Harriet

Contribution and Collaboration

MI Day

I was part of the scheduling/ guests group for the Industries day, and it was a job I was looking forward to doing. In the initial meetings I was one of the people who took control, but in the end I didn’t have as much of an impact as I would have liked. Having said that, I feel like I was one of the people who bit the bullet and made calls where others held back; a massive highlight for me was talking to poor old Bud Tingwell (who was totally delightful!) – and I did really re-enforce for myself that lesson that people are generally nice and want to help you out if they possibly can. The thought of picking up and calling is worse than actually doing it! I ordered the wine, but someone else organised it all – all I did was dial and talk but.. that’s what “collaboration” is all about I suppose. someoone organises, some calls someone goes and picks it up.

Overall I thik I did a reasonably good job all things considered – more than some but not as much as others.

Showcase

My main contribution to the Showcase is my insistance, along with Dani that the after party be somewhere clean. Hopefully, now that Dani has organised somewhere you all appreciated my decisivness on the matter. I attempted to go and stuff envelopes, which is one of the main tasks requested of the marketing/party group or whatever we were called, but they hadn’t been delivered yet, and I did put a poster up at work, which I’m sure will attract noone, but I had a crack anyway. This past weekend I made some calls and tried to organise somewhere for the after party, but dani pipped me at the post and I’m sure she has done a better job than I would have!

Proactive Learning

The main lesson I learnt from taking part in the organisation of the both of the days is the power of just having a go, like I said before, I feel like I really bit the bullet and called people even if I was nervous about their reaction or what I would say. I had alot of knockbacks, but a few people came through as a result of my calls, and that’s what I remember, and that’s what I believe is important.

Participation

Overall, compared to my peers, I think I participated moderately well. I don’t think I should be held up as a shining example of the perfect student involvment in days like these – but I did have a go, I feel I learnt things, and I think on occaision I helped others do better as well. I could have attended more classes – I missed some because I finished work at 11 and it made it hard to be there by 10:30! I could have sought out more jobs and I could have been a bigger presence in both my groups, but I did my part, and as many others have said before me, because all the groups were pretty big, there was no real sense of urgency.

Connections/Intersections

I made a real effort to speak to people at the MI day – however I have to say that the “top guns” were the easiest to speak to, and after Jon left they were pretty TV/film-centric so I didn’t really feel any great desire to make a massive impression in the hope that they would offer me jobs or meetings with their head honchos. Of course they would surely have Radio contacts as well, but I felt like that was a big ask from a 10 minute conversation. All is not lost though, I feel like every experience you have talking to someone older/wiser/more expereinced than you is a good one, and the better impression you make every single time the more likely it is that one day you will stumble across someone who can offer you something good!

I have enjoyed the planning for both days, and although I wasn’t an amazing participant, I think I had a go and learnt quite a lot!

Therefore I give myself a Disctinction.

I feel like I have said so much about this project, it is hard to write again without boring myself, let alone the people who have to read this.

I am proud of our project. I think we worked hard, took advice, stretched ourselves and put in an amazing amount of physical, emotional and intellectual energy. Every time we went into the studio to work on it some more I think we suprised ourselves because we were really the result of our work, our technical, communitcation and production skills grew exponentially over the semester, and year.

I don’t think that “The Hard Line” is a radio master peice. I don’t think that people in yeras to come are going to dig it out and use it as an example of 21st centuary brilliance, but I think that given our combined 6 other subjects, 4 jobs, 21st parties, sporting commitments family crises, relationship problems, blah blahs and blah blahs, I think we did a really good job – and even if the end result hadn’t been as good as I think it is, the sheer mass of learning expereinces we have had would make it a worthwhile semester anyway.

When I listen back to the pieces, there are things that I would like to change, I think I am particularly frustrated with some of my acting.. but that is to be expected. Some things didn’t turn out as wonderfully as they sounded in my heads planning space, but again, that is to be expected and happens regularly on even the most professional works.

