Final thoughts on Premiere video project

The subject of my video project initially started out as the topic for my audio story.  After conducting my interviews with three employment experts, I changed the topic of my video story from whether it’s a good idea for women to take a break from the work force to job hunting tips for re-entering the work force.

I opened the story with a montage of my life as a stay at home mom.  I contrasted that to how I now spend my weekdays in front of a computer.

The three women I interviewed had slightly different takes on how to go about job hunting, but they all agreed that setting expectations and being creative in the approach are keys to success.  The story is separated into three segments or lessons, with each expert speaking to a  lesson. Cropping the video and utilizing different effects helped with the pacing and created visual interest.

One of my classmates felt the transitions between each interview should be stronger and that there needed to be more clarity with the first interview subject so I took her advice and re-arranged my script.  I did not do any re-writing, but hopefully the new order will make the story easier to follow.

For the lessons, I built simple graphics using a black background with a white font that one of my classmates felt looked old and dated.  In this final version, I used the same font for the lessons graphics that appears in the name title graphics.

The upbeat music bed is by Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech helps carry the video along and keeps the viewer engaged since I’ve removed all the natural sound from the video I shot.  I did have one segment of natural sound in my draft, but the feedback I received from everyone was that it was distracting and didn’t add anything of value to the story so I eliminated it.

My audio levels were all over the map between my interviews and my track so I learned how to equalize the audio through a YouTube video by ZincLabs.  Keyframes on the music bed helped me control the levels throughout the piece, allowing me to fade in and out before and after interviews.

One final note about my video.  I shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio and not in HD or 16:9.  I adjusted my editing and exporting to accommodate this.

I’m pleased with the final version and I hope the story sounds better and makes more sense to those viewing it.  Again, thanks for the feedback and for taking time to watch!

Job hunting tips script 12 09 14

Lessons learned through the Premiere video project

The subject of my video project initially started out as the topic for my audio story.   I wanted to explore the idea if women in their 40’s should take a break from the work force.  After conducting my interviews, I had an “a-ha” moment about the past year of my life.  The advice these experts shared taught me some valuable lessons that could have helped in my own job search.  Their words of wisdom apply to anyone who’s re-entering the work force after a break.  I abandoned my initial idea and changed the subject of my story to job hunting tips for re-entering the work force.

I chose to tell this story in the first person because so much of what I learned through shooting this story applied to my own situation.  Once I wrote it, I realized that while I had great audio and content, I would need to be creative with the video for this story

The three women I interviewed  had slightly different takes on how to go about job hunting, but they all agreed that setting expectations and being creative in the approach are keys to success.  Each transition to a new expert uses a page wipe to represent the different lessons being told in the story.  Cropping the video and utilizing different effects helped with the pacing and created visual interest.

For the lessons I opted to build simple graphics using a black background with a white font that looks similar to an old style computer font.

I added in an upbeat music bed by Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.  I want this piece to be uplifting and inspirational and the music helps to move along the video where I’ve removed the video’s natural sound.

My camera only recorded audio on one channel so I had to create the stereo audio by copying what was on the left channel to the right channel.  I did this by going to clip>modify>audio channels.  This was much easier to do in Premiere than in Audition.

My audio levels were all over the map between my interviews and my track so I did some research on audio sweetening.  I learned how to equalize the audio through a YouTube video by ZincLabs.  Keyframes on the music bed helped me control the levels throughout the piece, allowing me to fade in and out before and after interviews.

One final note about my video.  I neglected to check the settings on my camera and shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio and not in HD or 16:9.  I had to adjust my editing and exporting to accommodate this.

The end result was longer than I expected but I am pleased with the result.  As always, I look forward the critiques from my readers and peers to see if the story should be shorter and what content I can edit.

Thanks for watching!

