I have greatly enjoyed getting to know the VME students and learning about what their field entails, through New Media speakers and interactions with my classmates. It’s cool because though we have different mediums and methods we share a lot of the same motivations for what we want to get out of our careers – namely, we are all creatives of some kind looking to integrate what might have been our hobbies or passions more coherently into our paid work.
For the first New Media module, I was in Vanessa’s Narrative Filmmaking class, which was really fun, despite it definitely being out of my wheelhouse. I appreciated what I learned in this class for several reasons. For one, I think it will be super helpful for me down the line just to have a broad exposure to all of the Adobe products, and so to get a rudimentary grasp on Premiere has already shown benefit. I’m noticing the ways that skills from one of the software products transfer over to another, and helps to cement my understanding of the tools overall. Furthermore, I can easily see a situation in the future when I might have to call upon my knowledge of the program in order to complete some problem, which I have no doubt I’d be able to rise to the occasion of even if it’s not part of my regular design practice, now that I’ve had some exposure to it.
Besides learning the technology, I also really appreciated how we spent time discussing and talking about camera and editing techniques that are specific to the filmmaking discipline. I had never learned about film in a class before, and I was totally unaware of the ways you can dissect the director’s camera and post-production decisions – for example, the differences between different kinds of cuts and movies that have used them to effect, or the different types of shot angles and the emotional flavors that they impart on the viewer’s experience. It is now valuable knowledge for me. I can see how I would be able to apply some these same principles to visual design. Really, photo and graphic design have lots of overlap when we think of the viewport or canvas for an image as the “camera” for a designer. So, it’s not too much of a jump to bring in, for example, the sense of scale provided by a super wide shot in film, to a “super wide” composition on an image, when my goal is to imply breadth and emphasize the relationship between a subject and an environment in some visual story.
The final aspect of Vanessa’s class specifically that I really am grateful for is the exposure to film in general. I actually came into this program with very little knowledge about film – I often joke that I have huge gaps in my cultural knowledge because I missed out on so many famous films. After this module, I actually have an interest in film now. It’s honestly really rad because I had tried to motivated myself to watch films before (like, not just casually with friends at the theater as a way to hang out – that’s something I of course did, but to really consume film as an artform, as inputs for my internal creative toolbox) but it’s never stuck until now. I think it’s a result of me also being a design student. It wouldn’t have been the same if I had just taken this class solo, out of context. The fact that now I’m thinking about images and design is providing a natural outlet, a generative need, for film.
And I’m so not surprised! I think the cool thing about VME and DES is that these are very practical, applied disciplines. In our other design classes, we’re learning about how important it is to put intention behind what we produce – how the design must serve the human goal, whether it’s a client’s business imperatives, or a user segment’s needs. In that sense, VME is similarly placed in the real world. How is photography and videography actually being made and consumed by people today, and what is it’s role in our current media landscape and society? That’s what I imagine they are learning over there. It’s the same with design.
I wonder if I will end up working in the film industry. I could actually consider it now. I lived in LA for 8 years, so that whole vibe is something I’ve thought of before. I’m not putting any pressure on myself to know what exactly I want to do for a job just yet, but it’s definitely a door that if open, I will peek behind.