Progress

At the beginning our As media course when our coursework task was first explained to the class by our teacher, i was very excited and enthusiastic about the task and I thought it would be fun compared to our usual based essay coursework assignments. I also felt quite confident at the beginning and believe I could perform will in this task as i had taken media studies at GCSE Level and got a B in my results and so I felt I had significant knowledge about the theoretical side of media. I thought that with my knowledge already i had an upper hand in the coursework and felt that I would be able to contribute well to the group especially as two of my group members hadn't taken Media at a GCSE level. From my previous knowledge, I felt that I understood the codes and conventions of films well and knew the effective ways in which to engage the audience and ways in which to build up tension and suspense as I have studied this at GSCE Level. Therefore this would be a huge help within this task. However when we was put into our groups I immediately changed my mind about this and felt unconfident as it seemed that there were certain group members who over shadowed others and liked to have things there way, as well as try to take over the workload. Also as I didn’t know anyone within the group I was very quiet at first. This quickly made me become unenthusiastic about the task.

On the other hand in spite of this previous knowledge i felt I had incompetent knowledge and skill in the practical side, which made me worry and become nervous and feel rather unconfident as I had never filmed anything before or used an editing programme, so had no experience of what to do whatsoever. Nevertheless after using the editing program and camera equipment for our first intro camera task, the continuity task and with some help and advice from Andy I progressed quite a lot from being nervous to a bit more confident. And I now know I can help out a lot more with the practical side of things. As well as this after a few weeks of working together as a group I began to find it easier to get involved more, contribute and communicate with my group, as I felt more confident working with the people. I started feeling more positive about my ideas and working well within the group and as we worked on our animatic and so as a result felt much more enthusiastic about the work.

As a result of this, I now enjoy working with my group and helping out with the practical side of things, as well as with the written side of the task. I am still not as confident as other members of the group or as confident as I’d like to be with the software, but in spite of this I do feel I can help out effectively with it.

Alternatively, I do feel that there are certain individuals within the group who choose to take too much responsibility and do not like to share the practical side of the work load either because they feel as they have the best sufficient knowledge in the group they and so want to and enjoy doing it or because they feel others do not have a good enough ability to do so. For example, I would like to be involved and given more opportunity in the practical side of the task a all though a have done some I would like to do a little more and believe I could progress my practical skills further with a little help and more opportunity to do so.

Lastly I also struggled greatly with keeping the written side of my coursework, which is my blog, up to date at first as I felt the workload was huge and so as a result I soon became behind. I am much stronger on the written side of things and failed to see at first why I wasn’t performing to my best ability. I soon stopped updating it regularly after a while and tried to avoid doing so as I became confused with what to do and what to write about as well as trying to keep up to date with other coursework I really began to struggle. I found it hard to manage my time effectively to begin with and began to prioritise my work so therefore I neglected my blog. However after my teacher putting it into perspective for me and saying how we only have a week left I started to realise this was an important part of my coursework and not doing it and leaving it till last minute was both stupid and not an option. So as a result of this I started working hard in the week or so I had left in order to finish my blog to the best possible standard I could and dedicated a lot of my spare time and effort into doing so as I wanted to get the best marks as possible on this work. I can now honestly say I am extremely pleased with every aspect of my written coursework so far and that every blog entry I have made is to my best ability. I may have left it late to do some of the work but however this did not lead me to rush what I did neither did it mean I didn’t produce the work to the best of my ability as I genuinely worked hard to complete my blog and get it up to date. I am really proud of this progress and feel that my writing skills have improved further and am pleased that my time management skills have also now improved as a result. I am now very happy with my blogged work and am doing well in keeping it up to date regularly.


In conclusion I feel my theoretical knowledge has improved further and practical knowledge has progressed steadily through practical experience with help from the tasks set, teachers comments and advice as well as members of my group. My confidence has progressed since the beginning of the coursework and i feel I have eventually developed the effective skills needed to carry out a practical task. I have gone from being very unconfident with myself to working well now as both an individual and in a group and am more confident with working on the editing software. To me this is significant progress and I am pleased with the way in which I have progressed so far.