End-of-Year Reflection

Throughout my four years in e-Comm, here's one valuable takeaway I've gained from each of the five guarantees:

Technology: Especially during my junior and senior years, I have expanded my knowledge of technical skills exponentially. I have continued to improve with Illustrator and Final Cut, I have learned how to use After Effects to create a variety of motion graphics, and I have began to do some editing in Premiere (although I still greatly prefer Final Cut over Premiere).

For some examples of the technical skills I've gained, I'd point out a few projects that I completed over this school year.



This animated state gymnastics poster required use of Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects, as I had many moving components, along with both vector and image components. Click here for a more detailed description.



For basketball season, I created player intros and graphics for both our live broadcasts on YouTube and in-game on our video board. I utilized Illustrator, Final Cut, and After Effects. Click here to see all of the graphics I created for basketball.

Collaboration: An example of collaboration would be when I worked with Yearbook to find photos to use for the senior farewell video. The photos were a great addition to the video, and I was glad that Yearbook was willing to share some of their photos with me. One of the things I wish e-Comm did more of would be to work with other strands. We hardly ever have contact with graphic design, web design, or entertainment, and I think it would be a strong characteristic of the academy if we started working together more.

Communication: Communicating between students in Convergence is important, as creating Raven Minute (and especially ONW Now) requires the efforts of many people. While I think our communication improved over the last two years, for me personally, I still don't think I did a good enough job of communicating as I could have.

Project Management: Overall, I thought I did well with project management. I worked on many projects outside of class, including the basketball graphics, the L3 promo video over the summer, and the senior farewell video. Although the basketball player intros took longer than originally anticipated, I was determined to make the finalized designs good quality.

Leadership: Looking back, I do not think I was as good of leader as I could have been. Although we were generally good with getting productions completed in a timely manner, I sometimes lost my temper, which shouldn't generally happen with someone in a leadership role.

Overall, I have learned a lot this year in e-Comm. I have gained many technical skills, and I have had many opportunities to work on many projects involving animation, editing, and graphics. I am looking forward to my next four years at Northwest Missouri State and continuing in mass media!

Weekly Blog 9: ONW Lip Dub Package & Fox 4 Field Trip

This week was a busy one.

For this week's edition of ONW Now, I created a package to go behind-the-scenes of this year's ONW lip dub.

I interviewed director Skai Gray and assistant director Lilly Beckwith and asked them questions about the entire process of creating the lip dub from the first idea to the actual production. Skai had a lot to say about the design process, and she mentioned that when they first presented the idea to administration, they had many questions for the production team that they hadn't even thought of beforehand. Lilly talked about the sheer amount of work the team had to do to make the production a success, noting the prep night was an important part of the preparation.

Overall, I was pleased with the finished package. I was able to grab b-roll that was relevant to what Skai and Lilly were saying, and I had a nice variety of b-roll shots that I implemented. For example, I followed behind Cyle (the cinematographer) through all four takes of the lip dub, so I was able to get some nice shots of both Cyle and the people helping guide his chair and the rest of the students and staff lining the hallways. I grabbed b-roll from video that I took on both the prep night and the actual day of production, and both days, I filmed in 1080/60p. This allowed me to slightly slow down some of the b-roll shots while still exceeding the 30 frames per second the actual package was in.

I was originally going to film both interviews in the e-Comm conference room, but Skai suggested that we set up in Ravens Nest due to the good lighting it had. I ended up really liking the footage I got. I filmed Lilly in the conference room to have variety in interview locations, and I liked the setting; however, I did not do as good of a job framing her that I would have liked. I ended up adjusting the scaling on her interview, and it turned out pretty well. In future packages, I'll err on the side of caution and frame subjects a little more zoomed out than I normally do so if subjects move slightly I can adjust scaling in post.

We also headed out to Fox 4 today to see a professional newscast in action.

I talked with Jana Calkins and Rob Collins about college and career paths, and I got to see their main studio, the control room, their other sets, and their newsroom. It was a very educational experience and it was great to get a glimpse into what the real news world is like.

Weekly Blog 8: Article Review

This week's article discusses a big change in a new Apple product. Apple's new HomePod speaker isn't getting released when Apple originally said it would. Apple has said that they "need a little more time before it's ready for our customers," and they also said shipping would begin in early 2018. This means that they'll miss the holiday season and could miss out on a large amount of potential revenue. The product was presented back in June.

The article is fairly brief, but it does address most of the changes that Apple has made to HomePod. The writer uses a quote from an Apple email to help explain why the release date was moved back, and points out how the release will now miss the holiday season. However, the writer did not specify when the original release date was, which would have been nice to know.

In my future news stories, I'll always try to use quoted material from sources or people whom I've interviewed. It can add credibility to the story and make the information easier to understand as it's coming directly from them rather than being paraphrased by the writer.

Weekly Blog 7: Premiere CC vs. Final Cut Pro X

This week has been pretty busy in e-Comm. In terms of technical improvement, this week, I started using Premiere for the Late Night highlight video. It is definitely very different than Final Cut; however, Haden has been helping me with shortcuts and settings to make Premiere as similar as possible to Final Cut. First, I updated the keyboard shortcuts to reflect those of Final Cut (I also changed some more shortcuts to match Final Cut even better, such as"v" for disabling a clip).

