Confessions Part 1

I believe Boyz II Men said it best: It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.


Yesterday actually came a couple of weeks ago, when we presented our final projects in the very last #J198 class. (I've gotten so used to labeling the class with a hash tag that you should probably just go ahead and rename it that for next semester, Jeremy.) It was a great recap of the semester, showing all of our hard work to each other and to interested LU faculty, while live-tweeting the whole thing. It was also the last class of my Lehigh career. I'd say it went out with a bang.


Here I am blogging on May 9, well after when I should have gotten these done, but that's beside the point, right? After all, my pledge to consistently blog sort of went out the window weeks ago. You know what happened: Senior things, job things, life decisions, the whole deal. Point is: Thou shall be neglected no more, good old friend. Let's go out in style.


What's on tap for the end? How about some good old fashioned evaluations? That's right. I'm talking about ME, I'm talking about #J198 and I'm talking about #J198 COURSE MATERIALS, Y'ALL. Check it:


THREE-PART SERIES FINALE!


Okay, let's do this thing.


I'll start off by saying that this class, for me, was maybe the best one I've had the privilege of taking during four years at Lehigh. Hyperbole? Maybe. My enthusiasm can't be dampened, though. #J198 was a game changer. But enough about the class itself -- that's coming with my next post. This one should be all about me. "Goals and expectations vs. what I learned." Gotcha.


Going into the class, my goal was to become a better journalist. I sorta feel like I had a mastery -- or at the very least, a great understanding -- of traditional journalism in the scope that Lehigh presented it to me, and I had already toyed with multimedia and social media for the purposes of entertainment and curiosity, but rarely for telling a story. So that was my biggest goal prior to starting #J198: Use these new, strange tools around me, couple them with what's already in my arsenal, and spread some good old fashioned information around.


Did I do that? Yes. We all did. But again, I'm talking about me, so who cares about everyone else? (Just joshin' ... the class was full of straight up all-stars.) I learned how to take cool, little things I wouldn't have thought twice about before, like Gowalla, and use them to enhance an existing story. Want to see that in action? Check out our Web site, read up and then go take the walking tour. The full package, right?


How did I change personally? I learned how to not be a selfish pig, for starters. I love being creative, and I love doing things my way, so it was tough letting other people be privy to my creative process, and tough taking some of my hands off of editorial decisions. But working with a group was huge. It let me see how other people - I'm looking at you, Lauren and Opi - get creative and attack problems, and gave me inspiration for how to apply some of their choices to my own decisions. In the end, even if our group didn't always agree on what to do, we all learned from each other and delivered one hell of a final product, methinks.


I learned how to become more technically proficient, I learned how to look great on camera and ape Jack Nicholson, I learned how to ride my bike around the South Side and get college credit for it, and most of all, I learned how to appreciate the art of storytelling.


I'd say I learned a lot.


Coming up in Confessions, Part II, Andrew totally trashes #J198 the class. Just terrible.

You Might As Well Call Us Three Ken Burnses

Well, maybe we're not there yet, but here's our documentary on a recent exhibit at The Banana Factory. Props to Opi for filming the whole thing and interviewing several artists, and props to all three of us for editing the whole thing together for the first time this semester! As for the actual documentary, it was tough to piece together some sort of narrative in the clip without actually narrating it, but I think we did a good job letting the artists speak for themselves.

Fun with Podcasts

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Look at us, total pros!

We made a podcast for the first time ever, using only the audio from a Zi8 video where Lauren, Opi and I sat around and talked about the semester so far. Obviously we had a great discussion. We put the audio into MovieMaker, and voila! Podcast created. Only, not really. We had to use the fancy converting service YouConvertIt to change the .avi to an .mp3, and then brought it in to PodBean, a free Web site that allows anyone to upload podcasts. Pretty cool.

If you make it through the full 8:45, you get a prize! 

Fun with Photos

For the first of today's two blog posts coinciding with the latest J198 lab, I present you with a Flickr slideshow of our group's recent trip to Zoellner Arts Center's Art Gallery. I trekked the half-block to Zoellner this morning in sweltering heat with my trusty Canon PowerShot SX10 IS in hand, which has barely been used since I got it two Christmases ago (aside from these sweet photos I took at last year's Sundaze).

