Reflective essay
My impression of Gerona started with the TV series Game of Thrones. Gerona Cathedral impressed me in the Game of Thrones, so my first impression of Gerona is a majestic city, just like the King’s Landing in the Game of Thrones. But as I learned more, my impression of Girona has changed a lot. I found in articles and pictures on the Internet and the media that Gerona is different with my original imagination. Compared to a majestic city, Gerona is more like an ancient and quiet town. The cathedral framed in the Game of Thrones is just a landmark of the town and does not represent the entire city of Gerona. My impression of Gerona gradually turned to a town with a variety of historic buildings and a peaceful atmosphere. However, the communication with the Gerona Group has also changed my impression of Gerona again. We did see many of Gerona’s ancient ruins and that famous cathedral in the shots that the Gerona team sent us, but we also saw many modern elements in Gerona. For example, the modern train stations and crowded traffic all show Gerona’s modernity. In addition to watching the clips provided to me by the Gerona group, our thoughts on Gerona have also changed after Skype communication. We found that as local people Gerona team’s thinking of Gerona is different with we imagined with Gerona. The Gerona team believes that Gerona’s modernization is more advanced than we think, and the modernization has already been well integrated into their lives. Now my impression of Gerona has become an ancient city with both vibrant modern culture and a long history.
In our video we shoot a lot of daily life scenes, like getting up, brushing teeth and washing face. We want to reflect our connection with Melbourne through this everyday lens. At the same time, we have also selected trams and rivers as our theme, and trams are also one of the important elements that run through the city of Melbourne. Rivers are a very special thing for me. When we talk about a city in my hometown, we often think of rivers in that city because rivers nurture our culture and as my hometown most cities are built on water, so understanding a city from the river is a special and profound way for me. So by adding river fragments and elements, we can better express our connection with Melbourne. As in the footages that describes our relationship with Melbourne, we have selected some elements and footages about the Gerona river to show the relationship between the Gerona Group and Gerona. But the difference is that in the description of Gerona, we used more fragments of the streets of Gerona, because unlike in Melbourne, I think that the walking footage can better reflect the Gerona team’s connection with Gerona. Compared with Melbourne’s tram system, Gerona’s more popular mode of transportation should be walking, which also better reflects the ancient and elegant details and characteristics of Gerona city. Of course, we also chose the crowded traffic that reflects the good blend of modernity and history of Gerona today.
There are many media forms that describe cities, such as videos, books, and news. By combining the information of these media, we can understand the city more effectively. At the same time, various media descriptions of cities often have certain differences. For example, when I searched for videos about Gerona on YouTube, I found that many of these videos are about Gerona’s ancient buildings or how Gerona became the location of the Game of Thrones. But the news and articles on the Internet are more about describing the modernization of Gerona. Combining the descriptions of cities by different media can also make our expressions of cities more complete. When discussing the direct communication between Gerona and Melbourne, we consulted many media materials, and no matter what form of media all have a little influence on own impression of Gerona and Melbourne. We hope to combine the data and elements which we have collected in our videos to make the film more comprehensive. For example, during the video we made, we cited some articles and materials in the voiceover. Like “urban space is objective and physical, and it is also subjective and psychological.”(Pattison 2016), we want to show own thinking and feeling by these citations in own voiceover.
Communicating and understanding cities through the media has certain limitations. The materials and content presented by the media often contain many subjective ideas of the media producers, which will cause the audiences’ impressions of the city to be biased towards the impression of the media producers, and these impressions are often full of one-sidedness. Communicating cities through the media sometimes lacks authenticity, because we have not actually experienced the true face of the cities we want to communicate with, and the content presented in the media is sometimes not entirely true. Getting to and feeling the city is an extremely important part of urban communication, so in the future, we maybe will go directly to the city to investigate and improve the understanding of the city. Field trips can effectively break the limitations of the media in communicating with cities and improve our comprehensive understanding of cities. The field visit can directly feel the details of the city through ourselves, and form a certain sense of the city. Compared to understanding the city through the screen through the screen, the information obtained from the field visit is obviously more authentic. Using our own real city impressions to compare with describing of the cities in the media can help us better understand the city.
Leo
Reference:
Pattison, M., 2016. ‘Strife and the city: urban space and the essay film,’ Sight and Sound Magazine. https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/strife-city-urban-space-essay-film.
