You’ve grown up with media. You’ve watched movies at the multiplex; cartoons and newscasts on television. Plenty of time binge streaming series on the computer and playing on the Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo. You’ve got social media on your phone alongside podcasts and YouTube and Netflix and Spotify and TikTok. Electronic media is everywhere and impacts nearly every aspect of our lives.

But you don’t want to just watch movies, listen to podcasts, or play videogames. You want to create them. And because there’s so much media around us you already know everything you need to know about how it works, right? Probably not. Will you know everything after reading this text? No – and you won’t know everything even after earning a four-year media degree and following that with a 50-year career, either. Media is constantly evolving with new story structures, new delivery methods, and new production technologies. That’s part of the fun about making media – every day brings something new.