and the video...

Written Response...

Forget everything I said about the audio project. Well not everything, but the part about it being the hardest project of the semester. My confidence was proven erroneous over and over again on this project, probably because of my forgetting that the last time I worked on iMovie HD it was senior year of high school. Now, four years later, I ran into quite a lot of trouble. The writing process began with an idea to shoot video on art students. I know nothing about their program, what they do, or what they will do when they receive a degree, so I figured it would be interesting. Then I realized why I knew nothing about them: they are never around and have class or studio 24/7. Even though I have a good friend who lives with me in the art program, scheduling was next to impossible, especially when trying to coordinate three chaotic schedules during midterm week (project critique week for the art students, as I learned). This set Eric and I back… huge. The project seemed to be doomed from the start, but then there was a glimmer of hope as my stomach turned for food early Saturday morning. BAGELS. I realized that I love bagels. Then I realized, “Hey, Howbowda documentary on these loved bagels?!?!.” And there you have it, we were off to the races. Eric and I quickly drafted up question after question that we could use to create this documentary. I swear I could feel the cold, thin air of Utah brush across my face as I accepted my Sundance Film Festival award (haha). But really, I was excited to get going and set up shot after shot. And so we did. The filming was a blast, and the owners and employees were happy to help us out. Then all I had to do was creep around the quad to get a few cover video shots (I learned that phrase from my journalism buddy). This was easier than I had imagined, just point and shoot at anything with movement that looks interesting. After this, and checking out what Eric had filmed (we decided to film separately to allow flexibility and creativity apart form each other), we were ready to edit. This is where the troubles I spoke of above came in. The biggest problem: massive amounts of footage. Eric and I complied so much footage we didn’t know how to sift through it all. We eventually decided to take turns watching the interviews and street/quad shots, recording what we saw, noting a few key words, and writing down the clip number and time elapsed for that sequence. This proved to help a lot in the long term, since our storyline was vague and underdeveloped when we came to this stage. Our biggest mistake was just filming everything, without a guiding storyline or goal in mind. We figured it would be beneficial, but it proved to take up a lot more time than expected. However, once we had the keywords and times noted, the editing was pretty easy. The most fun part of the editing was choosing music. We had a ton of songs to choose from since we did the editing at my apartment, so my whole library was available. Still, the editing took much longer than expected, more because we enjoyed adding effects and music to the max, but this made our project more aesthetic and creative. In the end I realized one very important thing: iMovie HD is leaps and bounds easier than iMovie, especially when it comes to audio mixing.

my first '10 thing'

1) 'REDRUM' - above a urinal, English building, but the R's were the wrong way so it wouldn't read right in a mirror
2) While filming on the Quad, amidst the choas and scramble, in the cold, stood a young guy playing hacky sack by himself. It calmed and soothed me b/c I really needed a break right then with 7 hrs of class to go.
3)4th and Healey - @ least 12 pumpkins smashed in a block span before it was even Halloween
4)4th and Green - Big Brown wig amongst a bed of dying flowers
5)Group of three people, walking in unison, all holding hands... i dont get it
6)An email -> You Vote, Free Starbucks... sooo progressive
7)Two squirrels mating... pause as we walk by... return to the deed when I'm @ a distance
8)Halloween - 3 Dads walk down green street, all decked out in 'Hater's Ball' full-out pimp suits
9)Construction site - 1 digging, 6(!) watching... classic
10)A car w/ a 'I have a son in the Marines' and 'Obama '08' bumper stickers (i love it)