Happy Trails

One of my first photography attempts for the Seeing Red project taken outside my Columbia, Mo. home. Though I never came to love the Nikon, I did learn to live with it.

I can’t believe it’s almost over! I’ve actually become proficient in Audacity, Soundslides, Final Cut Pro X and Photoshop and crafted two multimedia feature pieces on a couple of really interesting Columbians. I’ve presented my group’s website to the class, and with some adjustments, the whole thing will be finished. Here are a few things I learned from J2150:

1) There are really interesting individuals out there. Just ask around. You never know who’s sitting next to you.

2) Technology is scary, but don’t let it scare you away. The internet is a wonderful place with many instructions that can enlighten you to the wonders of multimedia applications.

3) You should always try to remain professional with your sources, but you’ll get much better content if you can establish some trust and common ground. Be formal, especially when you first make contact, but once you’re sitting down for the interview, cracking a joke can go a long way.

4) You can never have too much B-roll.

5) Five shot sequences are what makes your video look professional. Without a five-shot, the audience feels like they haven’t seen everything there is to see.

6) Leading space is important. Don’t make your audience feel trapped or claustrophobic.

7) Don’t be offended if you show your finished product to a friend and they respond with, “Yeah. It looks fine.” It means it looks like what they were expecting: a news piece. They saw everything they felt they needed to, and it looked like the evening news. They would have noticed if you did something wrong, but they don’t notice if you do it all right.

8) You’re going to make mistakes, but you’re not necessarily going to learn from them. You have to make a conscious effort to correct poor tendencies.

9) Don’t forget to do your weekly blog post. Your writing skills will leave you if you stop writing.

10) Ask lots of questions! You probably don’t know what you’re really supposed to be doing. Lab instructors are helpful like that.

I’m really glad I got to take this class. I made final products that I’m proud of and learned way more than I could fit into one blog post. I’m much more confident about publishing multimedia – I think I could actually make decent pieces for news publications now. The adventure continues with J2100 next semester!

Final Cut, No

A still from the footage of Ann Glavan that I got following her show in Lake St. Louis, Mo. on Friday, Nov. 7, 2014. I spent a lot of time Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2014 looking over the large amounts of video I shot that day. Luckily, I had been able to organize the footage before editing all the videos I made.

Final Cut Pro has been giving me a huge headache. When I was purchasing materials and computer programs for J2150, I bought Premiere Elements to edit video. I have no idea why. When I started to work on my first round of videos, it only took me about a half an hour to realize that Premiere and I were never going to get along. The free trial of Final Cut was my saving grace, but now my trial has expired and Final Cut has forsaken me. I set my due date for the video component of the final project for Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2014, so I didn’t have much time and I did not have an extra $300 lying around to purchase the actual program. I was desperate to find an alternate route to Final Cut.

I tried convincing the free trial website that I wasn’t Jacquelyn Olson, no, I had never even heard of that person. I was a newcomer to the free trial and I deserved a month of free video editing. Clearly, Steve Jobs’ intellect and security programs were superior to my  false identities (aka, my roommate’s name and email address). Then, I tried installing the free version on a friend’s computer, but our schedules never lined up enough for me to get any real work done. I even tried installing it on my sorority’s desktop computers, but they were too old to accept the program. Finally, I realized that (duh) the J-school computers ALL have Final Cut Pro installed! Come on, Jackie.

The problem was that the J-school computers do not allow you to save anything locally to be worked on later. I had one shot to edit all of my videos. So, I spent my 20th birthday in the basement of Walter Williams Hall, creating three beautiful videos:

I got the job done, but I think Final Cut bested me in the end. It’s crappy to work on a tight deadline for hours at a time. After going to lab, I went home, consumed an impressive amount of birthday cake, and passed out. Only one more day until Thanksgiving break…

On the Go

 

I covered the qTpoc meeting in the LGBTQ Resource Center in Columbia, Mo. on Monday, Nov. 10, 2014. The talk was interesting, but I spent way too much time on interviews while covering the event.

So mobile assignments on deadline are pretty stressful. My last post, significantly different in layout from my usual posts, was published entirely from my phone. All of the content was gathered and posted in under two hours.