I think one of the main things I learnt about working on a peice like this is honesty – if you don’t like something you have to say it, cos it’s only going to come back and bite you later if you don’t.. and i think god that I was able to work with Don because I was able to be more honest with him than I can imagine myself being with almost anyone else.

TNA

I always nearly forget to write about TNA when I’m doing this snapshots, and that’s because it was a totally different expereince for me. The hard line was a completely positive, safe, happy learning experience for me, and while TNA taught me a lot, it did so in almost the opposite way.

With the Hard Line I learnt that I was more capable than I thought I was, with TNA i learnt that I was less talented than I imagined myself to be. Working on the Hard Line showed me the sort of working environment I relish, and TNA showed me the way that I do not want to operate in in the future.

I think that the RN/RMIT partnership is an amazing idea, and I can 100% appreciate that it was the best possible experience for heaps of the class, but I have never struggled so hard in my life. Normally I love Radio classes and everything to do with them, but our fortnightly TNA meetings started to stress me out the Thursday before and the build up of stress and worry continued until they were over on Monday nights. I am sooooo bad at editing stuff like that. In second year I spoke to Bruce about it, and we agreed that I should just keep it simple when I am forced to do projects that require a lot of editing, and put more energy into the aspects of radio that I am good at. Eventually that’s what I did with TNA, but it was harder because everyone else was producing these elaborately layered pieces and mine was just plain jane. I had also moved further down the path of my other skills, so the disparity between what I am good at and what I am bad at was even more obvious than last year.

It would have been much better for me, if we could have weighted our TNA/Primary projects how we liked, as was originally suggested, but I accept that it would be tedious proposition for Kyla when it came to marking, and co-ordinating us all.

I am glad that I did this project, because it leaves me 100% certain about how and where i can work best, but I’m sorry to the members of the class, and to Kyla to whom the project is their priority that I couldn’t have made a better contribution.

I tried very hard and never really delivered anything particularly excellent, and that’s not something that I’m used to. I struggled alot on my own, and didn’t seem to improve over the course of the semester – again somthing i’m not used to. Not since science in year 9 have I been faced with HAVING to do something that I wasn’t particularly good at and it was a tough feeling to get used to! I have said a million times over the course of the semester that I love radio producing. I love my job at 774, I loved my role in our primary project and I loved the times where I sat with other people and gave suggestions while they did the actual physical editing, but I just am no good at doing it myself!

Well our project has been by and large a positive experience, I don’t think we’re sailing to the finish line, but even if the seas are rocky, i’m sure we’ll get there in one piece. The main problem we’ve had so far is with time, both Don and I are pretty busy, and unforunatly we’re both so funny that when we’ve actually found the time to go in and do some work we spend a big proportion of the time laughing at each other’s hilarity… but never mind, I’d rather laugh than cry!

We’ve really been editing as we go, so we have another session of voice recording to do before we’re done.. but I’m really comfortable doing the voices now, I don’t even cringe when we listen back, except for when I slip out of character and I hear my actual voice, which I find really hard to deal with – but that’s a whole different issue!

I think that the style is fairly consistent the whole way through, and while it’s not roll-around-on-the-ground funny, it’s all pretty amusing I think, most people get at least a laugh or two out of each episode – and they’re only a couple of minutes long, so.. in reality it’s a laugh a minute! ha! (see.. how can it not be good?!)

We could have worked more consistantly, and spent less time mucking around, but at the same time, it’s our last semester of uni, you might as well have a good time! I’m pretty proud of the way we’ve handled the whole ordeal.. I think the end result will be worth listening to, and I think that we should get a good mark for it.

In terms of TNA, I really like our half our, I think it sounds true to the program, and has a lot of interesting bits. I have to do a bit more background still, but I have other things to concentrate on before that, so I will really think about it later.

