Final Semester Reflection

On the first day of this class I couldn’t help but think that this course definitely was not for me. As an economics major who is a quantitative thinker the proposition of completing a series of projects that required creativity and an “artsy” thought processes was frightening to me. However, I told myself that I would stick with it at least through the first project, as it was a completion grade (which I can say was  great idea).

The Sweded project that I completed with Liz and Patrick went very well, and I decided that maybe I would be able to be successful in this class. I decided to stick with it, and here I am today – all projects complete.

Surprisingly to me, the projects nearly all went much better than I could have expected. My least favorite was the graffiti project, in that I was inept at actually being able to physically create the graffiti. I enjoyed my idea, and was glad that I was simply able to use paint and a cutup poster board to create my final mockup.

My favorite project by far was the sequential art project. I believe this is because it required a relatively low amount of my performance skill (although I have no problems with public speaking or presentations) and instead required a lot of behind the scenes thinking and planning. I was also able to create it about something I had very strong feelings for, therefore making the project all the more natural to me. That sequential art project turned out to what I believe to be my best work throughout all of INFO 303, and I enjoyed the debate it sparked when I presented it.

As we went through the class I gave it my best attempt to constantly make each project substantially different from the others, especially in regards to the ideas. While some others in the class repeatedly explored the same themes throughout most projects, I wanted to both challenge myself and liven up my projects with fresh ideas. As so, I touched on everything from astronomy to infomercials to University of Illinois corruption. This kept the projects both fun for me and interesting for the audience.

Even with relative content with the projects, I feel that there were a few things I could have done differently. My second video project seemed very monotone and possibly a bit boring, so I would go back and liven that up, although not too much so as I did have the objective side of the argument. In regards to the podcast project, I believe more musical transition would have helped, in addition to slower & better annunciated words. I can attribute this difficulty to both the newness of recording sound and my inexperience with sound modification software such as Audacity.

However, even with these minor regrets, I still had a great time throughout the semester. I explored a world that, as an economics major and informatics minor, I would have never experienced if it hadn’t been for this class. For that I thank both the entire class, and especially Hannah for a great semester in WAM.

Final Project Process

Pre-Production

Our first idea was to give a typical presentation as we had done the entire year and not included the class (audience) in the learning. As so, we were going to create our own different messages using different mediums and then explain the theory based around those artifacts. In addition, we would have simply explained the difference between hot and cold media rather than having the audience experience it themselves.

However, we thought this would not be creative enough and generally just be too much of a alphabetic representation of the theory. At this point we chose to have the audience involved, and then after some brainstorming, discussion and modification of the original theory we decided on having the audience create their own artifacts through drawing, which happened to be fast (as we needed for the presentation length) and easy so that everyone could participate.

Composing

The composition part of our project was largely done mid-presentation by the audience. However, we did create a self-reference instructions sheet as shown below:

1. You have 9 shapes to use in creating your artifact.

• 3 circles
• 2 straight lines
• 1 curvy line
• 1 triangle
• 2 dots

1. You can only use these objects, but you must use all the objects!
2. Everyone must create their own drawing.
3. However, feel free to work with the person next to & around you in coming up with your creation.
4. You all received different drawing utensils so please use them & only them.

• Paper
  • Pen
  • Pencil
  • Crayons
  • Markers
  • Computer Drawing

This outlined our instructions for the creation of the artifacts. Unfortunately, we did not save any of the artifacts that were created from neither our testing nor our actual presentation in class. However, the created artifacts were usually either a snowman, car or abstract object.

Presenting

Our presentation went well, and consisted both of us instructing and of the audience participating. I feel that the audience’s involvement was difficult to work around seamlessly, especially since we literally had no idea what people would create. However, we were mostly correct in that nearly everyone in the class created a snowman, car or abstraction.

We then went onto explain why we had the audience do this, and how it directly related to the theory’s the “medium is the message.” We then drew our own version of the shape on the whiteboard and used this as a piece to explain the different between hot and cold media.

Critique

While I believed our idea was solid and everyone did indeed have fun with and learn from the experience, it did appear that the presentation was not well thought out / executed. I believe this can be contributed to the fact that we had the audience take such an involved and integral part in the presentation, and we did not know exactly what to expect or how to plan for the audience’s exact reaction.

Even so, I believe we did well in representing the theory and I do hope that it was both informative and fun for the audience.

Video Project – Process

Brainstorming / Pre-Production

Patrick and I cycled through many ideas and took quite awhile to come up with our idea. The final version of it started when Patrick brought up the BBC / Discover channel’s Planet Earth series and its laid back style of a documentary. At that point we deduced that we could apply it to the University of Illinois and came up with a final name of “Planet Campus.”

We wanted the objective viewpoint of the university to show it as a place of higher education where students work hard in earning their degrees. In contrast, the subjective viewpoint was to show students out partying and not at all working on their education.

At this point the idea was nailed down and we started brainstorming different shots that we could use in conveying our message effectively. These would be divided into two categories, daytime shots of campus and nighttime shots of Green Street and the bars. The final list of footage that we compiled was relatively comprehensive, but we did end up shooting some footage spontaneously also.

