As is consistent with all my DA’s, the development process was a hot mess–like a real shomozzle–but the final product is halfway ok. I think.
Let’s get into it.
I think the best way to approach this is to do a quick recap the first two iterations, before launching into a discussion of the final version. There I will explore the steps, thought processes, and research backing up the “final product”. For the sake of ease of assessment on your end I’ve included links to all the major elements of my DA–plus a few nice little samples–at the end of this presentation, any links that appear throughout are to prove “x thing I’m referencing exists”, be it things I’ve written, or research I’ve drawn upon.
While listening to the Blank Check Podcast episode on Mad Max: Fury Road, noted Cool Person Emily Yoshida put forward her take that the film is literally just a representation of what it is like to be a Twitter user post 2013–noise, carnage, insanity, and people screaming all the time. After these past few weeks, I’m inclined to agree.
This is to say: I’ve really enjoyed BCM 325 live tweeting sessions as a reprieve from all that noise. Having a constructive Twitter-sphere to go to once a week, where discussion are constructive and polite has been a real saviour for my already tenuous sanity. I know in the tutorial people were advocating for less screenings, which I understand, but I’m firmly in the “this is just right” camp and want that to be known. Also I know…
Ok so I’ll say this at the top: I picked my peer commentaries at random (maybe not the best plan?). So found myself with a variety of topics that I could engage with at different levels, and in different ways. Much like in the last round of peer commentary, however, I focused on providing feedback to tighten up the overall concept, provide new angles and approaches, but not to contradict their research and point-of-view, which are generally well defined at this point. Let’s dive in.
So, on that whole “I didn’t know much about some of these topics point”… yeah, I knowing jack about sport. But that’s fine, because I know plenty about video essays (and Tik Tok, a knowledge base I was hoping to not need to dip into and yet here we are ).
Let’s get into this. As mentioned in the video I have a LOT of content I need to lay out here for y’all so… I’m going to break these down into sections, with the rest of the formatting and structure becoming apparent as I go. Good? Good. Let’s go.
part 1 – Film Daze
I’m lucky enough to be able to write for Film Daze, here’s a link to my entire log of articles. Now as you might be able to garner from this, my primary role at Film Daze is to write reviews/features on animation, I love animation, and I would LOVE for it to be regarded with the same esteem as live-action.
In addition to this, as a known home of sexual, I am also focusing more on writing about queerness in cinema (more on this soon), however, this slots nicely into…
I will admit 95% of the reason I picked BCM 325 was because a portion of my marks would come down to my ability to live tweet about science-fiction films in class. I like film. I like science-fiction. I “like” tweeting. Live-tweeting films is something I have experience with, I do it from time-to-time on my non-University twitter. This should be a walk in the park right?
Well, kinda.
The rigour expected from BCM 325 tweets is far higher than those of Film Twitter, and the need to be informative threw me for a loop. My instinct was to be funny, make memes, so it goes. In the end I only made one humour tweet over five (5!) live-screenings. I learnt quickly that this class is, uh, not the place my little jokes.
So I shifted the focus to being engaging in the Academic Discourse. In some ways this…
Alana’s pitch is well-defined in it’s topic: the future of aged care. It is particularly intelligent as it draws upon previous knowledge obtained in non-BCM subjects, allowing her to build upon her other talents and integrate a variety of course content into a single, fully realised portfolio of work (therefore actually addressing a second future: her own). The structure of her DA was also intelligently conceived, with the three podcast episodes allowing her to address Bell’s model of future studies while also minimising the level of work required. This allowed Alana to lay out a clear timeline, while also providing her DA
with an overall direction and momentum.
Where Alana’s pitch showed weakness was in it’s scope/focus and audience.
As I noted in my comments “the future of aged care” is an incredibly broad topic…
For this semester’s DA I will be creating a fictional podcast mini-series in conjunction with. It will be of the speculative fiction genre, focusing (broadly) on potential future apocalypses (grim, I know!).
The narrative of this podcast will focus on two hermits (or otherwise social recluses) who discover that they have missed the end of the world. One is from Australia (me) and the other is from South Africa (Allison), they begin to communicate via HAM radio, and as the series progresses they try to discover how the world ended and if there are any other people still alive.
Obviously, this concept is born, at least somewhat, out of the current coronavirus crisis. It spurred an interest in discovering possible ways that the world could end. While the series will focus on this idea, it’s equally going to be about human survival, there are AT LEAST two living humans after…
).
Future Cultures 