Coming to an End

It's Friday afternoon, and very shortly our Fall Seminar will be officially over. It's odd to think that I will have to get up extra early in order to find a parking space, I will have to walk on campus, or that I won't be receiving daily emails from Kecia.

Last Tuesday night we had our last screening of the film in the Letterman Building, and we had an amazing turnout! Shortly after 7:00 p.m. the room was packed and we had to bring in more chairs. The walls were lined with people, and there were even a few Burris players sitting on the ground in the front. This time we even had a few very insightful questions. After the screening I had a several of my friends come up to me and tell me how wonderful the film was, which is always great to hear.

Wednesday was our final day of class. We turned in our portfolios and watched the completely FINISHED Behind-the-Scenes! Well, there was one small clip we had to fix, but after that it was COMPLETELY finished. It was nice to hear our classmates compliment us on the work we had done. The music boys were really pleased that we used a lot of their songs. Now we are just waiting for our copies of the movie. I'm very excited to go back home and show my family the work that we have all done.

The ending of the seminar is rather bittersweet. It's nice to finally be done and not stress, but then it's sad because our class has such a close bond with one another. I would do the stress and long hours all over again, for an experience like this one.

It's too late... I'm using too many elipses...

0400 . . .

The gala is . . . technically, well, tomorrow. The butterflies are more than hardcore now, and even though I am home, I still cannot manage to let my brain rest.

I feel so much for our editors who have been working so hard in the cave, and I have complete trust in their abilities to turn out a film that is guaranteed to turn heads. They truly are the core of this project, and I don't know where we would be without their talent, commitment, and patience. We could not ask for more.

Today was an eye-opener. Everyone has been talking about immersive learning and what it is like to collaborate this entire semester, and I guess I just took it as a given. I thought, “Of course, we have to work together. We are together all the time." Today, I realized I have to be open to others. Yes, I have been teaming up with others for weeks, but I have always tried to do things the way I envision them, and haven’t really gotten past that until today.

The Behind-the-Scenes Documentary crew has mainly consisted of Kristen, Samantha Davis, and me for the better part of the semester. We were assigned to do a piece in the early weeks and just kind of were . . . in charge from then on. With other committees and commitments outside of the project, I have been spread pretty thin giving me limited knowledge/focus about the project with the two them. With the gala nearing and other projects wrapping up, I have been able to spend more time with them, but am extremely behind on the keyboarding/editing skills they have acquired. Long story short, I went in with different ideas and skill sets, and I quickly became frustrated. After talking with Laura and Kristen, I realized my frustrations (with myself and the BTS documentary) only made the situation more difficult.

The skills I am learning, no matter how minute they might seem compared to my peers, are those I might not have learned otherwise. So, again, I thank them for their patience in teaching me and putting up with my stubbornness . . . next time, a swift kick will do.

On the topic of collaboration and new skills, Blake and I worked together on the invitations and programs for the gala. My interest and abilities with photography and Adobe Photoshop were rekindled while working on these projects… which remind me that the gala is EVEN CLOSER! There were a few problems we didn’t catch through editing the programs, but as Jamie said, “If that’s the worst thing to happen, we’re in good shape.” (KNOCK ON WOOD!)

The photos for the gala are in, and spiffy at that! Adam Wilson was hiding his awesome photography capabilities all semester! Some of the best photos we have are from the state game with the Owls, and our audio gentlemen in the studios. I really hope everyone enjoys them.

As I type, Adam and Dan are pulling one of many over-nighters in Sursa for the second week in a row. They top my list of favorite people, and have probably the toughest job of all because they have to wait for the rest of us before they can finish their work. I have complete faith in them, and will never pass up bringing the cherry scented lotion for their cracked hands and chocolate coffee for rejuvenation.

Last kudos go to Sarah Marty and Michael Straub who lent us their time in finishing up this project. I can’t wait to see your work with our final presentation.

. . . bed.

Sorry can't talk now...

