Digital Media Cultures has started off with a very complex lecture; however a lot of it was referencing work by Marshall McLuhan, which I intensively studied during my A level in Media Studies.
I made a lot of notes throughout the lecture, just short quotes and various items that we discussed. I'm going to just select a few that stand out - points that are powerful and are the basis of this module.
- Media is culture and culture is media
- 'The world is a global village' - Marshall McLuhan, 1960
- 'The book world that we had and the electronic world that we have'
- The tribal man is resurfacing - retribalising. We are in the process of getting rid of the individual
- Media is a window on the world (this statement is arguable)
- The media can be described as light refraction. A story arises, and enters the media. The media then churns out dozens of variations of the story
- Western media is very much censored compared to other cultures
- TV has 2 divergent trajectories - Commercial and Public Service. But which is dominant?
- Knowledge isn't valued anymore because it's all at our fingertips
- We are 'users' rather than 'viewers'
- Digital media is seen as interactive because the media is responsive to the preferences of the user
- The internet is hyper-textual - it can turn in to a rabbit hole in which you find various paths and is an avenue of possibilities
I found the lecture enlightening because we spoke about a lot of subjects that I have touched on in the past but in this case we elaborated and went in to a lot more detail than I have previously ventured.
We were also told today that for this module we will be submitting a 2000 word essay that is fully referenced and researched. To me this sounds interesting because I enjoy doing written assignments and also doing individual work. We also have to do a group project which will involve a 2000 word report. This assignment will give me the chance to work with others as part of team, which I also like to do. Most of our modules are team orientated so I like that we do have some individual aspects in Digital Media Cultures.
After the morning lecture with Keith, we then had Beyond The Camera with Ian. I was interested to discover what this module was all about when we heard about it in our first year. In this module we are going to be using a lot of After Effects to create still and moving images whilst incorporating special effects. I am excited to start using After Effects because we only touched on it last year; learning to use a new program will be hard but I am looking forward to gaining a new skill. Last year we learned how to use Dreamweaver so I know that I do have the motivation to use Adobe programs. I also know how to use Photoshop well so I think this will help me along.
Our first assignment is to create a single frame composite using Photoshop. Ian did mention that this was to get everyone back in to Photoshop to refresh everyone's memories. I use Photoshop quite often to edit my photography and such so I am hoping I can produce something really good. I already have an idea for this assignment which we have to talk about in the next lecture.
A lot of useful material was given during this lecture which we were advised to take a look at. Things such as the Keylight Green Screen program and the Audacity Audio program.
Something new that I learned today is that when we are going to be using green screen for our special effects, lighting is extremely important. Of course, this makes sense as you do not want any shadows on the green screen as this would be harder to edit out in a post production program.
So today was a productive day, two whole lectures and I didn't fall asleep! But seriously I am glad to be back in university and I am thinking these 2 modules are going to be very interesting. I like that our modules only run until Christmas because I feel as though we will learn quicker and also more once Christmas passes about other aspects of the media.
Speak soon!
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