I didn’t enjoy doing TNA at all really.. I would have much preferred to do a longer version of our primary project, but I understand that not everyone would want this. I know that my pieces have been the weakest, but it’s really truely not for lack of effort. I tried every single time, really really hard, and I am just not very good at that sort of editing. I can hear in my head what I want it to sound like, but I can’t construct it in real life. I should have insisted on getting help from other people, but I was stubborn and thought that eventually everything would just fall in to place.. I think I deserve a good mark for participation becuase I really did try so hard, but I don’t imaine I’ll get a particularly good mark for the end result, which is fine. I’m pleased that I came up with anything, there was a point where I was considering faking a broken leg, or telling the class that I was vomitting up blood just to avoid TNA work, so I’m proud that I persevered, and gave it a shot!

It was a thrustday afternoon. when I decided to buy don a big present. but that has nothign to do with this snapshot. working with don was incredible. he was smart, funny, modest (that was my best quality) and he had a really goood way with the ladies. If i was to give him a mark I would give him 100.

Primary Project

I really like our primary project. Most of the time we have alot of fun doing this project – doing the voices ourselves is really fun and it has forced us to stretch ourselves a bit in terms of both acting, directing and editing.

One example of this that springs to mind is when we wanted to get the voices of young children for one scene, so.. as has been our policy thus far we thought we would give it a go and see what we could come up with. I cannot remember the exact effect we put on our voices, but after a few goes we got something that I think really works – so much so that when I listen to that section I feel a bit emotional because the voice reminds me so much of home videos from when I was little. I’m actually convinced that it is a much younger version of myself!

There are some problems obviously – one section that we recorded on a monday evening when we were both exhausted is quite weak and I really want to do it again (sorry don if you read this, I haven’t spoken to you about it yet, but it’s been plaguing me since I listened to it through the headphones!). We are sort of editing as we go, and as has been discussed several times we are luckier than some in that we know exactly what order we want to have our material in so it will cut down dramatically on the time it takes to smooth over the whole production.

All in all, I am pretty happy with the progress of our primary project, I am 100% confidant we will have something at the very least reasonable at the end of the semester!

The Night Air

I have had a few hiccups on the TNA road so far, but hopefully I have overcome them now. I think my problem at the start was an overwhelming desire to be a good student, to try hard and to impress everyone as much as I could. What I really needed to accept is that while I am right to try as hard as I can, is to accept my strengths and weaknesses. To be honest, this project doesn’t play to my strengths, and I knew that was the case right from the start.. So what I need to do is to take it really back to basics, do what I know I can do, try what I think I might be able to, and ask for help with the rest. I think that in these new smaller teams it will be better, because I can palm off some of the work that I know I will struggle with and focus on what I will do easily. I think working with Phoebe and Don will be really good, because we are all good friends, but different in our approaches and our skill bases so hopefully it will all gel together.

My last TNA assignment was really stresful to present, because I hadn’t made a fully edited collage like everyone else, but I did what I could with my skills and strengths and I will just keep on doing that. I can help others out as much as they like – but I am also going to rely on the help of others.

For the Media Industries Day, or whatever ‘hip’ name we have given it now, I am on the guests committee. There are three of us interested in radio, and we this is probably an over-representation in terms of the whole course, and so together we decided that we ought to aim for “big names” and people that have had experience in a range of mediums so that we wouldn’t lose the interest of the rest of the audience, yet are still hearing from people in the industry we are aiming for. As a result, I am concentratiing on speaking to someone fairly established at ABC radio, and researching the commercial radio sector to see who would be appropriate, given our criteria. I think this is particularly important, as, due to the nature of the course, and the things we have availble to the students, lecturers and tutors – I feel that commercial radio hasn’t really been discussed as an option and I would like to hear from someone in that sector.

Once our guest list has been established, i was also contribute to the forming of questions, the order in which people will speak, and on the day, greeting the guests I have invited and making sure they are looked after well.

I think that this is a medium to high level of participation, and so for the Production Project screening, I should aim to have a low to medium level of participation so as to average it out. I am naturally a pretty bossy person, and as I’m pretty busy at the moment I think that I should aim on hanging back a bit to give other people a chance. Of course I will need to do the things I have committed to doing, but I need to trust the other people in my “committee” and allow them to do their part without forcing my views down their throat. my way isn’t always the best way.

