Final Project Idea

So, for our final project, my group and I plan on attending the Disaster presentation on Friday April 30. Moriah will get interviews with people who are attending, I will get b-roll of what's going on, and I will also get still photos with my camera. We will put it together making a video and a slideshow. It will be a good time.

Our Video Project

How do Lyndon State College students prepare for finals? Our footage captures both the lazy and the over zealous students as they get ready for exams.

The answers you would typically expect from students would be study, getting plenty of sleep, making note cards etc. The students we interviewed took preparing for exams to the extremes. Some students just try cramming the night before the exam, to make sure that they can remember the most important information; other students like to prepare the entire week before the exam. One student described waking up early every day to study, and spend the whole day studying only breaking for classes and food. Each student seems to know exactly what works for them. But then you get the clowns that don’t really prepare for the exams at all they like to sleep a lot, eat "healthy food" such as McDonald's and then drink lots of "water" the night before.

In one scene, you have a girl, Jill Rancourt, and she's frantically studying, searching through her books and comparing notes to the periodic table she looks as though she might have a nervous break down. In another scene, you have a guy, Jake Davis, who appears to be completely at ease like he's not worried in the least bit about exams. He's playing video games, sleeping on his futon and then wakes up to find a rather tasty looking burger on his stomach; later on he is seen with a case of beer.

No matter what you do to get ready for finals, I hope that you have fun and do well.

Newspaper Video Assignment.

I critiqued theday.com because it is a paper that we get every Sunday back home in CT. I went to the tab that says "multimedia" and the first video that came up upset me. Not in the way that the content was horrifying, but in the way that it was an opinion piece of American Idol and how it is supposedly "driving some to drink". I don't personally think that this video should have been on this newspaper site, maybe more like YouTube.

The next video on this site that I saw was Voluntown Honors a Fallen Marine, Tyler Griffin. I really liked this one. It was just symbolic and it really captured the emotion of this ceremony. I liked that there was only nat sound, and no V/O because it just added to the whole calmness of the video.

I then went to the Norwich Bulletin.com and just happened to find another video of the same topic above; it was another ceremony for the fallen Marine, Tyler Griffin. I watched it and came to the conclusion that I liked it even better than the one on theday.com There were more scenes and more nat sound that I thought fit the topic better.

The next video that I watched was also related to the Voluntown death. This lady talks about how her son died in Vietnam and how she is going to go to the ceremony for Tyler Griffin. This one is really hard to watch because unlike the other two that are just videos of the cars and of the hearse and flags and what not, this one actually has the victims mother in it. You can see her trying to hold back tears, you can see the picture of her son that she is holding. It brings tears to your eyes at the thought that this woman, Grace MarcHurele lost her son at the age of 20.

All in all, I think that the Bulletin has the better videos in their multimedia section and it is the site that I will go to when I need to see a video of some current event.

iReport Critique

iReport.com is a good website. What I like about it is that anybody with a story can send it in. It doesn't have to be a well known reporter or photographer, it can be an everyday person, but on the other hand, the only thing that's bad about that is that a story that's not all together truthful can get through and onto the web. CNN had a pop up come on as soon as I entered the site saying that not everything is edited and fact checked, so I liked that at least they warned you about it.

I also like how you can see a biography of a reporter. It gives you insight to how they see the world. I really like the slide show of Zanziar. I find them very beautiful and they make me want to go there.

The shaken baby syndrome report was a little much for me to handle, but it needs to get out there so that people know about it and I think that iReport is a good medium.

As for uploading stories, I think it looks simple enough, but I'm not going to sign up until I want to upload something myself.

All in all, I think this is a very good site to get out information that not every big news station is going to want to cover. Sometimes it's the smallest stories that have the biggest impact on people.

Critique of CNN.com

Well, I'm doing this a little late, but anyway... I critiqued CNN.com and what I like about it is that you can search by subject including U.S, World, Politics, Entertainment and many others. They have many pictures and videos that are made visible to you so that you can get a better hold on the story. I'm not a very political person, nor do I watch the news or follow it in any way so will I find myself back on this website often? No. But now I know that this would be the prime website to go to if I ever found myself craving some political and world news.

Fish Slideshow

Slideshow critiques

Ok, so I'm supposed to find slideshows online and critique them. This one is rather funny. It is of caricatures of celebrities and you can find it here click the one that says "celebrity caricatures"

Here is another one.
It's just really funny and cute! (click on the picture with a baby holding a Playboy.)

This one is a slideshow of a wedding because I couldn't find any with music. This one has music and an interesting "visitor" in each picture. Can you spot who?

Here is a photo gallery that I found rather interesting.

All in all, I think I like the slideshows are better storytelling tools. I just feel like I'm "in the zone" or something when I watch them. When you look at a photo gallery, you have to click on each individual picture to look at it closely and I just like the motion of the show.