A/V Project Reflection

Reflection-  

I started this project off by just listing things in my head of all the things that I sometimes find annoying as being someone who lives in Family & Graduate Housing. I didn’t want this to sound like a rant so, at first, I was reluctant to pursue this topic. There really are a lot of positives to living in FGH, but sometimes I think they are more beneficial for people with children or adult dependents living with them, or that there are unit options that are best for single graduate students than of one couple in an apartment. So I started this project off by making a bullet list of the pros and cons.

Then I tried storyboarding but that didn't’ quite to work for me per say so I continued with bullet lists and using arrows to show changes and stuff. Instead of squares with crude drawings, I started titling sections by their main topic and below adding notes about certain settings and music choice. Before officially choosing my topic, I had been scanning through my photos and other potential photos and compiled them into a folder.

One of my scheduled laundry times are Sundays and instead of having only photos sliding through this project, I wanted to try to add actual video, so I spent 2-3 hours of my 5 allotted hours trying to record multiple times in which I loaded the washing machine with my iPad. After each clip was taken, I dragged it over to my computer and started messing around with iMovie. I shortened each clip, turned off the sound, enhanced the pictures, and added a transition called “cross diagonal” (or something) so that all three of  my clips ‘folded’ into one another. On scrap paper I wrote down notes on the “settings” I had for the first laundry video clip that I made: Laundry Schedule- Fast paced music, show 4-5 loads in FAST mode on 2x. (I obviously only did 3, but these were initial ideas). I wanted it to look fast and have that sense of urgency- hopefully I pulled it off with the music that accompanied that clip.

There is little text to my piece overall because I wanted the pictures/videos and the music to speak for themselves, almost. I felt that some of the photos were stronger without too much text. For example, text shouldn’t distract a viewer from my photos of the view I have from my deck; the mess on the kitchen counters….. My mess speaks for itself. Most of my text is in the beginning but it was my way of introducing the viewers to the subject of my project before I made a video clip that was like a brochure of the pros and cons of living in FGH, the second biggest amount of text is in the end where I decided to do a quick summarization.

I was initially nervous about this assignment because before this project, I had only some experience with iMovie- from like 7th or 8th grade Computer class. It has obviously changed in the past 9 years, but I think I knew enough to kinda fumble around before I got a real handle on the ins and outs of the program. I’m sure that my project would have more sophisticated if I had more experience with it.  

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