I've been at Lehigh for four years - and in Bethlehem for 18 more - yet was a virgin to the Art Gallery until this morning. Shame on me. Even if it's just on a break between classes next time you're in the vicinity of Zoellner, stop in the gallery! There are a lot of great paintings and sculptures on display from local and international artists, plus the woman who works at reception has a pretty fantastic German accent. What's not to like? Gander at my photos to get a little preview of what you're missing.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

This post is brought to you by a forgotten hit from the days of yore, "Hollaback Girl."

Like the beat that Gwen Stefani was totally in strong agreement with, our most recent trip to the Banana Factory was bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.  If you aren't hip to the Factory, it's basically South Bethlehem's best kept secret. If you have heard of it, then you probably love it. It's an arts and cultural center on Third Street that 28 resident artists, ranging from painters to sculptors to glass blowers, call home. It's got galleries and studios, classes offered for children and adults, and is basically the perfect for our semester-long final project. (Reminder: We're focusing on the revitalization of the arts in South Bethlehem.)

We got to meet some great folks over at the Factory, including artists Doug Wiltraut and Priscilla Rosenberger, who were kind enough to show us their art and explain their creative process to us. We also talked at length with Mark Demko of Arts Quest, the organization in SoBeth that's responsible for duh, the arts, in the Lehigh Valley. He gave us a personal tour of the Factory and will be a vital resource for us going forward.

As for our video, I think it turned out pretty well. Lauren and I worked diligently on writing a script for the piece and editing it over the course of a couple hours in Coppee, and I'm happy that we were on the same page for much, if not all, of the process. I enjoyed bouncing off ideas with her as to where the video should go. We had so much B-roll to use that paring it all down to 1:30 was almost like putting together a puzzle. If I have any criticisms, I think we still have to figure out how to properly record voice overs and interviews. (We didn't use the lapel mic this time around and stuck with just using audio from the Zi8.) But you be the judge: Tell us how it sounds.

Anyway, here's our video. Stay tuned for more details on the final project, and where we take it from here.

Creep City, Literally

For the second map in today's lab, the entire class collaborated on a big map locating all of the registered sex offenders (per Megan's Law) in the Lehigh Valley. The whole collaboration/crowd sourcing thing is really cool, but I think we all would have preferred to map something else out rather than a list of creeps who live a few doors down from us.

As Jeremy noted, we put together a map of all the sex offenders in the Lehigh Valley in something like 15 minutes. Crowd sourcing is a pretty powerful thing. What other kinds of possibilities can you guys see for using something like this?

The map:

View Megan's Law: Registered offenders in Bethlehem, PA in a larger map

Mapping It Out

Today in J198, we're learning how to effectively use Google Maps to tell a story. Our assignment is simple: We need to create two custom maps. The first one, which I've included below, is a map of nearby places for Lehigh students to go when they're bored or want to get away from the usual bar scene in South Bethlehem. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but still, it can get a little monotonous sometimes.) As a Lehigh Valley resident all my life, I've explored every nook and cranny the area has to offer, so making this map was a piece of cake. Here are 10 interesting places ranging from baseball stadiums (Go Pigs!) to drive-in movie theaters to check out.

View Hey Lehigh students: What's going on in the LV? in a larger map

Everyone's A Critic

Okay, fellow J198 students, say it with me now: "I swear I'll stick to my schedule, I swear I'll stick to my schedule, I swear I'll stick to my schedule..."

It's hard to consistently blog for this class, especially after being thrown off with the whole spring break thing a few weeks ago. But I promised myself I wouldn't falter this week, which is why I'm blogging close to midnight, fighting off sleep and/or that appealing Curb Your Enthusiasm rerun on HBO. I've got a job at hand, dammit! Blog I must!

On Monday we had an incredibly useful session in which we watched each other's latest TV videos and offered up comments and criticisms -- with love, of course. We critiqued everything from narration to direction to lighting choices, and I think we found that almost all of it was beneficial. I was nervous to see what everyone had to say about our video, which I sort of became married to after completing it. 

I was relieved when mostly all the comments about the video were positive, but the ones that weren't were still constructive. Among the better criticisms we got:

• Framing of the shots could have been better, particularly with the heads of a couple interviewees being cut off. Must be more steady when operating the camera.
• The lighting wasn't great. Find a better location for interviews, perhaps with more natural light.
• Voiceover audio wasn't great either. Try out the lapel mic, play around with recording spaces.

