their personal climb up the ladder to success, though I did feel as though Catherine Deveny was overpowering, to say the least. I later heard from a group member that she had originally been informed that this would be a one-woman show, which showed in the overall presentation as Catherine took over at least half of the speaking done throughout. The spread of topics covered by the guests was good, though, since it showed the group organising the seminar had put a lot of through into their guest invitations.

With regards to quality, this group was top-notch in all areas except their sound management, and the moderation issues I’ve noted above. They did manage to fix the sound issues quickly, however, which was good. Presentation was minimal, but perhaps it was more effective like that – I think I would have liked to see some examples of the work these people were doing, however, rather than just being told they were writers. That’s just me, though, I am sure others were quite happy with being spoon-fed the credentials of these writers (to steal a phrase from Jo Walker).

Overall, the seminar was excellent, though I did have my minor quibbles. The content was educational for those interested in working in the media field, as well as giving some fresh opinions about the new means of accessing your start in that career path – I never knew Twitter was so important!

The first of the seminars we’re going to see this semester, the folks behind the Main Event had only a short time to set up their seminar, and considering the quality of what they were able to put together, they did a fantastic job. With guests Ellie Rowland, Ashleigh Parker, and Sophie Brous, the crew did what they were tasked to do, and did it with flying colours.

From a purely “are they involved in events/marketing” point of view, I would say that the guests for The Main Event were entirely appropriate. It was also interesting that they found and secured Ashleigh Parker, an RMIT graduate, who was working in the appropriate field, adding to the notion that we’re all one big RMIT “family”, which many of our tutors have been trying to labour upon us for quite some time. Perhaps not all of the guests seemed as excited/happy to be speaking, but that’s another matter entirely – what’s important is that they all were appropriate and involved with the events aspect of the media industry.

Unfortunately, there were a few issues that I found with the seminar overall – there were multiple sound and lighting issues that were present at the beginning of the seminar, and while many of them were fixed in short order after people arrived, that doesn’t really excuse in my mind that they should have checked out some of these things earlier. Likewise, I feel as though the host was trying a little to hard to be an MC – jokes that weren’t required, commentary where there needed to be none, and awkward, stilted transitions between the questions spring to mind. While I understand it was the first seminar, and the time constraints they were facing, being a host is one of those things that I know from experience to not be that difficult, especially if you have your material/ideas even a little bit prepared.

I do not know how I feel about “refreshments” being on the list of criteria by which these people are judged.

Overall, the seminar that was delivered was high above what I am sure many people expected to see from a group that had only really been given a fortnight to create and organise a seminar. Technical issues and poor moderation/hosting, however, simply push the wrong buttons with me, and I find them to be difficult “crimes” to forgive.

In the end, I gave these guys a D – perhaps they deserved higher, but that is how things crumble down.

The process of creating this piece was relatively hassle-free. Research was negligible, which may seem like a negative factor, but I don’t think it was really required for the purposes of the piece. We weren’t out to present a scientific, clinical analysis of colourblindness and how it definitively makes an impact on people’s lives. What we wanted was to give the perspectives of the people with the condition, how they see the world, their stories, their connections. It would be easy to present a bunch of fact and figures about this randomly-selected tribe, what made it more of a challenge was accurately and honestly giving the colourblind-folk’s stories and perspectives to the world.

There was an important design decision we made with the presentation of our final content piece, and that was this: we didn’t want people to just be presented with a swathe of information and video. Tumblr is fine for passive content, I’m sure, as well as tracking your “pingbacks” to the work, but I feel like there’s a certain element in that kind of presentation which is detrimental to the work overall. That isn’t to say you cannot present fine work through tumblr, or similar information-overload approaches! I’m sure it is possible to do. But for the purposes of our content, we decided that encouraging the users to explore and interact with the piece itself was more important than giving away everything up-front.

Another thing I’d like to put into consideration is that everything about the website’s structure, from the pages to the images, was hand-coded and hand-drawn by myself. This was done for a variety of reasons. By taking complete control of the website design instead of using a pre-fabricated service such as tumblr or Wix, it allowed the group to be fully responsible – and fully capable of creating – the final design, presentation and structure of the piece. It also meant being able to be in complete control of the layout, as it wasn’t forced to be fitted around any pre-existing frameworks. Avoiding a flash-based interface also allows users to be able to link and re-connect from anywhere within the piece, as well.

The design of the website isn’t flash and polish web 2.0 graphic style or structure. Let’s be frank – it’s a pretty crude design. Most of it is comprised of absolutely-positioned div tables that keep everything central, embedded quicktime video, and image-links to other parts.

