Sunday, April 22, 2007

The Facebook Group

I created the facebook group to help get the word out there about the videos. I am going to put up some posters during the next week that will hopefully get some more people to watch them. So far, the hookup video is leading the way with over 150 views, so I am on my way towards the 500 view mark.

I had people come up to me last night and comment on the videos which I thought was pretty cool. One guys in the video said that he enjoyed it and that it was pretty good. My other friend mentioned that she had seen it and had loved the part with her friends. I think people can relate to it because they go to the school and know some of the people in the video.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Rough Draft and Viral Videos

Well, I learned a little about viral videos today, namely how the idea started off as advertisements, and simply spread to video with the spawn of high broadband internet.

In more exciting news, I put together a rough draft of a full video. It is a compilation of the number 4 videos. I don't have an intro, and some of the sound is a little off, but I like the order of the clips. This stuff takes a long freggin time for about 3-4 mins of output video. Oh yea, I also rearranged the storage of video clips so now they are sorted by topic instead of interview. I am also realizing that if you thought that last line was interesting you have no sense of what is interesting because I thought it was dull and boring. Actually, it is kind of like the status update on facebook, you probably read it and then realized you do not care at all, at all.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Tales from an Editor

The editing process began today at exactly 2:52pm in the ITS media lab. That place is a look high tech nook in the middle of an extremely high tech building. There are four computers with more media connections at each one than anyone could ever really need. It took me twenty minutes to figure out how to get started, but once I started I was like a rock on a hill, I rolled down. (Did anyone notice my genius simile there? I thought it was pretty good.)

So basically this is what I did today:
1. I had exactly 54 minutes worth of interview time from at least 20 different people that I need to break up into individual interviews.

2. I then broke up those individual interviews into each question. Yes, I know, breathtaking.

I got through the first 11 interviews, or 28 minutes of film. I should finish the rest on Thursday and then the splicing and true editing will begin.

Many Interviews Completed

I think my co-pro and I conducted over 15 interviews tonight. We interviewed every type of person in every place. I learned a lot in my adventure tonight.

1. 86.3% of people at Pomona are awkward, especially when they have a camera thrown in their face. Many people answer questions in two words and clam up when the camera turns on.

2. Interviewing friends in pairs is awesome. Friends have a tendency to feed off of each other and answer in complete thoughts and sentences. Furthermore, they offer longer answers and do not seem as frightened by the camera.

3. People take the questions to literally for the most part. The off the cuff, kind of strange, responses we got ended up being the best.

4. People are usually in a rush when they are walking around and it is better to initiate a conversation with someone who is sitting down.

5. I hope this ends up being as funny as it was to hear these responses. Also, as a side note, interviews in the bathroom are strange and should not be repeated.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Interview 1 and 2 complete

Well I got my first two interviews out of the way this weekend. The first one was awkward to say the least. Let me try and give some context to these. So I brought the camera to the water polo game I was working out; I figured I would interview my co-workers. We are acquaintances, but not really good friends and one is a senior and the other is junior. Basically, I figured it would be a good start because it would give me some grade variation and not have them be complete strangers.

So, when I say awkward I don't mean horribly bad, never talk to them again, just strange. The answers were all shorter then I would have liked, which is probably just a factor of having a video camera shoved in your face. So while the process was strange, I think I got some decent footage. I got the semi-strange location I wanted, not some fabricated interview room, and the responses to the questions were decent. All and all I learned more than I gained in footage, but thats the way the cookie crumbles.