Shooting

While our shooting was done on many separate occasions, there were three main meetings in which we shot most of the footage. The first meeting covered the time lapse of the quad and all the library shots. The second got other pictures of the quad, combined with other shots of the university and the third captured all the footage of the night life.

Interestingly, the Game Stop footage was completely unplanned and it just happened to be the release night of an extremely popular game Call of Duty. Shooting the footage of the main stacks was extremely difficult and required us going on an escapade in order to get the prior approval we needed to film inside the actual main stacks.

The time-lapse shots of both the quad and car rides were difficult because the camera had to be absolutely steady in order for the time lapse to not become distorted. We ran into some problems with this in the vehicle, however we were still happy with how they came out overall.

Of the four people we interviewed we were lucky enough to get two of the people to get the thought question about Mt. Everest wrong and the other two to get it correct. This gave us appropriate footage for both the objective and subjective sides of the video in order to show the juxtaposition. As a final note on the shooting, we worked hard to get footage that both of us would find beneficial, as we suspected overlapping footage would be difficult to come by.

Editing

By far the most time consuming process of the entire project, fully editing over 30 minutes of footage into something just 4-5 minutes long that has meaning proved to be difficult. My first step was to create an outline of what shots I wanted to keep in the video for sure, what I was unsure about and what I knew I would remove.

I immediately removed most of the night scenes, as those were filmed specifically for the subjective cut of the film. At this point I took an inventory of all the footage that I still had, broke them all up into their own sections with Windows Movie Maker and removed the audio from the clips whose sound was either inaudible or not necessary.

After determining my inventory I put together a storyline that would roughly follow a student through their day in which I would comment on each section. I organized these clips in the order that flowed best and removed any extraneous clips that I no longer wanted. I sped up the time-lapse of the quad about 20 times so that the final version was only 40 seconds, compared to the original 15 minutes.

At this point all that was left for me to do was write a script that explained the images and followed my story, and then simply record the script and integrate it with the video. After the script was written and I began to record, I had to pause my voice for the lecture scene and be cautious of the undergraduate library’s background noise.

After importing this final audio track and equalizing the sound level I was officially finished with the video.

Post-Production / Critique

While I thought the video did well to portray an objective view, I thought doing so was partially at the expense of excitement. I wanted to talk in a somewhat laid-back, monotone style as to not evoke any emotions in the viewer than is currently occurring with the images alone. To combat this I attempted to use some witty comments and thoughtful editing to keep the audience’s attention.

Also, near the very beginning of the video there was some visual artifacts that I believe arose from a combination of the camera used and Windows Movie Maker’s poor editing code. Even with countless attempts to fix it I was still getting the same poor result.

As we as a class have not yet had the opportunity to go over and critique my video, I cannot comment on that. However, I will edit this post if and when we get to discussing it as a class.

Video Project – Planet Campus

Planet Campus (Objective)

Enjoy!

In Class 11/3 – Edu & Lundsford Question Responses

In response to Hannah’s prompt:

Write about how you think Ede & Lunsford’s discussions of authorship and collaboration apply to the collaborative video project you’re working on.

I believe Ede & Lundsford stress the importance of interactivity between the new authors in order to create a work that is profound by reflecting on the experiences of both parties involved. As collaboration should be a two way street that connects the ideas of all the authors involved, it is also important that both feel that they have a say in the final outcome and also also credited for their contributions.

 

In response to Brian Baxtor’s question #2:

Do you agree with the idea of collobarations being credited with a group name? Why or why not?

While I agree that crediting to a group name may be the only fair way to distribute credit when a large number of contributors were involved, I feel that authors should be named individually for very small groups such as the ones for the video project in this class. However, as I mentioned for larger groups such as 10-50+ I feel that it is only fair to mention the group name, provided that everyone contributed equally to the final work.

Class 11/03 – Ede & Lundsford Questions

1. Do you feel that one contributer “doing more” than another is often felt by people within a group? If so, do you believe Ede & Lundsford’s primarily group recognition is  adequate in most situations?
2. Have you ever co-authored something which was credited as a group and therefore felt cheated for the work you put in? Explain.
3. Do you see us as a society ever going back to the medevil times in which the concepts of authorship were much more blurry than today? Do you think today’s society is overly stressing on proper credit for work?

In Class 10/27 – Response to Hampe Questions

In response to Hannah’s Question:

Based on Hampe’s concept of “visual evidence” and editing, do you believe documentary is objective? why or why not?

According to Hampe, I do not believe that a documentary can be completely objective. After even removing as much personal bias as possible, there is still a certain reason why a director filmed a certain scene in a particular way or chose to edit in the way that they did. For example, one could cut out more footage in regards to one side of a story or even simply edit one part of the video with a longer transition, which can leave the audience with a subjective meaning, even if not intended.

 

In response to Georgia’s question:

I think reality television is a big place where editing can determine the feel of the scene. Can you think of any examples of when this happened in any show?

While I am not a frequent watcher of reality television, I can comment on how editing can completely shape the meaning of the scene. For example, when the “actors” of the show are in what looks to be in a secluded area giving a “confession,” there is often a director sitting behind the camera asking questions and prompting a response. However, this is obviously edited out from the footage so that it looks like a simply an “objective” personal account of whatever they have to say.

