Half way there

Guess what?

I'm finished my first year of CreComm!

And it feels great.

I've learned so much this year, even though it took me a while to realize just HOW MUCH I've learned. And most importantly, this year has made me figure out what I actually want to do with myself, career wise.

I came into the program wanting to go into publishing, with just some weird feeling that the program would help me.

It wasn't long before I rediscovered my love for video and production.

Working in a live filming environment in first semester was scary, but exciting. Just non stop work.

And getting to make my montage in second semester rekindled my love for editing.

I'm really glad I made the decision to go into media production for second year, even though I also developed a love for advertising.

I can't wait to see where I will go next.

Montagin' it up

I've finally finished a video piece!

That's right - last Friday, I completed my montage assignment for my media production class.

And to be honest - although I spent the last three years in a digital multimedia class in high school - this is the first video project I've finished since 2010.

I think the problem before was the fact that in class at high school, I always bit off more than I could chew - and so I never had enough time to finish what I had started. I would end up losing motivation for the projects after a while, as well. And it really didn't help that we had no chance of working on our videos after school hours.

So, being able to start and finish this project made me really happy. Not to mention that it turned out quite well, and I'm pretty proud of it!

It did start to get a little scary near the end, though. I had just over an hour of footage - which is a lot less than others had. But the thing about mine, was that I did it on pole dancing. so a 20 second clip could have a whole bunch of usable clips mixed around in between, because my subject is constantly moving and doing new and different things.

But it still wasn't a lot of footage.

So when I started getting close to finishing, I started to run out of clips. I started to panic, and was just putting any kind of non-crappy footage into the empty spaces I had left. I think I ended with one unused clip left over. Yeah. Scary.

Thankfully, though, I did have enough. Barely. I had already re-shot the majority of my footage because the gain on my DSLR had messed everything up, so I really didn't want to have to shoot again (and miss out on my own pole classes).

Another problem I had was the door in the studio. Light comes through there pretty well. So I did one of my filmings around 3pm, where the light was shining through really strong. It made my footage quite beautiful, actually.

But, when I went to film the actual classes during the evening, things were different. I was filiming from about 6pm to 9pm. Right when the sun was going down. Meaning my light completely changed, and even the beginning of the footage was much different from my 3pm shooting. I ended up having to change the way I filtered my footage in my editing, as the consistency between the clips just plain sucked. But by making it mostly black and white and adjusting some of the levels, I was able to make it a little better. It was unfortunate, but there really wasn't much of another way to get around it.

Overall, I am really happy with what I have accomplished. I know I will learn from the mistakes I made this time around, and am excited to get better over the coming year as I work not only on my documentary, but in the media production major.


Today, I leave you with - you guessed it - my montage.

As the school year winds down...

Everything is coming to an end.

I've just finished my montage assignment, and am about to submit it to the CCMAs (Creative Communication Media Awards).

I've handed in my last two assignments for two other classes.

The magazine project is complete.

Just two more tests.

And I will be finished with my first year of CreComm.

And really. After all that stress I went through - this has honestly been the most stressful year of my life, next to a really crappy period of junior high that I won't talk about here - I'm happy.

I learned so much, from each class. I can write more suscinctly. I can design quite nicely. I have a new love for orange. I'm learning how to use a camera properly. I've come to love advertising. There's just so much.

And above all, I've finally figured out what I really want to do. Which is really just utilize all of my creative abilities to the max.

And to think I wanted to be an editor before.

Bah.


Soon, it will be summer. Although I'm not sure the weather would agree. Soon, I will be able to draw, read, write, whatever. I will begin my preparations for my art table at Ai-Kon. I will start filming for my documentary. I will begin making my plans to move out next year.

I feel like this summer is going to bring a lot of new, good things my way - and I'm really excited for it.

Thrust into Videography!

With the kickstart of the montage assignment and, of course, my IPP, it's time to start really learning some filming skills.

