Rough draft of final

This is a compilation of the footage we have captured as a group.  We want to make a video of advocacy.  Our thought is to take this footage to make an average person’s daily routine without any paralysis or spinal cord injury.  It is essentially the little things that we take for granted in life.  We want to make the audience think and relate to the video in some way.  In this portion we want to raise awareness that people with spinal cord injury may have a different daily routine than this.  We will then bring the video to videos we find online of people with paralysis and spinal cord injury.  This part is meant to be more uplifting.  We want to create a positive spin here and show how inspirational these people with the injury can be and how they overcome obstacles.  The last section will move the audience to create some sort of action to help this cause.

Social media is a great way to spread the word in this day in age.  If this was for a personal cause and agenda, I would go through as many social media platforms as possible.  Examples of the platforms would be Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and even LinkedIn.  These videos will already be embedded in the social media platform, or it will be one click away.  Furthermore, they are also one click away from the Christopher Reeves Foundation website where they can learn more and learn ways to help the cause.  They can also donate directly to he Christopher Reeves Foundation.  I would also email to all my family members and ask them to share with friends, family, and co workers.  This way the video can be shared and reach the optimum amount of people.

 

Group Process Reflection

I think our group reached a mile stone when we discussed the storyboard in class.  I believe that we reached a group consensus of what direction we wanted to go in terms of our video.  We decided that we want a more positive spin on the video and we did not want to just play the emotional and depressing perspective to the audience.  Instead, we decided that we want to inspire the audience.  We want to make a video of how inspiring these people with spinal cord injury can be and inspire the audience to help them achieve their goals and successes.

I think we also reached a milestone when we discussed the storyboard and how we wanted to actually achieve this perspective to the audience.  We made a plan to try and shoot and gather as much as we can outside of class so that we can start to compile and put videos together.  We want the audio to be uplifting.  We want the video to illustrate the successes that people have achieved with a spinal cord injury such as a marathon in a wheelchair.  We could use screen casting for this part.

I think we may run into trouble with shooting footage with a camera.  The sound will be difficult to capture in good quality.  I also think we may run into difficulty all meeting at the same time to shoot any footage.  I know that I personally have a really busy schedule the next few weeks, but I will make every effort to make myself available for my group to make a quality video.

 

Final Project Media

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxxTf1AXm9A

http://soundcloud.com/tracks/search?q[fulltext]=a&q[genre_tags]=+%22%22Emotional%22%22&q[type]=&q[duration]=&advanced=1

Our idea and storyboard will be one about advocacy.  We decided to relate to the viewers first.  The first link is an image of someone walking up stairs.  Our idea is to show images and videos of people doing every day things such as walking upstairs, using a cell phone, and even a simple daily routine.  Then we want to transition the focus for the audiences on some facts about spinal cord injury and paralysis.  After this, we want to bring in some positive light and find videos and instances of successes and overcoming obstacles from people living with such a condition.  The middle link is of a video of a man living with spinal cord injury.  It tells his story of how he got his spinal cord injury.  Then he tells how he overcomes some obstacles and gives a realistic picture.  At the same time, he is very positive and he promotes a wheelchair race.  We could take the parts of about how he overcomes obstacles or parts about his rehabilitation.  This sort of sends the message to the audience that they do a lot to help themselves.  The next part would be to video a video or way to express to the audience that this is not enough and that everyone should be helping anyway they can.  The last link it to the song.  The song is called, “All A Dream.”  I think it has a nice melody to it.  We could possibly use this song for the beginning with the collages, photos and videos of relating to people and/or for the parts where there will be facts about spinal cord injury and paralysis.  It sort of has the emotions behind it that we could match the fact with this song and how those simply daily routines may not be as simple for some people.

 

 

Final Project Direction

I think my group is thinking all in the same direction.  There is a very slight possibility that we can make an inspiring video of a particular individual with paralysis; however, we all understand that is likely not going to happen.  We agreed that we wanted to do a video about awareness.  We all really want to make a video that is going to be effective and make an impact.  The purpose of the video is to make people think about this and take action.  We want them to either keep this in the back of their minds and make an effort to learn more, and hopefully try to make a difference themselves.  Depending on the exact details of how we go through with this project and video, we may make it for different audiences.  We can make the audience college aged kids, or raise awareness in general.  For my idea and storyboard, I did make the audience college aged kids.  I think this audience is relevant to ourselves, and is not a likely target audience.  I do think it can be helpful though.  Our age will enter into the workforce soon, but are not fully there yet.  We can donate our time for right now, but we will be able to donate our money soon as well.  I think raising awareness for our age is important.