Admittedly, I hadn't even noticed that the cut-off heads were so prominent until I watched the video on the class's big screen in horror. Now it's glaring. But that's one thing we'll always remember to avoid from here on out - all made possible because of other people's criticisms. What a great concept!

The Need for Seed

Long time no blog, eh? Good to be back to the grind, though I certainly wouldn't mind still being in the Bahamas for Spring Break.


Yesterday we had a special J198 class, which found Jeremy bringing back some of his newly acquired tools and tricks from the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin. I'm still jealous. He attended many panels on new journalism and social media innovations, and showed us some of the coolest things he found, including Augmented Reality.


But I was immediately hooked when Jeremy started talking about AOL's Seed. The Web site in a nutshell:

SEED assigns, buys and distributes work for all of AOL's properties: more than 80 of the Web's most highly trafficked and respected websites, including the world's leading sites for music, style, TV, tech and more. [link]

Consider me not only impressed by what SEED is doing, but a little obsessed. This is the perfect opportunity for freelancers, especially college journalists who are looking to make a couple extra bucks a week writing. I've been looking all over SEED for potential stories I can write, particularly in the Arts and Entertainment Section. I could make $10 writing about a song in a television commercial, or $25 for a short piece on the Latin Grammys. This is an amazing concept. 


I graduate in May. I have no idea what I'm doing after college yet. If it takes me longer than expected to get a job, freelancing via SEED could be the perfect buffer for me to make some money while getting reputable clips and continuing to build my resume. That sounds pretty great to me. 

I Want My J198 TV

TV News Anchor: What goes on behind the scenes of making a minute-and-a-half long TV news spot? Amateur TV reporter Andrew Daniels has this and more.


Reporting from my bedroom a mere five minutes after waking up, this is Andrew Daniels for J198.


Last week we were given the assignment of crafting a TV news spot, no longer or shorter than 1:30, of an event happening off campus. The three of us ultimately decided to do a spotlight on the Bobby McFerrin vocal workshop that happened Sunday afternoon at Zoellner. While the workshop was technically on Lehigh's campus, it still had plenty to do with the theme of our final project, which will most likely be a look into the revitalization of arts in South Bethlehem. So Bobby fit.


Opeyemi got some brilliant footage in some less-than-subtle ways Sunday afternoon, which is hilariously documented on her blog. While next time we should probably clear permission to record video at a high profile event like this, our cunning reporter got the story, and we couldn't have made the final product without her work. (Wait for the moment where Bobby himself comes right in front of the camera and sings to it. Priceless.) Lauren also was lucky enough to attend Bobby's concert at Zoellner later that night, and got great footage and interviews with enthusiastic members of the audience.


I was in charge of editing, which is fast becoming my favorite pastime. I don't even consider editing these videos as work, because I enjoy doing it so much, but I did spend close to three hours yesterday putting the whole thing together. Editing for a TV news spot is vastly different from what we've done in the past for the Web, and I might even enjoy it more because of the "rules" we have to play by.


Given the time constriction, the piece had to be short, engaging and have a logical story structure. My two partners got close to 40 minutes / 3GB worth of video, so I had to carefully pick which scenes to include in the report. There was so much I had to cut out, but it leaves us with some great B-roll footage if we decide to incorporate Bobby into our final project. I had to watch several news reports to get the feel for how these editors transition between scenes. Often, they use hard cuts and very little effects to move between footage. So you'll see that in this video. I also noticed their use of natural background noise from B-roll, so I left a lot of sound in, which is good, because hey, it was a workshop about sound.


Lastly, we come to voiceovers. I wrote a script yesterday to guide the story along through voiceovers, which I intended for Opeyemi to read. She originally recorded the VO's for this piece yesterday using the lapel microphone, but when I came back to my house to edit, the sound from the lapel was grainy, distant and from the sounds of it, recorded in mono. I'm not sure if we didn't use the mic properly, but we basically couldn't use these VO's without seriously jeopardizing the natural flow of the piece. So I recorded the VO's myself in the traditional method sans lapel mic, and the results turned out fine. (Though I had to re-read the script several times until I finally became happy with the sound of my voice. Ugh. I hate hearing myself talk sometimes.)


