I always am very afraid to ask for exceptions. I'm trying to be better about advocating for that type of thing, but it just terrifies me. It feels unfair to other people, I think. But I was lucky enough to have someone ask for me, so here I am getting to do something I prefer much more than real world filming. Not to say I don't have any bright ideas on that- Plenty of projects in the woodworks. But, as happy as I am that I get to flex my passion in graphic design, I'm a bit saddened at the same time I wasn't brave enough to ask earlier. But it's alright, because nobody's born perfect. SEGUE!

Working on this project was a lot of cutting work for me. Almost none of the graphical elements I used (besides the text) came as presets for Adobe Spark, which means that pretty much all these assets are custom made. Some of them were quite testy to make as well, I wanted to make the central photo I used of myself a very wavy color, and it took a loooooot of effort to do.

I initially tried using a basic color palette swap with Paint 3D, my favorite image editor, but it didn't give me any satisfaction from replacing big blocks of colors.It was very flat. The solution was to "write" lines in my hair to represent wavy streaks, and then plug the newly edited flat colors with hair marks into an image filter, which made the color swap "pop" as well as keeping the hair as an image with a lot of depth in it. 

 As with the theme of the written elements being people having multiple sides, I wanted a big contrast in the colors of the elements I used between very monotone graphics and a huge blast of color in the middle. All of the grim illustrations come from one of my favorite books, Mordheim. I can talk about it for hours, but the artist John Blanche is prolific and one of my all-time idols. Getting these on here was a process. I scanned in the original images from the long page cut outs in Mordheim, (the original book! pressed onto a scanner!) used Paint 3D to cut out all of the text and background to make them transparent files, then uploaded them onto Adobe spark to arrange them about the image. 

Overall, i'm super excited to get to work on more graphical projects in the future while still making videos. I hope that I can keep going strong, and really hit my stride with creative work that I can use my technical expertise to make good work out of. Here's to the future.
(I also cooled off with some graphics work for Maxwell. Was nice.)
​

First project! Second semester! Luckily enough, it doesn't involve much filming which is good for me. I get to stretch out into the nice comforts of graphic design once more. The real benefits of this project was the relearning of how to film interviews using a bit of the critique that my finals granted me. Looking back at the rule of thirds and other advice, I used a tripod and phone to set up a more stable interview angle than the more shaky "candidness" than I did for my final. Of course, the interview footage wasn't included in the actual submission, but it was still certainly useful as anything I'm going to do later is probably still going to involve that stuff. I still need to learn how to use the DSLR, but for now I'm trying to hold that off as long as I'm able. Sometimes it feels like I'm only open to learn new things when a great idea hits me, so I think that when inspiration strikes I'll be ready to lean into it. The better part of all of this, of course, is getting to flex my graphical talents again. I'm pretty happy with what I came up with, especially considering most of the designs I make are pretty monochrome or dark-hued in their palette, it was pretty tricky to nail down the use of the full color wheel instead of the darks I tend to stick to as my trademark, but it was also fun getting to use a more expansive catalogue of design assets. In the end, it was definitely a nice project that let me use a lot of my prior skills, and relearn the ones that I needed to refine. The challenge now for me is going to be thinking of interesting film ideas for the remainder of the semester, but I'm definitely excited to get started.

It's about that time again! Well, I say "about", but to be precise it's fourteen minutes until it's due.

In any case, this semester's final was super enjoyable- I like it a lot more than the one last year, although that's not to say they were both fun in their own ways. But I got to be a lot more emotional with this one certainly, and the experience of making it definitely fit with my style. We didn't have as much time as any of the previous projects- only two class periods and the final of whole dedicated work. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the way that I was able to work on it, especially considering the subject matter. If the last video I made was the one that appealed to my personal hobby the most, I can certainly say that this video is the one that I felt I was able to make the most emotional impact with. Like any project, the initial plan for it was different than the final result for time reasons, but I stand by the end product just the same. The main regrets I have was that I underestimated my ability to clean up background audio in final cut- A lot of the general sounds of the school in some scenes still shine through, and while I was able to edit out some annoying bits, a couple interacted with the main video in such a way that it wasn't able to get cut. The thing I'm happiest with the most is how fate lined up when it came to the backing audio (which, sneakily, wasn't actually played by me! Also meaning I didn't have to spend time memorizing a new song) completely synced up without me needing to use any effort. I barely had to cut anything for the musical beats to line up in their best measure, and I can't stress enough how fortunate a turn of events that was.
I loved making this final, and while the backing audio issues hinder the overall result, I stand very happy with what I ended up with. 