But while the design is crude, it isn’t heavy on download caps – most pages are barely 10kb in size, including pictures. The videos are larger, but embedding a straight quicktime video meant we didn’t compromise quality with Flash-conversion and embedding.

The design’s purposeful simplicity was also created so the user wasn’t overwhelmed with content. By importing a simple point-and-click interface, with no heavy reading or massive swathes of things to deal with and distract you on every page, viewers are meant to be drawn into the piece. This is also heightened by the simple “tests” put into place after each of the main exploration functions on the “explore” page – by giving the user a choice that directly ties into the underlying narrative of the piece (a simple dot test can mean you have a disability), they are encouraged to view the piece that they inherently chose by their inner nature.

The tests, by the way, are the standard Ishihara colour tests, internationally recognised as the standard means of identifying colourblindness.

The choices continue from there, as well, by not forcing the viewer to return to the exploration immediately – while the option is there, they are also invited to see things from another point of view. An inherent division is therefore present in the choice itself, and underpins the test’s function – with a simple choice of a number, viewers will be exposed to one piece before the other. But like the division between colourblind and normal vision, it isn’t a wholly divided choice, permanently seperating one from the other! It’s simply a different point of view, and the viewer can then see what they might have been exposed to, had things gone a little differently.

The visuals of the website are meant to assert this feeling as well, by being cheerful and playful, perhaps even cute. Though we are discussing and exploring what is technically a disability, there’s no sadness there – none of the people we spoke to found their condition depressing, nor a real problem. The stories they told in which they were at a disadvantage were always accompanied by a laugh, a smile, a cheerful tone in their voice. At no point do we turn our subjects into victims, nor do they do that to themselves!

Did we achieve what we set out? I think so, yes! If you look at our initial pitch, you’ll see that we managed to tick all the boxes of what we wanted. The interviewees gave us all of the information, aspects and perspectives that we set out to find and present. The videos give a pretty interesting and somewhat psychadelic depiction of what the condition is like to experience, and both the website and content are highly colourful and visual to boot.

Was the concept appropriate to explore? I think so, and I am pretty sure we did it successfully. The idea of exploring a tribe that is so loose and haphazard, with members often unaware of each other’s presence until chance circumstances intervene was interesting in and of itself. There’s a tribe there, certainly, but it’s a tribe who don’t require support groups or disability cheques, they’re just people who can’t see “normally” – but as they say themselves, what is normal, anyway? It was a different approach to the “my tribe” concept, because of the lack of common identity between members aside from their different perspectives on the world.

Could we have done things differently? Certainly. There were some times when I felt we weren’t organised enough with our content production, and hand-making a website meant we had a difficult time at the end of semester. I couldn’t finish the website until we had the final videos and audio pieces available, which meant the last few days before final submission were a bit of a stressful time! Likewise, we had some difficulty in finalising the visuals of the piece, as we almost worked independantly of each other, meeting once a week or so to keep track of what we were up to, set time limits, etc. It meant I had to make some design decisions without group support, as well, which was slightly uncomfortable for me – as time ran on, I needed to make snap decisions which couldn’t wait for slow group approval. We still succeeded where we wanted to go, though, so I’m not disappointed at all.

It was a good project, and I am happy to have worked with a tribe without colours.

you’re everything a big bad wolf could want

My role in the group began as that of an average group member, though the dynamics of our group were a primary factor in that. By deciding to split our research into individual areas, our group was more or less independant of each other’s approval and feedback, which in hindsight was a terrible decision. Without any real consultation or discussion regarding our research areas with one another beyond our weekly meetings (which some members didn’t attend at times), there was a significant lack of unity within the group, contributing to our overall lack of cohesiveness.

Towards the end of the semester, however, my role in the group took on more authority – due to my own self-interest in getting a good mark for this course, I decided to try and whip the group into some degree. A significant problem, considering that our group (outside of myself and Jim) was quite unwilling to maintain contact at times. One or two members in particular would barely stay in touch, ignoring all messages or attempts at information gathering/organising that were attempted. Our Facebook group page, originally designed to keep us in touch, eventually became a monument to its own slow death, with the few of us who actually tried posting on it giving up ourselves.

Were there any solutions to this? If I said we honestly and whole-heartedly attempted to solve all of the issues that plagued our group, then I would be a liar. There were attempts to increase communication, but of these (mostly attempted by myself and Jim) – organising more meetings, trial run-throughs of our presentation, even just trying to find out where people were at in their research progress – none ever managed to make an impact on our group. There was either active resistance, or just plain apathy. Many emails and messages on Facebook went unanswered, and eventually it resulted in Jim and myself ending up as default leaders.