I also had my friend walk with me to Zoellner, which is a block away from my house, so he could shoot my field outro. This should have theoretically taken 30 seconds, but it took us about 15 minutes to get the decent shot I wanted. We tried all sorts of places from different distances for a visually pleasing background, but in the end, I chose a tight shot of me in front of one of Zoellner's pillars where I "signed off" from the report. I also pledge to wear my cheap wayfarer sunglasses every time I'm on camera, because I'm cool like that.


So enjoy the video above, audience. This is by far my favorite of the projects we've done so far, and the video I'm most proud of. I can't thank Lauren and Opeyemi enough. We're really gelling as a team right now, and I hope that we continue to as the semester goes on.

Here We Are Now, Going to the South Side

In today's class, Jeremy asked each group what it was thinking about doing for the big semester-long project. Truthfully, the three of us hadn't discussed our ideas at length until a few hours ago, but I've been kicking around one topic since I first was accepted into J198 last fall: focusing on the efforts to revitalize the arts in Bethlehem's South Side. 

As a North Bethlehem resident my entire life, I wasn't familiar with the South Side until coming to Lehigh three-and-a-half years ago. It was essentially a different town from mine, one that I had scarcely visited and knew virtually nothing about. Now as I'm getting ready to depart SoBeth in a few months, I consider it home. I've taken a particularly interest in Bethlehem's efforts to revitalize the borough's shopping and entertainment district (primarily along Third and Fourth streets), including arts and performing venues like the Wildflower Cafe, Touchstone Theater, Banana Factory and Godfrey Daniels, to name a few. 

It appears there's somewhat of a burgeoning scene happening in the South Side again, and that excites me. I don't know if I'll be in Bethlehem in a few months or an entirely different city altogether, but I'd like to do all I can to become immersed in the scene before graduation. I think this project will help. I don't really know the logistics of what we're going to do in terms of packaged material yet - we still have a little while to think about that - but I know this project is far-reaching enough that we can all get something out of it.

In the short term, we're doing something related to the arts and the South Side for our TV news spot due next week. We'll be covering the Bobby McFerrin song workshop at Zoellner Arts Center this Sunday, which is free to students in advance of his concert that night. The event should provide a lot of great interviews and visuals, so stay tuned for that. And in the immortal words of Mr. McFerrin, in anticipation of our third snow storm in two weeks, "don't worry, be happy." 

Except, no, Bobby McFerrin, I'm pretty pissed about this snow. I can worry if I want.

Lab 5: Zi8's and Spring Breaks

Heyello erryone! What you sayin', Buyh?


Oh, excuse me, I'm just practicing speaking the way Bahamians do, so I'll be well-versed in island slang when I CRUISE TO THE BAHAMAS FOR SPRING BREAK IN TWO WEEKS!


You can definitely tell I'm excited for spring break, which Lehigh has from March 6-14 this year, but from the looks of the video below, maybe I might be the only one. Come on, Lehigh students! You're in college! It's spring break! Jeez. Show some emotion, for crying out loud. To be fair, the random students we interviewed for Lab 5 last week don't really accurately represent Lehigh's student body. But man, you would've thought that some of these guys and girls are treating spring break like a 4 o'clock or a dentist appointment. (Okay, that one actually comes from one of the interviews.) At least make traveling home sound like it's any bit interesting.


Anyway, the point of last week's lab wasn't really to get great student opinion or craft thrilling content, but rather, play around with filming and interviewing techniques. After a helpful lecture/burst of energy from journalism professor John Jirik, Jeremy sent us out in the field to interview students about a topic of our choice (spring break, duh) in various spots on campus that he knew would lend different light and acoustics for filming purposes. Lauren, Opi and I all ventured up and down the mountain to places like Ulrich Student Center, the Alumni Memorial building, Campus Square and a classroom inside Drown Hall to see who we could find and in what way we could film them.


Our goal was to see which conditions brought out the best interviews. Some locations were pretty good for both natural light and sound (outside Coppee Hall and on the Drown balcony) while others were poor (in the University Center during lunch hour, inside Ulrich.) I manned the camera for most of the time while Lauren and Opi did a tremendous job thinking on their feet when talking to stubborn students (it was like pulling teeth) so I wanted to achieve a certain consistency with angles and steadiness. I didn't quite get there -- mostly because I kept forgetting to follow the rule of thirds -- but I think I'm getting a bit better with finding it. 


