Actually pulling all of the media together took a great amount of time. My computer would not read the files after the camera recorded so i needed to convert all of my media files into wav format. I found the most difficult thing to do was editing the audio. My interviewee tended to stutter and repeat alot of information, so i needed to cut out tons of tiny segments to get it all to sound fluently. I would change how I came about the whole project. I forced myself to redo it multiple times because I kept learning new material that needed to be in the project.

I had fun with this project,  I didn’t enjoy every minute of it but the end result was satisfying.  I believe the hardest part was the audio, cutting out all of the “Ums”  and getting to understand audacity was much of a challenge; however, by the end of the project i understood to a certain extent how to get everything done.  My favorite part was taking all of the pictures.  I enjoy taking pictures and videos of people.  Through the camera. there’s a totally different world, things are clearer and might I add, better.  Next time I would ask more questions because i was confused about what exactly I had to do because of the fact that I didn’t ask questions which was bad on my part.  I look forward to doing my on campus story, I’m a lot more experienced so it should just fly by.

Producing this piece was very time consuming and difficult. The easiest part for me was the editing because in the past I am used to working with programs like Adobe premiere pro and Adobe photoshop. The most difficult thing for me was trying to tell the story through pictures.  I have never done that before so it was something very new to me. The interview with Kadijah was time consuming to edit the first time , but I thought it came out very well and she told a beautiful story about her relationship with her family and college.  So when it came to taking pictures it was difficult to try and tell that story when her family lives far away from the campus. So I did my best to get pictures of her with her friends on campus and her cheer-leading team.  Kadijah was nice enough to give me some photos of her family and her mother who she talks highly of in the audio.

When it came time to put the audio and the photos together, this is when it got difficult for me.  When I put my pictures in order to the audio, I noticed I did  not have enough pictures. So, the first thing that I did was edit down the audio and take out what did not go with the pictures. Cause at some points it was had to express what she was saying in any photo. Also we were able to take some more pictures to fill up the gap.  Also I listen to Prof. Mulé criticism in the last audio project about the abrupt laugh and I took it out. Another thing I tried to do with the project is the picture of Kadijah silhouette at :50 seconds is a symbol of what she is saying. When you look at a shadow there is no real identity and more of a shape.  You cant really make out what the shadow is, but you have an idea of it.

Looking back on this piece the one thing that I would do differently would be to try to maybe tell a story that is easier to take pictures of. Like I said before it was difficult trying to take pictures of Kadijah family when they live far away. So I would also take a lot more pictures next time because I thought I had enough , but I clearly did not. So next I do something like this I know exactly what to do and not to do. I will make sure to learn from my mistakes.

Reflection:

The process of coming up with the audio final piece was long and frustrating. I did appreciate the fact that this final project was broken up into different sections so I had more time to accommodate. However, seeing as though I have never worked with any of this type of technology before, the process was difficult. Once I finally edited my audio, the next step was to take photos that pertained to the story I was trying to tell. My partner and I had difficulty coming up with ideas of the type of photos we wanted to take, not only that but also having to take photos that followed the guidelines. We went wrong in not taking enough photos as we should have while we were working together. When it came time to add the photos to the audio profile there was a shortage and some of the photos that we did have did not pertain to the story as well as we wanted them to nor did they follow the guidelines.

Despite our minor setbacks, each of us found alternate pictures to substitute for the few pictures that we couldn’t use. Now I know that for the future, it is better to have too much material than not enough. Next time I will also have to plan better so I don’t find myself in these same stressful situations. Overall, going into this project I thought it would be fun and interesting but it actually turned out to be quite the opposite. I know that when I am learning new things everything can’t go smoothly and perfectly. However, now that I know what I did wrong, I can hopefully learn from my mistakes and the process will be easier and easier as this course progresses.

As for my next campus story, I’m still having trouble deciding exactly what story it is I am trying to tell but I am open to new brainstorming ideas. I haven’t found anything campus wise that stands out to me as much yet but I know that I will. I was thinking of possibly doing a story pertaining to a “day in the life of an RA” but I am still brainstorming at the moment.

Doing this video i came across some difficulties, one for example was i wasnt sure as to how long i should keep a photo showing. Also it was somewhat difficult to find the right questions to ask to keep the story fluent. Next time i think conduct clearer open ended questions to ask and to learn how to use final cut pro and imovie so it saves me some trouble.

My interview with Symphonie was about ten minutes long so I found it difficult to edit this piece to only three minutes. My main focus of the interview was to discuss the club she is involved with here at Wagner. Since this was the center of the interview, I made the decision to edit most of the other topics out. I chose to start my piece with the “natural sound” of her stepping because this is what Symphonie does in her club. By beginning with this audio piece, I thought it would set the theme for the rest of the interview.
I chose to edit my questions out of the entire piece. I found it unnecessary to have my questions on the piece because Symphonie repeated my questions in her answer. When there was silence, I either cut it out or I edited the room tone into the interview so it would sound natural. There were a few times where I left the silence because it gives more realness to the piece (such as you can tell the interviewee is thinking,ect.) I also kept the most important moments when you could tell she was passionate about what the was discussing in the interview. I edited out pieces where you could hear movement around the microphone to make the piece more clear. Some recording decisions that affected my editing is that during the “natural sound” I had to cut the beginning out because I had recorded too soon. Also I had recorded the natural sound without headphones so I did not realize the microphone movement.
For a future interview, I will know that instead of asking too many questions, I should let the interviewee speak more so that it flows better as one audio piece. I also should not be too responsive to everything the interviewee says, that way it makes it easier so that I will not have to edit out my voice. I also know to wear headphones at all times because it picks up more audio.

Conducting the interview was quite difficult for me. This is probably because it was the first time i have ever made an interview which included an actual microphone and camera, so i was that sure as to what to ask or how to ask the questions we came up with. in the future i know now how to ask and lead on the person im interviewing to somewhat drag along their answers to make it more full and fluent in a sense. when i conduct my new interview piece i am pretty sure i know how to go about my segment with questions that will add more substance to the story im trying to tell to the audience.

Portrait, dominant foreground

dominant foreground

portrait (door frame), background

motion

motion

motion

dominant background

rule of thirds

dominant foreground

perspective (floor), rule of thirds

dominant foreground

dominant foreground

patterns,  rule of thirds

dominant background, perspective floor

juxtaposition (chairs), portrait (chairs)

rule of thirds

blur (motion of hair), rule of thirds

rule of thirds

rule of thirds, perspective (ground)

rule of thirds, perspective (ground)

rule of thirds, patterns (tiles)

mirror (its almost like she’s pulling away from her reflection)

mirror

dominant foreground