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.