First off i’d like to say this is probably the best class I have ever taken when it comes to learning skills I want to use in the real world. Being able to go from start to finish on my own production seems like a necessity to a professional career in broadcasting. As far as my favorite project goes, hands down was the premier project. Being able to incorporate every aspect of the technology I learned since photoshop was the challenge I wanted. I felt like I could take almost any and all freedom when creating this project. Leaving my creative side to think of how to put it together; as well as leaving it to my technical side to figure out how to put it all together. It was a challenge, but I am really proud of what I was able to put together. As I was saying earlier, being interested in broadcast media, I found this class extremly helpful when it comes to the production process. I feel like I could use any of these programs to effectively convey a message in a professional manner. Either it be, documentary making to rapping, the things I have learned or looked up can and do have an impact on the quality of my work. The hard-working student in me is saying that I wish the tutorials were longer/more in-depth in the programs; but the lazy student in me is saying that they were enough work as is! I found simple YouTube tutorials about how to create cool effects extremely helpful. Combing multitudes of untaught effects in my project really made it seem higher quality. With my final words for the class, id like to thank my TA Ron for all the extra help I required as well as Chelsea for facilitating the teaching! Maybe one suggestion would be to recreate the tutorial videos as most were presented on what I figured was about 3-year previous versions of the adobe software. Having to find my own things that have been moved around from program year to year, proved to have consumed a considerable amount of time.

I really felt as if though I had full creative freedom with this project. Being able to do whatever I wanted (in a sense) for this project was a dream come true. Until I realized my ambitions were so far away from my skill level, it was going to take a lot of time and effort to satisfy my OCD tendencies. From waiting for random ideas to arise in class to editing in my final scene was hard work. When thinking about what I could do for this project, I took to the internet. Watching my favorite documentaries from Vice, HBO, and National geographic I gathered inspiration and style ideas to enhance my own brainstorm. After deciding to focus on my friend Kevin’s fall out of football grace, I had to collect film. I had recorded him telling the story maybe 30 times. Picking and choosing the best interpretations of each. I had collected them all and had to produce the rough draft. Having what I thought was such good footage, I feel like I had thrown it away with my less then sub-par skills. Even though I had received praise on my rough draft from my peers, I didn’t feel like it was nearly as good as it could have been. Taking a much-needed break from school during Thanksgiving break, it was time to get back to work. Spending hours cutting each clip from its original 3-minute interview, gathering music and one non-original clip of cougar stadium, I had produced my project, drawing inspiration from numerous Life documentary sources like those mentioned above.

Moving into the more technical side of this it was a nightmare! Jumping straight in after collecting my video footage. I would have to pray to get my computer to accept one video from my phone. I had talked to multiple people, seemingly with no answer but to hope. After hours spending importing video clips. The music was pulled from a creative commons website and is credited, as well as the stadium image. Besides for that, all footage was my own. Cutting the clips together to produce a coherent story was necessary for the base of my intentions. After the story was together, I had followed a tutorial online on how to create the triple image lettering. Using the essential graphics and effect controls I was able to create the title screen “OUT” referring to his injury taking him out of the game. Utilizing the effect control fade him out Infront of the image of the game. The scene of him walking down the stairs and hallways were done via doubling the clip and reducing the frame rate to appear as his body was lagging him. Finishing it off with some video-music synchronization!

It was a pleasure to produce this project as its exactly what I hope to produce in a professional environment. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did create it!

Credits due to –

During the creation of this rough draft, there seemed to be an endless amount of challenges and hardships to be overcome to complete something that isn’t complete trash. The most apparent problem I seemed to face came to me when completing the tutorials. They are extremely outdated and makes finding the simplest of tools an entire task. Attempting to figure out most of the examples via different YouTube video’s that didn’t help much either. Things like the effect list seemed to be hiding on the 2019 version opposed to the tutorials 2015 cite where it is blatantly obvious where it is on the page. Next on the laundry list of issues, one that almost made it impossible to complete the project. Every time I would try and transfer the videos I took to my computer, I would get an total connection error, canceling the entire download, the only way that seemed to bypass this issue seemed to be restarting the process. Hundreds of times. I had maybe spent 3 hours Infront of my computer, either looking for alternative methods of transfer, or praying to every God in the known universe that the download wouldn’t fail. Hard to believe that I hadn’t even started my project after all the hardships. I had my idea, a story about one of my friends, tragically losing his scholarship after a terrible injury. When I was finally able to get started, it was easier than I thought. All the time and effort I had put into adobe audition had come in handy. Clipping together the footage along with music and images seemed to come naturally after previous programs. Being the rough draft, I understand it is ROUGH, seemingly only curable by a considerable amount of time and effort added. But time and effort are all I have here in pullman!

