Time flies and I have now come to the end of the semester with reflections on my time spent in the Media Industries 1 course. Initially, we planned to do a research on "The rise of Asian cinema in Australia." However, after much discussion with Geoff and Christina, we decided to do a study on the "Growth of Asian cinema in Melbourne." Much work was put into the completion of the project and although there were many obstacles that we faced, we managed to finish it and come up with a good presentation that showcased what we learnt from the project.
I shall now go into the details of what I have learnt from this course in this reflective journal.
ROLE - For my role, I contacted the different cinemas, television stations as well as key people to try and find out their take on whether there has been a rise in the airring Asian films here and why this was so. Over time my position and function of contacting the relevant parties evolved and I became point of contact for the relevant parties and my group and I became the interviewer of the team as well. Whenever we conducted video interviews, I had to ask the questions and translate them if they were not in english so that it was easier for the majority to understand. Before these interviews, I had to think up of what questions to ask and if there were any key questions that we needed to ask so as to get answers for our research.
When it came to writting the final report and collating our information, I was assigned to proof read the report and making sure that everything was in order. After rehearsing for the presentation, I was chosen to do the introduction and conclusion as my group members said that I can project my voice well and speak well. :) Hence, from simply being a point of contact in the group, I was the interviewer and editor for the final report.
PROGRESS - During our research, like mentioned from the earlier blog post, I was not familiar with the media industry in Melbourne as well as the research methods that were used. Through the duration of the project, I managed to find out more about the general scene of how the media industry in Melbourne operated and was able to use the many research tools that was available to us in RMIT. The databases were very helpful and we got relevant data from the library.
Therefore, from being ignorant about Melbourne's media industry and the research methods that were available, I managed to find out what is the media scene here about as well as know how to utilize the research database in school effectively.
STRATEGIES - At first, we wanted to conduct a survey as well and have a quantitative research. However, we decided to interview the relevant people to have a qualitative approach to the research. I think the choice to make it a qualitative research was a good one as this project was on how we could use it for our future jobs. By interviewing people in the industry, we were networking and not simply taking statistics.
In the beginning, we tried dividing the work out specifically, but as time went on we realised that some of our parts intertwined and it would be better if we collaborated to prevent doing double the work when it would be more efficient to work together. Initially, we did not set any deadlines for when we had to submit our individual parts. We later found that this could not work as we were not able to get our parts up by the next meeting. Hence, we set deadlines for when we needed to get our parts up and collate them. This worked much better and we got things done much faster.
PROBLEMS - I faced obstacles like there was no reply from most of them at all after I tried to e-mail them multiple times. Even when I called, they would tell me to wait for their reply, but in the end, I never heard from them again. This problem is the one that got to me for my role in the beginning as well as shown here.
http://revelationsofazombie.blogspot.com/2010/04/media-industries-1-indivdual-progress.html
Though we could not get companies like Hoyts to respond, we managed to get the distributor of Asian films there to talk to us about the Asian film scene in Melbourne. I also managed to contact SBS's Head of Audience Research to tell me more about the Asian film scene here. The interview can be seen here.
http://asianfilmsinaustralia.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/interview-leah-hooper-head-of-audience-reserach-for-foxtel/
The key is to not stop after some failures, but pressing in and being more determined to overcome them. One more problem that we faced was that as all the final projects were cramped up within the same time frame, we needed to prioritise our time to be able to get the report done. It helped me with my time management skills and on handling the stress of doing all the major projects at once.
CONNECTIONS AND INTERSECTIONS - The value of this course is that it is so broad and we are forced to conceive of a topic that can encompass any aspect of the media and conduct a study on it. This is similar ot what is in the working world as in life, we do not get clear directions all the time, our bosses can sometimes throw things our way that are vague and have no specifications and we are expected to solve them. This course helped improve my problem solving skills by making me perservere on and not giving up in the event of a failure, it has also helped me to learn how to work with people from a different cultural background as we all have our different work styles.
I have managed to make some connections with people in the media industry like the Asian film distributor and the head of SBS's audience research department. This is helpful to me as in the media industry, it is usually not about WHAT you know, but WHO you know that will have you clinch the relevant job as people are more inclined to working with someone whom they already know as opposed to a stranger. As I am interested in working the the film industry, I am sure this will indirectly give me a leg up when I am finding a job in the future.
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