For the Screening, I am in the “publicity and party” group. I would like to organise the after party, but I am a bit worried about this, primarly due to my complete lack of cool. I am a dag, and have no natural instinct for ‘coolness’, but oh well. In our first meeting, Dani and I made it clear that we wanted our after party to be somewhere “clean” – I think that the Screening is supposed to be an event that shows the result of all our years of education – learning and maturity, and so the after party should reflect that and be a fun, “grown up” party, with out the sticky floors and dirty toilets and smoky venues that we have all experienced for end of year celebrations in the past. Don’t get me wrong – I want it to be a lot of fun, but I want it to be “nice” so people think back and feel proud, rather than disgusting!

Well. we are basically a third of the way through now; and while I’m enjoying this semester more than I ever have in the past, I’m impatient to finish.

Like Don said; we are so far on track with our timeline, and I really do think that it is a good one that we have set ourselves.. We have given ourselves alot of time for everything without eating into every spare second of our lives.

We have put a lot of thought into the scripts so far, which is something that I mentioned I was concerned about early on and we still have another scheduled session to polish it off. I think that we have decided to do the voices ourselves; while we know we’re not the most talented voice actors in the world and we won’t have the experience of going through the casting process, we have decided that in the spirit of the 12th man, it can be funnier when the audience is aware that it is the creators acting out the characters. Also – because we have so thoroughly discussed the concept between ourselves, we are aware of exactly what we expect and can take as much or as little time as we need without running to other people’s schedules as well as our own busy lives. This solves the other two concerns I had written about in the first snapshot – casting and directing.. so I think it is the best option.

Now.. onto the Night Air. I have put quite a bit of thought into the ideas behind time – our topic. And apart from going to all the appropriate meetings and doing all the assigned work – I have been in touch with Audrey Niggenegger
about quoting from her novel “the time traveler’s wife” in our assignment. It is such a beautiful book – I love it and, luckily for me, it is also extremely pertinant to our topic!

Overall.. my goals have stayed the same since the first snapshot.. but many of my concerns have been addressed and I am feeling confidant and happy about what lies ahead.

As Don has so rightly pointed out; our project has changed somewhat since it’s original incarnation.

We are now producing 30 minutes of material, which instead of being two weeks worth of listening for our audience will end up being just one week.. or 15 minutes or so, becuase of all the material they “choose not” to listen to.

I think that this allows us to have alot of fun with the script, and also with teh format.

Now. my own experience with the choose-your-own-adventure genre is somewhat limited, I think that in their book format, they are primarily aimed at young children, and when I was in the demographic that they were marketed at; my parents were primarily choosing my reading material and I have a sneaking feeling that my parents were a bit snobbish in their selection for me. As it turns out I have only ever read one such book, which I believe was a joint venture between morris gleitzman and paul jennings? (please..correct me if i’m wrong). Anyway, the point is.. I enjoyed it alot; but after a few different “adventures” I was unsatisfied becuase there was this big thick book and I was only reading a portion of it’s pages, so I went back and read the book from start to finish, which was actually really interesting in terms of working out how it was all set up. I was a strange kid.

Anyway, point is – it’s quite a big genre, one that I will need to look into a bit before the final stages of our scripting which is next sunday.. i think we have a bit to learn about cliff-hangers and the structure of choose-your-own-adventure, although it will be different in audio to in print.

PS I wrote this ages ago but only posted it today.. i don’t know why!

Well. I have been extremely uninspired about this whole Media Industries things up until now. While I think the discussions we’ve had have been good, I have been very sceptical about having topics such as “how did you break into the industry” because we have all heard time and time again that it is largely good luck, good timing and having the right friends.

This side of the industry (a term which shits me to tears) is one that I loathe. I hate the idea of making friends for personal gain, or of having to act a certain way to try and get people to like me. I don’t like the idea of competition in that way – but on the flip side it would drive me absolutely insane if I thought I had missed out on a job that i believed I could do well because the person that got it had smarmied (is this a word?) up to the person giving the job.

