w13 - bye bye birdie

So, no more pracs, and no more classes - for that matter. Gotta love week 13.. Lucky for some, unlucky for others.

For those of us seasoned veterans, 'Week 13' has come to be synonymous with 'Self-Assessment'. Good old self-assessment. It really drives me bonkers because if you give yourself a shit mark, no-one's really going to argue with you (unless you truly deserve it), but if you give yourself a good mark, people are going to just think you're full of it (in which case, you wonder if you actually are).

As it happens, I chose the path of awarding myself a good mark. I rightfully deducted a mark for the lecture I didn't attend, and was going to deduct one for the tute I had to come late to, 'til I remembered all those times I returned the filming gear on my own, all the running around I did in aid of making our production run as smoothly as possible, all the money that came out of my pocket (petrol, tapes, props) and realised I'd be doing myself a disservice if I didn't nominate to receive a HD.

Moreso than last semester, I have gone out of my way in tutes to give as much feedback as possible. I am not that ridiculously competitive that I would dream of inhibiting the creative process of other students' work; if I think something can be improved, they deserve to have that brought to their attention. The other 2 groups had real potential with their projects, and for the most part they did really, really well in driving home exactly what it was those projects were about.

And while being on the receiving end of feedback has never been something I've enjoyed, again I've done my best to take everything that other students (and my tutor) suggested on board, and the changes we made were evident in today's screening. For one, the sound has improved in leaps and bounds, and the cuts make more sense than they did in our rough cut. Our work has evolved from something we were cringing at merely 3 or 4 weeks ago, to something we are proud to show off.

There's nothing I wouldn't have done for this subject. It has consistently been prioritised over everything else, and for good reason. This has been my sole creative outlet for the semester, so I have only been 110% willing to get behind it.

Thankfully we also had the privelege of David & Christine working together with us to hone these concepts and guide us towards success. And after seeing how far each group has come, they have certainly done a fantastic job.

...between a rock and a hard place

Is anyone else shitting their proverbials about the exam we're meant to be handing in next week?

I've been (albeit a good 5-10 minutes impunctually) to every lecture, prac, group gathering associated with this subject.. Read that freaking dossier from week to week and still, still cannot fathom how I'm expected to demonstrate my acquired 'knowledge' in an exam format... Unless we're talking in terms of safety precautions, or what button to press and when, or what to plug into where, which has been about the extent of it.

Seriously though, the whole assessment approach this course has taken is completely bizarre. I'm going to write a nice constructive response when the course evaluation surveys do the rounds in the coming weeks. This course could really have done with a Summer intensive to show students how to operate the technology PRIOR TO getting put into groups... Because it's not really fair to expect Paul and David to aid each and every one of us in our individual understandings of how the cameras and editing suites work. That's just not practical.

As a student, however, it's just so frustrating having to work with all this gear while pretty much clutching at the straws trying to get your head around it. I find this especially difficult being from Prof Comm, where movies are not my life 24/7. I thought the fact that I could appreciate communications more broadly would assist me in taking this course, but if anything it seems to have had the opposite effect.

Knowledge in philosophy, literature, drama, the classics, history and politics is what gives context to any media, for me, but I can't seem to find a level with anyone with a straight film bias. My HD in Broadcast means nothing because I can't translate any of that into what we're doing now - and it seems to be because of a) lack of one-on-one teaching and b) 2nd yr media clique culture. I feel stuck.