#fpmfa

I have progressively realized that the perception I had of all of my courses does not hold up at all, mainly because I had literally nobody to tell me about what I was going to do for the rest of the year after Useless Boringness Overload aka Mastery. I have said it before and I'll say it again: get rid of Mastery, it's completely useless and it doesn't help one bit with anything. Back in UBO (Useless Boringness Overload) I was sure that this was going to be the class I hated the most, because what I thought it would be was a typical school lecture with a well-dressed lady that only cares about herself and thinks that her craft is a lot more important than anything else in the world and would look down on us for not being law students. I was terribly wrong, of course.

I can safely say that I enjoyed this class quite a lot. The instructor made it interesting and engaging, especially with her examples. It is so, so important to know how to educate your students, and believe me, the class wouldn't have been as engaging without Davey's excellent stories and examples from cases related to media. Again, I thought this class would be completely soulless and leave me soulless, but I was very wrong. So much for starting the program with a guidance course, huh?

The most shocking part about reading my predictions for this class was that I was completely convinced that it would be completely uncreative, just like UBO was. Needless to say, I was wrong and I am glad, because the assignments for this class were original and very helpful at understanding the content. I am happy with the class, the instructor, the assignments, and whatever will come next for us in the near future.

After this class I know I want to direct more and maybe even act one day. This class was very eye opening to me and really help settle my mind on what I want to do after school.

It was also cool because I acted in a lot of different stories and some of them were very straightforward and some of them were riddled with subtleties that took more acting on my part.

I also felt that this class will help me more as a director because I wasn't directing actors I was directing people that had to act. That meant I had to be more creative in the scenarios I used to get certain performances and more cautious about the people I chose for my cast.

This class also help me get out of my comfort zone and helped me realize what my comfort zone is.  It also helped me look at people and see what their comfort zone is and see what they're comfortable with and how I can get the performance I want without breaking their comfort zone if it's not needed.

 The more time it passes, the more I realize the Mastery class is completely useless. For starters, it makes us set goals for classes we don't know literally anything about, which makes it kind of funny when you go back and realize you really had no idea what you were talking about. I've said it since month 3: this program needs a serious rework. They need to rearrange classes urgently, taking away mastery and giving us most labs before month 3. It's ridiculous that we're supposed to start making films before we understand basic lighting, camera techniques, or editing. Just ridiculous.

 But anyway. Talking about this class specifically, Visual Storytelling and Technology, I must say I am mostly happy with the experience. I learnt a lot, enjoyed the lectures, and thought the assignments were interesting and relevant. Working on thesis, on the other hand, was absolutely horrendous. Never in my life have I felt so looked down on and lost in a work environment, which really falls on my lack of practice in lighting labs and the limited exposure we had to all of that. I also got sick due to the cold and still haven't gotten better; I won't expect compensation for medicine. Although I'm really angry about many things regarding the program, this class was truly a breathe of fresh air. I appreciated the discussions a lot, because, and I just noticed this, sometimes there's not enough talking about film as an art form or even as a medium for entertainment. I constantly feel pressured to be on top of my game and to be ready for challenges, so taking a moment to just talk about things we like and we don't feels very refreshing and necessary for my mental stability. 

 Looking back at my original objectives, I can say that they don't really apply. I thought this class would be all about cinematography and staging, and it kind of was, but not in the way I expected. It was extremely practical, so all the strategies I had for reading and analyzing different films are irrelevant, because it's not what I really had to do. I think I did go out of my way to learn some extra things about cameras specifically, which helped me in my role of DP for my final project. This also helped with my picture assignments, and I hope it shows in the work.