Midterm Blog Design

It was hard to decide what I wanted my blog to be about.  The assignment was to pick something useful either professionally or personally.  I decided I wanted to do something about comfort and a whole blog about cheering people up such as cute animals and other cheerful stories or things.  As I started to make this blog, I decided that it would be more useful to make a professional blog.  This way, I can use this to demonstrate certain skills that I may be able to highlight in order to advance in a job.  As I sat down to think of what to put in the blog, I realized I would still have to come up with some sort of topic to write about to demonstrate the skills and a purely professional blog will be boring to design and maintain as well as to read.  This is how I came up with the idea to make a blog about the idea of positive thinking.  This is something that will be motivational and inspiring.  Furthermore this can still be plausible to use in a professional sense.  This topic is always compelling to me.  I love looking at really inspiring videos and stories.  And I love looking for the positive messages out of them and trying to apply it to my life.  I have found that these messages really do improve my life and would love to help as many people improve their lives.  When I got the idea, I wanted to pick a quote to put in the header to capture and sum up the messages all together.  It was really difficult to choose one.  I am not even sure if I want to keep the quote that is up there now.  I may want to change it later, but for now, I think this is fitting.  I did not want to take away from the messages from each post or video so I decided to keep the blog design itself simple.

 

http://angelicadangelo24.wordpress.com/

I am awful at cooking, but love homemade food.  If I am to make food, I need it to be simple.  This blog is about simple food and recipes.  I like how the recipe is written out and demonstrated in the video.  I love Italian food and love bruschetta.  I would follow this blog to find recipes and make them when I am feeling inspired to cook my meals.  I like how the recipes are not going to cost a lot of money and time.  It is also very helpful that it is easy and user friendly because I definitely am no cook.

 

http://christineacollins.wordpress.com/

I like how Christine made her blog useful for the future.  I like how she has produced a radio show and has written reviews.  I thought the radio show was great.  I also thought the review of Spring Breakers was interesting.  I have not seen this movie yet.  I have considered watching this, but I am thinking twice about watching it now after this review.  It sounds like the movie, Project X.  That movie was also just about one big exaggerated party.  Personally, if I would rather go out and have fun than watch people do it if it is not a well made film.  I would come back to this blog to see other reviews.

 

http://alikatt06.wordpress.com/

I like the concept of food being a positive experience.  I agree with this philosophy.  I always try to have a positive outlook on everything and anything in life.  I like how this blog does that.  I also just love food in general.  I am no cook, but I can appreciate fine dining and all different kinds of foods.  I have never thought about food in such depth before.  I think this concept and this blog is very interesting.

http://sylviamrdth.wordpress.com/

I have been going to Atlantic City since elementary school.  My parents used to take my sister and I with them a lot.  I grew up knowing Atlantic City.  I have only been able to experience Atlantic City over the age of 21 once so far.  This blog is very useful to me.  I would love to know the experience of people my age in Atlantic City and their thoughts and reviews of their nights and the specific venues.  I would definitely consider this blog the next time I want to take a trip to Atlantic City.

Top 5 midterm blogs

http://megdadkins.wordpress.com/

I picked a lot of blogs concerning food.  I just love food.  My hometown is in North Jersey.  My friends and I always just go to the same places.  We like what we like and we do not like change.  We just don’t know where to go.  This blog would be useful to have an opinion of all different types of restaurants in the area that are great   It also has recipes for baking.  I would love to learn to bake desserts.  I love cupcakes.

Video Editing

Strategic Presentation video editing from Melissa Fang on Vimeo.

I started to look for videos on Vimeo and Youtube.  I couldn’t decide what I wanted this video to be about.  I feel like this blog has like a split personality.  There’s this really cute side with animals to it and then there is the trippy theme.   Since I have been running into a lot of issues with copyright laws and my content in general, I decided that I would just use some pictures and videos I took from my camera phone.  I had enough pictures from my new years eve celebration that I decided to make a video about that.  It also relates to my trippy theme a little bit.  There is a lot of bright color and lights.  Since one image and video with audio was not enough, I decided to use two of each to make it longer.  I had a much easier time uploading this than I did with the audio.  I think what took the longest is choosing what content I wanted in the video.  I also couldn’t find the scrolling credits for a while, but that was just me not looking carefully.  Other than that, it did not take me that long.  It was definitely a lot easier to make this video than the audio assignment.