I'd like to blog, but I am so busy trying to score the documentary I don't really have time to talk about anything. Dan and I have been up past 7 AM everynight, working over 18 hours a day for the past week or so. It gets to be time consuming when you are composing, performing, recording, editing AND mixing all the music for a film project.

Hopefully I will see you all at the Gala, there I will be able to answer any questions you might have about the process. Later!

BTS

Today Kristen and I worked for about six hours on the Behind-the-Scenes documentary. Six hours sounds like a really long time; we got one segment finished. We decided to edit together the clip about the '82 reunion, because we thought this would be a rather easy clip to put together, we have a lot of footage, and Audrey gave us some great sound bites for it.

Putting together the clip wasn't necessarily difficult, but it was rather time consuming. After we started working on the clip we realized that a lot of the B-roll footage we had wasn't that great or wasn't what we needed. That was probably what took up a majority of our time. Finally, we decided just to watch the whole reel over again to see if we had missed anything good. We did. There was some good footage on the reel that wasn't captured. No biggie, we got it and used it. It made our little segment flow a lot better.

We also got the chance to learn a few new things about Final Cut Pro. One of the major things we learned that will help us in transitions, was the cross fade. It is exciting to learn about a program that you didn't think you would be able to comprehend! I love having that feeling of accomplishment when the day is done. After several hours of working you get to sit back and watch a three minute clip that you have completely dissected and put back together again, and you get to have a moment of pride.

I get so excited when we finish just a small clip, I can't wait until we actually finish the whole Behind the Scenes! To be able to look at something you once before knew nothing about and then to conquer it and produce a great (hopefully) final product is an amazing feeling.

I totally dominated Final Cut Pro!

Yep, you read right. The philosophy/psychology major has mastered professional editing software. Well, maybe I didn't master it, but it feels like I did! This past week I spent most of my time working with Teri and Samantha D on the behind-the-scenes documentary. During the all-nighter we started to pull together all of the footage of the class that has been taken thus far. We soon realized that while we had lots of footage of classmates doing things, we didn't have anyone talking about our project. We decided at that point to do a couple interviews with Aaron L. and Rachel. We also created a list of all the subjects that we needed people to speak on so that we can 1) use the footage we already have and 2) create a documentary that is representative of our creative process. At this point we want to interview our classmates on the subjects of interviewing, the reunion, the Tennessee trip, frustrations with the project, learning new skills, our own attempts at playing volleyball, and our enhanced appreciation and excitement for Burris volleyball. I'm sure we will add more subjects as the semester progresses.

On Wednesday, Samantha D. and I discovered that Kecia expected a clip of the behind-the-scenes documentary by next Tuesday. We looked at the mess before us and decided there was no way to we could create a trailer that hit on all the subjects that we wanted to cover. We had been working intensely on a small section devoted to the all-nighter narrative meeting and came up with the idea to just focus on that section for the Tuesday screening. It was very important to us to create a trailer with structure as we need to get used to envisioning the project, itself, as a story. We added an introduction and a nice wrap up, as well as a few surprises of which I am quite proud. By the time we were finished we had created a trailer with a little story line and even some music.

The completion of a 3 minute and 42 second trailer might not seem like a huge accomplishment, but for me it was. I had spent most of the semester completely avoiding anything associated with technology. I was convinced that I would break or mess up any of the great work that was being done by my more technologically savvy classmates. Tackling this fear was a huge achievement for me. I also experienced the reward that comes from creating something tangible. Most of my college experience has been spent reading and writing papers. A whole semester may result in one paper that I actually like, but this was totally different. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I finally felt like I had something to show for all of the work I (and the others) had done. It is simply different from turning in a paper at the end of the year, or giving a presentation. I was so excited about what I had completed that I told everyone I saw and even called my mom. That's something I have never experienced with a good paper and it's awesome. I can't wait to continue working on this part of the project!

**And thanks to everyone who popped in and imparted some of their wisdom on us: Adam, Dan, Aaron L., Blake, Laura Huffman, and anyone else I have forgotten**