I've been able to mimic Premiere's layout to closely resemble Final Cut's, and overall, the layout is not a problem for me. You can see this by comparing my Premiere workspace and my Final Cut workspace.

The biggest difference between Premiere and Final Cut, however, is the timeline. Final Cut uses a magnetic timeline, which I absolutely love; however, Premiere does not have this feature. I looked up how to mimic this feature in Premiere, and there is a solution: holding "command" while bringing the clip into the timeline will stick it in between clips. However, this solution isn't perfect. As audio tracks are not linked up with video clips the same way as Final Cut, audio clips will get cut wherever the new clip is put in. Overall, I still prefer Final Cut over Premiere, but I'll continue to try to adapt to Premiere as best as I can.

Weekly Blog 6: Article Review

Today, I looked at another article on MSN about a unique building in Denmark (the link to the article is here).

Airbnb is offering a family of four a chance to spend the night at the LEGO House in Billund, Denmark. The winners will head to the house on November 24-25 for an overnight stay in the 12,000-square-meter building. I like how the writer organized the information, and I especially liked their understanding of relatable information to the article itself (for example, Endicott mentions that Billund is not only the location of the LEGO House, but it is also the headquarters of Lego itself). I personally know quite a bit about Lego, so to read an article in which the writer has obviously done their own research to learn more about Lego in general is enjoyable.

I do wish the writer had gone into more detail about what is inside the house itself—they just mention that it is all plastic. I also want to know more about the background of the house itself. Why was it built? How long did it take? How much did it cost to create?

In terms of being a leader in class, I've been production manager and part of the production team during Raven Minute episodes and ONW Now. We've also start to teach other students in the class how to run production so hopefully we can eventually have a rotation to give ourselves breaks between productions.

The new LEGO House in Billund, Denmark. © Airbnb.

Weekly Blog 5: Article Review

While I was scrolling through news articles today, one article caught my eye, not for its title, but for its description beneath. You can click on the image to upscale it if it appears too small on your screen:

FOX News posted an article titled "Deserter Bergdahl says Taliban more 'honest than US Army," and the description reads "The U.S. Army sergeant whines that the US treated him worse than the Taliban as he faces a life sentence for desertion." As a reader, I'm not sure if FOX News or MSN is responsible for writing the description, but whoever did it did a very poor job.

There are discrepancies between style. In the title, 'United States' is abbreviated as 'US," and in the description, it is first abbreviated as 'U.S.' and then 'US.' The thing that stood out the most to me, however, was the word choice. Saying that the sergeant 'whines' is not an appropriate word to use in this situation and suggests that the news agency believes Bergdahl is being outrageous. Ultimately, the word choice clearly shows the bias of the news agency, which is something that should be avoided.

The article itself appears pretty unbiased, which leads me to wonder where the description itself originated from, as it's not found in the actual article. I believe the writing is strong for the most part and gives a nice general outline of the events leading up to this point, as Bergdahl now awaits his sentence.

There were a couple points at which I was confused by the writing. This paragraph was confusing:

"Bergdahl, 31, from Hailey, Idaho, says he never quite knew where he stood with the Army as he performed “administrative duties” while awaiting his desertion trial."

First off, the article does not explain what these "administrative duties" are, and the language makes me unsure when, in fact, he actually performed those "administrative duties."

The next paragraph was somewhat confusing as well:

“Here, it could be the guy I pass in the corridor who’s going to sign the paper that sends me away for life,’’ he says. “We may as well go back to kangaroo courts and lynch mobs.”

The article makes it unsure as to where "here" is. I can assume that it is the courthouse in which his trial will be held, but a tidier description to lock down the exact location would have been extremely useful.

If I do end up ever posting any of my feature stories online (I haven't been able to yet, as the GSA story was cut by administration), I hope to create a quick description to go with the title of the article. Of course, I'll plan on avoiding using biased language in the description, unlike this article.

The link to the original article is here.

This week, I helped produce the show and several Raven Minute episodes. I think we're doing a better job of getting the shows done on time, and though we're still not perfect, we're doing better than we were before.

Weekly Blog 4: Article Review

This week I picked a sports article for our weekly blog highlighting Syracuse's upset over Clemson. The article includes a video player which shows a touchdown highlight from the game, and it includes a slideshow at the end of the article. The first paragraph is a basic overview, describing Syracuse's offensive performance and the negative impact the game will have on Clemson's playoff chances. Then, the author splits paragraphs to talk about Clemson and Syracuse's recent history, and then goes into discussing the game and important plays throughout.

I think the author did a nice job of incorporating every aspect of these two teams into the article. Not only did he talk about the game itself, he drew on earlier events with the two teams to explain how they should continue with the season moving forward.

I would have like to have seen full game highlights in the video player rather than just the one touchdown. Other than that, I thought the article was detailed and organized well. I appreciated the links to box scores and related articles.

If I end up doing any sports articles, I'd like to implement what he did in this one - add detail and both pictures and video for the article. The writing itself is done very well and I'm sure that in the professional industry it's important to produce a well-written article as quickly as possible.

In terms of time, I spent Monday mostly working on the new commons updates video, and on Tuesday, I worked on the scoreboard graphic for the football game and made sure that all of the footage and files from the GSA story were being kept to potentially re-edit and submit the package to eMagine this year.