I’ve had to make a few video presentations for my Human Resource Management courses.  I have used MovieMaker on the PC back in high school for a few projects.  I had never used IMovie for anything though.  I’m glad I did get a chance to do that.  This is definitely a useful skill.  I plan on working in business and/or human resources.  This could come in handy when I need to make professional presentations.

Editing audio

Podcast introduction

 

The two tracks I decided to mix is “Sweet Disposition” by Temper Trap and “How High” by The Charlatans.  I choose “How High” first.  I actually already made that into a ringtone before so I already cut it to a small section of the song that I liked.  I don’t remember what program I used for this.  I choose “Sweet Disposition” because I think the tone of the song went well with the first song I choose.  Once I watched the videos for Garageband, I found it really easy to mix the two tracks together.  I had trouble with the voice introduction part.  For my version of Garageband, every time I pressed record, it recorded over the track that it was in.  What I did is I uploaded a third track track and recorded the introduction to that song.

I had a lot of trouble uploading the track onto here.  I think I just wanted to get it done and did not think things through.  I misunderstood in class and thought I could just upload the file from Dropbox.  Then I realized that I couldn’t and tried to use Soundcloud.  The first time I uploaded it, something wasn’t working properly when I transferred it over to WordPress.  I think I kept trying to post it as a URL link.  Then I tried to copy and paste it into the visual field.  I realized afterwards that I should have tried to embed it into the text.  It was too late though.  I thought something was wrong with the audio when I uploaded it to Soundcloud so I tried to delete the file and re-upload it.  Then Soundcloud tagged it as violating copyright laws.  I tried altering it slightly and re-uploading it.  It still didn’t work.  I searched how to fix it and upload audio to WordPress and someone suggested Mixcloud.com.  I did this, but it still wasn’t embedding correctly or uploading correctly.  I think this audio file plays in some browsers. Otherwise, if you click the link, it will direct you to the website with the file.

Learning how to edit audio is useful.  For presentations purposes, it could make it better with an audio introduction.  It is also cool to learn it in order to make ringtones or custom alarms on your phones.

Header

I think I am going to change this image eventually.   I really love puppies so I wanted to incorporate this into my header image.  The only thing is, is that it is hard to edit two images and incorporate this puppy image without it looking a little off.  Pixlar does not have a tool that will allow me to make an image crop correctly to account for things such as dog fur.

I had trouble erasing at first.  I started to erase, but I was not completely satisfied with this.  Then I tried using the wand tool.  I did not know how to use this properly and tried to switch back to the eraser.  For some reason it did not allow me to use this tool after the wand.  I re-uploaded the image of the dog.  Then I figured out how to use the eraser and make the erasing area smaller so I can use that tool near the actual outline of the dog.  This is really the only trouble I had with editing the image on Pixlar.

I decided on the background to be a beach with love written in sand because I love the beach and the summer.  I think love is a powerful word and everyone should just love each other.

Blogging Experience

I had a Xanga when I was in middle school, but that doesn’t really count since I was a little young and didn’t really do much with it before I stopped using the site.  I consider this to be my first blogging experience.  When we started building our blogs in class it was really easy.  I did not have any trouble at all.  Of course, when I went to go finish the building process and the assignment for this week, I came to a dead end when my blog was disabled for awhile there.  Good news! It’s up and running again as you can see.  Honestly, the assignment and how WordPress is set up makes the building process organized and easy to do.  It was just a matter of actually doing and personalizing it.

Since my blog was disabled for a little bit and there were a lot of blogs already made for this class, I went to go check out some of those before I continued to build this blog.  Originally, I was going to make it plain and simple with a solid color for a background.  As I looked at other people’s blogs, I noticed that there were some really detailed ones and some really bland ones.  I decided not to be boring.  My background and my header image might seem a little random, but I love puppies and cute things and I really like trippy colorful things too.  My header text is a quote that a really like and identify with a lot.  Generally, I try not to take things too seriously and I always try to be positive.

This image is from Google Images.

I like this image.  I thought about this image for the background, but I went with the one I did.  It’s almost like it’s smoke.

This image is from Google Images

I was going to choose this picture for the header image.  This cat is just really silly and happy.  I like dogs better though.

I don’t have a set agenda for what this blog will be about in relation to the assignments that will be given.  Given the choice of topics for future assignments, it will probably just be a mix of all the things I just mentioned above like cute, trippy, and positive things.

I hope you all enjoy.

Test

This is a test.