VIDEO	AUDIO
Montage of photos with Tristan Zoo, birthday party, beach	(VO) This was my life as a stay at home mom.
Lori typing at computer	(VO) And this is my life now.
Lori on cam	(SOT) If I had only known then what I know now….maybe it wouldn’t have taken me a year to find a job. I failed to realize job hunting has changed dramatically in the past five years since I took a break from my career to start a family. To learn what I could have done to find a job sooner, I spoke with three experts in employment
FX:  crop Jessica, Heather, Jenny	(VO) — the keeper of Portland’s hottest job board, a recruiter at a highly respected job placement agency and an experienced job coach.
FX:  slide full screen graphic – Lesson #1 – Step back to leap forward	(VO) Here are some of the lessons they shared. Sometimes you have to take a step back to take a leap forward.
FX: page wipe SOT – Jessica Fx – Jessica Williams/Prichard Communications	(SOT) I don’t think you should be punished for leaving the workforce by any means.  But like anyone who leaves the workforce you might have to start out at a lower level than you were previously.
B roll Jessica at computer Cut to screen shot of Macs List website	(VO) Jessica Williams runs the highly popular local job board Macs List.  It’s the place to go to find communications, pr and nonprofit jobs in the Portland market.
Jessica at work station sequence	(VO) Williams took a two year break from the work force, then changed careers. She advises to carefully plan, build your network of contacts and be prepared to make sacrifices along the way.
FX: Page wipe to Jenny Foss at computer FX:  Dissolve to JobJenny.com website	(VO) After years of working as a recruiter, Jenny Foss founded a job coaching company, JobJenny.com.  She often works with women like me — moms who want to return to work after taking a break to raise kids.
SOT – Jenny Fx -Jenny Foss/JobJenny.com founder	(SOT) You don’t know what you want to do next.  You’re not sure you want to work full time, you know your resume hasn’t been touched in 3, 5, 10 years.  You don’t really understand Linked In because it’s evolved in the past handful of years in a big way.
Montage of Linked In gfx, website	(VO) Foss helps candidates on a number of fronts — from creating and refreshing resumes to building LinkedIn profiles.
FX:  slide Lesson #2 – Be present on Linked In and social media	Linked In and social media are important components to any job search.  It’s a way companies search, screen and learn more about candidates before actually meeting them.
FX:  page wipe Heather Gordon	(NAT SOT) “I’m going to send you a an email because there might be another opportunity”
boly:welch reception area	(VO) Heather Gordon is a recruiter with staffing agency Boly:Welch in Portland.  She works with candidates of all ages — those who are local and people moving to the area.  In fact 40% of her clients don’t live in Portland.
SOT:  Heather FX – Heather Gordon/boly:welch recruiter	(SOT) There are a lot of organizations that use us that never advertise their positions. Which means that candidates who are looking could be really fantastic but they’ll never know about that opportunity because they don’t know the company is looking.
Dissolve to AH website application	(VO) If you don’t use a staffing agency but choose apply through a company’s website, know that large corporations use scanning software to identify keywords in resumes to weed out unqualified candidates.
FX-Wipe Lesson #3 – Write resumes for computers and humans	That means today’s resumes have to be compelling enough to get past a computer and a human.
SOT – JENNY	(SOT) You can either get mad at the reality and give up or you can figure out how this game works, and strategize accordingly. I always vote for figure out the game and strategize accordingly.
Lori on cam at desk Classifieds B-roll people walking downtown	(SOT) Fortunately my story has a happy ending.  After a year of searching — I landed a great job.  I didn’t follow all the advice of these experts, but I did a couple of things they suggest.  I was open to a job outside my area of expertise and more importantly, I adjusted my salary expectations. The biggest lesson for me in all this is there are jobs out there if you’re willing to do what it takes to find them.  Sometimes it might mean seeking professional help.  But have the confidence to stick it out and your efforts will pay off.
Fade to credits Special Thanks: Jenny Foss Heather Gordon Jessica Williams FX: dissolve to Special thanks: Tristan & Skyler for their inspiration &  support FX:  dissolve to Music: “Vivacity” By Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech) FX: dissolve to Kindergarten@ 48 Fade to black	Music full Music fades

Premiere Tutorials

Final Audition story – Visiting Letterland

https://soundcloud.com/lorisas/final-audio-story-letterland-mixdown

For this project, I originally defaulted to the way I’ve been trained to tell stories.  My instinct was to find a news angle to a story on Tristan’s first year of school.  I had a couple of ideas but couldn’t settle on one subject.  Skyler (Tristan’s dad) finally said to me “why don’t you just have fun with this assignment?”

