If you are ever a BCM student at UOW and you keep a regular eye on your feed, I can promise, you have definitely seen the tag #BCM325 multiple times. In fact, you’ve probably seen it a million times all at once, on the same day, and do they only seem to be talking about movies? Yes. That is correct. In BCM325 we have been asked to participate in weekly screenings of films that are relevant to our topic of Future Cultures. When we watch these live screenings, we are required to live tweet throughout the film, being original tweets, but also interacting with fellow classmates watching the movie – almost encouraging conversation relevant to the film. So in this blog post, I will be looking at some of my key tweets and considering how I could improve from those.
Before I begin doing a week by week breakdown, I must admit, I wasn’t able to do the live tweeting perfectly every week, in fact, one of my weeks was posted after the film screening and sometimes I didn’t hit the 10 original tweets and 20 interactions required of us. So in advance, I apologise for the spam when I update my twitter!
Week One – Metropolis (1927)
Week one with Metropolis was an interesting one. I have never had to live tweet during a film screening. Overall, I enjoyed live tweeting. Metropolis was an interesting film to begin with, there was no words, only music and it caused me to think about what I was watching. I think at points I found it difficult to concentrate and stay engaged with the movie. But others tweets helped me keep an understanding.
As with a few other of the films, I found it difficult to reference sources and other research during the screening. This led to me more analysing the film and techniques as I was watching it, rather than looking specifically at theories and educational resources.
Week Two – 2001 : A Space Odyssey (1968)
A Space Odyssey was a film I did enjoy watching. I had done research prior to the class in order to understand the film and possibly engage with it on a deeper level than just watching it for enjoyment. Because of this research and a deeper understanding of some of the films themes and events, I could engage with my peers on twitter and reply to others questions, maybe even posing some of my own. I was also aware of key events so I didn’t find myself becoming distracted and wanting to watch the film for just the sake of it.
I felt that my tweeting was more in depth and related to the course content and the film this week. The prior knowledge assisted with my engagement and I looked for some more in-depth scenes to analyse.
Week Three – Westworld (1973)
Westworld was a film I struggled to engage with, maybe in a way I found it cheesy. Another film that speaks out the flaws of humans, creating a being more powerful than their own, and then surprised when they turn on them. I missed the live streaming class due to some personal reasons. So to catch up on the tweets without my peers watching it “along side” me was something that made it feel more like a chore than an enjoyable experience. I found the film difficult to engage with at points because of this.
Week Four – Blade Runner (1982)
I feel that for week four, Blade Runner was really interesting to watch. I enjoyed Blade Runner a lot, it had been on my list of movies to watch, and this made it a really enjoyable experienced to watch. It was full of sci-fi plot, neon lights and had enough to criticize of. But plenty to analyse at the same time. Much like A Space Odyssey I had done a lot of previous research for the film. This helped me tweet more valuable content and engage with other individuals on twitter in a more in depth matter. I was able to discuss key themes of the film, and even mention some things that we may not agree with, much like the romanticizing of Japanese culture, through things such as Geishas.
Week Five – Ghost in the Shell (1995)
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Overall, I am not overly happy with my live tweeting experience. I definitely need to engage more with the course content, reference more academic sources and our readings, and focus on keeping up to date with my peers and the tweets. I am to improve this as live tweeting is a new and strange experience I can only learn from! I hope to engage with the movies more, but overall am happy with the ability I have shown to analyse themes in the movies. Hopefully the next post with our tweets, I can prove some more in depth and higher quality tweets !
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Reblogged this on Future Cultures.
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