So far, my group’s creative process has been very productive and substantial. The last time that we met in class, we talk a lo to about finalizing our storyboard, where we should record, and what kind of information we should entail into our script. That part of our creative process was pretty much like a brainstorming session where we kind of just threw ideas out and agreed on just one. Beyond the classroom, our creative process extended. Outside of the classroom we regularly spoke through a group chat. That is where some of our brainstorming occurred also. In the group chat we finalized dates and ideas of when to meet up and more. We decided that we should meet in Alexander Library to record some material. At the library we had a camera and tripod that a group member previously had and a computer for a script. We met in a quiet area and began filming. At this moment, we had reached a milestone in the creative process. After extensive planning, we were able to come together and bring our ideas to life. With the camera and tripod, we did not face many troubles because we had a steady platform, and with the script already pre-made, we also had an idea of what to say and do. Overall, we got a lot done and it was a successful. In the future, we plan to record the parts that we were not able to record before and also brainstorm about some ideas on how to edit our video. I think this will be the most difficult process because it is apart of the final process & if we want a good project, we will have to spend the most time on it. I think once our group gets everything finalized, then it will be a good project!
Week 10
First, I would like to start off by saying that I found the Creative Commons Search Engine very difficult to navigate. For this assignment, we were asked to search three different medias and link them to the blog and tell why and how we would coordinate and use this for our final assignment. While I searched many different medias, I found myself constantly running into dead ends and not finding what I wanted. But after playing around with some of the features on the website, I was able to make a little progress. The first thing I search for was a resume photo (
). Being that my group is making our final project all about resume writing and building, I figured that would be the first thing we need.
Second I searched for music. First I made a really general search for elevator music. The inspiration for our final video comes from buzzfeed, and I think in buzzfeed videos, there is a lot of usage of elevator and very simple music that is played in the background just to add musical element. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a sample or link for some kind of cliche elevator music to use, but I will continue to look!
Lastly, our final piece of media had to be of a movie. Now, I think I had the hardest time thinking of a movie that my group could potentially use in our video because our videos theme is so specific. So, instead of spending too much time thinking of a specific movie, I chose to find a short youtube clip of an interview gone wrong (
) I chose to use this video because I believe that this video can serve as something like a direct reference to get a feel or ideas for our group without directly imitating it.
Storyboarding
First, let me start off by saying that story boarding via digital media is difficult. Some of my group members and myself have never really done story boarding before, so this week’s blog assignment was a little bit over the place. I also believe that because of the confusion of the assignment and what content we needed to produce, it made everything seem a little out of wack. But ultimately, we came together via chat on Google and decided to do our best and have the best animator in our group produce an outline for a storyboard and other members of the group produce the extra content to make it complete. When looking at our groups story board, there were no extreme changes. I think if there were any changes, it would probably be the order in which our scenes were originally; but other than that, there were no specific changes. Our story board has animation that can effectively guide our group through a successful shooting and editing process for our final video. The story board entails a lot of directions and step that we did not think of initially when we first came up with out idea to do a video on resume building, so it’s pretty cool to see that we’re going in a good direction!
Group Work: Creative Process
So far in my group, we have decided to do our final assignment video on resume writing in regards to what the Career Services at Rutgers University entails on their website and Youtube channel. After much deliberation, as a group, we had chosen to do our assignment on resume writing because we believed that it would be the most interesting and be a topic that we could all easily relate to in hopes to create and produce a successful project. After we came up with a theme for our project, we began to talk about the creative directions that we wanted to take. In my opinion, our individual efforts in creating a group project on something such as this is fair. It could be a little concise, but I presume that our creative process will have its bumps, twists, and turns because we will often change things and add as well. We came up with one really good idea to create a video that resembles a Buzzfeed video, and I really like that idea. I like the idea because Buzzfeed has become something that almost everyone is familiar with, one way or another, so being that we could create something similar to what Buzzfeed produces, we could catch the attention and liking of some people. Although it is not very unique because we found the inspiration from another platform, I think if we worked hard enough on it, we could potentially add something special to the overall concept to make the video more distinct in the process. In regards to the storyboard, I hope to reflect precise concepts and frames of what our final project will be like. I think it’ll be good to make something that we all collectively agree on but we should also have an understanding that the storyboard is something like a rough draft and sometimes our ideas will change.If our group’s intended creative process goes out the way that we plan that it does, I think we will have a successful outcome!
