Elina Vagele

Digital Media Production

It's more practical based than just theory, reading and writing

For the first two years we had a mix of things that we did and in the second semester we did reading and modelling, and modelling is my favourite thing. A thing that they wanted us to do is an animation, a bouncing ball and then the second thing would be your own idea. So I created a room as one and you can design the room however you want.

At first I just felt very nervous to talk to them and I think that's the main thing

If you don't start a conversation, if you don't go forward and try to get to know the lecturers, it will be a completely different experience. Now I can easily approach them for a problem I have, or with a question, even if it's not related to the work or something, maybe it's about the future. They always help with advice and I suppose because you've made the effort, they will remember you.

Most of my deadlines are at the end of semester                                                                                                              

Elina-on-phone-on-campusAt college it would be deadlines of like a week or two weeks. So you had a short time frame, but now when you have so much time, you don't tend to focus on the work. You start thinking about it when it's closer to the deadline, but it's like you have a whole semester like 85-90 days. It's such a long time and then it becomes too late. I think that was my problem in year one where I kind of left a lot of things at the last moment and I did okay, but it was not worth the stress. Whereas you can do a little over time and get it done even before the deadline. So just keep constantly working on your assignments throughout the year.

The lectures will help you find opportunities for yourself 

Or you can find them yourself. But if you don't do anything, you won't get that far because this is a very competitive field. You have to sort of think outside the box and do a little bit extra for yourself. I'm starting to apply to different workplaces, the main film industry is based around London. So maybe in newsrooms and also I'm interested in video editing or I would love to get a masters at some point, I would love to get into visual effects and VFX editing.