Filed under: media industries 2, reflection, seminar | Tags: documentary, final, reflection, self assessment, seminar
Contribution and Collaboration
My contribution to the seminar was that of post-production, where it was Eric and my job to edit the seminar footage as well as consult with the steering committee. This role was mainly a 2-way collaboration, with little to no issues along the way as Eric and I worked well together to formulate the highlight video. We worked together in that I would formulate the structure and he would do the technical aspects of putting it together so our skills worked well together in terms of complimenting each other. Due to the nature of my role being within the post-production section, which I could only really contribute to after the seminar was over I also helped out in some of the pre-seminar tasks. This included coming up with a set of questions with Gabriel and Ruby prior to the event and also talking through with Candice the questions, once both our host and back-up host were ill. Therefore, the major problem that arose through the process of hosting our seminar was our two hosts becoming ill and not being able to attend the seminar. This required a great deal of team work in terms of going through the questions and key topics with Candice as well as being on top of all the other elements that had to go into play to put together a great seminar.
Refer to: http://hannahfilmtv.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/editing-seminar-footage/
Proactive Learning
My proactive learning came in the form of going to see documentaries and also attending a masterclass on documentary filmmaking. I felt that I made a conscious effort to immerse myself in the field of documentary, which really helped when it came to formulating questions as I already had formulated some through my reflection on documentaries. In reflecting on the documentaries that I had seen as well as the masterclass allowed me to be more aware and also more involved in putting this documentary seminar in place as I felt that I already had key knowledge in terms of what made and didn’t make a documentary work. This also became incredibly important when it came to formulating the highlights video as I could dissect what was important in terms of relaying this to an audience. In conjunction I felt that I technically learnt some new skills in editing with Eric, the more you do something, the more you learn and I felt that this was clearly evident through this collaboration.
Participation
Most of our group collaboration and participation was done through a Facebook conversation in conjunction with our weekly class meetings prior to our seminar. In these collaborative environments it was difficult to participate fully due to the scale of the group and having all different members working in different areas. I was able to participate more when we broke up into our separate groups. In our separate groups participation was easier and there was a better dialogue happening between each of the groups, which worked a lot better. In terms of my own levels of participation I felt that I always made a conscious effort to respond to facebook conversations if appropriate and attend most of the editing sessions with Eric. However,I felt that I could have participated more in the final editing of our highlights video. Whilst I participated with Eric in the earlier editing sessions it got increasingly harder to make times that both of us could edit. I felt that I could have made a more conscious effort to finalise the edit with him.
Refer to: http://hannahfilmtv.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/is-this-reel-life/
Connections and intersections
One of the most valuable things I learnt through putting together this seminar series is how happy people are to talk about what the are passionate about and that networking is one of the most valuable things to take out of this course. Being able to approach people, even if it is simply via an email can be really difficult and daunting, yet really there are a lot of people that are willing to help you out. In conjunction to this it is really obvious to me that the value of the seminar series, is that you learn a lot from a practical perspective the ins and outs of documentary, not just in terms of content, but how to realistically apply what we have learnt in subjects such as ‘True Lies’ and ‘TV2′ within an industry-based context. For instance, some of Dennis Smith’s real documentary scenarios allowed you an in-depth perspective on what it’s like to deal with difficult subject matters and how to ethically approach documentary scenarios. What I have learnt about myself is that I still find it incredibly difficult to network, to approach people and to be confident about what I am interested in and I think this seminar series along with my own Personal Networking Report have encouraged me to become more sure of myself and confident in the skills that I have learnt throughout this course. However, at the same time I have also figured out that my previous career interest in being a Project Manager is not really what I want to do anymore, because I feel I don’t have that extroverted quality in terms of contacting and speaking to people, which is needed for this role.
Overall, I found the process of putting a seminar together quite challenging, yet extremely rewarding, mainly due to the content delivered by our fantastic guests. In our hosts both not being able to make it I felt that I learnt a lot about not getting flustered and the importance of being really organised to put swift actions in place to resolve the issue. This ability to resolve an issue comes not only from yourself but from good collaboration between yourself and your group members.
The guests made this seminar is all I can say. I thought that the guests were the most distinctive of any of the other seminars- they were funny, swore and definitely had some insightful, metaphoric, philosophical and poetic things to say about how sound works. What I thought failed in terms of the seminar was a structure, it seemed a bit all over the place, and the questions were rather vague at times. I think the seminar would have worked a lot better if the seminar was better structured and then the questions would be more driven. However, this was saved by the content of the seminar guests and their insights into sound and the industry.
Overall, the guests were very insightful in terms of what they had to say. One of the most useful insights for me was in terms of the strong connection between sound design and film in terms of the livelihood of sound designers. If the film industry gets money stripped away from it so does the necessity to have sound designers. What had becomes so apparent throughout all the seminars is that the idea of having a single role is much in the past and that to get a job you really have to be multi-skilled and flexible because employers want people that can do multiple jobs not just one to save them money. Whilst the panel painted a pretty dire picture of the Australian film industry they pointed out the plus side of working in post production where you don’t have to have face-to-face meetings but can correspond via email and forward the content back and forth between borders. This is incredibly convenient for production companies because it allows the film to be finished quicker due to the 24 hour work cycle of having people work on the other side of the world. It saves them both time and money and can be very beneficial for cultivating international networking.
I really thought this was a lovely point to make and transcends through all industry work becoming relevant, even if you don’t have a huge interest in sound production. Again I think this was another highlight of the seminar as the guests content was not limited to people that were just interested in sound but for those that were interested in other fields because there is such a huge link between sound design and film. Even though the Q&A section highlighted something that we didn’t want to hear through the fish and chip analogy that pretty much every distinctly creative idea that you have will just be copied and become mainstream the seminar held itself through its guest’s insights. And to finish off on a slightly technical note I really thought this group would have benefited from checking all their sound properly first because the animation they showed just after the break was barely audible, which defeats the purpose of showing it in the first place. Otherwise this group did really well and I congratulate them on their distinctive guests.