I'm glad we're finally starting to learn such techniques, even if they're still small. That's a big reason why I enjoyed Lab 5, but another reason I think we found success is because the three of us took a lot of steps forward in figuring out how to be a team. We all had well-defined roles, which made the filming and editing process much smoother and made for a better final result than last time around.


Enjoy the video. Oh, and interviewees? Next time around, try to curb your enthusiasm just a little bit. 






(Plus, since I was feeling inspired by Steph's 50 Cent-themed post title from earlier today, I dipped into the Kanye West pool for my own title. Spot the reference?) 

A QIK path to journalism's future?

Could live streaming Web sites be the next important addition to new media journalism?

Earlier this afternoon, my roommate Ricky came back from class raving about a new app he downloaded on his Droid phone called QIK Live. He fired up the app, which takes video from the phone and streams it to a live channel on QIK's Web site in real time. My mind was pretty much blown. I frantically searched for the app on my iPhone, and to my delight, it was available for free.


Almost immediately, I signed up for an account and began recording and streaming away. I mostly just took test videos in my room while Ricky was watching from downstairs on my channel (there's about a nine second delay between live and stream). While recording myself, I could see everything Ricky was typing back at me through QIK, and we were essentially having a conversation face-to-text. 


All of a sudden, I noticed I was getting another viewer following my live streams by the handle of "max b." It turns out Max is from Sweden - or so he said. I found that out because he was using the same real-time text feature while I was responding to him on camera. Then I got even more viewers, many of which probably found me through QIK's front page while I was live broadcasting at the time. Powerful stuff.


While QIK and other streaming sites like UStream are good for personal communication, I keep thinking of the journalism possibilities they could present. Reporters could stream live from their phones when breaking news happens, or stream from politicians' speeches or sporting events, etc. I think of it as the video form of Twitter. The conversation aspect is big, too. While there are a lot of kinks to be worked out if something like this were to become a viable option for journalists, it's still really promising. Anyway, what do you guys think?


Oh yeah, and I left J198'ers a message below. Feel free to explore any of the other super awkward test videos I took this afternoon. Don't judge! 

Lab 4: We Can Work It Out

One of the hardest skills to learn is how to effectively work in groups. There's always the tough task of trying to please all the cooks in the kitchen when working on something together. Case in point: my group's video for last week's lab, which was postponed due to Snowtorious B.I.G. and was only finished last night. While I can admit that no one between the three of us - Lauren, Opeyemi and myself - is completely satisfied with the end product, it's a good compromise and the first step toward achieving group unity.

This is the first time we had to work in groups and submit one video, so it was admittedly hard to give up some responsibilities and freedoms. Most of us know exactly what we want, so it's hard to get everyone on the same page. Anyway, Lauren had the idea of previewing the then-upcoming Vagina Monologues performances, which occurred this weekend and concluded last night. Lauren collected three excellent interviews with the show's student co-producers, and the director of the Women's Center, Rita Jones. They all spoke on the background of the show, what its intentions were and which organizations would receive this year's proceeds.

During the week Opeyemi shot some stock footage of women walking around campus, interacting with each other and performing various tasks, like working out at the gym and eating lunch at Rathbone. We all acknowledged that it was hard for her to collect such footage, because there weren't exactly many visuals we could use to overlay on top of interviews for a show that didn't let photographers and videographers into its rehearsals or performances. So we made do with what she got. A lot of the Vagina Monologues is about women empowerment, so it made sense to get video of female students doing different things.

When it came time to edit the video last night, we dumped all the footage together on one computer in Coppee Hall, and we individually worked on editing. I was busy a lot of the night editing The Brown and White, but I dedicated time to putting together the video while Opeyemi and Lauren took breaks. It truly was a collaborative effort, which is why the video below seems a bit choppy and not as cohesive as a clip from just one editor. 

It should also be noted that Windows Movie Maker gave us quite a fit throughout the night. Volumes of clips kept mysteriously dropping out, and it took several repeats of copying and pasting clips to amend the problem. While I've gotten a good grip of the program so far and can easily see its benefits for producing short, quality clips for breaking news events, I'm still not sold on it for producing longer videos like this one.