As I mentioned in my initial individual progress report, communication was always an issue. I did attempt all of the things I suggested to myself in that initial post (publishing my findings in the group, informing other people of leads, requests for sharing), but none of them had any success. Is this because I am not a natural leader? Perhaps. Was there a fundamental issue in our group with communication (or lack thereof) that was almost impossible to resolve? Perhaps.

Whatever the problems were, no attempt at solution was easy or successful, and that’s all I can say on the matter for now.

My progression throughout the semester was steady, but mostly drew on behaviours and practices I had learned in previous semesters and courses. Searching for academic and non-academic articles is, and always will be, a breeze via Google Scholar. It also helped that I was researching an area that is both recent, and tries to heavily promote and publicise itself. The nature of marketing is to try and insert their message into the collective culture of its market, and being a tech-savvy individual, most alternate reality games were known to me not only as an outside viewer, but a player as well.

Again, referring back to my initial individual progess report, I had initial concerns about my abilties to find useful research materials, but I evenutally realised this was pointless. Part of researching is finding connections, and that is how I progressed over the semester – after initially speaking with Ken Eklund in my interview, some of the things he said and people he mentioned led me to investigating other resources, which further branched out until I had my final report, a relatively large amassed amount of documents, academic files, interviews and other pieces which supported my research report.

Perhaps my biggest weakness is my self-confidence, as clearly evidenced in my initial progress report. I was too concerned about finding “appropriate” material to realise that I needed to find any material, to begin with. As it stood, a lot of time was wasted while I worried and attempted to consult my group for advice and guidelines, before I realised that I needed to find material before I could decide what was right, and proper, to use in my final report. This was eventually counter-balanced by my biggest strength in the project (research and analysis of material), so it all worked out in the end. It just required me to slap that weakness out of myself, which I found myself capable of doing once I realised that my group was a “group” in name and mark only – truthfully, we were five independant people, each with their own levels of priorities and engagement with the course. My biggest weakness may have been my inability to recognise and address that before it became a big issue.

As I said above, I made a slow change from “group member” to “proto-leader” as the course went on and reached its conclusion. My own issues with leadership and confidence aside, this was a subtle move that I made due to my plans for the future. As an aspiring honours/masters student, I need a good grade average to progress further into academia, and as I realised the group’s problems, I decided (perhaps unconsciously) to take a step forward and engage the problem as best I can. Does this count as progress? I hope so – it’s taught me a valuable lesson that group dynamics need to be established early, and problems resolved before they become a huge issue.

What was the value of this course? Perhaps by giving us a research project into the area we’re studying, Media Industries 1 has enabled us to have a deeper understanding of the media industry itself, giving us more perception into the field which most of us wish to work within. By giving us a research project over the course of an entire semester, we’ve certainly had to bring our research capabilities up a notch, as well as our expression and re-teaching of this information. It’s certainly been useful for me, as a (hopefully) future academic.

Overall, I’ve learned a lot about how to deal with group interactions, or rather how you’re “supposed” to deal with them. Perhaps in my failures I’ve learned more than I could have with my successes? I’ve certainly seen that is the case, with many of the things I’ve experienced in this degree, but this course has brought those lessons to a T. I’ve said this before, in this post and previous ones, but much like cancer, group projects are forced upon you, and you can either deal with them and contain their issues early… or you’ll eventually reach a point where nothing, not even full amputation, will save you from slow, painful demise. I may have been too late to truly save this group, but I think the lessons I’ve learned will be useful for future group dynamics.

Networking, I do not actually think I learned or developed all that much. Perhaps due to the niche and America-centric field of alternate reality games, it was difficult to find contacts with whom I could get my foot in the door with. Beyond my one interview with Ken Eklund, all of my other emails were ignored by the intended recipients – not even a courtesy email or response to say “thanks, but no thanks”. Has this taught me that the media industry is full of jerks? No, not at all.

I’ve known that for a long time.

Do I see this course fitting into my future career development? Yes, definitely. The research and expression aspect definitely ties into my future plans as a research and teaching academic. Perhaps it may have less relevance to those wishing to work directly in the media industry, where practical knowledge is valued more than a vague research-oriented understanding of one niche field. This is talking directly about my own project and research, of course! I am sure the groups who looked into funding film will have found this course and its research more applicable to their futures. But then, I am sure everyone will be taking different things from this course, myself included.

So, where do I finish off?

