i'm sat here feeling stressed, annoyed, frustrated and worried about an upcoming assignment. as it stands, i feel like a bit of an idiot for not understanding what it is that i actually have to write about which in my honest opinion could have been prevented. i'm not going to be biased and say that this isn't down to me, obviously i could probably have done a few things better myself but i feel that a large part of me not knowing what i need to know is down to the way that i've been made to learn them. there will undoubtedly be new, long and complicated words for me and my piers to grasp as we continue on our journey but that isn't the problem. it would be worrying if we didnt learn new things otherwise we'd be departing with a big wad of money and 3 years of our lives for things that we already knew. the thing that pisses me off is the fact that i am being taught complicated things with unnecessarily complicated words and sentences.
i have a little sister who is currently in secondary school and have on many occasions helped her out with school work. without meaning to sound big headed in any way, on virtually all occassions i have been successful. if there is something new for her to learn that she just can't get her head around, i would explain it to her in terms that she understands. i wouldn't use complicated and wordy sentences to explain in spite of the fact that i would be able to if i wanted to. this is so she doesn't have to use her brain to think about the words that i use to teach her - the nothing words. i use words that she naturally and instantly recognises and understands in terms of the context that they have been used so that as i say, she doesnt have to spend a few seconds trying to figure out what i mean. this allows for her entire attention to go towards actually learning what it is that she needs to know. this, to me is the goal of learning and education. teaching in a way that makes the student understand.
this has not been the case for me. the books, websites and people that have taught me have explained in a deliberately intellectual way. using long words, complicated grammar and the assumption that i know a lot more than i actually do (e.g. that i know all about marxism, cubism and other philisophical/political ideas and that if they make throw-away comments about them i'd instantly know what they were on about) all lead to me having to go through things over and over again repeatedly whereas if they were put in a different way a lot less of this would be required. its worse in lectures because if i didnt understand something that somebody said, that was it, no chance to rewind and i don't have enough time to think about what they just said otherwise i'd miss another couple of points and end up being lost in a ridiculously big sea of words. its true that what i am being taught is of a more complex and difficult nature to that of my little sister but in terms of the difficulty of my task matched up with my abilities and the difficulty of my sister's task and her abilites, i don't think the ratio would be much different.
i am sure that there are less complicated ways of putting forward an explanation. this would lead in my opinion to more people being able to learn what is needed to be learnt and less feelings of preventable stress, worry and misery. don't make yourself sound intellectual just for the sake of it or to make a subject seem more difficult than it already is. this will only lead to more failures and angry blogs...
Saturday, 24 January 2009
Thursday, 11 December 2008
BACKLOG 3: pleeeeeeaaaaaassssseee don't make ken ill
on the whole i feel that my images assessed piece could have been a lot better. one of my main concerns was the ridiculous overexposure and brightness in some of the shots such as the tourist's POV. at the time of filming we weren't sure how to ease the problem which was something that on reflection we should have looked further into by spending more time in pre-production because these particular problems tend to arise from the shoot and are not easily fixable in 'post'.
now....
you may be wondering why i have mentioned ken in the title of this post. earlier in the week prior to our shoot we were scheduled to have a camera workshop with him but unfortunately, the good man was feeling unwell and so it was cancelled. we later had this workshop anyway as it was rescheduled to our reading week and guess what we learnt in the session?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I think that I used enough exclamation and question marks in that last sentence to not need to explain further.
ALSO...me needing to be in bournemouth on that day for the workshop led to me missing out on the opportunity to meet and speak to the woman of my dreams...Nicole Scherzinger ;__;
now....
you may be wondering why i have mentioned ken in the title of this post. earlier in the week prior to our shoot we were scheduled to have a camera workshop with him but unfortunately, the good man was feeling unwell and so it was cancelled. we later had this workshop anyway as it was rescheduled to our reading week and guess what we learnt in the session?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I think that I used enough exclamation and question marks in that last sentence to not need to explain further.
ALSO...me needing to be in bournemouth on that day for the workshop led to me missing out on the opportunity to meet and speak to the woman of my dreams...Nicole Scherzinger ;__;
BACKLOG 2: Japanese gameshows are for outside the editing suite
today i found another thing to add to the list of 'Things To Keep Out Of the Editing Suite' (which had previously only contained fire, giraffes and sandals) and that is japanese game shows.
if you're bored in the editing suite, DO NOT WATCH JAPANESE GAME SHOWS because the combination of the sounds of japanese people in pain with rupturous (sp?) laughter and loud and questionably racist statements - "this is genius", "this is only funny because they're Japanese" - make for difficulty at times in hearing your own piece of work as well as distracting other members of your group who had been there to help.
i'm not disrespecting japanese game shows as i have enjoyed a few in my time but ya'know...there is a time and a place guys.
if you're bored in the editing suite, DO NOT WATCH JAPANESE GAME SHOWS because the combination of the sounds of japanese people in pain with rupturous (sp?) laughter and loud and questionably racist statements - "this is genius", "this is only funny because they're Japanese" - make for difficulty at times in hearing your own piece of work as well as distracting other members of your group who had been there to help.
i'm not disrespecting japanese game shows as i have enjoyed a few in my time but ya'know...there is a time and a place guys.