For my montage, I am going to be doing a bunch of filming at Fantasy Pole Dancing in Winnipeg. But I've realized, that busing with like 50 pounds of equipment would not be very ideal. Especially considering the area I'd be bussing to, and the high cost of the equipment. So, I figure that it would probably be more practical to use my Canon T3i. Yay for DSLR!

But that means that I know have to figure out how to use the video function on my camera - well. This means auto-nothing, because auto-anything is for losers, as my instructor has told us.

I won't have to start figuring out how to use the audio until later on, when I do my summer filming. I also hope to use my Canon for my documentary, to reduce costs for rentals over the summer. The college will be closed, so no free rentals for me!

I'm really excited to start getting to film some awesome stuff and start training up my skills as a videographer. I'm probably going to start living at the school more often for some psycho video editing, especially with this montage. It's going to take a ton of editing, and I really want to submit it to the Creative Communications Media Awards. But the annoying thing is, that the deadline is on April 5th for the awards - seven days before the deadline for the montage as an assignment!

But I have a really good feeling about my montage, and feel confident in myself for the award. It's just a matter of managing to finish it before the deadline, ugh!


Wish me luck!

An Unexpected Turn of Events

The idea I have for the way I would be spending the next year of my life has suddenly changed.

As you may know from my previous post, I was planning for quite a while to create an art book for my Independent Professional Project (IPP). This project spans about a year in total.

From Wednesday to today, the first years were given the opportunity to watch the second year's IPP presentations. After watching the number of documentaries that the students had produced, I became inspired to create my own.

So, I have now made the abrupt decision to completely change my IPP - from art book to cosplay documentary.

I have to admit though; I'm extremely excited for this new project - as it combines two loves of mine, videography and cosplay - but I'm also rather frightened. This is because the final proposal is due in just over a week! Goodness gracious.

But I feel like I'm going to just be way more passionate about this, and though it might be more stressful time-wise, it'll have a much more valuable outcome for me. I would love to one day work for an awesome Canadian film company, and this would be an awesome way to get me on track with that!

It will also give me a chance to work on my PR skills, as I will be contacting different conventions to talk about partnering with them for the video. I particularly want to work with the Ai-Kon Anime Convention in Winnipeg, as I've been going there for 8 years now and have strong connections in that community. I have a million ideas flying around in my head, and really hope this is going to go the way I want it to!

I've already whipped up a Facebook page for my IPP, as I may be starting my filming at the beginning of April already! Go check it out!
http://www.facebook.com/anotherlifedocumentary

Wish me luck!

Behind the Scenes in Google: AdWords

Today in my advertising class, we learned about some of the mysteries of Google: AdWords and AdSense.

With Google AdWords, advertisers can literally bid on words that they think people will search. When they buy these words, they can create an ad with google that will appear on the search pages depending on search relevance. You can learn more about the behind the scenes world of Google by going here!

So our task in class today was to come up with five possible ads that we could make with AdWords for our blog. The tricky part of this is the fact that space in these ads is extremely limited! Here is the template:

Line 1: Max 25 characters
Line 2: Max 35 characters
Line 3: Max 35 characters
URL: Max 1024 characters

Note: Characters include all letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation, and spaces!

We had to create five different ads for our blog. Here are mine!

Live life every day

Laugh with everything you do

Learn with me on my blog!

http://kdifletcher.blogspot.ca

Live, laugh, learn!

Join Katelyn Fletcher on her quest

To always live to learn

http://kdifletcher.blogspot.ca

Live life to its fullest

Laughing at every great moment

Learning and blogging along the way

http://kdifletcher.blogspot.com

Learn to express yourself

Learn to enjoy yourself

Learn to love life.

http://kdifletcher.blogspot.com

Live to learn

The things you love

Every moment of every day

http://kdifletcher.blogspot.com

The most important key words I tried to use were common phrases such as "live to learn," "Live life," and of course the key words "live laugh learn"!

