Reflective Analysis: Multimedia Journalism

Multimedia journalism has been a very inciteful module for me that has shown me a great deal about the world of new media. We looked at various forms of new media in lesson and we were given the ability to learn and write about each one our own personal blog using WordPress. We were taught how web based writing works, and the need to keep things short and snappy with links pointing to more information. However at no point were the blogs purely academic, which meant we could customize them and change them to suit our taste. Having a bit of flexibility and freedom in what we did with it made it quite fun, and also gave us the ability to be creative and unique. I enjoyed the lessons and some of the things we had to do, such as being able to completely slate some of the various websites out there that are so poorly designed they may as well be deemed useless.

In terms of the audio and video assessments it was more a case of refining my skills than learning them, as i had done film and t.v. prior to this in college and knew how to handle video/ audio equipment. Never the less it was still a learning curve trying to find the right approach to interview people – something i have never done before. I liked the fact the module was mainly practical based because i think when it comes to multimedia you really need the hands on apporach to get the best learning exerience from it. Also its far more fun to be doing it yourself rather than watch somebody else do it for you!

The biggest learning point for me was just the eye opener to the world of new media that this module had. I never realised there were such a wealth of useful things out there on the internet. All of them related to journalism and while i didn’t like all the things we had to trial and test it was still and eye-opener none the less. This was a great practical module with plenty of hands of stuff to do that i like and enjoy, it was good fun!

Evaluation: Audio/Video work

With my audio and video pieces now handed in an can safely say i am happy with them. I had to produce two short pieces of multimedia journalism in the form of an video vox pop and an audio podcast. Each had to have a relevant topic that was both interesting and informative but could be condensed into a short time frame of two to three minutes.

For the video project i chose to ask people how they thought the university could be improved and record their various responses. The answers varied from clever to just plain weird, but most of my interviews were acceptable enough to go in the final cut. Though interviewing people was scary at first it was a great confidence builder that im glad i did. I made sure to frame shots correctly and to check for bad sound – however on two of my clips the sound was a slight worse than i had hoped. With that said i did my best to fix and adjust the bad sound in order for it to sound natural in the final edit, but for a couple of clips the result still wasn’t the perfect one i wanted. I can’t say i didn’t try my best however, which is why even though it could have been better im still happy with the result. I will indeed learn for next time.

For the audio podcast i chose to create a piece on the pressures of moving to university for parents and how it affected them. I managed to persuade my dad to be an interviewee and planned on interviewing one of my friends at university. However once i had finished my dads interview it became apparent how short two minutes actually was and i realised i only needed him as an interview. I was very happy with the technical side of the podcast, as i managed to clean up and perfect the sound to my liking. There was no popping whatsoever and i cut the speech so that there were no “errrs” or “umms” to slow the pace. I thoroughly enjoyed doing the podcast and the results were just as i wanted them to be!

Evaluation: Group Blog

With the group blogs now at an end i am happy to say that overall i am very pleased. The result was that of a very high standard, and something that as a group i think we all contributed to rather well. The basic idea for the blog was to provide an insight into the Illuminati and how it worked, and to see if the theories surround the conspiracy could be justified. Needless to say i had a lot of fun doing it, and it helped that my group were as keen as i was. At our first meeting we decided who was researching what area, and then we agreed upon a rough timetable to which we could all follow. We then arranged regular meetings after this to keep each other up to date on proceedings and always made sure to help each other if somebody was unclear via a facebook group we made.

In terms of group communication i think we all knew what we had to do and how to do it, which was helped by our pre-preperation. Having a timetable set in stone that we had to each follow meant that we all knew what we were doing and there was no room for slip ups. The fact everyone in the group was very friendly towards each other also helped on the communication side because there were no fights or people getting annoyed. It was laid back but at the same time very proffesional – these were most comfortable conditions to work under.

The blog itself came out brilliant, everyone filled their roles perfectly and followed each others advice. I was assigned as the designer and the writer, but also ended up taking the role of technical supervisor. I had to keep a check on postings and make sure that things like categorising and authors had been sorted, which i wasn’t too bothered about.

Overall i think the group were great, we all cooperated really well, and we created a really great informative conspiracy blog!