Media Magazine Conference Feedback: 13/12/12

AS and A2 Media Class with Corin Hardy, who directs music videos and horror based feature films.

The conference we attended on Thursday 13th in Logan Hall was more than I expected it to be and I am glad I went.  I believe this experience will help us in the production of our Vampire horror trailers. I left this conference with so much knowledge and it opened my eyes to the type of work I could specialise in. 

Professor Martin Barker was our first lecturer who was mainly speaking about media violence and how it affects all ages of people. The four types of intense engagement were through, cinema, TV, comic books and video games. There was a successful campaign run by parents to ban a comic book that kids were reading which included the character "The Mighty Shaggur" as it featured extreme violence and sexual references which weren't fit for viewing by these young children. His talk was very engaging and really taught me about audiences in the media.

Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse were the next two speakers who really gained my full attention. They are comedians and work in the media industry. We were shown clips from their programme which is aired on BBC3, "The Revolution Will Be Televised"  and I can say that I enjoyed it and generally because they get messages across is through being funny and this does attract our generation. I have now started watching their programme and clips on Youtube. I would recommend others to do so as well as the majority of what they talk about in their sketches is what we need to be fully aware of as most of it will determine our futures.

Clips you should check out:

Lynx ad 

Can I be your friend?

Google Homeview

Barclays Casino (HILARIOUS and TRUE)

Pete Fraser is a former head of the of Media Studies who is Senior Examiner for a major awarding body. He is a regular contributor, and inspiration for Media Magazine', and the authour of 'Pete's Media Blog'. He gave us useful A level tips, such as his 9 keywords for media are; Research, Planning, Evidence, Ideas, Feedback, Logistics, Equipment, Production and Reflection. I have defiantly taken notes on his tips and I will be demonstrating these consistently from this day forward. He has a useful blog which I have followed to get inspiration and tips throughout our production work.

Jump on these to help you out with production work, as his advise is specifically targeted at us A Level students!

BLOG: www.petesmediablog.blogspot.com

Twitter: @petesmediablog 

We were introduced to six previous media students who now currently work in the media industry. I found this part of the conference inspiring as these ex students were once in our position and actually gave me a boost to find out what I want to do and go out their and gain experience in that area. Also I understood that if you want do something you have to have a lot of dedication to stand out from the rest.

The 6 media students interviews

Dr Shakuntala Banaji has an fascinating interest in the social and civic contexts of children and young people. She lead us through a presentation about Global Media and poverty focusing on India where she found her research. This was a interesting talk as she spoke about her visits to India and what she found out while researching out thete. She told us about her experiences with children who had no encounters with the new technology which we are easily used to seeing. One child thought a camera was a hammer and starting smacking it against a rock. This illustrated the extreme conditions these people live in due to not having any way of sending information around. The villages that these people live in have no knowledge about citenzship. I believe that people have a right to know about what is happening in the world they live in, to not just  protect themselves but also educate themselves. She then ended the presentation with the question, Is media education a right or privilege?

I was throughly enganged by a journalist who works at The Guardian, Paul Lewis. During his talk he explained how social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube is a way for ordinary people to convert information before news reporters even hear about the story. He even admitted that this can help them as journalists but also become a problem due to the false information let out. For example, Twitter is seen as a quicker way to find out about global news and public affairs but on the other hand it can also spread rumours which can mislead the public and cause confusion. Paul Lewis was proud to say he was the second highest retweeted account on tweets related to the Riots last August.

@PaulLewis < for all you tweeters jump on that!

Corin Hardy's Instragram account. A shot of us in the audience while he was on sitting down answering questions asked by people in the audience. 

Finally we get to my favourite guest, Corin Hardy, a music video producer who produced videos for the likes of Ed Sheeran & Devlin, The Prodigy, Biffy Clyro, Olly Murs, Paolo Nutini and The Feeling. Over the past five years Corin has been busy writing and developing four of his own horror based feature film projects. In 2011 Corin was selected as a 'Star of Tomorrow' by Screen International. To be honest I just found his style of work inspirational. He's very talented and I think for this years horror based project we can use his work as inspiration. I will be using him as inspiration and I will be watching his videos during the production of our trailers.

We were shown the video for The Prodigy's Warrior's dance music video which gave me a shock as I previosuly stumbled across the video before and I found the idea of cigarette boxes coming to live creative and pretty much awesome. We got to view the FULL short film for Ed Sheeran and Devlin's track Watchtower which was a pleasant surprise. The way it was shot was superb and I found the pace of the short film much like a action genre.

Again, I must say going to this conference was a BIG help as I feel as though I have been steered in the right direction and I'm ready to start with production work, LEGGO :-)