While my group was plagued with issues, I feel I came out on top of most of them – and even if I didn’t completely succeed, I learned dramatically from my failures. This course has taught me many things about applying my research skills and attempting at group diplomacy, as well as about myself and my own strengths and weaknesses. To say that I have a vested interest in gaining a good mark in this class wouldn’t cover my concerns. But in the end, I feel like I’ve managed to achieve a certain level of reflection and improvement on myself, even without maintaining a proper blog over the course of this semester for the subject. I feel that my expression and capabilities in these posts, as well as evidence available on Facebook, will genuinely show that I’ve engaged in critical reflection.

Thanks for your time.

So hey, apparently we need to write a reflection on the workshop we took part in! Fun times.

I chose to participate in the Scriptwriting advanced skills workshop, under the apparent misapprehension that it would be about scriptwriting, instead of character writing for film. I suppose that is my own fault, in a way, but I still feel it should have been named more accurately? It is a pithy and probably useless comment, but I still feel that the title of the project was a little misleading, compared to what it ended up being about.

I believe the workshop gave me a useful insight into the “big picture” of screenwriting, helpfully assisted by showing us both scripts and the final film product. It was interesting to go from the script to the film, instead of vice versa – a couple of times, I found myself hating the script, but thinking the film was alright! Perhaps it’s because the narrative of a script is reliant on it being seen and paced though the visual medium, rather than purely being read? A script is a plan for a film, or a play, and that was what Marion seemed to be trying to pass onto us – this notion that we need to think of the filmic structure when creating the script, not a written one.

A primary element of the workshop was developing and fleshing out characters, which led to an encounter I thought amusing – Marion asked us to start picturing an original character for our short films, and when I commented that myself and another person were in the short story adaptation group, she kind of paused and told us to “think of an original character for a future project.”

Yeah, this studio wasn’t exactly designed with us adaptors in mind.

When working from an adaptation standpoint, you don’t need to “invent” so much about the characters, since almost all of what you know is in the original source text. While what we did in the workshop was useful for people trying to create an original story, and original characters, spending a full class on creating a background and “voice” for your character isn’t quite as important for those of us in the adaptation studio, since that voice already exists to a certain extent. You’re transferring the medium of presentation, certainly, but often what you do and don’t know about a character is important to the story of the text. There was no need for me to figure out where Stevie was born, or what his family looks like, when that’s all established to the extent it needs to be within the original story.

That said, I think I found the workshop useful, in a way. Although it wasn’t exactly about what it was advertised as being, it still helped a great deal in re-cementing the aspects that a short film needs to cover in order for it to work well on film, and in an overall narrative structure. From the aspects and normal “rhythm” of a short film, to fleshing out your characters to an extent where they’re recognisable people, instead of just words on a piece of paper, I feel I’ve learned a lot of information and ideas that will be useful for both PP2 and my further career in the areas.

Now for the self-assessment!

I think I put a lot of effort into the workshops, more than I had originally planned once I discovered it wasn’t covering what I thought it would. I attended the classes, participated to the best of my ability, and engaged successfully with the tasks we were assigned. As for my script and scene deconstruction, I do not think there is anything wrong with them – while definitely not viable for publication or filming at this point of the game, I do think that they’ve established a firm ground for me to move into PP2 with. Overall, I’m going to give myself an 8 out of 10.

sooner or later, gonna cut you down

So I guess it’s time for me to summarise and report on what I actually managed (and didn’t manage) to pull off as a social media producer. Let’s start at the very beginning, then, with my original job plan. Did I manage to meet those targets I set for myself, way back at the very beginning?

In short, not quite, but I did make a gallant attempt, and pushed into other areas where it was applicable.

My initial goal was to target and succeed in getting five people from the Pool, who weren’t currently participating in the MyTribe project, to participate. Unfortunately, as you can see here, my various methods of trying to communicate with the people and start conversations (ranging from constructive comments, to outright telling them to join the MyTribe group) didn’t garner any response from the people involved. Those are just some recent examples, but they represent the situation as a whole – whether through Pool’s problems or someone else’s, there wasn’t any real particular way for me to get anything started between myself and the other people, and little way for me to track if they later went and posted up some works for MyTribe.

Actually, I just went back and re-checked – apparently me and Kyla managed to convince this lovely gent to add his work to the MyTribe group! Successes: 1.

In any case – I tried, and I feel more knowledgeable for it, and that’s the important part.

