Weekly Progress + Plan

This is my weekly progress and plan for Comp 3. Made by Kenzo

SEMESTER 1
WEEK 1
For this week, we begin with term 2 and have decided on our new group for my music video. I wanted to have a different group than my previous group because I want to have a new experience and test out what I've learned from the past project on this music video. This week, we also studied media ecology, which is a study of how communication technologies and media shape human perception, society, and culture, focusing on the environment created by media rather than just the message content.

The problem we had this week was that we planned to finish the research blog this week and decide on a song that we want to use; however, due to the overwhelming amount of tasks we have outside Media Studies, we were unable to finish halfway through it.

The solution we used was to set a deadline and a progress tracker to finish the research, and most likely we would have to do it at the weekends.

Our goal for this week is to at least finish 65% of the research, and we may have to decide on the song next week.

WEEK 2
In this week, we work on our research and some of us has finished. This has allowed us to continue with the other task ahead of us.

The problem we had this week is that one of our group member did not attend the media class so we had difficulty on planning out the music video

The solution we had to tackle the problem is we communicate with him through WhatsApp; however, this did not fully solve the problem as it is still difficult for him to visualise our plan through text messages.

Our goal for this week is to choose one song for our music video. 

WEEK 3
This week, we continued our genre research for Comp 3, and our teacher said the deadline was at the end of the week. Good thing I finished most of my genre research in one day, so I didn't have a lot of things to worry about. 

The problem I had this week was still with the chosen song for our music video. We were still confused about choosing two songs because one of them had a female voice-over (which we didn't have any female actors in our group, and recruiting one would consume a lot of time), and the other one was too complex.

The solution we had was for each member of the group to find another song and then conduct a vote at the end of the week to decide the song choice.

My goal for this week is to finish the genre research and decide on the song we're going to use.

WEEK 4
This week, we started on the storyboard and statement of intent. This week, I was not able to attend school for more than 2 days because I had a sports competition. Most of the statements of intent were made by my other teammates without consulting me. However, my teammates knew what I am capable of (storyboarding) and so they gave me that role and one additional role (moodboard), which I am not familiar with, but I'll try.

The problem we had this week was due to the overwhelming schedule outside media studies; I was not able to storyboard during this week.

The solution we had was to delay the storyboard and do the other unfinished task for Comp 3.

My goal for this week is to try to help my teammates even though I am not available most of the time.

WEEK 5
This week, we began doing another task, the location scout and risk assessment. These tasks were very easy for us to complete as they required less work than the other tasks. The difficulty was deciding which location we were going to shoot, but we managed to come up with interesting places.

The problem we had this week was that I was not finished with the storyboard and the moodboard.

The solution was that one of the group members tried assisting me, which proved to be very helpful and effective as we finished half of the plan. 

My goal for this week is to finish the moodboard and the storyboard.

WEEK 6
This was our final week to finish everything before finishing semester 1 of our academic year. Our teacher gave us chances to do our Comp 3 during the media studies period for this week. Thanks to our kind teacher's decision, all the tasks were accomplished. However, we did miss out on 1 task, which was the classwork about media theories.

The problem we had this week was that we didn't have a proper schedule, so we missed one task.

The solution we had was to do the task during the weekends and do double checks in our blog post in case we missed other things.

My goal for this week is to make sure all my group members have the proper format for their blog posts.

REFLECTION on Semester 1:
Even though I don't like making weekly progress, doing this really helps me to set goals and track my improvements in media studies. This way, I can reflect on what I did wrong and avoid that problem and fix it in the future. Most of the time, I ended up not doing the weekly progress at the end of that week, so I did it the following week, which shows I had poor time management when doing this blog post. The next semester, I will have to push myself to do the weekly progress on that final day of the week in media studies.


SEMESTER 2

WEEK 1
This week, we had our due date for our Behind the Scenes post and Filming schedule, and we finished all the shooting of the scenes. We completed all the tasks except for our shooting, as we've been delaying and did not follow the schedule properly. In the end, we had to quickly reschedule everything and have a plan to finish the shoot by next week, so it's going to be easy for the editor to finish the final music video. Another thing we did was that we learned a new theory made by Richard Dyer called the theory of stardom. I learned that becoming a star is not an accident, as it is planned by the industry to build the persona of that star with the help of the audience. We also learned a couple of points of the theory, which are success, ordinary, consumption, Love Life, and downfall.

WEEK 2
This week, we learned about a new theory called the post-colonialism theory, developed by Paul Gilroy, which suggests that colonialism’s effects are still present in the media. It is a way for the West to assert its cultural dominance through the media (A sort of propaganda). However, this theory is ideal in past coloniser and colonised countries and does not apply to non-colonised countries. Aside from learning theory, we also had to do our music video project. Turns out the filming was really bad and we did not stick with the filming schedule, which messed up our progress. We might have to start filming during our holiday as soon as possible. WEEK 3 We explored a new theory by Henry Jenkins, known as the Theory of Fandom, this week. The theory of fandom is summarised in 3 points:

Semiotic productivity - Fans consume texts and negotiate their own reading (meanings). They don’t consume passively

Enunciative Productivity - Sharing meanings and ways of talking about the text - ‘fanspeak’ and wearing clothing, hair styling or make-up in a particular way. 

Textual Productivity (textual poaching) - fan-made texts as a sense of ownership of source text.
For the music video project this week, we finished shooting the whole thing in one day, within 8 hours and editing within 12 hours. Turns out the version 1 of our music video was pretty good and received a lot of decent comments from the audience. However, there are some negative comments, such as the lighting and the visual effect of the music video, which made it a bit uncomfortable to watch so we probably have to reshoot just a few scenes. 

WEEK 4 This week, we had a full schedule of project week, so we had no media lessons throughout the whole week. I say this was really helpful as we can fully interact and give feedback on my group's work one-on-one without having to chat them through text. Another thing is that we had the chance to ask our teacher with feedbacks regarding our music video, which really helped us and gave us room to improve before the final submission. The only problem I had this week was not being able to finish the digipak research, and so I have to finish it during the weekend.

REFLECTION on Semester 2:
I still despise doing weekly progress; however, doing this really helps me to set goals and track my improvements in media studies. This semester, the teacher did not check weekly progress on the last day of the week, so we were free to do it whenever we want which is a good thing. The bad thing about weekly progress is that it consumed alot of time as we have to remember what we did during that week. I'm so glad this is my last time I have to do weekly progress before I graduate.