For my final project, I chose to tell the story of public health via Polly Public. This was one of the ideas that came up over the course of the semester.  I work with clients in the public health field and I know how hard working they are, yet how little the general public knows […]

This week was about finally getting (just a little) bit more used to Audacity, appreciating Movie Maker’s simplicity and then wishing it had more editing power when it came to audio (or that I knew more about audio editing in Movie Maker) and making peace with “good enough”.  First though, the fun stuff (at least […]

Rather than dig for one last idea for a story, I decided to look at other classmates stories this week.  I love seeing what my classmates come up with the little window it opens into our lives.  I think there are some good things here–even if the original poster wasn’t so sure. The first idea […]

I saw the movie the Life of Pi not too long ago, and this Chaplin clip reminded me of the movie in that both characters are stuck in a confined space with a dangerous predator.  I only made it 1/3 of the way through the book when it came out several years ago.  The movie […]

All this talk of film editing made me think of Martin Scorcese and his long-time partnership with film editor Thelma Schoonmaker.  I would venture to say that Scorcese is a master director and storyteller, so chances are Schoonmaker isn’t a bad film editor either.   One of my favorite Scorcese films is Casino, so off I […]

On the surface, I agree with Roger Ebert’s idea of a film’s composition.  It is my sense that we as humans have a natural tendency for symmetry and balance.  We may not notice when something “works” but we probably do when it doesn’t.  It was difficult for me to think of this in the abstract […]

My main takeaway this week: working with sound is not as difficult as I thought, but still the most challenging I have found of the differing editing tasks we have done in this course.  I do feel completely at ease in recording, exporting, importing, and loading to SoundCloud, but the editing portion (splicing, fading, etc.) […]

I think I may have found my final project story this week, based upon comments alone.  The comments on my Public Health story idea seemed to coalesce around the idea of a public health super hero-type character- I really appreciated the different layers the commenters added to my original thoughts. I also learned via comments […]

Trolling Craigslist is always fun, so the first audio assignment listed on Week 5′s page immediately jumped out at me.  Off I went to the local Craiglist “free” section and found this lovely post: Sounds strange enough to me!!  Why anyone would want to take on such an awful job for “free cactus” is beyond […]

I was thinking if there were any work-related things I could pull into for a story idea this week.  I work with a lot of people in the field of public health.  You may be asking yourself “What is public health?”  Sounds kind of crunchy and idealistic, huh?  Well it can be those things, but […]

Oy. Audio editing really scares me.  Which is probably (definitely) a large part of why all these assignments are late this week.  But I digress. For the sound effects story, I started to think of what I needed:  a scenario that didn’t need dialogue and a scenario that was “noisy” or had noises that were […]

  This actually happened- check it out.

This week had me taking photos of beer at Costco and scouring 90′s movie posters for just the right one with Bruce Willis. Life is good! First up: Design Safari.   I used wallpaper, beer, a coffee mug (of a famous WWII poster) and photos of an airport to discuss rhythm, color and dominance, form/function, and […]

Well here we are another week…and no white light, divine inspiration moments this week (so far- there are five hours left!).   Something that has been on my mind a lot this week though is decisions.  I’m making a lot of them lately and whether it’s where to grab dinner (always at the last minute, decision […]

I will admit while this poster looks like it took about 4 seconds to make, it actually was more of an involved effort than first appears…First I had to think of a movie.  I looked through the past few year’s worth of Oscar winners and while I could think of a few sarcastic things to […]

We had a Netflix movie that needed to be watched, so movie night it was.  I had read some of the assignment ideas earlier that day, and while I hadn’t intended to make the movie I watched the subject beforehand, I started to think about as I was watching and began noting words that could […]

I kept my eyes open this week and snapped some designs that caught my eye as well as including a “design” of a building that I’ve always loved. Rhythm:  I am redoing the powder room in our house and was looking through wallpaper samples this past weekend (which is also a key marker I am […]

Do you remember when you were little, out for the evening with the parents?  At the end of the night and the fun, they’d strap you in the car seat and before you knew it you’d be home, having fallen asleep in the car on the way there.   This post is like pulling into the […]

I have to be honest–I am really struggling with coming up with ideas. My classmates have some great ideas so I know it can be done…I find myself either shooting ideas down because they are too boring or because they have already been “told”. At one point during the week I had a few ideas, […]

For this assignment, I wanted to use some pictures I already had. I started going through the many vacation pictures we have. I was looking for photos that offered some “space”over which to layer other images. I took a photo from our trip to England of the Roman Baths in Bath, England and combined it […]

Because I like to live dangerously, I chose the very first assignment at the top of the list: Splash the Color.  I don’t know if there was an “inspiration” for this per se–my thinking was more more “how am I going to get this done?”  I remembered the name Pixlr from the opening video for […]

I ventured outdoors again to the wilds of my backyard–in daylight this time–for this assignment.  I also re-used my trusty living room rug as I had done initially in my scavenger hunt post.  These shots incorporate the use of contrast, close-up, and interesting angles to alter my perspective.  For the first two concepts, I was […]

After a few draws, I decided to stick with this draw–the hovercraft sign was the spark that made it a bit easier to start something.  Clearly I would not have thought of a story involving a hovercraft on my own!  I think I went farther than captions, but I did not necessarily “do my research” […]

I chose my house because it was at night and I was already in my loungewear so I wasn’t really up to venturing anywhere except my backyard (and even then that’s a little iffy at night!) The time went much faster than I thought it would- hence my trying to squeeze 20 minutes into 15 […]

This week, I wrote about magical balloons, gutsy teenagers, and the lives of monks in three posts: First, I listened and mapped a Radiolab piece that explored chance in our lives–are random events just that, or something more?  The show used sound and music to convey action and tension.   The effect was to bring the […]

This past weekend I was at a retreat at a Monastery- 48 hours of silence and sitting in the abbey 7 times a day for prayers.   This little retreat took place at a Trappist Monastery about 45 minutes from Atlanta (where I live).  I joined a much more spiritually enlightened friend there last year […]

I love cars-driving them, watching documentaries about them, reading about them, etc.  So of course, it was natural for me to seek out a car ad to dissect.  If I am going to watch something several times, I should enjoy it right? I analyzed Audi’s 2013 commercial “Prom”: I’ve noted elements of “story code” (described […]

The Radiolab Piece “A Lucky Wind”  alternates between narrative and reporting in four segments: 1. The story of the red balloon; 2. A piece on a UC Berkley professor who studies random acts; 3. An ASU piece who tells us that randomness really isn’t that random; and finally 4. leaving the listener to ponder it all […]

As we wrap up the first week of EDIT 572, I learned a few things.  First, don’t things until the last minute!  Second blogging is more enjoyable than I thought it would be. I now I scrutinize every commercial  I see to determine if it has the needed elements for story.  That Bud Light commercial […]

When “recipe” is suggested, what comes to mind is Julia Child.  I like to cook, and I have Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but I confess I’ve only made a few things from it because in general it’s just a really intimidating cookbook, even though I consider myself a fairly advanced, adventurous […]