- You know those boring things like release forms, actor contracts, recces and risk assessment forms? Do them. I cannot emphasise enough how much these forms boost your grade.
- When writing essays, don't waffle. Make a point, explain that point, move on. If possible, provide examples.
- Expect to do work for other people. Yes, people are lazy. More often that not if you are aiming for a distinction, be prepared to fill out paperwork that is designed for more than one person, is it hard work? Yes, will it be worth it? Yes.
- Be confident. This is extremely difficult, but when making a presentation being a stuttering mess will drag your grade down, practice what you are going to say in private and keep practising it.
- Do assignments as early as possible, if anything this is the most important tip. Once you get one assignment you will probably get at least 2 more in the same week and if you keep putting them back you will end up rushing everything and your grades will suffer. It is absolutely horrible to be working when everyone else is lazing around, but 2 weeks later when you can sit back and relax and everyone else is running around like headless chickens you will feel incredibly proud of yourself.
- Take initiative. This goes for everything in life really, but it seems like you have nothing to do you are fooling yourself, there is always something to do. Seek that work out and complete it to a good standard.
- Research is terrible right? Unfortunately it is the most important work you will ever do and will be the majority of your overall grade. Get used to it, learn to love Google and only use reputable websites.
- Learn how to set cameras up properly, tripod, white balance and all that other funky stuff, you will need it!
- Use an external microphone when filming, the internal microphones on cameras are generally awful.
- Normalize normalize normalize. Normalize the volume! Nothing is more annoying than thinking everything is perfect until you introduce another sound which is 3x the volume than the rest of your work ruining your radio show.
- Read the assignments sheets whilst you are doing your work, this will stop you from going onto different subjects that won't get you any marks.
I will probably think of some more at some other point, I'm sure this won't be relevant to 99% of people that read this but hey, I hope it helps someone.
Modern Warfare 2 - You frustrate me like crazy with your bad map design, unbalanced guns, latency issues and overall horrible community yet I still come back time and time again. Why do I subject myself to this torture? I have no idea!
Torchlight - I don't play this very often, but it has a charm that keeps drawing me back. I'm not a very high level and I'm pretty much hardly anywhere in terms of the storyline but there is something about it that I absolutely love, maybe it's the old Diablo fan in me waiting to burst out in an explosion of gore and guts?
Dragon Age: Origins - I haven't even completed this game yet, it is that big. That and getting 3/4 through the story with one character and then deciding to scrap him and make a new one certainly doesn't help, but the decisions I made on the first character in terms of character development were absolutely terrible and left me with a character that was ultimately a bore to play so it was needed. But then again I have made many mistakes on this new character too, I accidentally left Sten to uhh, meet his fate and Liliana... Well, she doesn't like me that much any more, this has resulted in my party being incredibly bare. Oops.
Grand Theft Auto IV - I'll just say my computer cannot run this, at all. It looks disgusting.
Now I'll talk about life, in the rare case that anyone is actually interested in that! I'm on the second course after doing well on the first course and so far it is going well, even if I am sort of behind on assignments due to a couple of personal issues! But I'll catch up eventually. I'm with an amazing person that I absolutely do not deserve, I have no idea how it happened but I'm pretty damn happy I can tell you that. Apart from that, not much has changed!
Music wise, I've been listening to Genesis an awful lot for some reason. I'll put up some reviews of random things sooner or later. Now that this uninteresting blog post is out of the way I hope to put some more interesting ones later about things I've been working on. Oh, I'll probably be whining about the absolute trash that goes on Facebook, it... No words can explain. That reminds me, I want Mass Effect 2! Why am I so broke?!
My Dying Bride - The Angel and the Dark River (1995) - Distant, atmospheric metal with a focus on lengthy tracks and mournful sounding lyrics. This is an amazing album, fantastic rhythms on the drums, emotive guitar playing and consistent bass come together to make a very bleak album. Every single songs seems to scream out in pain, yet without being over dramatic.
Recommended tracks - Black Voyage, A Sea to Suffer In
Rating - ■■■■■
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love (1985) - An artist I feel quite embarrassed listening to, but don’t really care because it’s damn fine music. The earlier albums were pretty bad, but this is where you can see that she has definitely grown up. Production on this album is pretty top notch, details floating in the background that boost the entire album onto the next level. Plus, I’m basing my best music video of all time on the video ‘Cloudbusting’ so that has to count for something, right? (College assignment for you Giant Bomb fellows)
Recommended tracks - Running up That Hill, Hounds of Love, Cloudbusting, Jig of Life.
Rating - ■■■■■
Gentle Giant - Free Hand (1975) - Hm, I’m torn on this one. One of my old favourite experimental progressive rock bands on their rockiest album yet, filled with strange instruments and instrumental passages. Yet the production on my copy is absolute pap, everything sounds muffled and terrible, I’m not sure if it’s just my copy or what because their previous album ‘The Power and Glory’ sounds fine. Nontheless, it’s fine music, a bit pompous but aren’t we all?
EDIT - It was my copy, it didn't rip properly for some reason. To 5 cube type star things with you!Recommended tracks - Just the Same, On Reflection, Free Hand, Time to Kill, Mobile.
Rating - ■■■■ ■