Going in, I thought it would be a piece of cake. I’ve written on deadline before, and covered topics that are way more stressful than an LGBTQ discussion group. What I forgot was that I’m a perfectionist. I always feel like I need more background information before I can publish anything, lest I misunderstand something fundamental about the story and have it show in my writing. For an in-depth piece, this is a blessing. For an under 200-word blog post, this is a curse. I interviewed more than one person at the event, which was completely unnecessary. I also tried to talk to the speaker, which I had no time for because I’d already interviewed two people who attended the event. My biggest mistake came from asking a person who worked at the LGBTQ Resource Center a couple questions for clarification. Never engage someone who is passionate about a cause unless you want to be lectured for a while. Most of the information he gave me was helpful, but a solid seven minutes out of the ten minute lecture were really irrelevant to what I was doing. But I couldn’t cut him off, because he was talking to me as a favor. And because he didn’t breathe between sentences.

By the time I’d blundered through my interviews and gotten a lecture from Resource Center personnel, I had about 20 minutes to get my content online. Fine. I know how to write a lead and add a quote. But no matter what I did, the WordPress app refused to let me caption my photos. I pressed every damn button in the thing, and it gave me no other options but to post photos without captions. So I cut the deadline pretty close and had to omit photo explanations, and to top it off I totally forgot to tweet my post out for extra points. Come on, Jackie.

qTpoc Talk

The University of Missouri Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer Resource Center in Columbia, Mo. hosted an event for Queer People of Color on Monday, Nov. 10, 2014 that aimed to foster open discussion about the issues plaguing the transgender community.

The event is titled ‘qTpoc,’ adding a ‘T’ for ‘transgender’ to the Queer People of Color acronym ‘QPOC.’ Though QPOC meets weekly, the MU LGBTQ Resource Center planned and advertised qTpoc as an event in an attempt to spread the word about QPOC meetings and give students a chance to discuss issues specific to the transgender community.

Remi Rocha is a student who identifies as a queer person of color and describes herself as a QPOC regular.

“I’m still educating myself about trans issues, so I like to go to as many events like this as I can to further educate myself,” said Rocha.

Getting Back in the Saddle

I had a really good time making friends at the barn, like Chester, a Thoroughbred owned by one of Ann’s friends who also competed on Friday, Nov. 7, 2014. Chester entertained me at the Lake St. Louis, Mo. show by sticking out his tongue to try and get attention, but once the camera came out he got a little shy.

I’ve started my final project relatively early and have already collected all the content I need for the video. I drove out to tape Ann training for her show at the Lake St. Louis Hunter/Jumper Horse Show on Thursday night and caught her preparation and showing on Friday morning. She performed very well and got third place overall in the Younger Adult Hunter Class. I got to interview her and her trainer before and after her performance, and I’m excited to see how the video turns out!

It was really nice to be able to walk in to the excitement of the show atmosphere and be confident in my ability to take video. Before taking J2150, I would have had no idea what kind of content to look for or how to approach the video-making process. Now, I’m able to waltz in, quickly make adjustments to my equipment, and take quality video that conveys the feel of the environment well. I was able to gather several five-shot sequences as well as good action shots of Ann warming up and taking jumps during her competition. My confidence allowed me to be much more relaxed during this portion of the class than the last, and I was able to make a connection with my subject so that she felt comfortable with me as well. It also allowed me to have a pretty good time during the entire filming process.

As I said in my last post, I do love horses. This, combined with the relative ease with which I was able to take video, made me a pretty happy camper at the show. Despite the fact that I had to drive an hour and a half to the barn and back each day, I was very excited to be there both times. There were plenty of horses and dogs to play with during down time between shots, and the mannerisms and vocabulary I learned when I was younger started to come back to me. I’ll have to be careful not to use equestrian terms in the final project so that all audiences can understand the video, but I think I’m going to continue to have a fantastic time working on the project. I hope I can translate my passion for the subject into the final product!

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

I was an equestrian in my hometown of Naperville, IL for eight years. I’m excited to be back around horses for my next project.

