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.

Painting with Watercolours!

This week, I began my adventures in watercolour painting.

The idea for this began with some brainstorming for my IPP for school. I knew I wanted to some kind of story-telling art book, but I hadn't come up with a story yet - and the style had to match the story. As the idea for my story slowly began to form, I decided that watercolour would suit the tone of the story best.

The problem was, though, that I had not painted at all since elementary school. Remember those crappy little paint sets that dried and cracked really horribly? Yeah. Those. But, I figured I had to give it a shot, because I could just feel that it would be awesome.

So, last Friday, I went to the little art shop across the street from my school to get some supplies. I bought some 140lb watercolour paper, a basic set of 12 paint tubes, and some brushes - totaling about $23 with my student discount. I then went to Dollarama to pick up a little plastic palette for mixing, a white out pen, and some tape.

Before I started actually painting, I became rather nervous. What if I still painted like a fifth grader? What if I couldn't paint well to save my life? Then I'd have to completely re-thing my style choice for my book.

But when I finally started painting on Thursday, things went surprisingly well. Mixing colours really wasn't much of a problem, I guess because I had a good feel of it from my digital colouring, and I remembered to take into consideration the fact that the paint dries lighter. The biggest challenge was really just getting the technique down - how to blend the colours into each other, how much water to have on my brush, etc.

When I finished my first piece (which was actually my "tooling around" - I did nothing with the paint before this!) I was pretty impressed with myself. I figured out that I painted the way I wished i could digitally colour.

 

I also learned how well fingers can come into play - although I supposed paper towel would have a similar effect. When I went to do the gray shading on the eye, it actually came out too dark, and too much water (so there was like a blob of water just waiting there, threatening to spread and ruin the eye). So I panicked and wiped it with my finger, and it came out looking lovely!

When I started on my second piece - a character I have in mind for my story, in fact - I began applying and starting to refine some of the techniques I had already learned with blending.

Although I made - and will probably continue to make - a number of mistakes with the piece (eg. I was messing around a lot and lost a bunch of colour pigments in parts), I am still happy with how it is going, and am proud of myself for starting this adventure.

 

Always fun to come home to...

Today, I was planning on writing a nice, cute post about the gift I made for my anniversary.

I came home, took some nice pictures, then opened up my laptop to start writing.

But, sadly, I then discover that I have no Internet. Which probably explains the shaw bill in my mail box.

I often wish I had the money to move out and pay for my own bills.

But being an unemployed, 18-year-old student, that's not quite plausible for me yet.


For now, I'll just be thankful I have my phone.

Waiting Around for "The Waiting Room"

The other day, I went to see the documentary "The Waiting Room" on an assignment for my journalism class.

Ironically enough, I spent about half an hour waiting around in another kind of waiting room - the lobby. Not only was the line simply moving slowly, but once I started getting close to the register... The till broke down. Eventually she started taking the people who had debit, so I was able to get in, but I'm not sure exactly what happened after that. Regardless, I ended up getting into the theatre about fifteen minutes late - thankfully they held off starting the movie.

Educationally, I thought the documentary was interesting and thought-provoking, though a little lacking in detail.

Being someone that doesn't know very much about health care systems (particularely the American one), it would have been nice to have had a little more information provided. Not saying that I would have liked a big, boring monologue describing it, but maybe just some woven in facts, statistics, comparisons to other states, and such would have been nice - just to give me a better idea of what was happening on a larger scale.

I think the most interesting and shocking thing I learned was with the man who had bone spurs. His wages were far, far below minimum wage, his daughter and grandchild was living with him, and he had his health problems.

What probably struck me hardest was not just the fact that he had to pay for his consultation there - which would be "free" here in Manitoba - but that he went to the hospital, waited all that time, only to find out that they couldn't do anything for his bone spurs but give him pain killers.

Also the fact that the coverage the man could potentially receive was based on income was rather sad, knowing that the man likely did not have enough income for either of the proposed options.

I have to say, knowing that as long as I have my health card I can go to the doctor for a check-up is a great comfort to me.



Film-wise, I found that the documentary was put together well, considering the material.

