Protected: For Future Reference: WSU GSA “Rocky Horror Picture Show” 2014
05 Saturday Dec 2015
05 Saturday Dec 2015
13 Saturday Dec 2014
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So, I had a lot of trouble deciding where to go with this project… Don’t get me wrong, I really like filming and putting together videos, and getting to work with Premiere again has been a blast!! But I guess this project also made me realize how much I hate being on camera myself – I prefer to stay on the photographer’s side of the lens. Now, I could probably write a whole other post (and maybe I will) psychoanalyzing the various reasons I don’t like being the one in front of the camera; I can already think of quite a few things that probably influenced my camera-shyness.
But that’s not really what this post is about!! (Now, where was I…? Oh yeah!) So, I was trying to think of how to make the video fit the “about me” theme, while showing as little of myself as possible. I planned to shoot footage of my family over Thanksgiving Break, but that whole week just ended up being…less than pleasant (for a variety of reasons; and quite a few of those reasons were because of me). So I only really got footage of the very beginning and end of Break (and most of that was just landscape/scenery on the drive to and from Pullman). So that didn’t really work out; but I figured that I could make something from all the photos and video clips I’ve accumulated over several years. But yet again, the predicament was how to use any of it while still connecting the video to me. (I’m primarily a nature photographer, so there’s not a lot people in my shots or footage – unless it was some kind of special event that I thought was worth recording.) I also didn’t want to make the video solely about past events, especially if the events themselves weren’t really interconnected.
Anyway (sorry for the rambling here), I decided to use the little bits of footage I’ve gathered so far around Pullman and kind of intermix them with other (recent) important events in my life, I specifically wanted to focus on the celebratory “end-of-high-school / we’re adults now!” week-long trip to Cancun, Mexico with my Girl Scout troop this past June. The trip itself was pretty incredible, though I think we all came back with some interesting stories to tell about the not-so-great moments… eheh… (~_~;) I chose to focus on this trip because even though it still showcases the incredible beauty and diversity in Mexico (I know, I know; I’m such a nature nerd!), it also gives a glimpse of how tightly knit our group was. I joined this troop in Fall 2008, but some of them have known each other since they were toddlers!
Also, in order to show both my clips from Pullman and the stuff from the trip, I tried to use the video effects and transitions to make the clips from Mexico seem like a dream/memory thingy (LOL I’m so eloquent…).
06 Saturday Dec 2014
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there.
22 Saturday Nov 2014
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URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL2tYz_rjQk
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WimqMOo7Nc
YYYEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!
Can you tell I’m excited to be working with Premiere again? I kinda wish I had a better idea of how my actual video is gonna turn out, but I’m definitely going to work on it (both the story I want to tell and actually gathering footage for it) over Thanksgiving Break! 🙂
14 Friday Nov 2014
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Posted COM 210
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Adobe Audition, blargh, COM 210, Happy Halloween!, RAWR, SoundCloud, tired
Blargh, here it is – finally! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻*flings embedding code into post and flops onto bed*
URL: https://soundcloud.com/axelcosgirl/audio-story-draft-3-mixdown
I think I hated this project the most. Even though Audition was (according to my instructors) the easiest program for students to get, it can also take a long time to edit down and rearrange sound clips exactly how you want them; in a way, it reminds me of woodcarving.
I added a lot more stuff, compared to my first audio story draft. I got my Breath of Aire director’s permission to use some audio from a promo video we did for a concert a while ago. I also used some personal audio from one of my voice lessons (Mrs. Worthington has us record our lessons so that we can go back later and hear what we did well and where we need improvement. Very useful!!) I also took out a little bit of my mom talking, especially about Tom Knight (still a cool dude; just not as relevant as some other things). It was harder to take stuff out than put stuff in, because once you’ve got all the little bits pared down and in the order you want them in, it’s tough to go back and remove big chunks, since everything is so closely “sewn” together. That’s part of the reason my story is a bit over the maximum time limit…
Yeah… Not much else to say… I feel like I like this class less as the semester goes on; not because the content isn’t interesting or fun, but just because, this past week in particular (and right after Dad’s Weekend) I got a bunch of “heavy”/big assignments dropped on me, which has not been fun… Oh well, boo hoo. *whip crack* Post-holes! Back to work!
LW
P.S. If you get the very subtle “post-holes” reference, cookies for you! I might reveal it later…
25 Saturday Oct 2014
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Well, here it is. I’m not satisfied with it yet; but at the same time I’m surprised how well some of the splicing turned out.