As I reviewed the tape I recorded, a different idea dawned on me.  Rather than cover the news angle, I chose to tell the story of what was shared with Skyler and me at our first parent-teacher conference.  An email exchange I had with a fellow classmate encouraged me not to place so much emphasis on professionals and experts.  Professor Cooney reiterated this in an answer to a question on the discussion board when he gave examples of good stories from past students.

Tristan’s teacher, Mrs. Carter, and he demonstrated how the class had spent the previous two weeks learning about letters and their sounds through a concept called “Letterland”.   Watching and hearing Tristan recognize and verbalize the letters is proof that he’s learning something in kindergarten.  It may seem like a small accomplishment, but for Skyler and me, it was a proud moment.

In my draft, I built my story just using audio from the parent teacher conference.  This was intentional as I had laryngitis the week the draft was due and could barely speak.  But I missed the mark and left listeners confused.  My peers said I needed to include some explanation in a voiceover audio track.

My editing tools of choice were the razor tool and move tool.   To enhance the kid friendly tone of the story I added a music bed called “Carefree” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).  The music is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

Another comment from my peers was that the music was too loud at certain points in the story and made it difficult to hear Tristan.  I boosted Tristan’s audio and lowered the background music.

I feel the story can now stand on its own and is complete thanks in large part to the feedback from my classmates.   One of the most important lessons I learned through this Audition unit is I am capable of telling a story beyond the straight news angle.  It may not have been the primary goal of learning and I still have a long way to go to refine my storytelling, but I’m grateful to know I can get outside my comfort zone of telling stories to see beyond what may be obvious.

Audio story – Visiting Letterland

https://soundcloud.com/lorisas/audio-story-letterland-mixdown

My original idea for this assignment was to build a story around a milestone event in my son’s education — our first parent-teacher conference.  I defaulted to my background as a news reporter, putting pressure on myself to come up with some sort of “news” angle to tell a story because that’s what I’m trained to do.

Two ideas I considered were the social and educational benefits of Tristan being in a multi-age class with other kindergartners, first and second graders or discussing the success of the four day school week at Tristan’s school.

I wrestled with which idea to develop for days.  Skyler (Tristan’s dad) finally said to me “why don’t you just have fun with this assignment?”  Once he said this and I relaxed, the story emerged from the interview I recorded with Tristan’s teacher during our parent-teacher conference.

I captured some interaction between Tristan and his teacher, Mrs. Carter, before we started our parent-teacher conference meeting.   Mrs. Carter and Tristan demonstrated how the class has spent the past two weeks learning about letters and their sounds through a concept called “Letterland”.

Watching and hearing Tristan recognize and verbalize the letters is proof that he’s really learned something since he started school.  It may seem like a small accomplishment, but for Skyler and me, it was a proud moment.  And that’s the story I chose to tell for this assignment.

What also helped me with my decision to share this story is an email exchange I had with a fellow classmate.  He encouraged me not to place so much emphasis on professionals and experts.  Professor Cooney reiterated this in an answer to a question on the discussion board when he gave examples of  good stories from past students.

I used an audio clip from the official discussion with Mrs. Carter to help set the stage for what she and Tristan would be doing and to capture her passion and enthusiasm for teaching.

My editing tools of choice were the razor tool and move tool.  Perhaps it’s because I’m old enough to remember using an actual razor and splicing reel-to-reel tape!  I had to adjust the interview audio levels throughout to make the sound consistent.  To enhance the kid friendly tone of the story I added a music bed called “Carefree” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).  The music is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

While I had a lot of fun learning how to use the tools of the Audition program, the real “aha” for me in this assignment came from discovering I can tell a story in more than one way and that sometimes the best story isn’t obvious at first glance.