I liked that everything was incredibly personal - none of the patients really seemed like they were being interviewed. Rather, it seemed like they were simply having a conversation. I found this to be a lot easier to connect to, in a way. It felt more real.

Also, by having a well-balanced focus on the nurse, the film was given a nice comedic relief. Not enough to be a mockery, but enough so that it wasn't just straight depressing.

On the downside, I found some of the structure to be a little confusing. For example, near the beginning of the movie, we were shown a few shots of a man who had hip problems. But then he just disappears from the movie. Same with the man who had a bullet stuck in him. I understand that the movie could not include so many entire stories, and that it was showing the range of people that are stuck in this waiting room, but I would have had a bit of comfort in even just having a shot of them finally getting to see a doctor or something.

I also found the final scene with the man who had bone spurs a little weird. There was one shot they had of him talking to the nurse. Other shots of him just standing there looking stressed were cut in between. I liked the effect of this, except for the fact that the conversation audio just continued as normal over-top of the shot changes. I found this distracting from the conversation, as I was busy realizing "wait, he isn't actually talking in this shot". In this way, I found that the story got a little lost in the art.



Overall, I found the film to be alright considering the somewhat dry (though always headline-making) subject manner. They had a good balance to the content of the film, and I enjoyed many of their artistic decisions - such as the music (or lack there of), the stories they chose to focus on, and even some of their obviously art-directed shots.




Some sources I used ;;
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/publicationdisplay.aspx?id=2147484001
http://lois-laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-6/page-4.html#docCont

Back To Bass-ics

On Tuesdays, I normally hang out with my boyfriend - but yesterday he cancelled on me because he had homework and stuff to do around the house.

So, I had no idea what to do with myself. Obviously I had homework I could do, but to me, Mondays and Tuesdays are like my weekday relaxing time.

Some time after finishing my tooling around on the school Macs, I recalled how my boyfriend is always pointing out songs we listen to in the car that I should learn the bass line to.

This is because, as you may or may not know, I actually have a bass guitar. A Squier Jazz Bass, to be exact. Metallic blue. It's my baby.

I got the guitar for I believe my 13th birthday. Maybe 14th. I cried.

Now, don't think that I'm one of those people that gets a guitar, thinks they're going to become a master guitarist, then never looks at it again. I actually practiced on it a lot, and self-taught myself a number of pieces of songs and one full one. But after a while, I kind of fell away from it.

When I met my boyfriend two or three years later and he found out I (sort of) played bass, he began constantly prodding me to play for him. But, being that he's pretty skilled with a guitar himself, I was rather shy and embarrassed to show him my mediocre skill. So I continued to look away from my bass.

Until now.

Thinking about things I could potentially do yesterday, I decided to text my boyfriend to ask him what the names of some of the songs were that he wanted me to learn. Eventually, he suggested "Barbarism Begins at Home" by The Smiths.

There wasn't a lot to learn for the song - the same line is repeated throughout the piece, then changes slightly right at the end - but the tricky part was getting the speed. It made me really happy to be playing again, although I will really need to cut my nails unfortunately.


Today, I leave you with a video of The Smiths.

Live, Laugh, Learn!

Hello everyone!

I have a new blog, as you can see! (Here is my old blog)

My old one has recently begun falling apart on me. The initial idea I had for the blog was to have it focused on my art, and my experience in learning and teaching others about it. But it was simply too narrow - I found myself wanting to write about a number of other things instead, but then trying to refrain from it.

So I came up with this instead. A much broader passion of mine is simply learning. I've never been much of a "Yay, school!" kind of person - not many people really are - but I simply love to learn. I love experimenting with baking, I take dance classes, I want to get back to teaching myself to play my bass guitar, my drawing, and of course my schooling at Red River College.




Currently what I'm working on figuring out is how to use my fancy Canon Rebel t3i camera that I recently bought for myself. Although I'm doing pretty well with it so far, I'm still working out bugs with taking wide shots, as some I took with my friend recently turned out not-so-well. Close-ups on the other hand, I have down pat. I am also starting to experiment with the HD video feature, which I will be practicing with during my pole dancing classes.

Today, let's end of with a most-delicious photo of some vegan banana bread!