Like I said before, I'm not completely happy with the final product because I didn't have full creative control, but then again, that's part of the real world. We have to work with others during the creative process, and that takes some getting used to. And I'm by no means undermining the work of Lauren and Opeyemi. They did fantastic jobs. I have no doubt that by the end of the semester, we'll have learned each other's strengths and skills and will have produced something amazing together for the final product. Let's count Lab 4 as a good first trial run for what's to come. 

Storm Troopers

Good morning all! I'm writing you from the plush confines of my bedroom, cozy in my jammies and staring at the white madness outside, happily knowing I won't have to set foot in it at all today. That's more than I can say for yesterday; while the majority of Lehigh students were frolicking in the snow and having a blast for their first snow day since 2002, the editorial staff of The Brown and White still had a newspaper to put together. Much to our chagrin, the 20-or-so of us all trudged up through campus to Coppee Hall, amidst the biggest snowstorm since the Blizzard of '96. I could express the rage that I felt while nearly dying on my way to Coppee, but I think I'd run out of profanities, and this is a PG blog.


While the trip to and from Coppee was indeed a pain in the ass (okay, PG-13), once we kick-started press night, we actually had a pretty great time. For starters, we all reveled in our collective misery together, got to order pizzas up to the press room (no small feat considering the roads were non-existent, props to Campus Pizza!) and in keeping theme with the J198 class, used the snow to delve into multimedia.


Shortly before press night started, we got wind of an awesome campus-wide snowball fight occurring on the front lawn of the University Center, just a hop away from Coppee. Having the trusty Zi8 on hand, I sent out our managing editor online, Adrienne Smith, to go get footage of the fight and score some interviews. Plus, she just really wanted to play in the snow. Using the great footage she amassed with even better footage that (Digita)Liz Martinez shot earlier in the day, I proceeded to make a video of Lehigh students on their rare snow day:



I used all the skills I've picked up in J198 so far - notice the audio overlay with the rugby player's interview - plus tacked on a few more tricks. I'm particularly proud of the opening title shot. I was going for the old grainy news reel from the 1930s feel, especially after I found the fantastic "Black Bottom Stomp" by Jelly Roll Morton in the free-use public domain.


I immediately threw up the video once I was done with it, because The B&W is really trying hard this semester to function as an actual newspaper would, adding multimedia like photo slideshows and crude man-on-the-street videos to our Web site as soon as breaking news happens. I really feel like we're making tremendous strides so far, as we've already put up a ton of videos from campus events on the day they've happened. A lot of that is due to the ease of the Zi8 and Windows Movie Maker, and the skills our editors and videographers have picked up from J198 so far. I'm thrilled that we've almost immediately been able to find the link between this class and The B&W, because I know that's what LU's journalism department intended when they first toyed around with the idea of adding Multimedia Reporting to its curriculum.


So while I couldn't fully enjoy Lehigh's first - and likely only, seeing as I'm out of here in a few months - snow day in my college career, it still yielded some great camaraderie between the editors and some great multimedia results.


BONUS VIDEO!


I also forgot to throw up this video earlier this week. For those of you who don't know, I've had a radio show on Lehigh's WLVR for the last three-and-a-half years nostalgically titled The Honker Burger, and it's been an absolute blast. I wanted to show our audience what the WLVR studio was like, so I armed the Zi8 on its tripod during one of our breaks, and just let it record. The actual footage itself is virtually unedited. All I did was some quick titles in the beginning and threw it up on our Facebook fan page about an hour after the show ended. (For the record, we air Monday nights at 8pm, streaming live on WLVR.org.)


Here's the video. If you enjoy the sound of my voice as much as I do, you'll love it. If not, well, shut up.

RT @skippyd's #loveaffair with Twitter

I remember the day like it was yesterday, though I guess it was much earlier than that. I had finally decided to see what all the Twitter fuss was about, so reluctantly, I logged on to the still up-and-coming Web site, created a username based on my endearing nick name and on-air DJ Handle - Skip D. - and unleashed this gem:

SKIPPYD'S FIRST TWEET

skippyd: tired as hell. early morning meeting. no power. no shower. mad brick outside. headlights - "get your head around it." 2008-11-18 12:35:29

(via My First Tweet, which compiles every Twitter user's very first tweet.)

