Reflecting on my Blog... Spring Final

Early in the year, I learned how important it is to have titles that flow with the video you are creating. You can see in my “titles” workshop film that I didn’t quite have the hang of creating attractive enough titles yet, considering it was only the first month or so of school and we were just starting out. When we did our cyberbullying projects, Cassie and I learned how to use After Effects to create moving titles and titles that stood out a lot better than just the Plain Jane titles that could be created in Premiere Pro. I think the titles are what made the cyberbullying video as good as it was.
My first and second videos of the year, the “Introduction” and “So You want to be a Baler?”, really showed how rough and uneducated I was about the program at the beginning of the year. We were just learning how to cut clips properly so that the speaker would not be cut short during mid-sentence or during an awkward face, as well as how to make the clips flow together without showing too much of a “jump cut”. As the year progressed, my editing skills strengthened a great deal, as you can see in my last three videos: “Cyberbullying”, “The Result”, and the “Animal Rights” videos. I was able to figure out how to properly cut and make a video flow with itself.
I learned a lot in the class that were not demonstrated in any of my videos, especially all the things that filmmakers do to make a movie as eye-catching as it is. Every time I watch a movie, now, I notice all these minor details that were talked about during class that I would have never noticed had I not been told about their meaning. Even though films have always appealed to me, and I have always been a fan of unique editing and camera working skills, there are so many things I never knew about that I can take with me from this class. Be it the different angles that add to a certain “mood” the director was trying to portray, or the colors in a scene that can really change how the entire movie would be had it been a different color.
I really enjoyed being in this class, and I am happy that I did end up taking it. Even though during some of the projects I felt like I was about to go crazy from either someone not participating or from a scene I was working on not turning out the way I planned for it to. I met some people that I hope I can maintain friendships with even though we are “going our separate ways”, and I will be taking a lot of skills with me that, had I not taken this class, I would have had to wait until college to learn.

Spring Semester Final Video

"The Water is Wide"

Jabberwocky Stanza

*Due to a family emergency, I was out of class and unable to actually create this video, leaving Damon to do the majority of the editing and creating. I did, however, help find the images we used as well as type up the credits.