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.
Today was the television seminar, which was really great. I’m not really into a career in television, and was pleasantly surprised by how informative and insightful this seminar was. I really enjoyed the format of the seminar, which was entertaining in terms of it replicating a typical television hosting show and thought the introduction videos were well made, as well as funny in terms of introducing the guests. Whilst the second section of the seminar was really great and informative with the panel and allowed interaction and discussion between guests I found the individual interviews for the first half didn’t work that well, this was because it dragged out the life of the guest in two much detail and didn’t really draw on things that were relevant for us to know about as media students entering the industry. I think this section should have been a lot quicker in terms of giving a quick background on the guest for no more than really ten minutes each, just for the audience to get a bit of contextualisation before it went into the panel discussion.
The panel discussion after the break was really well done and the questions really hit the spot in terms of gauging the television industry in Australia from guests that have worked in quite different areas being music, comedy and childrens, therefore they really painted the picture of how the industry functions. What I learnt in this section was:
a) there is a really big tension between creative and network, where in Australia the role of creative is greatly over-powered by executive producers and networks. Australia sees creative as a interchangeable role and not overly important, especially in consideration to HBO, which has an extremely high creative aspect. Therefore in order for television to be a lot better in Australia there needs to be more respect and time given to production quality from a creative perspective. The industry seems to care too much on not hurting anyones feelings and being internationally successful that creative dies due to this.
b) the television media landscape has considerably changed, where the emphasis has switched from BIG comedy shows to BIG reality shows. This means that all the money goes to those reality shows and has a massive impact on other types of shows, which shrink. Therefore a lot of outsourcing takes place in order to make small budget productions that the television stations don’t really care about as they make the majority of their money from these BIGGER shows.
c) the future of Australian television will require hybrid products, with a massive emphasis on digital culture. The Australian television industry is not seen as big innovators and therefore it is up to us to bring innovation in terms of hybrid products to the industry.
d) multi-channeling is not really a good thing as it means less money into individual shows, where the production values of the television shows drop and don’t stand out distinctively. This is especially the case with ABC3 where there is a lot of same-same children’s programming that doesn’t break anything in terms of innovation.
Overall, the seminar was quite shattering for people that would want to enter the industry, where it seemed the overall mood was that it’s a very difficult industry that is not overly rewarding as you have to do a lot of not-so-pleasant jobs in-between. The future seems to lie in the form of digital hybrid television programs and there was a lot of emphasis on not specialising yourself to one distinct role as it is more important to know a little bit about everything so you can adapt to different roles.
As for the seminar itself I thought there was not enough food and hydration. I think the group should have put more thought and provided more for the audience. Yet, I think they did an excellent job in terms of keeping the seminar entertaining, having insightful guests and just putting on a good show in terms of their audiovisual work. The first section of the seminar should have been shorter, but the panel and Q&A section at the end was great and extremely informative.
