What is Media Studies for us?

This year we have started university and the degree we have chosen is called: Media Studies. At first we were quite enthusiastic about the idea this degree was going to help us for our future, in order to become better filmmakers because that is our goal in the professional field. But suddenly we realized this degree was not that practical as we thought it would be, and also that we had to attempt to classes we didn’t feel that they will prepare us for our future.

When you are admitted in this degree, in the one you have chosen among others because as you see it is what you want to do in a future, your feel excited about the fact that prepared teachers are going to tell you how a camera works, how you are going to write a script, what are the better ways of finding producers, etc. However what we found was a very different atmosphere: the teachers were good, but sometimes we found that what we were learning wasn’t useful for our professional goal, we knew that theory is essential before shooting but the fact is that we just learned the theory and the practice wasn’t there yet. In fact, we won’t get into a real TV studio until we reach the third year. Presenting this facts, we don’t want you to think this degree is nonsense because there are subjects that even though they could be more in-depht, they have taught us new things that a photographer or a filmmaker must take into account when filming or taking a photo, because you have to respect several rules, especially talking about the composition of a photograph: you just can’t take a picture and considered that is a genius one, you have to work hard in order to get one of those genius pieces of art.

As we see it, the only disadvantage this degree has is the fact that we considered that sometimes it is a compilation of subjects taken from other degree, for example in the first year we have had: economy and law. These subjects weren’t helpful at all because economy wasn’t orientated at media so they just taught us the general rules of this “science”, and in the case of law, again it was a general overview and it wasn’t focused for example on all the permissions a producers has to ask for in order to shoot on a public space or in a protected forest.

Due to this fact we think that the degree leaves empty spaces when taking about teaching Media and those gaps sometimes you can fill them but not always. That is the case of learning how to use specific programmes related with edition or photo manipulation like: Photoshop, Adobe Premier, Sony Vegas, After Effects… Those programmes are not available in the degree (even though sometimes they offer little courses about those programmes but we have considered that they are not enough), and when a teacher ask you to do a practical project you feel limited because you don’t control the essential tools. In our opinion, there should be a subject where they teach you how to control the basic tools of an edition program even though you may learn other things outside the university.  The ones who decided how a degree is distributed, should change this fact because is the one that hamper the evolution of students in order to give the best of them.