It's hard to say how people get their passions. I can barely recall what spurned me on this path, but ever since I was a kid I really had something for history. I suppose I can thank good history teachers when I was younger putting a passion into it for me, and RPG video games for giving me a fascination with people in heavy armor. 
In any case, the second that "storytelling" or "sharing our stories" was decided as the theme for the Ladue View, I knew this was the time to whip out such an obscure passion. My goal was really to try and capture the excitement that I feel for history and my thoughts on how it connects the world together in ways people don't think about, and share my passion with others in a video. Unfortunately, that's a pretty tall order, especially if you only look at history as a boring lecture subject to be taught in stuffy classrooms, but I hope I could do my best to share the energy I feel for the topic.

Research
The research that went into putting this video together was easily the biggest amount of time I've spent on any broadcast technology project. It's almost impossible to describe how many pages of references, research material, characters, geographical locations, modern historians, and other troves of images I had to sift through in order to weave a valid story together through all of them. To say that the final script that I produced barely touched upon the research I did would be a joke. Every conceivable offhand reference or character name mentioned had a plethora of time put into them, trying to see what I could summarize, put together, what overarching story could be made out of it. In the end a lot of it got the cut to make a better video out of things, but the effort to get all the information together was immense.
Script
An "angle" to the video was one of the first things I developed, and that angle would be how stories people told in history is similar in stories people tell today, and they spread across the media collective, broadcasting, etc etc etc. In the end I collected a bunch of medieval stories together and researched all the connections between foreign or various locations or other stories they showed up in, and pointed them out. The script had to be changed plenty of times of course, and the audio recording took a bit to get the right levels on as well but overall I'm happy with it.
Video Production
The production of the video itself was very much near the end of the work cycle. Again, this was a very time consuming production! Luckily for me, Keynote was easy enough to learn all of the quirks of and before I knew it I was able to add in and order up the visual traits that I needed for the project. My only concern was making the video itself not look like an "active slideshow" and seem more like an animated thing that was the background to a lecture, like the history videos I watch which I based this project off of. In the end, I think that I managed to accomplish this goal pretty well. The animation quality might not be Mate Daus, but it's certainly visually appealing enough to not be static. Either way though, my main hope was that the information presented would be valuable enough to fill in for the lack of particularly flashy visuals.

Overall I really loved to work on this, even though I had to put plenty of my own time outside of class into the heaping amounts of research and writing that the video would need to be successful. Regarding the final result itself, I think the presentation could have things added onto it to make it more interesting but there's only so much you can do when working towards deadlines. Nevertheless, working on something that I was passionate about and getting to participate in other people's films while I was working was really fun, and I enjoyed this project a lot.

I love analog horror! I love it. It's the latest "thing" when it comes to horror trends on Youtube, which, is a lot. From the Walten Files to Local28, there has been a lot of free horror out there which take the theme of "old technology" and increases the scariness to major levels. It'd take a while to explain the ins and outs of each series, but the appeal is universal: Weird, static overlays combined with unnerving sounds and barely visible or audible details underlaid underneath spooky VHS or security camera visuals. When I did the Podcast project (a WHILE ago) I certainly tried to aim for an analog horror feel there as well, though my audio mastery has definitely picked up since then. Hopefully. In any case, editing this was a real task to do.
1: Overlays
Luckily, Final Cut Pro came through with a bit of creativity. A lot of its transitions or generators can be toggled about with options, and with enough enterprising spirit, a simple "stripes" overlay very quickly becomes a flash of static in strange technicolor. The security overlay was the most useful, and only required minimal touchup before that was in working order, certainly. 
2: Audio
The audio was killer here. I had to record a lot of still sounds and borrow plenty from free sites myself. Final Cut Pro came in killer again here, as it had a perfect static overlay to any audio which decreased the quality, but I still had to do a lot. If you open the files up in Final Cut Pro, you will discover a LOT of effects and audio overlay for extremely brief sections. A whole lot of work went into that, and I'm glad the final result paid off.
Overall, this project was my favorite to work on by far out of anything I've ever done in this class. Getting to work with minimal live action footage, good audio, all in a short timeframe really was the best of every world I could imagine. 

