Looking Back

I'm not going to beat around the bush: this semester was not as well organized as the last semester (FilmP 150). Blog announcements were sporadic and sometimes non-existent so that throughout most of the semester I had no idea when they were due. The Final Cut project was a prime example of how messy things were this semester. Having to film the project in one hour was a problem I was able to get over quickly because I understood it wasn't a huge production we were working on. But then editing the piece was simply disastrous. I lost the audio on my piece during the transfer, then kept running out of memory while I was working on the piece. By the end of it all I was greatly disappointed with the fact that we had to work on computers which were not well equipped for the the assigned project.

The Flash portion of the class was not much better. The lectures on Flash were convoluted and difficult to understand. By the time I sat down to work on the Flash project I really had no idea where to begin. I had to mess around with Flash on my own while watching online tutorials to finally figure things out. The lectures were not able to successfully prepare me for the project but I got through it anyways. As a film major, I was bothered with the fact that I was spending a large amount of time learning Flash because its something I'll probably never work with again. Having this class be a two semester long course seems pointless to me because it is a very basic course and there were things that as a film major I had no interest in learning (such as Flash). There should be a single semester long introductory course for film majors and a separate one for media majors. An introductory course should not be two semesters long.

With all that said, not everything I have to say about the class is negative. Incorporating the Natalia Almada presentation into the semester was a nice departure from the usual lectures. I also liked that the midterm was a creative pre-production project instead of the usual in class exam. Although the blogs were not dealt with as well as in the last semester, I like how they are incorporated into the course work because it gives students a chance to freely explore relevant course material. Ultimately I think there are some things that worked well throughout the semester, but there is plenty of room for improvement for future semesters.