THE COURSES AND GROWN UP STUFF

Some of you may be wondering whether I’m actually at uni or just having an amazing time but you’ll be pleased to know I’m up to date with all my readings and assignments so far and the courses are REALLY good.
It took me a while to get into them, and I was pretty overwhelmed at the start wondering what the hell I’d got myself in for. The readings seemed to be never ending (and even all the students were stressing to me how important they were and that we were tested on them!) so I was getting pretty worried. So anyway it’s taken a little while to get my head around it and I’m not sure I fully understand but it’s a great learning curve.
The courses are soooo different from the UK, much more media and communications than cultural studies and very practical.
Media Policy and Media Law
This is actually an amazing course to do because I actually learn all about the law behind media, what you can and can’t do which is great. They actually compare a lot of ideas from the law in the UK, so that’s interesting too as I don’t know much about that!! We also have to do a research brief and proposal, and then actually do the research and essay which is perfect as I’m missing that assignment/dissertation prep in England. (Liviu and Denise will definitely be pleased at Newcastle with that!)
Media Democracies and E-Participation
This links heavily with politics, but it’s actually quite interesting. And also seems to overlap a lot with Media Policy and Media Law. The e-participation part is wicked; the lecturer has made an online world called Incognita where we all have our own character which we’ve made up. Each seminar group is a group in this world, and our one is the liberal media group. I made my character as the editor of the broadsheet newspaper.
We all have to have a secret to our character too which only us and the lecturer know, so no-one else in the group does. Half way through the semester there will be a big event in the town which every group will need to react to, and if it’s not getting exciting enough then the lecturer will start revealing people’s secrets! It’s teaching us about democracies but as actually virtually living in one so it’s pretty interesting.
Video Production B
I blagged my way onto this course big time as you’re supposed to have done Video Production A first! (as I mentioned before) and it’s pretty overwhelming but sooooo exciting!! We have two projects, one that we do on our own (or in groups of 2-3) and then a big group one.
The first one I’m working with two others who seem really nice (and both volunteer at Radio Adelaide!) and we’re making a music video. Got to enhance my skills for the dream job obviously! It’s really professional though, we have to find an unsigned band and have lots of meetings with them to make sure we’re doing what they want, also has to be contracted up as they could actually use it as their first music video!
The second project is a short film, which is also pretty profess as the lecturer has told us we could actually enter them into short film comps if their good enough.
We all had to write a film synopsis for the first week and then the lecturer read them out and we all voted on the three we wanted to make. 3 groups of 9 and I’m working on one that incorporates some facebook payback.