so this was the week that had me wishing something extraordinary would happen to life so that i would not have to bear it but... now that everythings over, it's so wonderful!!
the slides i did for my honours presentation unit:
it was on language (written/spoken, body, computer programming etc) and focused on the area for my dissertation- the internet language (leetspeak, memetics).was really glad that noor brought up the point about arabic people using arabic language to type out how english words sound like, for example, the words "thanks", and how arabic language advocates despise the advent of internet language as it will cause arabic language to lose its meaning...
my week was great if not for my supportive boyfriend, who made me food. check out the wantons he made!
we took some weird ass photos yesterday night. don't know what to do with them yet... also, finished this Final Cut Express video portrait! it gave me a splitting heartache...spending hours in the lab with everything go down the drain because the old man, K, didn't know that photoshop projects are not compatible with Final Cut Express software. mystery problem finally solved after what took ages and tolerance from not strangling him there and then. also missed out many lunch outings with dawn as result and am sorely disappointed.
wrote a complaint/grievance letter to shed some light into what had happened. nonetheless, life is good now that it is completed!
Hi XXXXXXX,
I have been meaning to contact you about my group member, K, but did not know how to address this appropriately or to even inform you. The MMC Reception office told me I should inform you before the whole project is over. I really hope this email would not jeopardize my group's grades and performance by letting you know the weaknesses that our group faced, rather I hope you would be lenient or understanding with us.
Firstly I have my own creative differences with K. I was not too keen on doing the video portrait on N P. When the script was done and organized, it was too late for any backing out. I had suggested ideas such as a music video I saw on Youtube and of using our own members as the talent, to make it fun and convenient to do, but K was staunch and the other members were affable and had no other suggestions, so it was to be on N P.
I had let known to him that I found it a tad boring, and he justified it by saying that we have worked on it for hours. K is very adamant and strongly-opinionated, and I was unable to get my feedback through.
I had also informed him that the script was too long; the photo frames idea could be photoshopped instead of being worked on in Final Cut Express; the assessment will judge on our filming skills; the images in the photo frames would be too small to be noticeable. He turned a deaf ear to all suggestions, and would only take it up when his way could not be done or if someone of higher authority would instruct him to.
Secondly K has been rather dismissive of us girls in the group. He has used his "20 years of experience" quip against my suggestions a couple of times. He makes us do almost-menial things like video logs and collating film footages to be used in the video which was tedious, and it ended up that only a very small part of it will be used. He insinuated that he has been "waiting" for the parts that "we girls" have been working on and was only able to merge the bits together after "we girls" are done.
K has the upper hand in the editing process and we were happy to let him do what he wishes to do, because we do not have as much expertise as he does. He has also pointed out we could only work on one computer so it is difficult for all of us to have our editing input.
K has big ideas and wishes to pull fancy edits in the video, most of which we girls are not taught in classes to do. I am faced with the situation when my suggestions are not taken up, and while we agree on his suggestion, the rest of the group members are unable to do the edits as how he has imagined it to be.
Thirdly we faced many technical difficulties in the course of editing the video. There was a persistent problem with KG Core plug-in that a few of the MMC staff had tried to rectify. We were unsure whether the causes were due to a file being corrupted or if the footage has been brought home to be edited (K denies this). Anita from MMC pointed out that it may be due to the different logins we had used for the project, hence the user preferences were changed. The program software being confused, would have shut down with the KG Core plug message as a result.
This setback has caused almost all hours of work to be washed down the drain. K decided to start over again and was using photoshop to be fit the images in the photo frames, instead of blanking out spots in the frames and super-imposing the images into the frames in FCE.
In conclusion this are some of the grievances I have working with him in this project. He is a good person, turning up for the projects and working hard on it while the rest of us could "watch on and learn", in the way that he preferred the project dynamics to be. He assumes leadership which is fit, although he could have helped assign tasks to lighten his workload.
Again, I just wish to inform you so that we would not be heavily penalized when you grade our work.
Thank you for reading this email.
Regards
Janet
No comments:
Post a Comment