Feature Story: Blaise Keasler
This is my personal favorite of the projects we did. This was a feature story about one person with an esoteric and interesting hobby. You had to make it informative, visually appealing, and have two interviews with quality information presented in both. Voiceovers were also necessary. This was a feature story as opposed to a news story, so it was less formal and the interviewer was allowed to be self referential. This video took a week to create solely in class. It took a day or two to create the concept and write my 21 questions (something I learned this semester was the standard). Then I had to decide on a second interviewee and write another 21 questions specific to them and their interview. After that, I had to schedule and film both interviews, deciding on the dressing room as the main setting. I used my own camera. Once both interviews were filmed, editing did not take me long; perhaps a day and a half of class. One of my main challenges was writing questions that would get in depth information, especially from the second interviewee, Jacob. Another challenge was the fact that I did not have a tripod at my disposal for the main interview, which taught me I definitely need one at all times of filming. That was one thing I learned: the imperative necessity of tripods. Other than that, I learned how quickly one needs to film and edit when making a film of this nature. I also learned that it is wise to have both interviews in a creative setting, not just one. That makes it more put together and visually interesting. Learning about the question-writing and the setting choosing essentially made me learn the bigger picture of "it is short, so it has to be full of detail work and information". The feedback I was given was mostly positive; the only feedback to fix something was that the voiceover introducing Jacob did not initially explain how he was actually related to Blaise. However, I fixed it before I submitted my video for full class feedback. That was one of the things I changed: my insufficiently informative voiceover. Otherwise, I changed my cuts to be more smooth and make more comprehensive sense. The visual aspects of this video were a large reason why I enjoy and appreciate this video. I also think my editing is, for the most part, effective. However I am skeptical of this video in that there wasn't an abundant amount of new information. This is when I could have afforded to improve my interview questions earlier.
ONW 1 in 2000: Addie Zoll
This was a news story as opposed to a feature story. Therefore, there is only one interview. It does not require a vast amount of B-roll. The interviewer does not 'exist' in news stories. This was to create a special in which a person from Northwest explains their summer break and what was interesting about it. It took around a week, but did not go as quickly or efficiently as it was my first time doing anything of this nature. Everything was somewhat of a challenge as compared to now: it was extremely difficult to think of quality 21 questions, and predict what would be good to get information during the interview. It was also difficult to film somewhere with good lighting according to the camera. I learned that one should choose a place fitting for a news story, which I did not quite do. I also learned how to ask follow up questions during an interview to make sure when you combine it all in editing, it flows and makes sense. My feedback was mostly good; people appreciated my intro and smooth editing, which is only because I've been doing it for so long already. I believe part of it was to avoid jump cuts again, which I learned was hard when sometimes answers were too long. One thing I learned along those lines was also that you have a lot less time to have quality information than you think you do initially. Choosing and gauging what answers should and should not be kept was very hard. I could not change anything in that respect. I thought this video turned out alright, but lacked a lot of visual interest and engagement, and I do not know whether I chose wisely on the things I removed to cut the time down.
ONW Now
This project was to create a short feature story for our own 7th hour ONW Now episode. Me and my partner, Ashley Augustine, created a feature story about Winter Wishes by STUCO, since it had just recently gone on. It took in total three days, I believe? One of our challenges was not being able to find our interview files for a day, as her SD card was functioning oddly. However, it was overcome as our friend Ryan helped us find the files in a 'hidden' place on the SD card. Otherwise, we had trouble with people walking by and talking while we were filming. We learned that getting enough B-roll is difficult sometimes, but using images and getting creative with it really helps. It was difficult because we could not attain B-roll pertaining to actual winter wishes being granted as it was happening past the deadline for the feature story. However, I think we did alright as I got the images off of their twitter of past ones, and she got B-roll of a friend making one at lunch. Our feedback was positive, however it was suggested we get a second interview. It was not mandatory, however could have added more. I believe this video turned out alright, but under the time crunch prevented me from doing better.
How did I Use my Time?
I have typically used my time in class for projects as much as I can. Sometimes filming does not immediately line up, but I try to do everything as soon as it is possible. I don't stop editing until it is completely finished. Whenever I finished early, I remained productive by starting the blog post for whatever project I finished early. Sometimes I would rewatch it once I was done and fix things, such as the voiceover in Blaise's feature story. Outside of class, I occasionally filmed extra B-roll or thought about how best to go about my schedules. I don't consider myself to ever have been a person that did not work when it was appropriate and necessary, and all my videos have been on time.
Areas of Strength and Improvement?
Personally, I think my strengths are definitely my editing skills and technical filming skills and eye for visuals as I have been working on that since I was in elementary school. I maximize on them by learning new things still, and especially learning the things I did NOT know as easily, such as writing interview questions or recording voiceovers (which proves to be difficult). Since I don't have to divert all my attention to editing or filming, I can put it into things I did not know at the beginning of the semester. Those were a couple of the areas I could improve. The essentials of convergence journalism were not as easy to come to me, and I think I could improve on those. I tried to revise them and make them better every time we repeated them in doing a new project. I also could learn how to use the cameras at school we used, and definitely the tripods. I know how to fix whether the audio is working, but have trouble with white balance, and also getting it on and off of the tripod.
Overall, I loved the learning of this semester. I never would have known otherwise the difference between a news and feature story, how to be an effective interviewer, or write a nut graph. I would change how much B-roll I got for all of my videos, however, to make them all more interesting and not just focused on the technical aspects. This was a very successful semester, not only for me, I've noticed, but for the entire class. We all learned and grew together, and I think caught on quickly to the unique way convergence works in itself.