With the final component of my first project completed, it’s time to say goodbye to the family I’ve been working with for the last seven weeks. I’m excited for the milestone of finishing the first half of J2150, but I’m sad to bring my visits with my subject to an end. He and his family were incredibly kind and generous during the entire process, and I feel lucky to have been able to meet them and tell their son’s story. I hope my project can be of some use to him in the future.

Now, I get to do the project all over again with someone new. The next victim is Ann Glavan, an MU student and equestrian. She boards her horse, Lucky, in Rocheport and competes in Kansas City and St. Louis. During this project, we will catch her at Lake St. Louis to compete for the title of grand champion. She is also an aspiring journalist who would like to write for equine magazines. She has already written professionally for Phelps Media Group and Chronicle of the Horse, and has been asked to drop out of school to write full time by some of her supervisors.

I’m really looking forward to working with her, not only to get to know someone new, like my last subject, but also to snag some tips from her about how to intern with some pretty big-time publications! I’m also excited about working in the barn with her. I rode horses throughout most of my childhood, and I miss the atmosphere.

I anticipate getting most of our photography at the barn while she practices, trains and cares for Lucky. The audio there will also be really interesting – stall doors, buckets, hooves, gaits (and gates), hoses, brushes, tack clinking, boots, you name it. We will follow Ann and Lucky with video cameras at her show for the video component so that we can capture a complex environment more easily and in a short amount of time. The story will cover her accomplishments in journalism and plans for the future because of the relatively few visuals that go along with those components. All in all, I’m expecting a really solid and interesting final project.

They See B-Rollin’

My subject’s drum waits out the remainder of halftime after the band’s halftime show on Friday, Sept. 19, 2014 at a Columbia, Mo. high school football game. During the show, the drum is harnessed to my subject so that he can march with it and leave his hands free for drumming. 

I think I’ve done the impossible: I think I’ve taken too much B-roll. I know that all lectures and workshops advise to take more B-roll than you think possible, but I must disagree. The problem lies with my equipment. Even though I usually rent the Cannons overnight, checkout only gives me one battery to use for the evening and the morning. The camera only holds a charge for about an hour’s worth of filming, and I need to leave room for interviews and standup. I have a terrible track record for keeping time, and keeping track of my remaining battery life has been no different. I keep finding myself lacking needed battery time because of my new hobby of filming any and all B-roll-ish looking things in a given setting.

Once I start looking for B-roll details, I can’t stop. I start seeing everything as something indicative of the setting, and I wind up with a lot of uninteresting footage of stationary objects. I’ve had to delete a lot of them. I’ve been kicking myself for spending time focusing on small objects while my subject’s band – what I’m supposed to be focusing on – plays on around me. Aside from being weirdly obsessed with B-roll, I do this because I don’t want to end up with only wide shots from the top of the bleachers or from the sides of the field. I can’t get very close during practices, so I’ve been looking for details in B-roll instead. Still, it’s no substitute for close ups/extreme close ups of my subject, and it’s annoying to have to ignore the band.

All the while, I have who-knows-how-many eyes on me. All the band kids and directors can’t get over the camera, even though I went to a practice a couple weeks ago to practice shooting for this week. I’m hoping their stares don’t show up in my extensive b-roll shots. My subject is fully aware of all the attention I’m inadvertently attracting, and appears thoroughly embarrassed by the camera and me. I feel bad because he’s the one doing me a favor, allowing me to follow him, but at the same time, I want to get this project done and I’m getting used to being the elephant in the room. I’m gonna keep B-rollin’ on.

Marching On

My subject performing at a halftime show in Columbia, Mo. on Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. He is the leader of his drum line and is in charge of keeping time for their marching.

I think the short video was my favorite project so far. The visuals already lined up with the audio, so there was no need to sort through photos and line them up with semi-matching audio, which caused me a lot of anguish while making the audio slide shows. I could never decide which photo was best with which sound clip, and I would end up editing way more photos than I actually used. For video, the audio and visuals move together (obviously, they were gathered simultaneously) and make for much smoother transitions and fluid story lines. Though I began with a greater appreciation for audio slideshows, I think I like video storytelling better now that I’ve worked with both types of media.

