Term 1

Personal reflection is what I'm supposed to be doing more of, so starting when we get back I'm going to be doing one every Sunday, looking back on the week, but I think now would be a good time to look back on term 1 as a whole.

For one, I can't quite believe it's already been 12 weeks. Outside class it's been a whirlwind of fun mixed in with learning stuff like "how long is too long to cook noodles?" and "how seriously should I take this use by date?". I love living in the city and I love having met such lovely people!

On the academic side, I really feel like I've learnt a lot. I love seeing the line between early film and TV and what we have now, and even further back to the theatre and music hall which was popular before the CRT had been invented. I also like that we're being taught about the business side of the industry since it's so important that we can actually work. I think I've done well with this, and I'm keeping up with the blogging, partly because it feels quite natural to me: I've been talking about and writing about films for ages, and even blogged before.

Writing I've enjoyed, but I find parts of it hard. I've always been a pretty miserable creative writer - draft 1 is a painful, painful experience for me and usually precluded by plenty of agonising. I'm not wholly satisfied with my own performance in this class yet. I didn't think my short story was very good (it's been an age since I wrote in prose and the subject matter felt very bleh) and I've only had a couple of premises I like. Of those, a couple were too long, one was a good length but I couldn't convey it in words (which probably means it's not a film), one was a play and two were animations. I do really love one of those, and I'm going to write it up as a personal project and try to find someone who can do the visuals: a chained-up bank pen stages a daring escape and tries to find its own place in the world. I like my tv idea much more, and I think it's a very interesting medium to work in, and I'm happier with my performance in that class.

I enjoyed the bits of editing we've done so far, and I think I'm quite good at it, but partly that's down to the fact I'm already familiar with the software. Still, I'd like to think I've passed the assessment. I don't feel like I've made enough progress with the camera: I still couldn't do much more than set it up and point it at something. I would still struggle to then record that something, since the record button has proved elusive. So next term, my resolution is to take the camera out and get practice.

So overall, I think it's been a good couple of months and I'm very much looking forward to the next couple of months to follow!

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