Today I created a document that will help contextualize the information for the final product. I have about two more pages to create before I’m completely done.

What I Did

I waited on the rainbow wheel a LOT (my files are giant, so I think that I’m frustrating the computer). On a more productive note, I set up the layout for one spread and got about halfway through a second in InDesign. This entailed selecting a background color and inserting placeholder text and boxes where my text and images will go. After those two, I only have one more spread and an ad left, so I’m finally in the home stretch. They do still need text, images, and better fonts, but it’s nice seeing less blank space in my document.

Why I Did It

I’ve been working on one spread at a time, but I think it might be more productive to have the skeleton set up for the rest of the document before I worry about selecting fonts, creating images, and writing the body text. That, and this computer is far too slow for Illustrator (I have better luck with the ones at InnovationSpace), it won’t load my fonts, and I do my body text at home, since it’s about the only thing I can do on a computer that does not have Illustrator or InDesign, so my hands were kid of tied.

What I Did

Today I spent my class time writing my reflection memo. It was fairly easy to come up with the content, but I was very thorough in my memo, so it took the whole class. I loaded my presentation and examined it as I wrote my memo to ensure that I did not miss any features of my Prezi project. I also looked at possible ways to cite my sources.

Why I Did It

The reflection memo was required, but I examined my presentation so that I would be able to better reflect upon my project. Looking at certain elements reminded me of the tools I used and challenging that I faced when creating this project. I also used the Writer/Designer questions to better guide the analysis of my own presentation. As for my sources, I plan on creating a slide at the very end of my presentation with all of the links to the photos that I used (which is going to take a while).

Today I mostly worked on getting the images I plan to use for each character’s Facebook profile picture.  This was kind of a tedious process, because I decided to do this part last.  This involved just looking up scenes from the movie on Google Images and saving the images of the characters as a jpeg file to use.  I also kept track of the source of each individual image; while they all come from the movie, I still plan on citing the website from which I pulled the image, as well as the movie.  I’ll be citing these images in my reflection memo, as I can’t really see how I would organically work the citations into my actual presentation or project, because it would look a little strange and out of place on a Facebook thread.

The work I did on my project over break included recording the audio for the opening title, introduction and credits portion of my production. This took a little bit of time as after I had the script written, I had to practice how I wanted the narrator to sound, how the script would be read, and other little details to make sure it was believable; add trying multiple times to get the recording I wanted or a reading where I didn’t flub it up, and you’re looking at 45-60 min of time invested. Perhaps that’s too much time, but it will be worth it when my end product is the in the style and quality I want it at.

I also have begun filming, and gathered ‘B-roll’ footage and images for tittle/credits section of the film, as well as started a draft of the credits. I have done this in order to give the audience something to look at while they are introduced to the story via the narrator, to give the credits a background to sit on instead of blankness, and to set the theme for the audience. The soundtrack is still a work in progress, as not very much of the royalty free or creative commons music that’s in the theme that I want is very good. I do have a few in mind though, and will apply them when I am closer to finishing my project to see which one fits the best. And finally, I began to create my film in Adobe Premiere Elements 9, the video editor I have chosen for this project.

What I did

Right before break I started to add all my clips into iMovie (you can see this from the selfie I took). I was able to finalize all of the clips I wanted to use by selecting off of youtube. Once I did that, I imported all of them into iMovie. I’ve started to edit and put them together to form my final project but it is still a work in progress. I plan on going to the innovation space this week to continue working on it and finalizing everything before my presentation this Friday.

Why I did it

I knew it was important to finalize everything and what I was going to do before and over break. I did and now I feel good about where my project is and how I am going to complete it. The longest part will be when editing and making sure everything flows together.

What I did

Today I worked on making some final touches to my video. I am still working on lining up the music with the video and deciding whether or not I am going to add another song in the middle. I have to make this decision and put in the new song before I can make the final edits to adjust the audio levels. I have also been tweaking the length of the clips individually. I have started to think about credits and how I am going to cite my sources. I also started working on my presentation.

Why I did it

I am working on the audio because it is an important aspect and because it is one of the only aspects of my video that I have left to complete. I want to add a new song because the first song does not flow well into the second song; I need a little transition between the two. I am tweaking some of the clips because when I re-watched the video, a few seemed too long. I need to add credits to cite my sources and I started on my presentation because I am presenting on Wednesday.

To be honest, I did not do much over break regarding any sort of school work.  This morning; however, I began to work on my presentation that involved the typical “what I did and how I did it” as well as a little extra few tid-bits that will make up my presentation and some scary similarities between my remixed stories.

I think in order for my classmates to see the most of my stories, I will present my information orally but include rhetorical situations and devices on a notecard so that I will more easily be able to add that to my reflection memo.

What I’ve done

Over Thanksgiving break, I decided to change my project once again. I have been struggling to work with both Premiere and iMovie on my laptop, but for some reason, they both crashed again and again. Instead, I will be working with InDesign, since it is a program I enjoy (and works on my computer!).

My project will be remixing Time Magazine with the Hunger Games. I am focusing on the first movie/book. I plan to incorporate the book’s quotes with images from the actual movie.

What I need to do 

I have completed a basic layout for the magazine, but still need to write the actual articles of the framework.