Final logo

When I began designing my logo I wanted the end result to be simple, cheerful and whimsical.  I am experiencing Kindergarten at 48 years old through my 5 year old son.  There is humor in this for me when I realize I’m the same age as some of the grandparents in his class.

My son inspired all the elements of my design.  His favorite parts of school are riding the bus and coloring with crayons.   I knew I wanted to work these into my logo.  The bus became the background to build the elements of the title.

In my draft logo, I came up with the idea to use symbols to represent the title of my blog to keep it as simple as possible.   I used different crayons in primary colors to make the K and the number 48.  One of my peers felt it was difficult to read the letter and numbers with the different colors.  Two of my classmates felt the title didn’t make sense independent of the blog.

I gave this a lot of thought as to whether I needed the full title on my logo or if I could stick with the symbols.  Given the nature of my blog, I feel it would appeal to parents of school aged children who would understand the symbols better than someone who isn’t in this demographic.

I took my peers’  feedback to heart and chose to use the full title.  Spelling out the words meant I would lose an element of my draft design that I loved.

I wanted to maintain the whimsy of the crayons in my design so I used them as the striping detail on the bus.  I chose the color red as it already appeared in some of the lights on the bus.  Another peer suggested I add a door to the bus.  I could have changed the direction of the bus to avoid having to do this, but I prefer the orientation of left to right which indicates forward movement.

I chose the cheerful golden yellow color for the bus based on the article Color Symbolism by Jackie Baer.  The use of rectangles throughout the design utilizes the Gestalt principle of repetition.  The crayons provide closure and a natural frame around the title.  I utilized many of the techniques practiced in the AI tutorials to create the gradient effect in the windows, bumper and layers for the tires.

Another classmate suggested I add a sense of motion to the bus.  It was an instinct I had after I turned in my draft.  To have a classmate point it out reinforced that I was on the right track with this thought.  I added a drop shadow effect to give the bus some depth.

The final result is a logo that tells a more complete story.  I hope the viewer has a better understanding of what it represents and the journeys my son and I are on as we continue our educational paths.

Draft logo

The inspiration for my design comes from a literal interpretation of the name of my blog.   I wanted something simple, cheerful and whimsical that featured primary colors.   I knew I wanted symbols to replace the words in my blog title to keep the logo as uncluttered as possible.

I chose the letter “K” because that represents Kindergarten when referring to grades in school.  I came up with the idea to create the “K” using crayons.  My son, who is in kindergarten, prefers coloring with crayons right now and watching him inspired my design.

The @ symbol seemed logical to replace the word “at”.  For the number 48, I wanted a clean, sophisticated font to balance the playfulness of the crayon “K”.  I tried different fonts, but eventually settled on using crayons to create the 48 which ultimately provided the balance I was seeking.

Once I figured out the elements of my design, I began sketching out different concepts.  Just the basic letters and numbers seemed too simplistic and neither a vertical or horizontal treatment worked.

I needed a background for my logo and settled on a yellow school bus.  The inspiration again came from my son who’s favorite part of the day is riding the bus home from school.   The use of rectangles throughout the design utilizes the Gestalt principle of repetition.   The other gestalt principle in use is closure with windows and bumper of the bus forming a natural frame around the title characters.

One of the logo readings that informed the layout of the crayon characters came from 4 Principles of Great Logo Design and the use of the principles of balance and repetition.  I also settled on the cheerful golden yellow color for the bus based on the article Color Symbolism by Jackie Baer.

I utilized many of the techniques practiced in the AI tutorials.  The linear and radial gradient tool was used in the windows, bumper and tires. The layers from the Safari tutorial added the shine to the tires.   To create the front of the bus I utilized the Pathfinder>Unite tool which merged two rectangle shapes.

The logo is a visual representation of my blog and this stage of my life.  Kindergarten can be wondrous at any age, but now that I’m experiencing it through my son, it has more meaning to me.  I never lose sight that my son and I are both on educational journeys and because of him I’m reminded every day that learning can and should be fun.

