After last weeks brutal setback, I decided to get my work done as soon as possible. As I was working through, I realized my laptop was not up to the standards I was hoping it would be after the repair. Once I received my laptop on Friday (dropped it off on Tuesday), I got it back with all of my content on it. This is due to their initial claims of it being the motherboard being false. It was simply the display, but that still did not cut down the cost. I realized that my laptop was still messing up. When inserting a video from my webcam into iMovie, my camera would glitch, almost creating a gif of me before I even hit record. After I captured the video, however, the pictures moved along with the video. Then, every time I have to get on my laptop, the log in screen freezes, forcing me to restart my laptop every time I get on it. Safe to say I was livid. You would think they would have the audacity to completely fix a laptop while it is being fixed, but I guess that’s not the case. I called apple for the millionth time and ended up having to completely reset my laptop, as if I was using a brand new one. I had to take a few hours to set it back up and download everything I was missing. I was told that doing this might fix the problem, but it didn’t. The only thing it fixed was the camera and not the log in screen. So now, I have to take my laptop BACK to apple, for them to send it back out and for me to have to go through the same rushed methods of last week. So for now, I’m grinding out my homework in order to get everything done and for them to fix it. BUT LETS GET STARTED First things first was the assignment banks. I normally do as many 5 star assignments as possible so that I can get the stars done. This is because I’d rather do harder work, than write a bunch of different blog posts. However, it was quite hard to find 5 star assignments in the bank. I chose to do 2 four star assignments and 1 two star. I also realized that the star ratings change quite easily. Assignments I had saved would go from 5 star assignments, to 2 star assignments, and I’d have to go through the bank to find different assignments. My first assignment was 4 stars. This one I was quite excited about. It was basically like the video essay we did last week, and I loved that assignment. I chose this one because of that. I chose the same movie, Amelie, because I felt like this movie is perfect for these essays AND she is the inspiration for my character, and thus related to the course. I did however choose a new scene, as I didn’t want to basically do the same assignment. I also wanted to add a little twist. Instead of focusing on every single thing we learned last week, as I felt rushed when I was voicing over, I chose to focus on one aspect. Camera angles. I felt like this scene had AMAZING camera angles and were perfect for this analysis. I also chose to keep the entire clip whole, as if I didn’t it would once again take away from the meaning. I read through the syllabus and added title/ credit slides to each video I made, and made my posts about them up to standards (by adding a screenshot of my iMovie screen into the blog post), but this is the only one I didn’t add music to. I felt like by adding music it would distract from the true meaning of the video. My next assignment was four stars as well. For this one I had to chose a software and explain how to use it. I chose to do this for clip grab. I know this may be a very simple tool to use, but someone in the class may need to either know about it or still know how to use it. This software helped me immensely with the video section of this course. I added music to the beginning and the end of this assignment as well. I had to google how to screen record, and after that, I made a recording of how to use it and put it into iMovie and added a voice over. I was intimidated by iMovie in the beginning, but it has proven to be a lot easier than I had thought. My last assignment was 2 stars. This one was pretty simple and easy to execute. It was a letter to my 16 year old self. I also chose to relate this one to my character. However, I also felt like our secret agents are supposed to be us, so I didn’t change many of my details, just made them very vague. This way, it is obvious it isn’t SPECIFICALLY my life, but it is Amelies (kinda confusing). I really did enjoy this assignment, I haven’t had to do anything like this, so it made it very unique. I added music to the beginning and the end because I felt like it fit. I found a photo of a letter, made it fit my voiceover, and it was complete! This assignment definitely was a 2 star assignment, but it was a fresh breath of air after always doing highly rated assignments. Our last write up assignment was to create a new mission. I had a hard time thinking of it, but I know I wanted to incorporate everything we have learned so far. Once I new that, the assignment molded itself and I wrote it into the blog post. I really liked working in groups. I feel like its hard to talk to classmates when you’re in an online class, and the audio assignment allowed my group and I to have people to talk to if we ever had trouble. My group was also amazing at getting the radio show done, so I would love to work with them again! Posts of the Week: I’ve said countless times how I love doing the posts of the week. This reminds me to always be commenting and forces me to do it. It also allows me to find great posts from my peers and become inspired by their ideas. I also love how Professor Bond posts the winners of the week on twitter, which always makes me want to strive to be on there and put out great work. Daily Creates: Commenting: With the posts of the week, I have been commenting more, which I a win win. WEEK ELEVEN IS NOW IN THE BOOKS!

This week, we take a dive in the cinematic universe of film. It's the first week of Film, and we're starting off with a bang! … Continue readingWeekly Summary #10 (3/22 — 3/29)

This week was very interesting; I like how we were introduced to new software, ad-ons, and had new twists on old assignments. This week I got a majority of my work done in the waiting room while my grandmother was at the doctors. I got a majority of everything done in the hour to hour and a half I was there. Like I have said before, I am not sure if I am finally getting the hang of this class, or if the work load is becoming easier. It used to take me around eight hours to complete the work, now it takes me around 3 hours to complete the majority. I, at the same time, am not complaining. First, we had to listen to the radio shows. There were showings Monday through Wednesday. I was only able to make it to the Wednesday night showing. I really enjoyed it though! I talk in my post about how I regularly listen to podcasts, so I knew I would enjoy listening to the shows. The only problem was I normally am driving when I listen to podcasts, so having to be cooped up in bed and on twitter wasn’t ideal, but it was a great experience. I love being able to create a radio show and then listening to how everyone else interpreted the assignment. The second thing we had to do was web storytelling. I state that I thought this would be way more difficult than it was. I tend to have problems with new technology we have to use. I had a very difficult time with audacity, so anything that is foreign to me I try to avoid for as long as possible. I finally read through the entire thing and realized it may be easier than I thought. The tutorial when you download it made it a lot more manageable. Overall, this assignment went very smoothly and I was pleasantly surprised not only at how it turned out, but how well I was able to execute it. There seems to be a theme with this week. Everything on the syllabus looked to be difficult, but once I was doing it, it proved to be easier. For connecting the daily creates, I knew this would be hard. