RDT JV Slideshow

For my Dance Team I was in charge of making a slideshow for the JV team. It took me about a week but i feel like it turned out well. Here it is!

CST Spring Show and Banquet Video (Music Video)

Instead of filming a Music Video we were working on finishing up our client work. We made the slideshow for the CST Dance Teams Banquet. We also went and filmed their spring show. We learned how to deal with certain situations. Heres our finished projects.

Client Work (North by Northwest)

Last week, Mrs. Morris showed the class a short film called, "North by Northwest." Instead of watching that we were editing for our client. This is what we were supposed to blog about but since we were doing something else, we decided that we could tell you a little about what Abbie, Jayleah, and I have been doing for the past couple week.

Mrs. Morris always assigns client projects to people based on if she thinks these people based on if she thinks these people would work good together and if she thinks they would be interested in working with these kinds of people. Morris gave us the Chisolm Trail Dance Team Slide Show and Spring Show videos. Both Jayleah and I are dancers and we usually work with Abbie because we work well together.

To get started we emailed Megan Hankins, the coach of the CST dance team, to get info about this project. She told us that to start off we would make a slideshow for the dancers to watch at their banquet. She got us connected with a Google Drive with all of the pictures she wanted in the slideshow on it. She told us she wanted each dancer to have three pictures and their video of them saying what their favorite memory was. Abbie did most of the editing but we all helped out by watching over her shoulder and giving her feedback and our opinions. Once we were finished we emailed the finished project to Mrs. Hankins. It took about two and a half weeks to edit due to the big number of girls. She loved it though.

Our next step was to go to their Spring Show which was on the 2nd of May. Here's where it got complicated. Jayleah and I were the ones who went to film because Abbie had previous plans. On Friday we realized that Jayleah wasn't there to check out the equipment because of a Dance Competition and I went home sick earlier that day. That left Abbie to check out the equipment and then somehow get it to me. I had my own Spring Show at the school so Abbie checked out everything and then put it in my locker for me to pick up later. I successfully got the equipment and went on to perform at my show.

The next day was show night. The show started at 7 o'clock so Jayleah and I showed up 40 minutes early to set up and get ready. Here's were everything started to go down hill. Going 40 minutes early, we thought that we would be the first ones there and have a place blocked out to get a good angle and not have to pay to get in. We were wrong! We got there and the place was packed. When we first walked into the front hall there were 3 teenage girls and I asked them where we could find Mrs. Hankins and that we were here to film the show for her. They said she was busy with the team and to just go ahead and go on in. We got asked to pay and went on in to there being no seats. We ended up setting up really close to the from and sitting under our camera tripod on the ground. Once the show started we pressed record and it was working fine until the 4th dance. Our screen said "Movie automatically stopped." I tapped Jayleah trying to stay quite in the process and told her. She told me to stop recording and start it over. So i did and it went back to normal. We hoped that that wouldn't happen again. It of course did a couple dances later so we started stopping it and starting back up every dance. Then it eventually told us that the card was full. We were so confused because that card could hold so much that that couldn't be right. We didn't know what else to do but take out my phone and record the last couple numbers. We started freaking out and left hoping that we could work with what we got.

The next morning which was a sunday I checked my email and there was an email from Mrs. Hankins that said, "I didn't see you at all last night, Please tell me you were at my show???" Then i went on to tell her exactly what happened. She was so grateful that we actually were there and got some. She told us that since she didn't see us she had a dad record the whole thing on her iPad so if we for sure didn't get something she could give it to us off of there. We were so grateful and started editing.

This is why we were not watching North by Northwest. We were focused on the crazy weekend that happened before.

Leadership Strengths

Leadership Strengths

Communication (Influencing): 

"People with strong Communication talents like to explain, host, present, and write. Their natural talents enable them to bring ideas and events vividly to life."

This is reflected through me when i am on teams and work in groups by me explaining what is going on in our group and vividly bringing my ideas and thoughts to life.

Woo (Influencing): 

"Woo stands for winning others over. People with strong Woo talents enjoy the challenge of encouraging new people and gaining their esteem."

The woo quality is good to have when working in small groups because you raise up the positive atmosphere and encourage people. 

Positivity (Relationship Building): 

"People with strong Positivity talents are generous with praise, quick to smile, and always on the lookout for the upside of the situation. They bring enthusiasm to people, groups, and organization."

This characteristic has similar qualities with Woo. You want to make people like you so therefor you make a positive vibe. You want people to want to be with you and work with you.  

Includer (Relationship Building):

"'Stretch the circle wider.' This is the philosophy on which people with strong Includer talents center their lives. They want to include people and make them feel like part of the group."

