Personal Reflection/ Making Media

“For the very first time in my life, I have the feeling of a creator.”

Overview: The past 3 months at RMIT University as a Professional Communication major have taken me through a lot of valuable experiences. The Making Media course was one of the first courses I enrolled, which was lectured by Professor Jonathan J. Felix. I have been very interested in editing and shooting since I was in high school so that’s why my anticipation for this course is the highest. Even though this course just happens in 12 weeks, I believe that I have exerted myself in various positions, from a content writer, photographer, editor, interviewer to the most important position, a team player. It would be a lie if I said that everything was all easy and went on the right track. Everything was kind of terrible for me at the beginning while I had to deal with my team’s problem, which even led to my mental health’s problem. I was actually in a different team at first and then my teammates suddenly changed the class right after we nearly finished the discussion for the podcast, which was also my first assignment. The pressure from the new environment and that shocking news in addition, really drove me crazy that time. However, no matter how bad the situation was, things would always have a silver lining at the end, and in this specific story, that was my new teammates.

My practical experiences: I found my new teammates by chance in the other course and fortunately, we were very clicked. I came up with the idea of talking about the transformation of women for our projects and they all agreed to work on it. We had to narrow our ideas many times for the podcast so that it could be suitable for the time requirement and we could discuss it in the most detailed way. In fact, that was the first time I had a project related to recording so I need to research and practice a lot to use the equipment and voice editing software, mainly through my school workshops, my lecturer’s instructions and some Youtube videos. Furthermore, playing a scriptwriter role was also a new challenge for me, to be honest, I never got any high grade for my writing test in high school so I was not that confident in my writing skill. However, the script turned out pretty good and lived up to all my team members' expectations. I also got many compliments from them that made me feel really proud of myself. And for the very first time in my life, I have the feeling of a creator. The second project we had to work on was producing a magazine in connection with the previous podcast. This time I had a chance to experience some basic work of a photographer, editor and interviewer at the same time. It was very interesting for me although I was exhausted at that time because of continuous moving for the photoshoot and I was also drowning in deadlines for other courses. To a certain extent, I believe that the most valuable things that I learned from this experience were the interview skill and shooting skill. Compared to the past, while I only set my camera in auto mode, now I can confidently do manual setting to fit my taste. Besides, I also learned how to take advantage of my extrovert personality when shooting and interviewing, for the purpose of creating a comfortable atmosphere for the models and interviewees. This website was also included in this course assignment, while I have to create an online portfolio for myself that could present all my projects, blogs and so on. Living in the digital age, I can feel the importance of the digitalized portfolio, especially for those who major in communication and creative fields. My future plan for this website is to develop the personal blog posts, sharing my perspective about social issues as well as update the projects that I have done in university, with an aim to introduce it as my personal platform in the resume. Conclusion: To put it in a nutshell, I am very ecstatic with the experiences that I have learned from this engaging course. After all the assignments, I could enhance my writing skill, my editing skill, my interview skill, my shooting skill and most importantly, my teamwork skill to another level. For that reason, at the moment, I am fascinated to conquer the next challenges as a university freshman.