First project back, and oh boy, it's a stinker! 60 Seconds: Fencing is my first debut into the field of "informational topics that I need a lot more time to talk about than sixty seconds, but what can you do". In all seriousness, I wanted to pick one of my not as niche hobbies and try to explain it. Unfortunately, there's a lot to go through with fencing. A lot a lot a lot. 
1: Materials and Filming
Filming an accurate set of materials was pretty easy. All I needed was a way to show off the sword, the jacket, and the helmet. Unfortunately, when it comes to cinematography I am hardly that creative, so most of the shots regarding those wound up being bland. For the explanation of the movements themselves I didn't need to worry that much as the camera would have to keep still to point out information, but the angle or position could've been shot better. Some of the shots with the full body were dreadfully cut off as well from the height being an issue. Overall, most of the scenes I wanted had to be spliced badly from the cutoff.
2: Sound Recording
Recording all of the various audio took ages. I think I rerecorded the audio for everything about three times for the full video itself. It certainly took a while! But in the end everything got mixed up fine, and there weren't any glaring audio issues. But sorting and filtering and re-recording took a very long time to get through.
3. What next?
I really don't like this video much at all. I think it's pretty terrible even if the idea was sound. My predictions of it's score was pretty correct, and most of the footage I have absolutely needs to be reworked from the ground up (literally, the camera cut things off from being too close to the ground) and the editing choices also will have to be realigned to fit this. But I think there's a nugget of good concept here, even if the format is terrible. By the end I doubt I can work it into sixty seconds.

Yes! It's here! The end of all things! Or, at least of the final. On the grand cooperative two week (or really, like 4 hour) movie creation effort, I played the role of one of the directors. So, with a high up position like that, I can give some insight into the process:

First, I would like to say, that Fiona and Lizzie are great people and some of the most organized and capable of the role that I had the pleasure of working with, however I would like to note about the problem with having three directors, that is the "creative vision". Now, at risk of sounding like an art snob, what I'm trying to say is that everyone has a different idea on what the project is. The scriptwriters, the actors, the directors, and all of that. The problem with that is that with a lot of creative voices speaking on that, who gets to call the shots? When me, Jett, Mate, and Jack all wrote the script, some of our ideas were cut out of the final production, for good reason most likely. However, this brings up the issue that with so many creative producers someone has to be the one to cut out ideas that aren't necessary, and that's an integral part of the process, but they'll always ending up looking like a bad guy. But who's creative vision is the right one to follow? All of that is to say, and with no ill will towards my super competent and amazing other directors, I think that there definitely were a few cases that having too many directors was doing more harm than good. Super professional people, kind, and integral to the process, I loved their inputs, but I really wish that more of our other students part of the creative vision was kept. 

I think if there's one responsibility as director I failed at during the process, it was keeping everyone in the know with all the decisions being made. I specifically remember Austin on the first day saying that he didn't really know what was happening, but he knew that a lot of work was being done. I think that this idea kept through with the whole production, and if I could guess I would say that a lot of other people wrote about this. I think the problem was that with such a scope of different people and everyone being an actor, it was hard to keep everyone updated with what was happening, or what they were working towards. I think the way this could've been resolved was handing out the scripts better. I doubt many people working on the project besides the "board of directors" and scriptwriters themselves had a good grasp of what the plot was going to be, not to sound insulting at all. I think that if I could redo this, I would make sure the checklist we had going on would be placed in the TV studio room, so it wouldn't be erased as often, and people could know which part of the process we were working towards. The lack of information being passed around is a big regret I have on not handing better on the project.

"Broadcast is the only reason I don't snap at school, I think. This class is what keeps me going." -Austin

I absolutely am going to admit that most of the actual work on the project becoming a successful final result was left to two people, Mate and Austin in editing. And I must say, there absolutely could not be two better people we could have left it to. Let it be known that Austin is a broadcast technology star who is going to make more hits than any of us ever will, and that Mate is a technologically advanced overlord who has graced us with his presence. My wholehearted thanks to those two to taking this work home. 
Tyler was one of the most driven cameramen in the face of not knowing what to do and always was ready to do something new.
Jack was here at the very start and tail end of the project, and both times he managed to put all of himself into his work.
Maxwell stood shirtless in the main hall of the high school, an action that took so much bravery it speaks for itself.
Kenneth was always there for everyone, and always pushed himself to finish his work even when he was the only one on site.
Fiona is the most logistically organized mind I think I know, and that's saying something when the only people I know are RPG gamers.
Lizzie is the sweetest person to ever describe themselves as a "control freak", and give out death glares on set (in the nicest way possible).
Gabe put on a pink cardigan and headband, marched in front of a camera and wore it with pride while still doing more camerawork.
Heather, when we were in our scene together, couldn't stop smiling and laughing, which kept making me smile and laugh, which I think is the best problem I have ever had.
Jett was always there with the scriptwriting set with good ideas, and you could constantly find him in the TV studio helping out the editors.
The list goes on and on. I couldn't believe some of the absolutely incredible work the entire team put into this project. I can frankly say I didn't know the names of half of my sophomore class before this, but I feel a connection with all of them after.

