Trip to University of Kent

On January 14th 2015, the two AS Media classes had the opportunity to spend the day at the University of Kent attending talks, taking part in workshops and generally learning a lot from both the professors and the students. When we arrived in Canterbury, we were split into two groups and took part in the first of many activities - a lesson on screenwriting which I learnt a lot about as we had to adapt fairytales, of which we chose Sleeping Beauty. This helped with understanding the film making process and how important it is to plan things. We then had a workshop on in-camera editing where we had 50 minutes to create a short film without retakes. In small groups, we were given a camera with film in it as opposed to a memory card, which meant that we were unable to edit takes that we did not want and had around 20 minutes to create a very short film involving as many of the 5 points as we could. This workshop also made it clear how important planning and time are in the film process.

 After lunch we then attended a seminar held by two of the lecturers at the university. The talks were about anime and stardom, which were very interesting but not very useful for our current project and coursework. We had a tour of the campus and viewed a film that had been made by one of the students whom we had worked with earlier in the day. 

Overall, it was a very interesting day and I feel that I learnt a lot about planning which will come in useful for my coursework both this year and next year.