Assignment #4_Part B_Melody s3672080_Reflective Essay_“Sensing the City”
Melody:
After the whatsapp video chats with our Girona group, I have developed quite a few impressions of Girona through our conversations without any personal living experience there. The very first thing I paid attention since the first blog was the languages speak in Girona. We also mentioned that in our video chat. While Australia only has one official language English, Girona has multiple languages including Catalan, Spanish and French. We moved on to exchange information about public transportation, minimum wage and cultural activities or practises. They also mentioned protests in Girona, which I personally feel the connection by living on Collins Street. Although my memory of Melbourne doesn’t necessarily consist of politics, but protests did happen a lot and influenced the traffic of the city where I live. They talked about being liberal as individuals and they considered being independent and freedom of speech really important. I noticed they chose to use our protest footage for their own video. It was interesting to see how people from different parts of the world reflects on similar issues or characteristics. Although the size of Melbourne and Girona is greatly different, I never considered protests as one of the similarities.
We did have difficulties to keep in contact with our Girona group. I wish we spoke with more assertiveness since the beginning of our communication. It might have things to do with different course planning and scheduling. It seemed to get harder to sufficiently communicate with them later in the semester. Since we can see every Girona group’s videos, they made similar decisions of shooting locations, like the Jewish Quarter, Medieval Walls, Onyar River, and Girona Cathedral. One of the reasons might be the small size of Girona, but another could be that their local media has also repeatedly show these places, therefore forming icons in the minds of our Girona peers.
I felt very fortunate about the creativity of this studio. I have gained precious insights to various elements in film-making from different studios throughout years, but this particular studio allowed more personal and creative perception. I personally enjoy studying about cultures, especially in the last assignment my group got to view and analyze many examples for inspirations from Vimeo. I was aware of the complexity revolving around the film-making, and this semester has further provided more creative and personal insight that are applicable on how to handle communication between colleagues more efficiently. I certainly obtained pleasure after completing videos with more personal details and benefited a lot from the experience in every assessment I was told to make. Consequently, during this film making, every stage of this production requires the same level of concentration. All the assessments and practices which then transform into valuable experiences for us that will accompany us to go a long way.
Regarding the limitation of using media to communicate the city, I would say it is difficult to document the city with the video format alone. Melbourne is a busy city with dense population just like other international cities, for example my hometown Shanghai. However, there are many more tourist attractions within the latter city. For example, the landscape of the Bund the most popular icon of Shanghai, where all tourists take pictures. There is a limited amount of tourist attractions in Melbourne culturally speaking. Most city is consisted of architectures, boutiques or transportations. I would say Melbourne has a lack of uniqueness among cities. I liked living here because it is convenient to live here. It is hard to select something specific to really symbolize Melbourne to me. Everything that is meaningful is meaningful from personal experiences.
