Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Hello all. As I informed Dorian on Monday, I will not be in class tonight because I will be at the Dave Matthews Band show. Please do not take this personally. I still want to see everyone's movies (and I will). I will check them out on your blogs and post my comments. I hope everyone enjoys mine. I have really had a great time in this class. I learned a lot and also sat with impatience looking at my computer screen way too long. That's all part of the schtick though. I guess I better get used to it because next summer I am planning on making an hour long documentary. I can only imagine the time I will spend staring at my computer then (something like 6 months!) So, enjoy tonight. I am very excited to see everyone else's flicks. It's been a blast. Good luck to all of you. I guess I'll see some of you this fall. If you watch the movies at the Tavern, have a beer or two for me. If not go have one anyway. I'll be sure to have a couple for all of you at the show. Cheers!

Monday, August 07, 2006

This is my final project. It took many hours of editing and staring at a spinning ball of color. What a relief that it is done. I might go back later and change the music to a soundtrack that I will compose myself. I had to compress it quite a bit to get the file size down and I sacrificed a little quality; but it's not too bad. Hope you like. Let me know with your comments. Good luck to everyone with their movies! Cheers!

Sunday, August 06, 2006

I really enjoyed watching clips from everyone's movie projects on Wednesday. I can't wait to see the finished products. It appears that everyone has put a lot of time into these things. It has been a very fast paced class and everyone seems to be in a frenzy to get things done. I think this is good. The time budget we have gives us a little push to git 'r dun! I work best when under pressure (most of the time). I haven't been able to put my all into some of this stuff due to other classes and work, but I feel I'm doing a pretty good job given the circumstances. I think this goes for everyone else as well. I finished my movie Wed night at like 11:30pm. I just need to compress it and upload it to my blog. I hope everyone is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. See you in class.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Just wanted to say a few words about the critiques from the narrative projects. I did get a lot out of reading what everyone thought of my final cut. There were some things I agreed with and some that I did not. Overall, it was good feed back. My overall impression of everyone else's narratives was really good. I thought there were original ideas and personality. The narratives about families were touching. It's nice to see that people have great histories and they are willing to share it with everyone. The other narratives about personal interests and good old fashioned humor were also super. It was all very entertaining and informative. I liked working on the project. It was fun to see how other people put things together. They each have a unique style. It shows the diversity of the class. I'm excited about the final movie. I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with. Until next time...

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

I want to say a few things about the readings and links we have looked at thus far for the class. I do not have the iMovie book, so I guess I can't really say anything about that. I can say (as I have mentioned before) that iMovie seems to be a pretty easy program to learn. The shortcuts we learned about in class helped out. It saved me time from having to figure it out on my own. Garage Band is a really awesome tool to use for soundtracks or anything else you want to do with music. The Digital Video book has also helped. It is a lot of technical stuff, but still interesting. I've found that I was already preety familiar with most of the content; but it was still a good refresher. It is also a great reference for general digital video concepts and terminology. I have checked out all the links that have been assigned to us, I just haven't had the chance to talk about them. I thought the NY Times article was interesting. The power we have, literally at our fingertips, with computers and the internet is amazing. I found it very honorable that these people are willing to share their experiences of the war with the world. The sections on script writing were also very helpful. I've never written a script, so it was nice to see a few ways that it can be done. I liked the two column method best however, when I write another script, I will probably use a combination of a couple styles or modify the two column style to make it my own. I also liked the variety of clips (mash-ups, narratives, behind-the-scenes) that we were given to look at. They helped out with my thinking process, both on what to do and what not to do. I must say that my favorite one was the narrative done with Flash (I think it was called Epic) about Google and the revolutionization of the information superhighway. It was original and it seemed so very real. It did kind of remind me of The Matrix, however. Over all, the readings and clips have been educational and entertaining. Some of this stuff has opened new doors for me on the web. I am enjoying the class. I'm very glad I decided to take it. I only wish that it was a class offered in a normal semester or the longer summer session so that more time could be spent on developing stories and perfecting final cuts. Cheers!