There it was. November 18, 2008. I didn't know how to tweet, I didn't have any followers, and I thought I was being cool by saying that it was "mad brick outside." (For the record, that's supposed to mean it's cold.) I updated Twitter sporadically for a few weeks while I was slowly building a list of people to follow (mostly sports writers and news organizations) and trying to convert my skeptic friends to give the site a shot. Clearly, my tweets were still a work in progress. But as more and more people joined the conversation as time went on, I became hooked. There was no going back.


Flash forward to a year and three months - and 1,290 tweets - later, and it's hard to imagine how I ever lived without Twitter. What I once thought was just a glorified domain for Facebook statuses has transformed the way I think about spreading and receiving information, conducting conversation and hell, even living life sometimes.


I'm glad we're making Twitter a big chunk of the J198 curriculum. It's perhaps the most important development for journalism since the advent of the Internet, and the earlier our journo-generation learns how to use it for its good, the easier it will be for our kind to adapt to the new media world. As someone who's a mere few months away from graduating and actively looking for a journalism job, I feel confident that my social networking understanding and experience will separate me from those who are less inclined with these new tools. 


I'm sure I'll have a whole lot more to say about Twitter as the semester goes on, but in the meantime, I look forward to tweeting with you guys and the LV community. Also, I've embedded my Twitter feed on the blog (on the sidebar) to spice things up around here. #twittermadness

Audio Overlays: I'm Diggsin' It

For those of you keeping track at home, that's two awful pun post titles in a row! Can I go for the hat trick on Friday? Stay tuned.

Anyway, I just got back from our third lab, where we played around with audio overlays. Our objective was simple: Use the audio of someone talking and splice it up with a video of them doing something else. Last night I had rehearsal for wind ensemble (a wind ensemble for which I play the... drums for) so I figured I'd ask the director, David Diggs, if I could ask him a few questions and film him conducting. He gladly obliged, so I had fresh video to work with upon entering this afternoon's class.

It was really quite simple splicing and dicing the audio, so I decided to challenge myself a little bit and go further. Plus, I'm always trying to better acquaint myself with Windows Movie Maker, so I thought it would be good to play around once I got the gist of it. I experimented with cutting in and out of the video of Professor Diggs' actual interview (all while the clip's audio was playing) so it would look something like you see in a professional television interview. WMM only has so many editing capabilities, so I didn't fully achieve what I set out to do, but I think you'll get the picture. Also, I let the music run into the credits, which added a nice touch. Here's the video:

This week's only "headache" came with trying to get good lighting during filming, since I shot the interview in a relatively dark part of Zoellner and the practice room was rather dimly lit as well. It was pretty manageable, though, and I still think the end result looks okay given the circumstances. I can't wait to actually start learning proper shooting techniques so the videos will start looking, you know, good. I think we start on that road with next week's lab.

How did everyone else do today? Any problems or cool things you found? Can't wait to see your videos.

Jean Claude Van Brand

Okay, that's a terrible title for this post, I admit it. But it was the first thing that popped into my head after I decided what this afternoon's topic would be: branding. And before I get into that, look at me! I'm sticking to my schedule!

In this morning's lecture, we learned some tasty tips for blogging from Jeremy, who showed us the ins and outs of his blog and how we can use some of his suggestions to spice up our own blogs. One of the things that stuck out to me the most was the concept of branding. Blogs are built around brands, from the voice of the blogger to the niche and design of the blog. I've developed a voice of my own over at Stark, where I love to mix my enthusiasm for music with a healthy dose of cynicism and snark. My posts serve as a good contrast to my colleagues' posts, which are often straightforward - albeit excellent - descriptive blurbs, and I really enjoy playing that type of character in the context of the blog.

But I'm not so sure that voice is all that applicable to this blog, since the subject matter is much different and I have a significantly smaller readership. I don't want to be snarky when talking about the stuff I'm learning and doing, but then again, I don't want to be Jean Claude Van Bland. So I'm working to add a mix of humor to my narrative.