It helped that made things a lot easier on myself and gave up Premiere Elements for the Final Cut Pro free 30 day trial. It only took a half an hour on Premiere for me to decide I had no idea what I was doing. After working with Audacity, Final Cut Pro was actually an easy transition. The clear keyboard shortcuts help speed up the editing process. I was able to craft a clean project in a relatively short time with a very low stress level. It makes me feel like I’m starting to get better at multimedia!

For my final piece, I plan to focus on my subject’s involvement in his high school’s marching band. He spends most of his time practicing with the band and it seems to be the highlight of his day. I’ve already gone out and filmed him at a practice and during a halftime performance, so the stress level has been low on this project as well. The only thing I’m worried about now is getting an interview with his band director. It’s been difficult to track him down, but hopefully I can interview him on Tuesday without too much drama. With luck, this video will go as smoothly as the last one.

Changing My Tune

My subject let me photograph him practicing jazz on his keyboards in his basement studio last Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014. I feel that he is a much more dynamic performer than I’ve been able to convey in photographs, and I’m hoping film will tell his story a little better.

Now that my section is moving on to filming, I’m breathing a small sigh of relief. I really like looking for interesting angles to shoot visuals for this project, but nine times out of ten the damn Nikon has been messing up my shots. With the video cameras, I can see exactly what my project will look and sound like as I’m shooting. I understand how to work with lighting and focus, and I can make quick fixes on the camera’s LCD screen during a shoot. It’s not so much of a trial-and-error process as a formula with instructions on how to get your shots just right. Phew.

It’s also proving to be really fun filming my subject. His musical instruments have always made for great visuals and audio, and now I get to combine the two. He really is quite a performer, and now I’ll really be able to convey what it’s like to watch him work. Also, every instrument has a unique texture and sound, which makes for great b-roll. My subject will repeat actions a lot (because how else do you practice an instrument?) which will make for quality five-shot sequences. I think I’m set up for some great projects in the coming weeks!

The only thing that’s bringing me down about the video clips is the massive task of editing all the video. I’ve imported clips but I feel I have no idea where to begin, and I live in fear of my computer crashing or not saving my projects correctly after what I’m sure will be hours upon hours of editing. I think my best bet is to team up with friends from other sections who have already mastered Adobe Premiere Elements and ask for their assistance in figuring out the editing process. Hopefully I can repay them in knowledge on Soundslides and they’ll take mercy on me.

Take Two

My subject playing one of his many guitars in his studio on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2014. Still taking most of my photographs too dark, which made the quality of my first slideshow suffer.

So it turns out the biggest struggle of audio slideshows is not actually gathering the audio and visuals, but working the three programs needed to actually craft the slideshow. Audacity, Soundslides and Photoshop together create quite a challenge.

The ins and outs of Audacity were relatively simple to master because we spent a lot of time going over the program in class, but actually using it for cutting audio was harder than I thought. I spoke with my subject for seven minutes, and even that much audio was overwhelming to cut in Audacity. I ended up cutting what I thought was my entire story, only to realize that there were about three minutes leftover that had somehow ventured really far to the right and out of sight. I had to start over.

After working on that for a few hours, I ran my photos thorough Photoshop. I use the word ‘ran’ lightly; when I take photos through Photoshop I move at more of a ‘walk’ pace. I’m constantly forgetting one of the steps required for formatting photos correctly, and then I usually have to re-do all of the edits I’ve made to the photo (I’m really bad about separating the layer from the background before I start). Just like last time, my photos were dark and try as I might, the corrections I could make on Photoshop were too little too late. I had to use photos way darker than I would have liked in the final product.

Soundslides was the program that through me for the biggest loop. I’ve heard people complain that Mac computers do not allow you to modify details, but Macs are nothing compared to Soundslides. The creators of the program must have really wanted all slideshows to look the same, because there’s no way that I could find to modify much of anything. But I did try – for over an hour. Regardless, captions overlapped my lower thirds and cut into the bottom of all of my photographs.

I’m a little afraid to tackle these programs again this weekend. Audio slideshow two, here I come…carefully.