Midterm Process
So over spring break, I had the task to make a midterm blog about anything that I wanted. My topic ad to be clear, fun, and unique in order to captivate different audiences as well as have a clear message as to why I created that blog! Before actually creating my blog, I spent a long time trying to figure out what I wanted to dedicate my blog to. But after running through a few ideas and drafts of my blog, I finally decided to create a blog dedicated do it yourself projects and information for college students. I decided to do my blog on this topic because as a college student, it is a topic that excites me the most. Before entering my freshman year of college, I would spend countless hours surfing the web and researching ways to make my dorm room fun and quirky or how to survive my days through college in general! So, I figured because it is something that I thoroughly enjoy doing that it would be a good idea to elaborate and share my ideas and findings with other people! I wanted my blog to be both interactive and fun to visit. I not only wanted my blog to be a hub for all information, but just a fun site to go to when in need. The creative process that I encountered when creating my blog was a great one! I enjoyed writing daily blog posts because I was interested in what I was writing about and was also excited to be able to share that information. I made sure to be clear and concise through all of my posts and to also make it fun, so that it wasn’t like a regular boring informational blog! My favorite part about my blog is the video that I produced! Earlier in the class, I had a hard time producing video and audio, so I made sure to spend extra time producing my video and it came out great! I enjoyed doing the project overall
.
(header borrowed from my collegediy blog)
Editing Video
So, this week we learned how to screencast and edit video…wasn’t too bad. I understood this process, far more than I understood editing audio last week. Because I understood this process more, I didn’t have such a hard time screencasting and creating my video (even though I had to download and upgrade a lot of software onto my computer). But overall, it maybe took me one full hour to complete this task. I actually had a lot of fun making my video. It was a little weird hearing my own voice repeatedly, but the overall process was a interesting one.
I think the skill, of being able to screencast and edit videos will come in handy, just not for our final projects but also for our careers in the near future. If you’re like me and you career goal is to be a journalist or in the media studies someway, this is a skill that might be crucial (and it’s best to learn it now, rather than later). It’s no big secret that journalism and other things are going digital, so screencasting and editing video could be something very useful in the future, that can help make you a better qualified candidate whenever you apply for a job. Employers will definitely appreciate this skill! & so will you! Aside from using this editing skill to “wow” your future employers, I think this skill can also come in handy for someone who is interested in making different kinds of web tutorial videos. This skill can come in handy for making tutorial videos because the screencasting software provides you with the tools to serve and publish information from your point of view to assist other people in showing the right steps (If only there was an audacity tutorial made this way).
But I hope everyone enjoys, and good luck with your videos!
Audio Editing
(This image was borrowed from giphy.com)
Now you’re probably wondering why I chose this photo to begin with on this post, but it basically sums up my entire week while doing this assignment. I’ve come to the conclusion that audio editing just isn’t for me. When leaving class on Monday, I was little confused and not really understanding on how to use audacity, but I figured that I would just figure it out on my own (like I do most things), but unfortunately, that didn’t work out to well for me. Now, I’ve used Audacity in the past while attending another university, but during that class, I had a complete detailed handout on how to effectively create, record, and remix songs and other audio (If only I could find that paper ): ) Anyway, I tried over and over to get a good project, but things were not going smoothly. Between not being able to down the software without my computer denying its properties to no being able to splice and fade two songs to sound the way it was suppose to, it was an overall mess. Also, being that I do not live on campus, I did not have easy accessibility to a public computer. I looked for help outside of class, but it really wasn’t too effective.