With this strength I can make sure that everyones ideas are being listened to and through this we can be strong in coming up with as many ideas as we can.

Futuristic (Strategic):

"People with strong Futuristic talents love to peer over the horizon. They are fascinate by the future."

This is a strong idea to have when you are working in a group because you want to be able to plan out what is going to happen with your group in the future.

Q & A

Q: What did you find most valuable from the activate on Friday with Mrs. Knight?

A: I was only there for half of it because of an ACT activity i had to attend but i enjoyed finding out who had the same strengths as me and seeing if we were similar to each other. 

Q: What 'Aha!' moments did you have during the activity?

A:I had an 'Aha!' moment when I got my strengths because they described me perfectly.

Q:How might you approach team or group projects differently, now that you know more about the leadership strengths?

A: I don't really know how i would come across group projects differently besides discussing their strengths so i know how to work with them better.

"Are Your Costumes Telling Stories?" Article Summary and Critique

After reading the article, Are your Costumes Telling Stories? Take a Look Inside the Costume Design for 'American Hustle,' ( http://nofilmschool.com/2014/01/inside-the-costume-design-for-american-hustle )I really got a new outlook on how to not only tell a films story but raise the production value. This article is kind of old because it was written on January 11th in 2014 by V Renée but, i definitely learned something and would recommend it to anyone that wants to go into costume design. The three main points that the author of the article used were American Hustle, Hollywood Reporter Article, and American Hustle Featurette video.

American Hustle: 

This movie has a rating of 7.3 out of 10 and has a good plot from what i read. It is about a con man and his seductive partner are learned to work for a wild FBI agent who pushes them into a world of Jersey powerbrokers and mafia. Michael Wilkinson was the Costume Director of the film and in Renée's article she refers to another article where he talks about what inspired him.

Hollywood Reporter Article: This article is about five costume designers talking about what inspired their costumes in their films. The costume designers include, Catherine Martin (The Great Gatsby), Michael Wilkinson (American Hustle), Mary Zophres (Inside Llewyn Davis), Trish Summerville (Catching Fire), and Daniel Orlandi (Saving Mr. Banks).

Critique Q & A

Q: What is the author's argument and what information/evidence and sources does she use to support that argument?

A: Renée's argument is that costume design is more than just dressing someone. Her evidence she uses to support that are quotes and arguments from Famous Costume Designers and how they are inspired through clothing. 

Q: What are the author's strengths and weaknesses?

A: I feel like she does a good job of coming up with a lot of examples for her claims but she doesn't really go into enough depth for me and what i would think for other people.

Q: What are the author's general conclusions?

A: This kind of goes back to where the authors weaknesses are. She has many examples but doesn't end very well or come to a conclusion. 

Q:Does the author's argument support the main point?

A: Yes, she is very good at supporting of her main point.

Q: Is evidence convincing? Are there wider ramifications to the conclusion?

A: In my opinion, it wasn't very convincing until it came to the American Hustle Featurette video because i actually heard the costume designers talk.

Q:What are the applications/implications to you as a videographer?

A: I feel like as a videographer i need to have a passion for what I do. This is what the article was about and really made an impact on me.

Q:What don't you understand, and is this because you lack certain assumed knowledge or vocabulary or because the writer is unclear?

A: I had a pretty good idea of what she was trying to say in this article. I definitely don't have the same knowledge as a professional costume designer but she did a good job of writing this to her audience which was me.

Spoken Word

In this project, I develop a video collage of elements of nature. My video selected a theme and carried out a theme while demonstrating creativity in shots, locations, lighting, equipment use, and style of editing. I worked on the video "Growing Up" with Jayleah. Even though taking video of nature is boring i felt like we made a story and the voice over made you not want to grow up. It made you feel like the narrator did. 

Codecs

Codecs stand for compressor decompressor. Examples of a Container are .mov, .wmv, and .avi. These are not Codeecs. There are four types of Codecs, These Four types are Capture, Edit, Delivery, and Archival. Deep bit=depth is when there are no lines in gradient so that is looks smooth. The lower the bit depth, the less shades there are for every color in your picture. The real world is approx. 8 bits. Chromo Subsampling can be shown with a ratio of 3 numbers.

• 4:4:4 (4 out of 4 pixels have a color value/each pixel has it's own color and it's own value.)
• 4:2:2 (2 out of 4 pixels have a color value/one pixel get it's color value from another.)
• 4:2:0 (1 out of 4 pixels have a color value/three pixels get their color value from one pixel.)

"Codec is a technical name for "compression/decompression." It also stands for "Compressor/decompressor" and "code/decode." These all mean the same thing. A codec is a computer program that both shrinks large movie files, and makes them playable on your computer. They are required for a media player to play downloaded music and movies.