I'm thinking about a lot of other things I can change about this blog, and throughout the week as I continue to post, you'll notice some tweaks going on. I'm starting with something small - the blog roll on the right sidebar - which should enhance the community feel I'm trying to attain. Also, I'm working on responding to other posts from fellow bloggers in the class, which should help accomplish that same goal. I encourage you (whoever you may be?) to also comment here, so we can start a dialogue and not make this whole process so stuffy.

Let's get this train rolling, shall we?

Trying to Form a Habit

I blog. I've had a blog for two and a half years now, and I do lots of blogging on it. I started this blog a few weeks ago, too. You could say I'm blog happy. Well versed in the ways of blogging. But I can't call myself a blogger. Not yet, at least.

You see, if one were to give himself the title of "blogger," that means he would have to engage in the practice regularly as a sort of profession, much like a doctor would call himself a doctor because that's what he does. But I haven't been able to find a rhythm as a blogger; I haven't disciplined myself enough to working blogging into my daily routine. Sure, with Stark (the aforementioned blog) I've gone through spurts where I throw up three or four posts a day for a couple weeks, but then I lose my mojo and can go days without posting anything. It's tough to commit to something like that on a regular basis. It's not that I'm any less interested in blogging during my dry patches, but something just always gets in the way from allowing me to do so.

I don't want to get in the same pattern with this blog. I'm already not blogging enough about the class, even though it's of great interest to me. But there's so much else going on that it becomes difficult to find time to set aside solely for blogging. I have to keep trying to stick with the routine I originally set out for myself: Blog on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So far I haven't followed that schedule yet, but I vow on starting fresh today. In fact, after our lecture today, I promise I'll come back and work a post out of the material I learned. With any luck, maybe that regiment will carry over to Stark, too, even though I do that for fun and not for class credit. I've been neglecting my baby as of late, and I'm sure it won't be thrilled if I start spending all my time with another blog.

So here's to a new beginning of blogging, I hope. With any luck, by the end of the semester, maybe I can truly call myself a blogger.

Week 2: Haiti and Headaches

For our lab assignment this week, we were given the task of venturing out on Lehigh's campus, finding an unknowing interview subject, and bombarding them with a few questions on a selected topic. I picked the very relevant Haiti crisis, and what that particular student is doing/has done to help Haitians in their time of peril. The goal was to shoot a few minutes of interview footage using the "man on the street" technique, come back to Coppee and splice it together using some of the Movie Maker skills we acquired in Monday's lecture. I had my always enthusiastic partner, Liz Martinez, help me out again. She found an old friend outside of Linderman Library named Dominique, who was more than willing to answer a few questions for each of us. I filmed Liz ask Dom about the economy, and Liz filmed me ask her about Haiti.

We had a few problems (the "headaches" in the blog title), the first of which happened when we were shooting our introductions. We didn't realize that you can't shoot subjects in portrait mode on the Zi8 from very far away, or else it comes out blurry. My original introduction was shot outside of Coppee on a park bench, but when we got back to the lab to cut the video up, it indeed turned out to be blurry. Thus the re-shoot of the introduction, which finds me wearing sunglasses inside to match the rest of the video. I am basically Jack Nicholson.

Anyway, the first assignment was to produce an unedited version of our interview, save for a title bar to introduce the subject and a few credits at the end. That's what you'll see here. One of the biggest headaches we encountered was the complications with sound when filming outside. Much of the audio is obstructed by the sound of the wind and because Liz probably shot a few feet too far away, so when Dom talks, it's rather hard to hear her. Still, you get the point:

Next, we had to split up the interview so that text-based transitions replaced my questions:

Lastly, I had to add a fade transition after my introduction into the first question, to complete the grab-bag of skills we learned. (I also added one after the last question into the credits, just for fun, and because it was a bit choppy the way it ends in the first and second interviews.)

Another bit of trouble we ran into was the long load time it took to convert the clips into Prism after dumping the original cameras from the files on to the computer. I guess it was more like a source of frustration. It slowed Liz and I down considerably, and these were only two minute videos, so I can only imagine how long it will take when we convert longer videos.

Anyway, I shouldn't be complaining. Things went relatively smooth compared to some of the video ills that plagued other groups, so I'll be content with what we came up with. The videos we shot may be crude, but the whole exercise was to apply what we learned a few days ago, and I think I accomplished that. Props to Liz, Dom and my wicked sunglasses for being great sports today.