Sample Storyboard: Title of the Project

Order as Follows:

Tutorial 1 completed

Tutorial 1 Raw footage

Tutorial 2 completed

Producing this audio track presented numerous challenges that had to be overcome to create an effective audio story. From my recording software to remembering the experience in detail, there was no end to the hardships. Reading over comments and critiques was a source of almost infinite insight on how to improve my project. Luckily, people seemed to come to the consensus that the idea was a good representation for my project. So, with that to calm my nerves, I began  reconstructing my project from the ground up. I started with a new recording of the story. Borrowing my friends Bose Studio Headphones, I believe I was able to correct the fuzzy audio that seemed to come from my computer recording software. Second, it was time to start adding the sound effects to enhance the story. The main concern from commenters was the volume and frequency of the effects. So, cutting some out, adjusting fade, and frequency of the effects. Not being able to find all the sounds I needed was an issue, so I improvised! Using the soundbites of marbles falling, glass shattering and a door breaking, a muscle car revving its engine and finally a city street; I was able to effectively emulate the sound of an ambush. After hours of editing all the sounds together to fit perfectly into place, I believed my project was done. And I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did creating it!

For this project I had decided to go towards a narration/story that has been one of my most profound memories since it occurred. I thought it would connect well to my whole theme due to the fact that it is remembering someone’s life who still is out there living it. I thought it would be a good way to keep my promise to him as well as fitting into the rest of my work. Though I do wish I was able to talk to him again, being able to record that story firsthand from him would be something else. But I do believe I convey his story as well as I could in under 2 minutes.

I started by writing down everything I could remember from the experience. Then condensing it to its most important details. The original recording with its numerous cuts, mess-ups and awkward pauses took about 3 minutes of recording. Easily cut down to about 1:30, I had my base for different sounds to enhance the story. The nature of the story required a lot of sounds that I wouldn’t be able to capture myself but giving appropriate credit to creators of all the extra sounds used in the background at the bottom. I used sounds from a busy street to give ambient sound to the introduction of the story as I was in Seattle when I met him. Easily just placing it under my narration. Moving on to the most labor-intensive part; the reminiscences of that day. Finding sounds like a muscle car to mimic the sound of his Humvee. Then mixing the sounds of glass and dirt falling after the explosion. As well as the slow fade in of the ringing and gun fire. All these efforts are to help with the experience, since there is no visual representation, the most in depth audio seemed needed to experience different emotions; as he did that day. There is a lot of material that can be improved, but that just comes with time. If when listening to this you think its too much, tell me! I think that may be my main concern. I don’t want to overload the audio tracks, but I want to have it be as realistic as possible.

http://soundbible.com/2175-Street.html

http://soundbible.com/1764-Cave-In.html

http://soundbible.com/2199-Marbles.html

http://soundbible.com/2209-Muscle-Car.html

http://soundbible.com/1591-Mosquito-Ringtone.html

http://soundbible.com/1955-Gun-War.html

I plan on using one of these two formats to convey a story about someone’s life or an experience. Sorry that their long but definitely something I can work on!

The redesign of my project proved to be a monster in of itself. After scrutinizing myself for long enough on my draft post, I knew it had to be redone. Reading my comments was one of the most helpful things I could have done. They helped me recognize that my logo was less of a logo, and more of a cover page. Painful as it was to hear that, it was exactly my thoughts on it as well.

The new design could be inspired and take from the previous. Having some ideas set already. I was going to cut out all the empty space and condense the whole image. It started with an excruciating outline of a global flat-map. With the help of zoom, it only took about 35 minutes to get every curve and bump of the continents. After turning it into a symbol and placing it on the globe, all I had to do was wrap it around the sphere to emulate curvature. Adding a lens flare represent (And as you can’t tell from my draft, I love lens flairs) the sun behind the earth was another touch just to lighten up the whole image. I had realized during this process, as well as my draft containing too much stuff, it also had too many words. Scaling it down would be an issue as they would appear so small as well as it just being a lot to read on a logo. I landed on “Gordons World Chronical”. It felt like the perfect way to represent my project. I wanted to add some personalization to it as one day, I’d like to start my own journalism company. Chronical having its purpose in the way that I just want to record stories from the people, imbedding them in history to never be forgotten. Now that I had the words in my head, it came down to actually producing them. Using different techniques with pathfinder I finally found a way to give the letters depth and a shadow. With everything I have done I finally felt like I had a concept down that fit the scheme of the project. I hadn’t got that sense of accomplishment with the draft, but when I felt it with this one, I knew my vision had come to fruition.