Week 2

In week 2 for MPI303 we presented to the class our proposal for our major piece of work, I'd created a PowerPoint presentation to show for mine. I was very nervous as again I don't like to do public speaking even if our class is only 10 people! Most people in the class had decided to make a website of some sort or do a whole heap of other design stuff and finish of with a website. I really did not want to do a website I am over them and Cindy was the only other person to think the same. Hannah and Alice are the only ones in the class who decided to collaborate which was interesting to see.

As in my proposal I'd said I wanted to do a entertaining stop motion documentary on why people dance however I hadn't really thought about the amount of work and said it would go for 10 minutes which everyone scoffed at and in hindsight it was rather stupid of me to say it let alone think it! It would require a lot of work and Jenny asked to see me after class. After class Cindy and I both stayed behind and nutted everything out with Jenny and we came to the conclusion for mine I would still do a documentary on why people dance but the way I was to go about it would be different. Instead of photographing my dancers to create stop motion (one of the reason I chose to do stop motion was so I could photograph as it is an area I want to be apart of after my degree and what I feel comfortable with most) I would film them and then take every X number of frame out to still give it that jittery look of stop motion. We also decided no voice overs, we would have text for the dancers answers and appropriate music over the top. I left the class feeling a lot more settled and with the homework to source dancers, locations, play with After Effects, ask my dancers why they dance, and source equipment.

For COM123 that week we had to see the film W at Forum 6, which is a film about George W. Bush and the lead up to his presidency and the whole debacle of the Weapons of Mass Destruction. I was excited to see this film but left feeling exhausted. It was very interesting to see his younger years of going to college and joining the Skulls and to see him as an alcoholic. I don't know a lot about politics but I have always thought of George W. as a bit of an idiot but this film really portrayed him as basically retarded with the lowest possible I.Q. of anyone ever. Now I have to think he is an idiot but he did manage to become President - twice! So either he's not that stupid or the American public is for voting in an idiot, made me think a bit. Was well done with characters portrayed well and it really showed Cheney in a terrible way that he was manipulating Bush a lot but at the same time Bush was being easily persuaded and manipulated by a lot of his advisers but not as much as Cheney was. The film went for way too long and concentrated a bit too much on his presidency and I would have preferred to see younger Bush's life. They chose to do some extremely bizarre camera shots which really were not needed and were nauseating in fact. Forum 6 also needs to turn their cooling down as freezing in the cinema definitely makes it harder to watch an excruciatingly long film!

In MPI304 we all questioned different things about the two assignments we have an trying to distinguish them from our MPI303 assignments. We were told we really needed to start our seminar as we would be presenting them very soon!

In class for PHT220 we watch recent episode of Media Watch which was all about the different media companies trying to get the latest scoop on the Victorian Bush Fires even though the public had asked them to respect their privacy and give them some space. It showed different News companies trespassing through crime scene areas and reporters harassing victims and saying they understand they want to be left alone but continuing to harass them. It was interesting and quite sad because at this point my family was still unsure about whether or not my dads house was still standing. Chris gave an interesting lecture about photojournalism and photo essays. The book of photo essays that was passed around called something like 18 was very interesting look at 5 or 6 young 18 year olds who had had a hard life so far, 2 of the stories were from my home town and area which shocked me a lot. We did a practical in the studio where some of the actors played different famous people and some people had cameras and had to capture the image according the instructions Chris gave i.e. once a certain line is spoken you have 5 seconds to shoot.

I came up with the idea to follow someone for the day as my Documentary photography assignment. My friend Tom turned 19 on the Saturday so I thought it might be interesting to follow him as well as the fact we were having A Night of Passion that night (a night of drinking Passion Pop to celebrate his birthday). The following went quite well was a little boring at times and was a little repetitive, also that night I joined in the celebrations too early and forgot about the assignment and by the time I remember I didn't want to bring my good camera out and get it ruined so that part of the idea kind of failed and looking at the other photos I think most of the idea failed. It's hard to make this idea interesting and as you are only allowed 5 images it was hard to choose good ones and there would be massive gaps of time between them and they probably wouldn't make sense as a whole.

This week I also had to prepare myself for the interview I was having the following week. I was having an interview to be apart of the Exchange Program here at Charles Sturt University and had been given 9 possible question which they would ask me 6 and was asked to make sure I was prepared for them all.

I knew this weekend I had a large amount of homework to complete before the next week and I felt I managed to complete a satisfactory amount, in saying this my parents have also been quite impressed with my attitude to work thus far and this is also making want to continue with my work efforts so they remain impressed.