Blog #9: That's when I decided to break it.

I found myself sitting in Ferney's office. He was looking at me expectantly. I had to make a decision. Photography class or Media? I had had my heart set on photography since grade 9, but things had changed and I found myself seriously debating the issue. After talking it out and thinking it over I decided on the media course. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in university, but I figured media might be a little more beneficial than photography.

So I changed my courses, not entirely sure how I felt about the whole thing. But I figured I would give the class a chance. Ms. Jeppesen was the teacher, I had had her in grade 9 art and had no problems with her, it was an open course so I wasn't expecting that big of a work load either.

Once the class began I was a little surprised at how much the course covered. There was also quite a bit of work. None of it was ever particularly difficult, some of it was even fun; especially the group projects. I enjoyed getting together with my group and getting things done.

Throughout the course we learned not only terms and the evolution of media, but also how to critically analyze things that we are exposed to every day. Even things such as commercials and biased in the news, things that I had never really taken much notice to before. It made me much more aware of the world around me and gave me the ability to create well-informed opinions on what I was looking at.

Using all of this information the class was told to write blogs, which I found myself enjoying. I liked being able to give my opinion and personalizing my blog was actually pretty fun.

There was rarely a class where I had nothing to do, and even though sometimes the discussions were a little slow they were normally pretty entertaining. They were even more fun when we got a little side tracked from the actual work that had to be done and we ended up talking about the Cancer Bats or watching Haley's games of hangman or Vince causing small explosions at the pencil sharpener or Rachael, Justine and I playing games on our iPods.

Time well spent, as far as I'm concerned.

Despite the fun stories I heard from the photography class, I was very pleased with taking media. It was a lot of fun, even the projects and trips were awesome. Despite the fact that I still have an exam to write and I'm not sure of my final mark, I'm not too worried about it and would definitely tell anyone considering it to take the class.

Blog #8: Write it, cut it, paste it, save it. Load it, check it, quick - re write it.

At first, creating a music video seemed like it would be a whole lot of fun, and it was. I just didn't realize all of the work that would have to go into it to make sure that everything looked the way it should. It took a lot of time and effort to make sure that the timing was correct and everything was synced to the music the way I wanted it to be.

I managed to get some really good video footage and finding pictures usually wasn't too difficult. My biggest issue came with putting everything to the correct timing of the music. I used movie maker to put it all together and I would do small sections at a time. When I was sure that portion was synced I would go to the next one. However, when I would go back to the beginning I found a lot of it was out of sync. When I went back to check it again it would be in sync, but every time I started it from the beginning it would change again. This caused some problems for me.

Just a few problems *insert sarcasm here*

Another problem was that in the live footage, the singer sang at a different pace than the recording of the song. The timing wasn't too far off though, so that wasn't as bad.

However, the pictures and the other video footage that I used ended up working out really well. I was really happy with the way it turned out overall, despite the small timing issue. Next time I might give myself a little more time to create the actual music video.

Here's a look at my finished project:




While at Much Music I got to see a lot of behind the scenes things that I didn't realized happened during a live show. I was surprise at how small the actual studio was, it looks so different on television than when you're actually there. It surprised me how they rehearsed things before they did them live on tv as opposed to just going on with it.

I was also surprised that the producers of the show were so heavily involved. They told us when to applaud and when to cheer and encouraged us to always look happy and excited. They also stood right behind the camera to direct how things should be going and when certain discussions should be wrapped up and what should be addressed next.

That fits right in with the idea that all media is a construction. It's all made to look a certain way to the audience viewing it. The producers of the media have a message that they want to convey and they do so all of the time, even when you don't realize it. The media is produced for an audience and that's something that's always kept in mind. That is why things have to look a certain way, they want it to look good to the audience.

Speaking of good looking...

This changes the way I view live tv. I didn't think so much would go into making sure it looked a certain way. Also, I didn't realize they would run through things first in order to make it look a certain way when the show is actually live. It sort of takes away from the whole idea of a live television show.