So, this week LJMU kindly put on a Media CV Writing Workshop for us all, to help us learn how to write a suitable CV so that we can send it off to companies as we need to get a work placement for 80 hours at the same organisation over the summer. The idea of a placement really excites me as I cannot wait to spend some time in the media industry and pick up lots of knowledge and hopefully a few contacts.
I found the workshop inspiring as I went into the room feeling quite hopeless about the prospect of writing a CV as I didn't have a clue where to start, and thought that I had very little experience and skills to put onto it. However as the presentation was progressing I started to realise that, actually, the thought of writing one is much harder than just going ahead and getting on with the job. I also realised that I actually have many skills and abilities to offer a future employer and need to be more confident within myself about these. One of the key things I learnt was that the presentation of the CV is everything as if it looks bulky and wordy, then the employer will be less keen to read it and may just immediately disregard it. So this caused me to ensure that the layout and presentation of mine, needed to be as perfect as I could make it, with short and punchy sentences, bold headings and plenty of space on the page so it doesn't look overloaded.
After this session, I immediately went home and made a start on it because the information was fresh in my mind and found that it was a much easier job than anticipated showing me that I should think less about doing things and just actually do them! When I'd finished it I sent it off to the careers advisor for the Screen School for any tips to improve it and was shocked with the reply! The advisor commented about how great my first draft of my CV was and that I should be proud of it and only gave me 2 minor improvements to make. This made me think about how I am when I submit work. I often think it is of an average standard and I will receive a low mark but get surprised when I achieve a good mark - noticably twice this year when I've received firsts! I should definitely have more confidence in my own work and need to learn to be proud of what I have done, instead of being embarrassed of doing really well - I've never been one to take compliments well!
Overall, the experience of writing my CV made me really excited for the future, when I will be hopefully leading a successful career in the media. After researching possible positions I feel that the media was definitely the right choice for me and will continue learning more about the industry so I am fully clued up for when I graduate!
In semester 2 we have a new assignment for Digital Media Cultures.
Over the past few weeks, we've been having lectures about dissertations and how to write them. I have found this really helpful because the idea of a dissertation seemed extremely daunting but after having it explained to us as it being more like 4 normal sized essays, it definitely seems more manageable. Fortunately I've got quite a good idea of what I want to do my dissertation on. As it is such an important and long piece of work, I need to ensure that it will be a topic that will keep me interested for months on end. Because of this I really want to do my dissertation on reality TV. I am not too sure on what angle I am going to take yet but I would love to delve into all of the different types and talk about everything, with a few case studies thrown in for good measure! These lectures have made me really think about third year and the importance of starting early so I plan to start my research throughout the summer along with as much work experience as I could possibly get!
This semester's assignment was, in groups of 4, produce a 2000 word report of a dissertation proposal: 1000 word literature review and 1000 dissertation synopsis. We were put into groups according to what we wanted to our dissertation on and I chose reality TV/television formats. Our group of 4 (Sophie, Hayley and Ceri) were then split into groups of 2 and between us, 2 of us had to do the literature review and the other 2 had to do the synopsis. As Ceri, who was my partner, wanted to do the dissertation synopsis, I was more than keen to also do it. I thought that this was a good idea because it would be like doing a mini practice dissertation and as the saying goes, practice makes perfect!
I found researching the topic of television formats enlightening because I didn't realise just how much of a valuable commodity a successful format like Big Brother is and how a good format idea can go global. I am definitely interested in researching this in more detail because I found it interesting learning about how the television industry.
The process of putting our dissertation together went smoothly as we sat down for a day and managed to collate our research and produce a synopsis which I am very proud of. It showed me that with plenty of research and planning, a dissertation becomes a much more doable challenge.
This week it was time to get into groups and start planning our transmedia story or campaign. My group consists of me, Elicia Powell and Gemma Blaney. I felt that this was a good group because we are close friends so there would be a mutual understanding of how we all work together and no judging or communication issues. Over the past two years I have made a conscious effort to not go with friends all the time as I felt that it was important to go with a variety of new people so that I could develop my teamwork and communication skills and I felt that I have done this successfully.
We have decided to go down the route of transmedia storytelling because we wanted the chance to experiment more with different types of media and felt that we would have a bigger opportunity to do this by creating a fictional story. We brainstormed ideas initially using methods that we learnt from the first year module 'Creativity and Concepts'. I've found these methods to be extremely effective within idea generation and know that I now carry these with me throughout all my life.
Prospective ideas that we came up with include:
-A girl gets trapped in an attic
-Teenagers take a new drug and it mutates them in some way
-A haunting ghost story
Next week we will make a more complexed plan of our story and plan all the different platforms that we are going to use.
