Course Options & Reflection

My exit interview is in three hours. Talk about last minute.

Courses I took:

TCOM Immersion

Very immersed in some TCOM here. Pretty much dunked in it. Learned to use an $8000 camera (never did find out what it was called, though). Learned about three-point lighting. Did a lot of editing on Final Cut, which I sort of learned as I went. Audio editing for the Audio Tour on Cool Edit. Maintained a YouTube site, if that counts. Oh, and those Animotos. I like those things.

Writing in the Workplace

Did a whole lot of this, too. Every script for that audio tour passed through so many hands and was read and edited by so many people. I imagine this is what it's usually like when you're producing something that's actually going to be used. Although I only actually wrote two one-and-a-half page scripts, an instruction sheet and my Art Exploration page, there were so many revisions of each that I actually typed a lot more words than you see. Or listen to or whatever.

Group Decision Making

I think very few decisions made in this class, about anything, were made by just one person. Everything was run by Beth at the very least, but usually put up in front of several people or the whole class to decide. Even little stupid things. For the one million revisions of the tour scripts, we read them to the group and then got everybody's suggestions for improvements. Made a lot of group decisions this semester.

Scriptwriting

Or script revising. So many revisions. I wrote those damn audio tour scripts like seven times. Option fulfilled!


Reflection


Saturday at work I caught myself writing YouTube videos to promote the store and making a restroom sign on a program I didn't understand. I think I can blame this class for that. I've learned how easy and how much fun it can be to just try doing something that I don't really know how to do. I used to look at not knowing how to do something as an obstacle, and since I'm kind of lazy I would just give up and do something else. Now I look at it as a fun challenge. I don't think Caturday Night Fever would ever really happen if it weren't for this experience.

Also, I'm over my fear of public speaking. Seriously. Talking at the showcase was kind of terrifying, but I did well and, as nervous as I was before and afterwards, I was feeling just fine when I was actually on stage. Now I know that I can do that pretty much anytime. Probably the last thing I expected to take out of this class, or out of anything ever.

This has been a unique, fun experience, and probably some of the best job training possible. School should always be like this. Think of all the websites that would get made.

Week 14

Michelle finished the documentary and it's amazing. It's cool to see all of this footage that's been building up all semester cut together into something that makes sense.

More edits to the audio tour. Somehow I called a painting the entirely wrong name in one of my scripts, so Michelle had to cut the track up and do a bunch of clever stuff to make it work. I made some edits to the track about the East Gallery at home, just removing pauses and trying to make it flow a little better. And then I reloaded the MP3 players again. And then next week we're gonna find out that there's something wrong with the track for the Ethnographic Gallery and Michelle's gonna have to edit it, too. And then the MP3 players will need reloaded again.

I volunteered to speak at the showcase, which was just crazy. I hate public speaking, I have no idea why I would subject myself to it. This is one giant damn leap out of my comfort zone. Crap.

Week 13

I made instructions for the audio tour. I don't know how to use PhotoShop or anything, so I just did it on Word. As with the scripts and everything else, there were several revisions. It's a good thing, too, because that original version probably looks pretty ugly compared to the end product. Katie was awesome and helped me out by creating the MP3 player diagram, and Laura made a compass for the map on the reverse side. We're gonna get them laminated.

I loaded the MP3 players up with the tour. For some reason it took me a really long time to figure out how to get the images to "stick" to MP3 files. Tag editing. Never heard of it, but now I know.

Also, I looked up a bunch of places to drop our fliers off. And I made another slide show:

Stuff I've Done

List of accomplishments so far:

Researched and wrote scripts for the tour. Wrote 'em like seven times.

Researched and wrote a script for the Production section of Art Exploration.

Read, like, four books.

Learned how to use a really difficult looking camera. Taped a bunch of stuff for the documentary with it. Also kind of learned lighting.

Shopped around with Liz for some MP3 players.

Created and maintained a YouTube site for the class. Made a video and some slide shows for it.

Made a video for Art Exploration.