Class 10/26 – Hampe Questions

1. Hampe states that audiences often believe that their one interpretation is the only possible one for the video they just saw. As so, do you feel that you also fall into this stereotype? Or do you at least attempt to contemplate different viewpoints or interpretations before deriving your final stance?
2. Does the lack of a positive feedback loop (where the actors and the audience would be able to communicate in some fashion, such as a play) always makes it more difficult to communicate a message? Or can you, being the only one dictating the conversation make it easier to get your point across?
3. Hampe continually stresses that “Talk is cheap” and visuals are absolutely necessary to effective create meaning. Do you agree? Can you think of an example when you thought that a verbal scene was just as, if not more effective than visual evidence?

Podcast Process Reflection

Pre-Production
Before finally settling on my direct response television advertisement / infomercial idea, I mentally sifted through many other concepts. The runner-up, which I almost started producing a script on, was going to be a discussion about internet marketing. However, this idea had one major complication. While I believed that most of the class would be able to infer on a general scale what internet marketing is, I felt the whole idea just required too much technical knowledge to understand well. If I still wanted to press on with it I would need to take a large amount of time, if not the entire podcast just to explain what it is.

The final advertisement idea came after getting off work at 2:45am only to find infomercial after infomercial on television. Many of them I had seen for months in row. There were many big names such as the Shamwow and the Slap Chop, and I wondered what made these infomercials so successful.

I went onto analyze infomercials for about 3 hours on television that night and the night after, and also watched YouTube videos of many different infomercials also. I discovered that they all had the same structure and decided to pull out three of the most apparent parts to be my three talking points.

I also wanted to ensure that these points could be easily demonstrated with sound clips and that there would be enough to explain about them. I finally decided on covering the disclaimer / “small print,” over-the-top demonstrations / testimonials and bonuses. I used these three talking points, the sound clips associated with these points and transition music to create a final-ish version of my script.

One last important point to note is that I use the term “infomercial” to describe even the “direct response television advertisements” (DRTVs) as it is a household term and would be easily understandable by the class.

Recording
Although it took what seemed like forever (about 4 hours), recording generally went well. I already had a headset with a built in microphone with some noise cancellation capabilities but as I did the recording I am not exactly sure how effective that noise cancellation was. I used Audacity to both record and edit the podcast, as I’ll explain later in the editing section.

I had to record every part of me talking at least three times for me to be relatively happy with both my annunciation and tone. As my recording went on, I quickly noticed that I would have to cut out an entire talking point in order to fit the podcast in under the five minute mark. This was unfortunate as the point did indeed add to the podcast, but I am still happy with the final product even without it.

When it came to the introduction and transitioning between the talking points I had planned to use music for a smoother ease in and out of different main ideas. For this music I knew I wanted lyric-less music that was still up-tempo and did not pull the audience’s attention away from the fluidity of the podcast.

When recording my voice I had to be very careful of “M” and “P” sounds because of the expelled air interfering with the microphone. When these unwanted sounds snuck in I would often just rerecord the entire section over because I was not skilled enough with Audacity to remove them via editing without making it sound even more awkward.

Editing
The vast majority of my editing was done as I went along recording. This made it much easier for me to cut down parts and touch up any mishaps when it was still fresh in my mind. However, editing was still quite difficult for me because I had never used Audacity before and was learning via trial and error from the ground up. While it was not extremely difficult to get the hang of, there was still a learning curve with Audacity that took some time.

However, this was not nearly as frustrating as when I lost over one third of everything I had recorded because Audacity randomly crashed and me and I could not recover the data. After that I learned to save after anything I recorded and including even after the smallest of edits.

Despite that trouble with Audacity I found its features to be very well done. The fade in / fade out tools made it relatively simple to transition into and out of music with just a few clicks. I also had to play around with the equalizer to attain a consistent volume throughout the entire podcast because the music was usually too loud and the sound clips were often not loud enough.

Critique
First off I would like to state that I am happy with how the entire podcast turned out. I had done some video tutorial screen recordings before, but I had never used a sound editor to mix music, sounds and my voice together.

Regarding the recordings of my voice, I had to record myself sometimes up to five to seven times in order to finally achieve the correct tone and emphasis of my voice. Sometimes these recording processes were very successful and other times I still could not get parts to sound exactly how I envisioned them. This may be due to my expectations being too high for a beginner, me just not having the practice, marginal quality equipment, or a combination of all the above.

The musical transitions came out very well, and the entire flow of the podcast I feel both made sense and was relatively pleasing to the ears. Even with the lack of high quality equipment I found my voice still easy to hear clearly, although I do feel that some of my vocal emphasis was indeed lost for some reason or another.

The final issue I found myself faced with was the lack of time. A time constraint of five minutes forced me to cut out one of main my three talking points, leaving me only with two to touch on. While I feel that I did lose a small portion of the meat and potatoes of the podcast, I also believe that it still both has enough information and flows well as a final product.

Podcast Project

My Podcast is linked from netfiles below. Enjoy!

Infomercial Podcast