My Course so far!!

What I have learnt and achieved so far in Media Studies:

Considering I started Media Studies two weeks later than everyone else, I feel I have made a fantastic recovery. I have nearly caught up with all of the practical work and have finished all of the classroom work that I missed out on.

I started out with a theory lesson where we were really learning the basics on camera techniques and editing techniques. When I say this, I mean things like shot types, and editing cuts and so on. The real basic stuff which a media student really needs to know. This was very useful to know as I now understood the foreground of what I was going to be learning about in media. Since then we have began to look into the same sort of things, but in a lot more detail. For example, we have been looking at much more complex shot types and ways of editing films and scenes.

Recently in class, we have begun to look at sound usage in films as well, for example non-diagetic sounds and diagetic sounds. We have also learnt about more basic things like soundtracks and ambient sounds. To put our knowledge of all of these things (Cinematography, Misen-scene and sound) we were given prep where we had to break down the five first minutes of a film of our choice and then write an 800 word essay on what techniques the director used, why he used these techniques and the effect they had on the viewer. I was very pleased with the results that I got back for this. In the last lesson we then had to do the same thing, except for this time it was in test conditions. We also had to do it on a film which we didn’t know and only had an hour to do so. It was a lot harder but it is what we will have in the real exam (50% of our grade).

On the practical side of things, I am yet to catch up on everything that I have to get done. I have done everything except for a photo shop workshop (why I haven’t got any photos on my blog yet) which I will get done as soon as possible!

My first practical lesson was on how to use a camera. I had this lesson with Matt and I was very interesting, as we were introduced as a class to the pieces of equipment that we would have to use over the next two years. In this lesson we only touched down on the basics like how to change the shutter speed, and how to zoom in and out and so on. We then had a practical session where we had to film a short 5-10 piece of film, which may sound easy, but is actually quiet a challenge for the first ever time using one of the cameras. It was lots of fun though seeing the potential of everyone in the group. We have now been told that we are doing a scripted scene this week in the film studio which I am really looking forward to, and hopefully will learn lots more at.