For this years final project, we each had to create a six word story that tells the story of ourselves, and turn it into a six shot video. Each shot had to be a different type and angle. The first challenge for me in this final was just thinking of what my six words were going to be. After much thought, I thought of a six word story that described my life, but they were lyrics from a song. I asked my teacher if I could use six words from a song, and upon receiving his approval, I decided to make my story, "Even broken wings can fly away," from the song "Sanctuary," by Paradise Fears. I chose these lyrics because "Sanctuary" is one of my favorite songs and these lyrics in particular are very meaningful, and have motivated me continuously to keep going even when I feel broken. For the video part, I knew at once I wanted some of the shots to be of birds, hence the "even broken WINGS can FLY away." I went to film birds and the park, and ended up spending two hours filming random animals and plants at the park. It was one of the best shoots I've gone on, I spent a lot of time trying to find unique angles with the leaves on trees and the sun shining through. Also, I got to film right next to a bunny and got an extremely close up shot of the bunny. After many ruined, shaky shots, I finally got some cool shots of birds flying. My final challenge was to figure out what to use for the other shots. While at the park, I also got a really neat shot of a dandelion and blowing the white fluff off of one, and I used it in my video to symbolize another form of "flying away," being free, letting oneself live, etc. I needed two more shots, and I decided to film the looking through of a photo album with pictures of myself and my family. I really, really like how this ended up. The way I see it, and designed it to be, is that there are three different symbols of a broken wing flying away. One literal (the bird), one symbolic (the dandelion), and one relating the words to myself (the photo album), showing myself growing up and branching out.
My last project of the year (besides the final project) was another Senior Farewell video. I love doing "behind the scenes" videos, and since I made the video for last years seniors too, I wanted to find a way to make it different. This was a bigger challenge than I thought, because basically the video needed to have the same message, and therefore a lot of the same questions. I mixed it up by asking the seniors what they thought of each other, which I hadn't done before, and also by asking funny questions such as "would you rather?"'s. This video was time pressed because I had to find time to interview each senior while they each had their own projects to work on too, and in the end I wasn't able to interview one of the seniors. This was a big disappointment for me, but I was able to pull a sound byte from another interview the senior had done. Finding a spot for the sound byte was another challenge, but I was able to make it fit. Another challenge I faced was that one of the days, two hours of my editing randomly dissappeared, and I still don't know why. It was frustrating, but when I finally finished editing, I had 20 minutes of video. The final day I spent cutting the video down until I had a four minute production, which ended up later being cut down even more for the show. After many exports and versions of the video, I was proud of the final product and I think it well represents our Ladue View Class of 2013! I will greatly miss the seniors but I'm excited to be a senior myself next year! It feels crazy to finally almost be on top after 5 semesters of being an underclassmen in the broadcast class.
My newest video concludes the investigative series on the teenage perspective on 21st century tragedies. It focuses on the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, and the 2012 Aurora Century 16 movie theater shooting. This video was the last of 3 in my investigative series. This video in particular I found the most challenging out of the three, for a variety of reasons. My interviewees were less comfortable with these two tragedies than the more publicized 9/11 and Newtown. The video talks more about their experience finding out about the tragedies rather than the teenage perspective on them. Also, it was difficult to find broll to use for this one, even more than the others, because again, these shootings were not quite as publicized as the other tragedies. However, I still think the video was moving and I am proud of the investigative series as a whole. It was a great experience to do something different, and to work on a longer term project. In the beginning, I was going to try to fit all of the tragedies into one video. I'm glad I went with the series format instead, because each tragedy is awful and deserves more than a just few seconds of video.
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