Illustrator Tutorials

Final Collage

The inspiration for my collage came from the dominant themes of my life — my son, work and school.

I took all the photos myself.  Initially I was going to include more photos, but quickly realized that would clutter up the design.

I settled on four photos — two representing Tristan’s life and two representing my life.  The photo of Tristan determined the placement of the other photos.  I cut each photo out from its original file using the magic wand and eraser tools.  I resized the photos, then placed them using the move tool.

I needed a graphic to convey the concept of balance.  After looking at several different scales online, I decided to create my own.  While I’m not the best artist, the end result achieved the desired effect.  The crayon drawing works well with the chalkboard theme of the blog.  Credit to Jennifer Farley’s instructions on how to utilize these Photoshop tools.

I realized the collage lacked an image that represents school after I submitted my draft collage.  One of my peers made note of this as well.  I corrected that in the final collage by replacing the briefcase with a WSU logo.

I used the shield mark from WSU’s website and reduced the opacity to 64% to make it appear that the cutout of the shield was stamped onto the background.  Because the logo is being used as part of this course and is for noncommercial purposes, it does not require a license and is royalty exempt.  I have contacted the university’s logo licensing department to make them aware of the usage.

While my peers seemed to like my collage, they offered suggestions to incorporate more of the Gestalt principles to further enhance the story I’m communicating through this collage.

By replacing the briefcase with the WSU logo, the Gestalt law of repetition is achieved since variations of the color red now appear in each element of the collage.  I agreed with Mike and Matt’s critiques that there was too much spacing between the images on the right side of the page.  I enlarged Tristan’s image and took Kristen’s advice to blend it into the background using the eraser tool. This created better proximity of the images.

The final improvement I made is to the scale.   Mike liked the subtleness of it, but I agreed with Candace that it needed to be more obvious.  I increased the opacity to 55% to better match the red colors in the images.

This collage more clearly represents the imbalance I feel in my life.  I’m spending more time and energy on my pursuits than I am helping Tristan along his educational path.   My hope is that he’ll learn through my example that it’s never too late in life to pursue educational goals.   My bigger wish is that someday soon I will get my life (and the scale)  back in balance and find  a rhythm that works for all our lives.

Draft collage self-critique

The intent of my draft collage was to visually represent all the major areas of my life.  What I failed to do in my original post is include the technical steps I used to create the collage.  It was an oversight by me and will be corrected in this self critique.

I took all the photos that I used for this project.  My new briefcase and place of employment were obvious photo selections.  The pictures of my son and his school are the other major themes in both our lives.

I chose a neutral color for the background so that it wouldn’t distract from the photos.  I wanted it to have some texture and was hoping for something similar to a chalkboard, but the end result looks more like a hard stone surface.  I used spatter filter over a gray color to achieve this.

The layout was determined by the photo of Tristan.  It worked best in the lower right corner because of his orientation to the camera.  I placed the remaining photos utilizing the move and resizing tools and blended them into the background using the magic wand and erase tools.

Absent from the collage was an image representing school which will be corrected in the final version.  The briefcase is repetitive and will be replaced with the WSU logo.

The scale was added as I needed something to demonstrate the lack of balance in my life.  I could not find an image online that I liked so I drew the image using a crayon effect.  I chose a crayon because of the theme of my blog. The instructions by Jennifer Farley can be found here.  I reduced the opacity to 28% so the scale wouldn’t dominate the page and just fade into the photos and background.

Everyone commented on the use of the scale.  My intent was to make the theme of balance subtle by reducing the opacity of the image, but I took it too far and made it barely noticeable.  The scale provided connectedness between all the images and aligned the entire collage.

Candace pointed out that unity was achieved through the repetitive use of hard angles.  Upon further reflection, I realized that in addition to representing balance, the scale ties all these images together by connecting the school sign to the desk and medical center.

I tend to be very literal in my life and this collage is a reflection of that.  The suggestions for improvements by my peer review group will be useful in creating a final, stronger collage.