And who knows, maybe one day I'll end up actually making one of these ads! I think I would be most likely to run it during the summer, as that's when most people would have time to do the things I post about!

Oh, and if you're wondering what AdSense is - it's sort of like the opposite of AdWords. Instead of shelling out money to create an ad, you can use AdSense to put these ads on to your website - or your blog! With this, you can earn pennies for every click you get on the ad. It may not be much, but it's something - and it can really add up if you have a lot of traffic!

So today, I'll leave you with another random thing I learned while staring at my screen writing these - the stripes on hood of this sweater that I've had for two years go horizontal! I don't pay a lot of attention.

A Thousand Farewells

This month, I read the book "A Thousand Farewells" by Nahlah Ayed as part of my journalism class.

Being that I have never really read a non-fiction book before, I wasn't too sure what to expect, other than a true story. I was surprised to find, though, that with some tweaking the book could easily appear as a creative narrative. This was because the book was about Ayed's experiences as a journalist in the Middle East, which, to put it simply, was pretty intense.

The thing that gave it away as non-fiction was the balance between narrative and historical facts. Ayed would give a small amount of narrative, and then pages and pages of historical background. Although this was somewhat necessary to the story - as it is the history that has built up over time in the Middle East that has made it what it is now - it was a little overwhelming at times. Forty years of history is a lot for one 339 page book, and I found it rather hard to absorb. 

Despite this, I did actually find the history of the book very helpful to my reading experience. This is because I know very little about the events in the Middle East, as I was very young when a lot of what most people know about happened. Even around 9/11, I was only just starting second grade. I do remember seeing news about Iraq on from time to time, enough to know that there was a war going on. But I wasn't even 10-years-old yet, so it wasn't long before I flipped on through the channels to find the cartoons. I've always been weirdly unaware of a lot of the world's history. My elementary school hardly taught us any recent, significant history, so when I went on to junior high I admittedly felt rather stupid because I knew so much less than others. Honestly, I didn't know what the KKK was until I embarrassedly asked someone last year. So, being that I was young and oblivious to the world during the events of this book, it was rather nice to have it finally explained to me - and in much greater depth than I probably would have gotten from the news anyway.

Since I usually read fiction books, though, I greatly enjoyed Ayed's narratives. She made them very compelling and interesting, and her experiences were scarily unbelievable sometimes. This was most prominent in the chapter "Ghosts", where Ayed is attacked after a bombing, as the surrounding citizens thought she was the initiator of the bombing. People were beating her mercilessly, until a man managed to pull her away. What probably shocked me most here, though, was the fact that no one really stopped the man. They could have stabbed him, yanked Ayed back into the fight, but they did not. In my mind, it sort of shows the compassion they still had, even though they were enraged. I found this scene to be rather frightening, actually. You have to be dedicated to still want to work in a place that you know you could likely die in at any time, whether by bombs or resulting attacks like this. You could be jumped, or accidentally shot. Anything could happen, and you just have to hope that it won't, or if it does, that you'll survive. Maybe a random stranger will save your life. But you don't know for sure. And that's scary.

One thing I found could have been added to the book was the prospectives of other journalists and crew. It was obvious that Ayed made contact with various other journalists during her time in the Middle East, as not only did she have her own crew, but she mentioned that she sometimes stayed in the hotels that most journalists were staying in. I like being given the opportunity to see other people's views, so I feel like it would have been more enjoyable to me if I could see her conversation with one of the other journalists, and how they've been dealing with their experiences.

Overall, I found the book to be quite interesting and informative. I think it really showed how important a journalist's role is in the world - how their job truly is to tell the stories that need to be known. But it's also about lines - ones that you have to cross, and ones to learn to stay away from - like when Ayed chose not to interview the grieving woman on the hill above the mass grave. I learned a lot from this book, and I feel comforted by the fact that some holes in my knowledge of history have been filled.