After weeks of no success, I decided to ask a friend of mine if he would mind involvind his students in the MyTribe project, at least thematically, as part of their class plans – he’s media teacher at a prominent high school. He agreed, but said he wouldn’t be able to introduce it until around third term. A little late for me to be assessed on it, but there’s a chance that these kids will join and produce some excellent work for the MyTribe group.

As for our tute-specific activities, and the making of the “behind-the-scenes”/promotional videos for groups, we came so close to achieving my personal target of four videos in spite of all the problems we had. Here’s the links to the final videos we made:

Boardgamers at Dockers
Need For Speed
Why Not Worship

Why Not Worship was only finalised yesterday, so I can’t really comment on its performance in our idealistic outline for what the videos would do, so all of the comments I make will be about the first two.

Boardgamers at Dockers was our only real major success, as I’ve commented in a previous blog post. It managed to be short, catchy, generate some feedback and conversations between the authors and the audience, and give the group some excellent exposure… on Facebook. On Pool, it didn’t even garner a single comment. Need For Speed generated some feedback for the group, but nothing quite so grand as we saw for the Boardgamers group.

We set out to try and develop a certain amount of hype for the groups we filmed, and we more or less succeeded – while it might not have been huge hype, it gave them some extra support from people who offered ideas and postive constructive comments. As I mentioned in another blog post, the major difficulty wasn’t producing the videos, it was getting people to even agree to be part of them. Whether they were too busy or didn’t really see any point, only the handful of groups we filmed actually agreed to be part of what we were trying to do. No amount of convincing pushed the people who didn’t want to participate into agreeing. This was with open call-outs and private messaging on Facebook, asking them in-person, asking our tute liason to pass the word (just kidding, I do not think he can pass a subject, let alone a word).

I’ve talked about this in other blog posts, yes, but I feel it bears repeated for the sake of summing up this course in my own mind, and reflections.

My conclusion from all this is that we were stuck in a vicious cycle – we needed videos to show people how little we actually wanted from them, but we could only make these videos once people agreed to be a part of the idea.

I’ve learned a lot from being a social media producer and the environment you work in, as well as the idea of creating media socially. Perhaps the biggest lesson comes from an earlier post I made in the year, regarding user statistics of participation in social websites – that is, in any social media project, there are going to be a small “ideal” group, who contribute and participate heavily, and then there is the “normal” people who want to be able to do things quickly, easily, see how they’re going and gain positive reinforcement without putting in as much effort.

Being a social media producer, then, requires making things as easy for the user as possible. YouTube, Facebook, deviantart and Flickr – as well as del.icio.us, in a different sense – have succeeded in this incredibly difficult task, by giving users a simple navigation, commenting, publishing and feedback system to use as much as possible. This is all software, however – the real job of the social media producer is recruiting and fostering a contributing audience, and this again ties in with the issue of simplicity.

I’ve seen the Acid comments and design ideas for Pool, and I agree, they’re a step in the right direction. If/when enacted, they’ll make Pool an easier place to naviagate and use, and therefore garner a bigger audience as people start to find that it isn’t a hassle to use. The role of the social media producer, therefore, will become less “overt” than it is now.

There’s an adage from Futurama that I think is applicable for this role, and it’s this – “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” Most of these places work well because they don’t have an obvious pang of desperation to their community gathering attempts. When talking about Pool with other people, it’s almost obvious you’re trying to sell them on something – I’ve shown it to people before, and they basically comment that it’s deviantart, with navigation issues and ABC branding.

Getting work into the space you’re trying to produce is one thing, I’ve realised, it’s easy enough to do that – the issue is keeping people interested and willing to stay on the site and be communicative with one another. People love getting feedback, people love to think they’re being noticed, and people will post work as long as they feel it isn’t a hassle or a waste of time to do so. The role of a social media producer isn’t to make a system or place that has these things, but to foster a community spirit within a place that already features the ability to experience these things. Even better if they don’t come across as social media producers at all.

I guess I need to try summing this up.

Did I do perfectly? No, I didn’t. Did I do well and came close to achieving goals that, in retrospect, were a hell of a lot harder than I originally thought they would be? Yes, I honestly think I did. While what I set for myself in the beginning looks quite “easy”, the problem was that they were all relying on other people – the video task, especially, suffered because of its inability to be done independantly of our producing group. I also learned a lot from the experience, and can apply this knowledge to my future planning appropriately.

If I could sum up my view on what I did, it would be this – I think I put a lot of work and thought into my failures, more so than other people I’ve seen/spoken to put into their successes.

In light of that, I am going to give myself 80 out of 100 for this end of the project.

woke up, fell out of bed, ran my fingers through my dreads