What I made in a semester during my Masters of Media Arts and Production

So before I went all deep in that last post I was going to show you what I made this semester during my Masters of Media Arts and Production. The point of this blog post is two-fold. Firstly, it’s for me to show off, and also put the spotlight on projects that may other wise never see the light of day again. Secondly, showing the creative products of one semester studying at UTS might help people who are wondering about the course or trying to figure out which courses to take.

Directing

I made two videos during my directing class. In this first video I had to shoot a scene from ‘Silence of the Lambs’ within an hour in class, using only other classmates as crew and actors.

How we wanted the scene to be played was up to our discretion and it’s pretty weird, but I like it. I had to drag one of my classmates, Francisco, on a skate board to get the shot in the corridor, which was cool.  

For my final directing exercise we had to choose one script, from a collection of four, to direct for our final project. I’m happy with how it turned out.  

Sound and Interaction

So if you thought those projects were weird you’re in for a surprise with these two, because they are much weirder.

During this course I had to make one audio piece and one interactive work. Working with John Scarpias and Barbara Ings, I made this experimental sound piece for the audio component.

Sound

‘Cults’ is an experimental sound piece that focuses on the Australian cult, ‘The Family’. It explores notions of passive control and psychological manipulation. Using a sixty minutes interview with the leader of the cult: Anne Hamilton-Byrne, as the sound mark, we created a rich and diverse soundscape that highlighted the surreal elements of this horrible section of Australian history. We utilised sounds that are usually classified as acoustic rubbish (dial up tones, static) to rework into a rich tapestry that evokes a sense of the dystopia.

Interaction

For the interactive component of the course I made an interactive game on Hype. My interactive project was called ‘Miss Matilda’s Shop of Pretty Little Things for Pretty Little Girls’. The project is a comment on femininity and how video games are so highly gendered. I wanted to present the facade of a traditional ‘girly game’, the type of game that was offered to me as a child by Barbie and Polly Pocket, and subtly interweave violence and masochism which is usually associated with male gaming culture.

If you click the picture below it will load.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/x6gpip9j3v0nblb/Exports/MissMatildasShop/MissMatildasShop.html

Digital and Multiplatform Storytelling

Multiplatform Storytelling was a course created to follow Sound and Interaction for those who wanted to expand further into Digital Media. I took it as an elective because I’m really interested in different ways to use the internet and apps in fiction. However, UTS doesn’t specify that it’s a course that is meant to proceed the other. So I ended up doing both in the same semester which was annoying.

Stephanie Phillips, Sally Massos, Clare O’Halloran and I created Personality Punch Up for our project. It was made in Hype.

If you click the picture below it will load.

file:///Volumes/FELICITY/Master_PersonalityPunchUp/Master_PersonalityPunchUp.html

The target audience of Personal Punch Up is school aged children. In the game you are asked to choose between two groups of historical figures. You are then given facts about the historical figures and are asked to choose which historical figure will win in battles against each other.

By asking children to battle historical figures we hoped that, under the guise of a game, the children might learn about the figures and their lives.

My favourite thing about this project however is that I finally got to apply my experience as a spoken word poet in a more commercial type setting. We also went super well, which is always nice.

Conclusion
So there you have it. This is what I made in one semester at UTS doing the Media Arts and Production course. One thing I love about UTS is that they do really encourage you to do very experimental projects and urge you to think outside commercial media products and mediums. The only downside of this is that sometimes you can end up with a lot of strange little projects that don’t add up to a portfolio as such. If you’re a UTS student trying to choose which subjects to do next semester, I hope this helps.

Past Selves

I have just finished my first year of a Masters of Media and Production and I am very happy. It feels like so long ago that I handed in my thesis last year, only 1 year and 11 days ago. I feel like I’ve changed a lot since then. It feels like each year has come with different adventures, different creative goals, different people. I guess that’s the same for everyone. Sometimes this blog is a nice thing to come back to, to look over. I like to see how I use to talk about myself, what I was up to and what I was reading and watching.

I guess that’s the point of a blog sometimes isn’t it? Just a place to document who you’ve been and who you are becoming. Because it’s easy to forget past selves and forget your achievements or when you’ve struggled and just feel like you are who are today and that’s all that matters. But who you were matters, even if it’s just for reference for how far you’ve come or how much of a better person you are today.

As Joan Didion most eloquently put it in her essay ‘On Keeping a Notebook’:

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we use to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.

And so ends my deepest blog post yet, probably.