I can almost connect my experience to the reading “Minutemen” by Azerrad, because just like Boon and Watt, when I was introduced to this project, I didn’t know where to begin, how to begin, or what my project to even sound like. So, similar to their store, I played around with the idea and tried to create my own sound (well, in this case, just edit the audio correctly), but unfortunately, I did not have as much luck like Boon and Watt. In the near future, especially when it comes time to prepare audio for the next blog assignment, I will seek extra help to make sure I can practically do the editing process with my eyes close (not really, but you know what I mean). Or maybe I’ll find a different program to use, that will be easier for me.But for now, I’m going to continue de-bugging my pc, since it’s been running a little slow ever since I’ve tired to download the software various times. If anyone is reading this and can offer me some help! Let me know! I’m all for it (:
Image Editing
My experience creating my new header was not as bad as I initially thought that it would be, but I did run into a lot of obstacles along the way! While photo editing and other projects such as this may come naturally to some, it does not come naturally to me. But I believe that I handled it pretty well (at least, I actually created a header).
First, I thought about what two pictures I wanted to merge together for my new header. I searched for many options from cartoons to city skylines, but instead, I chose to use two of my favorites things pertaining to nature. I chose to create my header of out sunflowers and a butterfly.
(Original Photos)
Next, I began to think about how exactly I wanted to combine these two photos into making something that I wanted to showcase onto my blog. One thing I notice is that both photos have similar color schemes. That is one aspect that I loved and kind of used to my advantage, because I knew that the two photos would mesh well together.
After figuring out the positioning of the photos, I began to edit the background of the butterfly photo to remove all of the blue color so that it would not clash with my initial background, being the sunflowers. This was the most difficult part of my time editing my images because it took a really long time erasing all of the blue background from the butterfly picture. Because the design of the butterfly is so rigid and delicate, I had to make sure that I was super careful when editing so I do not edit too much to the point where I am ruining the picture of the butterfly. Also, because I was working on a laptop, it made the task even harder without a mouse.
Once I was finished, I used the brightness and contrast option to edit the butterfly photo to make it match the colors of the sunflower photo. Once I go the butterfly to the shade that I was comfortable with, I changed the overall color scheme of the picture to “Old Photo” for a more vintage feel.
I think I could apply my new found skills of using Pixlr to my everyday life, because as an aspiring journalist, image editing is a new skill that may be required for my future jobs. Because of the transition that journalism is going through with half of the platform being on the web, it is extremely important that you have as many skills as possible (other than writing a story) because when it is necessary, you will need to know how to do different tasks, such as editing a photo(s).
Experience
(Image borrowed from Google.com)
For a long time now, I’ve been wanting to set up and publish a personal blog, so I am very excited that creating and actually utilizing a blog is a requirement for this class! My experience with creating this blog was fairly easier than I initially thought that it would be. Me fearing that creating a blog on my own would be difficult is probably the main factor as to why I have not created my own personal blog yet. But, with the help of the professor in class and all of the instructional videos provided, it guided me through this entire process. Of all the steps required for successfully creating this blog, I think that the most difficult aspect was actually choosing a good layout and colors for my blog. As we read in the “Sparring Mind” article last week, a blog’s design and appearance says a lot about not only you but it also should be a reflection of whatever messages or moods that you are trying to portray to audiences. I wanted a design that was simple enough to where it would be easy on the eyes and comfortable for both me and my intended audience. I wanted my blog to be comfortable to navigate and read so that it would not easily turn away a reader because they find it too difficult to work or read through. Therefore, with the blog design and colors that I have chosen, I think that I’ve successfully reached my goal. Aside from my initial goals, I also realized once my blog was officially published that this specific technological space will be used to almost force others to cooperate and emerge themselves into something that will build an intimate community around one source as explained in the Fred Turner reading. While other technological sites can work to perform the same functions as WordPress, blogging can produce a bigger community and provide more space for creativity that other sites do not offer.
(image borrowed from Google.com)
Digital Media 