BACKLOG 1: Patience isn't all it's cracked up to be
while i'm here i'll have a go at backlogging. i'm not sure what the best way of doing this would be so i'll just write about lessons that i have learnt so far and how i learnt them.
the editing room can get very busy at times and the occurence (sp?) of more than one person wanting to use the same equipment at the same time is quite common. i learnt today (not literally today but i am backlogging now in the style that i would have adopted had i created this post on the day that it happened) that if you get to that piece of equipment first and another group asks to borrow it for "literally just 15 minutes"...don't believe them. i had deliberately sat at the front of a lecture to be able to leave the room first at the end in order to get into the edit suite. as it transpired, on that particular occasion i needn't have bothered because when i arrived to the edit suite there was no one else there and it remained that way with me on my own for 10 minutes. by that time i had already logged in and got the VT ready to start logging and capturing some footage when another person arrived. he saw that i was using the VT despite needing it himself and so asked if he could use the machine for "literally 15 minutes" because his group only needed to log and capture 2 more takes. i gave him the benefit of the doubt and so his group came in and proceeded to log and capture. an hour had passed and they still hadn't finished. i asked them how long they were going to be a few times and each time they reassured me that they wouldn't be long and so my softer side kept on prevailing. eventually they had managed to finish capturing their desired footage when the big twist came. they had been capturing using a slow method which meant that they had to batch capture everything. the process lasted for over half and hour meaning that when i did finally get to start editing, nearly 2 hours had passed from the moment i became the first person to leave my previous lecture..
"this is the quick way to log and capture" was a particular statement that i overheard which i found particularly irritating.
the editing room can get very busy at times and the occurence (sp?) of more than one person wanting to use the same equipment at the same time is quite common. i learnt today (not literally today but i am backlogging now in the style that i would have adopted had i created this post on the day that it happened) that if you get to that piece of equipment first and another group asks to borrow it for "literally just 15 minutes"...don't believe them. i had deliberately sat at the front of a lecture to be able to leave the room first at the end in order to get into the edit suite. as it transpired, on that particular occasion i needn't have bothered because when i arrived to the edit suite there was no one else there and it remained that way with me on my own for 10 minutes. by that time i had already logged in and got the VT ready to start logging and capturing some footage when another person arrived. he saw that i was using the VT despite needing it himself and so asked if he could use the machine for "literally 15 minutes" because his group only needed to log and capture 2 more takes. i gave him the benefit of the doubt and so his group came in and proceeded to log and capture. an hour had passed and they still hadn't finished. i asked them how long they were going to be a few times and each time they reassured me that they wouldn't be long and so my softer side kept on prevailing. eventually they had managed to finish capturing their desired footage when the big twist came. they had been capturing using a slow method which meant that they had to batch capture everything. the process lasted for over half and hour meaning that when i did finally get to start editing, nearly 2 hours had passed from the moment i became the first person to leave my previous lecture..
"this is the quick way to log and capture" was a particular statement that i overheard which i found particularly irritating.
LARYNX LET-DOWNS
NOTE TO SELF: BUY A NEW LARYNX. if the volume of your voice is lower than those of others around you, you're in trouble. i had a disagreement with the majority of my production group today regarding our next film project and felt that i should let them know what it was that i disagreed with. as usual my group had a lively discussion where ideas were endlessly bounced off of one other which i am a big fan of - i think its a great way of getting the best out of everyone to form a piece injected with a little dose of each person's creative talents. however, it got to a point today a few times where whenever i began to speak i would automatically be cut off by someone else and despite my attempts to continue speaking, my voicebox was unable to match the power and the levels of the other person and as a result most of my ideas went unheard. as i mentioned earlier, i am part of a very talkative group which in addition to reaping obvious benefits as i forementioned also has a downside in that if you were my position..you can't just wait for others to finish speaking before you say your part because several different points and issues get raised before any hopes of a quiet moment arrive for you to speak. this leaves you in the tricky position of struggling to remember how you wanted to present your original point as well as the multiple new points you had to make in response to the new issues raised.
