If you want to hear my slideshow, as well as see it, please open two windows in your browser. Wait for the ad in the video below to finish, then hit play on my slideshow in the other window. I don’t expect you to jump through such hoops, but I’m already an hour late for a working session on the final video with Craig. This is not good for our relationship!
Possibly Relevant Posts:
- Ain’t No Sunshine When He’s Gone (1) | gorditamedia
- Anatomy of A Failure (2) | gorditamedia
- “Dazzlin’ Dilated Displayin’ New Styles…Live On Stage…” (2) | H-Man
4 Comments
Hey guys,
since we have one more week (+) left for this I have a productive tip for you. Now that we have a more nuanced idea of what “fun” means, make sure that you are having fun. If you are not having fun try to ask yourselves why and what is required for you to have fun. If getting an digital flip video camera (and even returning it within the 30 days return policy) will make your lives easier, then do it. You don’t have to work with DV if your video needs to end up on the web anyway. Try to make your life easier, I would prefer you focus on the content rather than the technology (even though these hurdles are not at all a useless experience).
I hope you are (depending on what you’re defining as a challenge at the edge of your ability) but please, make sure you are indeed have fun!
You probably haven’t seen it yet, but earlier today I updated the shooting section of the resource page to explain that we switched last week to easy point and shoot cameras so DV is not the issue. Today, I couldn’t convert a slideshow .mov file which I created in what was supposed to be an even further simplification of the process: iPhoto. And I tried many tricks. Then the DRM joy.
Re: fun, I can’t speak for Craig, but you are correct in detecting that I’m not having much of it. I’ve produced/directed multiple corporate videos, but never had to worry about operating the equipment or software. I’ve shot and edited video for a documentary class, but all of that school equipment worked flawlessly, and I did not have to post to the web. In short, I have gained enormous empathy and respect for the technicians out there, but no, I am not having fun.
I’m open to other suggestions on making life easier. I really did think there could be fun in failure, but I didn’t anticipate so many technical failures to communicate. As an MCC student, you know why this is of particular offense. Also, I have spent more than triple the hours on this compared to other travelogues, at the expense of other classes, and you wouldn’t know it from the output. All that being said, Craig is a fun partner, and there really is no sunshine when he’s gone
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I think if there is any lesson we should be learning from our Travelogues, it’s that we should really be evolving our projects as we see fit and in a manner that caters to what our reader’s/viewer’s responses are to our posts.
As such, I’m suggesting the following:
Lets ditch the music video aspect.
We have a really interesting thing going with our simple weekly (literal) TRAVELogues that we’ve done. Putting ourselves in the spaces that we want to comment on, experiencing the things that we want to talk about, and then having on-the-spot creation and recording of our immediate experiential reactions seems to work well for us.
When we have done these, you seem to have “fun” (or so I hope), but if you are not then we will fix this. If you’re not having fun with me, then I haven’t been doing my job.
Don’t forget, we still have plenty of possible commentary material to work with, whereas we are slightly constricting ourselves because of the music video aspect. We have fixed, for the most part (the cloud tends to be where we run into the biggest issues), our technical issues, and I just need to spend more time showing you some editing techniques. Fear Not! I think we’re still doing well.
Who else can say that they’re going to go help power Times Square for the sake of a school project? (That’s a hint for the coming week for those of you following us.)
For anyone still following this saga, I agree with Craig and I’m going with his suggestion for the sake of fun. That being said, I find it very unfortunate, although understandable, that my technical frustrations have taken focus away from the actual commentary. Craig saves this aspect for the week with the “Two Parks” post, yet it is interesting that the commentary I provided via text, obscured as it was, received no comment from the commenters.
Instead, I am critiqued and “problem solved” for my lack of fun. While this is a perfectly valid criticism, I take issue with the idea that traveling, even in this context, “should” be about fun. Fun was certainly a goal, but under my larger intention to make art which is not necessarily fun.
I may write a separate blog post exploring this idea further, but I felt compelled to state the crux of it here. For now, I will gladly and sincerely cater to the responses.