It’s a slightly toned own casting couch as far as I’m concerned. I’m all for getting along well with your colleagues; and i know that in any job, and industry (grr.) personality plays a factor – but the idea that I could miss out to someone cos they’re blah blah’s brothers sister-in-law and they go to the same pub – makes my blood boil.

However – in response to my own rant – suck it up harriet; or get out while you still can.

Anyway. the point I was going to make is; Today in the lecture/whatever I was very suprised by how much I cared. As I progress through this degree, and get older, I’m increasingly taking a “if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it properly” point of view. In other words I’m turning into a Dad… but I feel that I have left far too many half arsed efforts in my wake because I’d rather go to bed, or read a book, or chat to my friends or whatever than sit around perfecting something, or proof reading or going that extra mile – but after pulling out all the stops on a few projects, I felt so satisfied, and I have realised that if i’m going to make an attempt to break into what we all know is a very competitive world, then I have to do everything I can to set me apart from the rest. SO.. I have meandered off topic again; sooo point is I suprisingly, care quite a lot about the Industiries day.

I think that our panel idea is really good.. I think the division of topics is good and I’m really confidant we can get some good people to talk. I think that if we get big enough names, people will flock, becuase it doesn’t sound boring anymore – it sounds exciting I think!

I would really like to work in tracking down the guests.. this was something that I loved doing at work experience, and something that I feel I am reasonably good at. other than that, I suppose I can decorate.. or somthing girly. But I would really like to arrange the guests. I also thought for a minute that I would like to “stage manage” or whatever cheesy name we called it, but then I realised that I’d probably rip my hair out, and I quite like my hair.

I’m excited about it, but I’m an emotional girl these days (lets face it – i’ve been emotional my whole life) and so I think that I would do badly trying to organise all the people I’ve gotten to know throughout this degree, I would let my feelings about people get too far involved!

So. there you go. I don’t know if we have to write about this or not. But anyway. now I have.

Kyla has been a super keen emailer (I think it’s good, it inspires me to try harder when I can see she is putting in a whole heap of effort) and has asked us to think about the following questions; initially for last monday, but now for monday week;

What does time mean or measure – how do we understand it and what is its significance?

Well. this is quite a big question I think, and one that no doubt many more intelligent and better educated than myself have grappled with to no avail. I think that time measures our life really.. we divide our life up in to managable segments; a minute, an hour, a day a week, and gives us something to hang on to. We know roughly how long we are for this world (100 years in my opinion is a fair run!) and so we plan, using time, how best to fill our lives. without time, I think it would be much harder to plan, and to organise, and i know that for most poeple planning and organising are things that come reasonably naturaly.

Perceptions of time in relation to ourselves and our lives – as ripe, rotten, premature, lost, gained…

Again, not an easy thing to think about.. this relates back to my previous answer.. if we are using time to plan our lives, then lost time, gained time, and “the right time” are all pertinant factors. We only know that we have left something too late if it was something that we wanted to do. We loose time when we spend it doing something we don’t enjoy, or that we consider un-important.. a “waste of time” and when we get something unenjoyable over with quickly, we have “free time”, time unplanned for, that we can use as we wish. In the end – our preoccupation with time seems to boil down to having enough for the things we want to do, and spending as little as we can get away with doing the things that we don’t. It is of course not so simple; sometimes we don’t know what we want until we miss out – sometimes, often in fact we have to spend time doing things we don’t enjoy to facilitate the things we love. I think human existance comes down to this, making yourself as happy as you can, and this, for most people involves a careful balance of work, play, sacrifice, selfishness, of being stressed and relaxing, of being right and wrong and so on and so on.

