Winol Week 8 and 9- perfecting our packages

Like promised, I managed to improve my £20 food budget feature. It took quite a lot of time but I can openly say that I am very proud of it. Spending up to 13 hours a day at the university was definitely worth it. Editing was a lot more enjoyable this time as I could see it getting better and better. The main change I have done was shortening it extremely from 7 minutes to 3 minutes, making it less chaotic and more interesting. I got rid of boring pieces to the camera and I recorded a voice over- therefore I had a chance of telling the story properly. It made the piece look more professional. The piece was supposed to be based on the Channel 4 documentaries, I feel like I have reached the target. I think the feature had a clear point and it was explained well throughout the film. In the voiceover I talked about Poland to clarify where my accent was from. I also thought that the audience would be interested to hear some fact about different culture. II also decided to get an advice from Julie Rowles who works in the university canteen. She was very nice and wanted to help. She gave me a basic idea of what I could eat and how much it would cost me. I can honestly say that I could never afford to eat there for a week on £20. My favourite bit is the montage of a shopping basket being filled up with food. In the other piece I had a very long, boring piece of a self check out.

The structure of the piece was well planned. It started with an introduction to the camera, then the story was being told in the voiceover, I tried to stick to the point I made at the beginning. Then the piece ended with a conclusion to the camera. It was definitely the first feature I planned so well.

Things I have learned from improving my feature:
1. Always make a detailed plan before you go out filming AND before you start editing your piece.
2. Don’t try to use every single bit of your footage you have on the tape. Even if you spend 3 hours filming one thing, 2 seconds of it will be enough to make your piece interesting. Everyone will know that you have put a lot of effort and time into it.
3. Don’t complicate your life by trying to be more professional than you are. Simple things look professional and great if you use a little bit of your imagination.
4. Voiceovers are much better and more interesting than pieces to the camera. So try to use them as much as you can! 
5. Living on £20 a week probably be possible if you manage not to get tempted by takeaways!

Hope you enjoy it!

Students' Protest in London against increasing tuition fees

So I am in bed with horrible developing tonsillitis, while my friends are trying to fight their way through the big tuition fees increase protest in London. I have been following the BBC website and it just looks so terrific to me. When I heard about this event weeks ago, I thought it would just be an innocent and sophisticated protest, which would show how devastated we all are about this horrendous decision about University’s tuition fees being raised up to £9,000 per year, up from current level of £3,290. But it turned into a riot, or I would even call it a jungle. Anyone would get angry and upset, but not to this level.

The protesters are made up of university students and lecturers, as well as sixth form students. These sixth formers are the ones who are most likely to face the climb in tuition fees if it ends up happening.

Students found their way to Millbank Tower, where the Conservative Party is headquartered and smashed the windows on the main floor, and hundreds filled the entrance hall of the building. Police tried to beat back the students, but they seemed to be stronger. The ones that stayed outside set a fire outside the building. Protesters were throwing bottles and other items on fire at the police line. According to Sky News, 5 policemen and 6 students were injured and taken to 2 hospitals.

Now, is it actually a protest against dramatically increasing tuition fees or just an excuse to throw heavy things at the police, because in this situation it seems like they can? This surely isn’t the way to change the Government’s decision. And the injury of 11 people was certainly not worth it.

More importantly, did today’s devastation in London bring anything good into students’ life? I very much doubt they achieved what they wanted to achieve.

James Joyce- Ulysses. Chapter 15, Circe

Metaphors, Themes and Analysis.

Chapter Circe of Ulysses is written in a form of a script. It is quite a confessional piece of reading. The themes introduced to the reader are themes of love, power, masochism, and consciousness. They are presented in a way to help the audience feel the battle between mind and body.

Chemical imbalance is another theme that supports the literary elegance of Circe. Specifically, Circe be might be seen as a metaphor for Schizophrenia. The chapter grows in the same way the disease does. The beginning of the chapter remains similar to the beginning of it, for example there is a strong anxiety and the reader is introduced to the elements of paranoia. There are lots of fantasies and actions throughout the chapter, they all slow and then the reader can feel a general paralysis. The chapter then follows to the part when the characters have systematic delusions.. This progress goes in the exact way as the disease of Schizophrenia.

The parent- child relationship highlights the theme of unique love, which is definitely worth looking at in this chapter. The characters experience it in different ways, mainly because the relationships were overcome with guilt. Stephen grieves at the memories of how he used to treat his mother. Whereas Molly thinks of her dead son Rudy and the sweater she knit for him. Bloom tries to visualise what Rudy might have been like as a young man. Love remains very strong in all these cases. The fact is that the characters try to learn the skill of forgetting the pain. While Molly and Bloom try to get over the death of Rudy, Stephen is trying to forget the pain of how he treated his mother.

There is also a theme of masochism present in the chapter which presents a fall of power in characters’ life. A new character comes in the middle of the chapter, it’s a girl called Zoe who’s affecting Bloom’s fantasy. The speech that Bloom is giving Zoe on her smoking problem takes Bloom into his unconsciousness. The reality fades away and Blooms becomes a famous speaker/ politician in his dream. In the end, his power fails and he is sacrificed. It makes him feel very low of himself; his ego and self esteem go straight down. This has an effect on his failure even in his own fantasies. This shows that we don’t have any control over our unconscious mind but they way we feel about ourselves influences our unconscious mind- and that’s what we can control.

The variety of relationship such as between mind and body or reality and fantasy interact with each other in the way that the end of previous and the beginning of new fantasy fade away. It has a relation with the conscious and unconscious mind.

The relationships between fantasy and reality as well as mind and body reflect on the conscious and unconscious part of Circe. The metaphor for consciousness in the chapter is shown through the characters’ thoughts of resurrecting the dead. Stephen thinks of his dead mother, while Molly and Bloom’s think of their dead son, Rudy.

In conclusion, the chapter is quite confusing to understand but it is definitely significant to understand Joyce’s theory unconscious and conscious mind as well as Freud’s views on psychoanalysis which declares that even if you hide something in your conscious mind, your unconscious mind will always bring it back to you.