today we worked on the script for our next piece which was where the disagreements arose. our director emailed a first draft to us all to give feedback and having read it myself last night, there were a few things i wasn't very keen on surrounding one of our characters. what i did next was maybe a wrong move on my behalf because it seemed to cause more problems than progression. what i did was i made tweaks to the script on certain lines to create my own edit of the script with my logic being "my director wants to know what i think of the script and how i would change it in any way". this included a change in one line from "where's the lucky layday" to "where's this mysterious layday?". i changed it this way because i didn't think the character should see himself as God's gift to women but instead just be a person who thinks that he is funny when in fact he isn't. i used the word 'mysterious' but in truth i didn't really mind what the new word may be as long as it changed that characteristic of the character. this caused more problems than i think was necessary in my opinion because it was just one word in the script that i would have been happy to change and that my group were also happy to change yet it was complained about for a few minutes. fairly soon after we read that line, my group decided to change the word to 'lovely' which i was fine about, job done, everyone's happy. this was not the case. whenever i made a new point about a new issue, for some reason the discussion would fall back to that one line and why the word 'mysterious' was the wrong word to use. this puzzled me because we had already compromised and changed the word away from 'mysterious' to one that we all agreed on in 'lovely'. i didn't and still don't understand this to be frank because i felt that instead of moving on to the other issues surrounding our film, we found ourselves stuck in a rut. i tried to voice this out again but as usual the quality of my voice failed me.
in conclusion, i am still unconvinced with our idea but still respect my duty of putting every effort into the piece because i understand that i am priveleged to have got onto a course as prestigious as this and that i cant stand it when people dont pull their own weight in a team through moping. i do feel however that the maximum volume of my vocal chords has let me down although at the same time, if someone starts to say something..perhaps letting them finish before you come in with your own point could help.
today we worked on the script for our next piece which was where the disagreements arose. our director emailed a first draft to us all to give feedback and having read it myself last night, there were a few things i wasn't very keen on surrounding one of our characters. what i did next was maybe a wrong move on my behalf because it seemed to cause more problems than progression. what i did was i made tweaks to the script on certain lines to create my own edit of the script with my logic being "my director wants to know what i think of the script and how i would change it in any way". this included a change in one line from "where's the lucky layday" to "where's this mysterious layday?". i changed it this way because i didn't think the character should see himself as God's gift to women but instead just be a person who thinks that he is funny when in fact he isn't. i used the word 'mysterious' but in truth i didn't really mind what the new word may be as long as it changed that characteristic of the character. this caused more problems than i think was necessary in my opinion because it was just one word in the script that i would have been happy to change and that my group were also happy to change yet it was complained about for a few minutes. fairly soon after we read that line, my group decided to change the word to 'lovely' which i was fine about, job done, everyone's happy. this was not the case. whenever i made a new point about a new issue, for some reason the discussion would fall back to that one line and why the word 'mysterious' was the wrong word to use. this puzzled me because we had already compromised and changed the word away from 'mysterious' to one that we all agreed on in 'lovely'. i didn't and still don't understand this to be frank because i felt that instead of moving on to the other issues surrounding our film, we found ourselves stuck in a rut. i tried to voice this out again but as usual the quality of my voice failed me.
in conclusion, i am still unconvinced with our idea but still respect my duty of putting every effort into the piece because i understand that i am priveleged to have got onto a course as prestigious as this and that i cant stand it when people dont pull their own weight in a team through moping. i do feel however that the maximum volume of my vocal chords has let me down although at the same time, if someone starts to say something..perhaps letting them finish before you come in with your own point could help.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
from backlogging to movie watching
having arrived to the blogging game a tad late i shall try to backlog as well as i can but thats for another night..
tonight, my studenty lack of funds has forced me into my room and away from the lights and sounds of bournemouth's finest bars and clubs...oh well at least i can indulge in one of my favourite past times - film watching =D one of the good things about living in the student village is the fact that the library and all of its DVD archive glory is a mere 4 minutes away (3 on a good day). i love watching films because it gives me the chance to be entertained whilst (theoretically) picking up tips on how to better my own films. tonight is the turn of Fight Club and Taxi Driver (I'm feeling ambitious) so that should go well. the library's selection has in the past given me the chance to watch 'different' types of films that i may not have watched otherwise such as Jou Dou and Akira. did i mention that this is all free? *chuckles to self*
this evening i found a whole new aisle in the library that made my growingly geeky mouth water....the TELEVISION SECTION!! from what i saw there were a few programmes available to students (me) so who knows..a few evenings of getting to know Twin Peaks may beckon...
tonight, my studenty lack of funds has forced me into my room and away from the lights and sounds of bournemouth's finest bars and clubs...oh well at least i can indulge in one of my favourite past times - film watching =D one of the good things about living in the student village is the fact that the library and all of its DVD archive glory is a mere 4 minutes away (3 on a good day). i love watching films because it gives me the chance to be entertained whilst (theoretically) picking up tips on how to better my own films. tonight is the turn of Fight Club and Taxi Driver (I'm feeling ambitious) so that should go well. the library's selection has in the past given me the chance to watch 'different' types of films that i may not have watched otherwise such as Jou Dou and Akira. did i mention that this is all free? *chuckles to self*
this evening i found a whole new aisle in the library that made my growingly geeky mouth water....the TELEVISION SECTION!! from what i saw there were a few programmes available to students (me) so who knows..a few evenings of getting to know Twin Peaks may beckon...
Monday, 24 November 2008
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