URL: https://soundcloud.com/axelcosgirl/audio-story-draft-1
As I state at the beginning of the track, I decided to focus on my career as a singer. Music has always been a big part of my life, and I already had lots of recordings that I could use as part of this story. Like a lot of people, I don’t like listening to myself talking in recordings, so I cut as much of myself out of the track as I could and let the majority of the audio be of my mom during our phone conversation. (Yes, as per Washington law, I did get her permission to record our phone conversation, and obviously since I wanted to record it, I gave my consent as well). Also, when she talks about my singing in elementary school, I faded in a track from the CD that my first grade class made, called “Zominamina”. After exporting, I realized that it’s kind of strange to have her talking about 5th grade, and then jumping back to 1st grade… I’ll move that around in the final version. Also, the plane sound around 1:49 is being used under the Creative Commons Attribution license – the clip came from soundmary on freesound.org.
I’m planning to add more audio from later in my life, like a clip of my choir Breath of Aire, singing. However, I’m not as sure about how copyright works regarding choral music/recordings. I mean, we sell our CDs, but we certainly aren’t the only ones to sing “I Heard the Bells”, or “While Shepherds Watch”, or any of our other songs. I will email our director and see if I can get his permission, because that at least will be something… I’d also like to find some audio of me doing a solo. We’ll see; I may still be a bit too shy to post a solo piece on the web.
Hoping for some good comments!
LW
21 Tuesday Oct 2014
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Phone Interview with my Mom:
Interview with Myself:
18 Saturday Oct 2014
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Tutorial 1.1: “Counting” Out of Order
URL: https://soundcloud.com/axelcosgirl/audition-tutorial-1-counting-out-of-order
Tutorial 1.2: “Counting” Final
URL: https://soundcloud.com/axelcosgirl/audition-tutorial-1-counting-final
Tutorial 2: Editing an Interview
URL: https://soundcloud.com/axelcosgirl/audition-tutorial-2-editing-an-interview
11 Saturday Oct 2014
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Okay, here we go again.
I didn’t get as much peer feedback as I expected on my draft logo, so after deciding which version of my logo draft I wanted to use, most of the revisions that I did to get to the final product involved experimenting with the font (placement, color, size, style, etc.). Again, I got a lot of feedback from my mom, mostly opinions on which fonts worked, which placements looked the best, and how to tell if the font size was big enough. But let’s start from the beginning…
I’ve always liked my name and my initials, and I like doodling and coming up with creative ways to write my name. So when I heard about this logo project and picked my topic to be “about me”, I knew that my name would likely play a part in my logo. Unfortunately, the week our draft logos were due was very busy, so I didn’t do much planning until the night before and the night that the draft was due. I sketched my name and initials in many different fashions, but none of them really seemed to have a logo feel. In hindsight, I think the problem was that I didn’t have a product or service that I was trying to convey through the design of the logo; I was simply messing around with my name/initials. A lot of my inspiration also came from sites I looked up with tons of examples of personal logos. Also, a few years ago I discovered the awesomeness of ambigrams. I wanted to see if I could make my name into a specific type of ambigram called a spinonym.
Anyway, none of my name/initials ideas were really inspiring or satisfying me, so I showed my mom what I had so far and asked for some suggestions. And of course, she had the perfect advice: “I’m suggesting breaking away from the letters so that you can focus on what it is about you that you want to communicate in a logo. It could be that you end up back with letters but you’ll have discovered what it is about you that you want to convey.”
So I decided to make a logo as though I were setting up a photography business. (After all, I’m an avid photographer… Who knows? Someday I might use this for as an actual logo!) Then, after being inspired by the crescent shape in this camera’s lens, I decided to make it even more personal, by adding the “blue moon” motif, since I was born on a blue moon! (Yes, I know “blue moons” aren’t actually blue, but I wanted some color in my logo!) I used the layering effect I learned in the Safari Icon Illustrator Tutorial to build the camera shape. Finding a good font was actually really tricky, but eventually I settled on “Candela“, a free font I downloaded from Font Squirrel. (Yes, I checked the license and other terms; and yes, it says it can be use for both commercial and non-commercial works).
Overall, this project was really fun. I also like the peer critique period too; I wish more people in my group had uploaded their logos! But I had fun looking at the logos of people outside my group too.
That’s all for now!
Cheers,
LW