Wanting to defy time, bend it to our will – speed time up, slow it down, make it stop

Once again my answer links to my previous response. It’s all to do with how much we enjoy things.. I remember when I was little mum and dad used to tell me that it was “one episode of playschool” to drive to grandma and grandpa’s. While I loved watching playschool I hated the half hour drive to grandma and grandpa’s and so I could find no comparison between the two supposed similar time frames. Eventually I was convinced that Mum and Dad weren’t pulling my little 3 or 4 year old leg, so when watching playschool I would put all my concentration into willing it to stretch for as long as the drive to reservoir went, but unfortunatly to no avail.

When I was in year 12, and I knew that I would eventually have to leave Strathcona and all my safety nets, I would sometimes lie in bed awake, rather than sleeping, because time goes so fast when we are asleep and I wanted my beloved school days to last as long as possible.

On Contary, when I was working at la porchetta, or in some classes at uni, I would write the numbers 1-30 on my hand and cross each off as a minute passed, breaking up the time into smaller chunks somehow made it feel like it went quicker, even though as we all know, a half hour is a half hour is a half hour.

It is all about enjoyment. when you are happy and entertained the time whizzes by, when you are a bored or miserable it drags forever..

I have often wished I had the ability to stop time, becuase although memories and mementos are amazing things; nothing beats the experience of being there in the moment.. or at least this is what our society privleges above all else. a picture may tell a thousand words, but being physically in the moment is like a thousand pictures and a million words that can never truely be recreated.

Concepts of timelessness and the end of time

Gosh. Time is such an ingrained concept, I can’t imagine life without it.. because even if a minute went for a year – surely you could still count one-cat-and-dog, two-cat-and-dog, three-cat-and-dog up to sixty and count the actual minutes in the streched out one.

The end of time – what would there be? nothing? but how can there be nothing? It’s one of those problems that make me feel like my head is going to implode.. not explode mind, just collapse inwards under the weight of it all.

The end of time woudl have to be the end of everything, there would be no time, no space, no light, no dark. Or, it would be a new begining, but surely with our knowledge and systems, we could just start again or keep going, and then it wouldn’t be the end of time at all. would it? weird.

“The human desire to manipulate time will be juxtaposed with sections depicting the futility of this dream” – how could we possibly realise this?

Well. time travel and understanding how the world came into being, when time began, and when and how and if time will end are some things that have had me thinking for as long as i have thought intelligently.. and I don’t doubt that all throuh my life i will struggle with these questions and never find anwers.

manipulating time.. going backwards or forwards, or pausing actual time so that you can rush around and do whatever you wanted. To go backwards, would surely mean that you were already there… twice if it was during your lifetime. If so, would your behaviour be predetermiined? is all our behaviour this way? if not.. would your decisions impact the future? (the simpsons did something on this!) To go forwards, would that also imply that the future was decided – that we do not in fact have freewill? I HATE that idea. maybe it is just one of several possible alternatives. one of billions of possible alternatives. I often wonder.. if there is a parallel universe wheere one small decision I make branches off into a new life. For example.This morning I was going to put on a jumper, but then I realised that it smelt a bit stale because I wore it out for dinner last night, so I wore a different jumper.. maybe that moment was a “branch moment” and in a parallel universe, I put on the smelly jumper, and maybe my day was totally different, maybe it was very similar, but instead of putting two jumpers in the wash when I got home i just put in the way and over the years this contributed to climate change and eventually we all flooded and died. Clearly I don’t know, but I often wonder.

Anyway. back to the question. To achieve this in our TNA episode. I think it would be good to talk to time travel man. maybe a philosopher about determinism/free will. I would like to talk to people who have theories about the begining of time.. to people who believe in parallel universes, to people who want to go back and change something in their life, to others who have no regrets.. I think that the conflict and confusion that these various viewpoints provide will go some way to demonstrating the “futility of the dream”. I would be every bit as excited about time travel as the next person, but given the option i don’t think i’d support it ultimately.. too many risks, and for what gain?

I also remembered a book I read called the time travellers wife which, reasonably obviously deals with time travel.. maybe i’ll email them just to see what costs are involved in reading passages from the book – it probably won’t be worth it.. but i loved that book and it would be interesting to go through the process.