People who helped me accomplish stuff:

There would be no Art Exploration video without Katie. She totally saved the day. Also, she shot a lot of the stuff in that video.

Michelle is a TCOM badass and has totally held my little hand with all of the video and editing stuff.

Loretta and Laura always PhotoShop stuff for me. I think Maddy did too. And David.

John Dalton taught me some editing fundamentals. And he showed me Animoto.

Liz went shopping with me.

Cara and Amy proofread and edited my scripts.

Beth helped me with revisions a lot. Tania, too.

Anybody I left out put up with me.

Art to Go, Week 11

Michelle and I began recording the audio tour today. Or, rather, Michelle recorded it while I videotaped her and tried to soak up as much ProTools knowledge as possible. She wasn't kidding when she said that isn't a very user-friendly program. There are all of these buttons you have to press just to get started, and a bunch of other stuff that just seemed unnecessary. I'm used to using Cool Edit Pro, where you just press record and do your thing. Cool Edit can get a little difficult to learn when you get around to adding effects and doing other weird stuff, but it's nothing like this. I dunno, maybe it just looked harder than it is. I'll find out next semester.

We recorded both Laura and Michelle's friend Austin. It went a lot faster than we thought it would, as Beth has told us horror stories about the time she recorded some podcasts and it ended up taking a million takes. Michelle had the idea to just leave the tape running and every time a line gets flubbed to wait a few seconds and re-read it from that point, to be all edited together later. I think this saved us a lot of time, and I heard some of her edited tracks and it sounds seamless.

Because we had so much extra time, I decided to mess with Laura while she was recording for the benefit of a future YouTube video about the Audio Tour recording. I'd wait until she was having a good take and blow my nose or eat a bag of chips. One time I fell down and Michelle beat me up.

And I made another slide show:

Art to Go, Week 10

Cool, I got a new video assignment. Beth wants me to tape a bunch of people making art in art classes for a video that's going to be in the How Was It Made? section of the Art Exploration page. Katie was a total champ and gave me the names of a bunch of art teachers that I could get a hold of. A few actually got back to me, so I set up some times to go visit their classes.

Since some of this stuff went down during week twelve, which is reserved for talking about all of the awesome stuff that I've done, and since I'm seriously writing this nine hours before my exit interview, I'll just skip ahead a couple weeks and write about what ended up happening. I went to a photography class with Loretta and got some shots of enlargers and people in the darkroom, and I also went to this class where people just got to do whatever they wanted, so I got people doing several different types of art in there. I went to a sculpting class, too. But that was it. Not really enough for the whole video. So then Katie was awesome again and went to the art building with me to weasel us into a bunch of classes. She also used the camera and got a bunch of good shots, many of which ended up in the video.

And then, some other week, I went to the drawing pictures of naked people class. Luckily, the instructor had the dude keep his clothes on while I was there. I don't have my hard drive for some reason so I can't post the video right now, but here's a link:
http://bsu.edu/artinsight/art_exploration/How_Is_It_Made/production.html

Also, we had lunch with Judd Fisher of the Edmond and Virginia Ball Foundation. He was a nice guy. The salad was really weird, though.

Art to Go, Week 9

John Dalton came in today to talk to the documentary group about editing and stuff. It was awesome, because I've never taken a video class so this was all new information for me. For example, I didn't know I was supposed to fade in at the beginning of a video, or that a dissolve indicates time passing.

Also, he showed us Animoto, a website that makes little slide shows for you. They're really easy to create and should be good for keeping the YouTube site updated regularly. Here's the first one:



The tour group met this week. More revisions. But I love revisions. I'm fulfilling my Scriptwriting credit like crazy. And Writing in the Workplace.

Oh yeah, Kelly, Maddy, Loretta and I all went to the museum to take some pictures for the etiquette PowerPoint. Maddy and I dressed up as "Bob and Sue," a coupla fifties dudes that always try to eat pizza and take naps on the stairs at the art museum. I didn't really understand what we were doing until we got there. I was just told to dress up like a fifties dude. So now there's gonna be a bunch of pictures of me on this educational website that's marketed to high school students with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in my sleeve.