Midterm Questions

How am I addressing course options?

TCOM Immersion:

I'm completely immersed in TCOM stuff. I've learned how to use the $8000 fancy camera, gained a basic understanding of lighting, and have spent many hours on Final Cut. Totally immersed in some Final Cut here. Just last night I learned how to do text on that thing for the class' first YouTube video. Oh yeah, we're making YouTube videos now. I'm going to try to do one every week. I'll probably spend some time shooting new stuff, like maybe following a person around for a day, or a certain group that's up to something.

Script Writing:

I've written a couple of scripts for the podcasts we're making for the tour group. They pretty closely resemble the radio scripts we wrote in that five-week pre-TCOM course. I think I'll have a lot more experience in this as the documentary becomes more of a priority. I guess it won't necessarily be script writing, but the organizational element will definitely be there. We're gonna have to sift through a bunch of footage and try to pick some sort of story arc or something out of it, with a beginning, middle, and end. Kind of like sorting through all of your crazy ideas about what a giant shark could do for your giant shark script, except our ideas are committed to tape and can't be changed.

Group Decision Making:

Nearly every decision made in this class is made by some sort of vote or group discussion. Major things, like the name of the site, are put up for the whole class to decide. Smaller details, such as the way a sentence is constructed in a podcast script, are made by our smaller groups within the class. Unlike decisions we might make in a classroom, the stuff we decide on here will be used by the museum for the next decade. So yeah, no pressure.

Writing in the Workplace:

This semester has seemed more like a job than school, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I feel like I'm having board meetings or something. As I said under group decision making, everything we write we run by other people, which I'm sure is how this sort of thing would work if we were being paid to make a website. Also, there is that pressure of knowing that whatever we write will actually be used for something.