This was a triumph. A triumph! A triumph, that I think really is going to get a middling grade, there were a lot of places we fumbled some things, but every scene there was laughter and joy. This is the only time in my life where the takeaway really was "Well, at least you had fun doing it."
I can't believe most of these people are coming back to broadcast. Help us all.

So, a big theme at the end of the school year is the graduation of the class of 2022. So, I wanted to make something related to graduation, growing up, getting older, change, and whatnot. The second the project was announced a month back, I opened up a notepad on my computer as the project details were being described, and I started shooting out what ideas I had. I really had nothing to think of for a creative film, so I just looked at what was around me. What could I do with it? A pen. Maybe the pen is moving around on its own. Maybe it's a senior's pen. Then, everything struck and I was off to the races typing out a very basic script. Seeing a new student grow into a senior through the lens of a pen, and the student doesn't want to change his ways but eventually learns that he has to change. The best part? It's called stationary.

I am so, so very proud of that pun. It's amazing in every conceivable way.

Filming was a real challenge though. For those interested, this is how you move a pen in a straight line without ever touching it:

METHOD 1: BLOW ON IT
Responsible for the straightest shot, but the shortest distance. Caused me the most trouble.
METHOD 2: FLICK
Distance, and straightness, but very very inconsistent.
METHOD 2: LARGE STICK
Can hit well, but the spherical end makes it spin out of control.
METHOD 3: LARGE (MEASURING) STICK
Hits well, hit straight, gets good distance but has a risk of spinning. The main method I used for most of it.
METHOD 4: JET ERIKSON
Good for dropping things while you have to film. Thanks for the help!

Overall, I severely respect the art of making things move in actual movies, and without the typical resources a puppeteer has, I did the best I could. Other than wild pen movement making up the most challenges in filming, the other big struggle was production scale. I had to conscript a lot of people, film a lot of places, and every day not spent filming was spent organizing said film into an edit. Editing and filming at the same time in the process was hard, but I think it got me done quicker than separating them. 
Most story elements had to be cut out for time, but I think what I ended up with is a pretty good result, all things considered. I hope it stands as a test to what I've learned from the start of the year till now, that's for certain.

Now with a grand upheaval of the website, only about eight months too late.
​For my project pathways project, I chose to do a podcast, because I like writing things and I figured I could transform a neat script with some audio editing and nice effects as well as some research from other podcasts, it would be a lot more interesting than me just reading an essay. In my pre planning phase, I had to do research on the podcast I took the inspiration from: 
Welcome to Nightvale is a podcast about creepy paranormal stories in a weird town reported on by the town radio broadcast, and is wildly popular. I cannot state enough how huge the internet community for Nightvale is, with many books compiling the episodes and other stories being written. Also wildly popular with the same crowd is the work of author H.P Lovecraft, a horror writer from the 1920s. While he was mostly forgotten while he lived, his works have gained popularity with millions nowadays. So, do the "Welcome to Nightvale" style with Lovecraft source information and inspiration, and I thought it would be a recipe for success. Which means I had to balance having references to the works of Lovecraft that fans could look into and recognize, I also had to do it in a format that kept the stories entertaining to people who didn't know anything. So, the Arkham Advertiser (Arkham being the town where Lovecraft's works took place) was wrote. Which took a lot of different efforts in a lot of places.
I had to research radio broadcast frequencies in the area of Massachusetts so I could make a realistic station signature, radio broadcasts from the 1920s to get the general theme of the broadcast, and a lot of writing, rewriting, getting some friends to voice random people, and finally recording and getting things together in Final Cut.
The biggest challenge I had was audio mastery, which, while seeming obvious while working with a podcast, was tricky for a reason I didn't find out until it was blasted out loud to the entire class at a loud sound: I had been editing the podcast with a lower volume on my Mac, so I made everything a bit louder which ended up being a fatal error from a innocent mistake. So, while editing things went well- especially the "creepy ghost interruption" in the middle, which was fun to splice together, I had to double back and rearrange the audio levels to be quiet. 
One of the surprises for me was exactly how long this thing took to write, because a typical podcast episode is pretty long and I wanted to at least create a mini episode of that, which meant a lot of writing which had to itself go through a lot of revisions. Funnily enough, rearranging the audio files in Final Cut Pro and reassembling my script as I wrote it was pretty similar to each other.
Overall, looking back on the finished product, I'm happy enough with the end product but I'm worried that it doesn't have enough substance. While it's gimmicks and novelty may carry it a bit, a lot of the stories I put in there seemed a bit repetitive and the general format was as well. It's good to open strong and end with something nice, which is what I tried to do, but the middle seemed like it could have done something more with it.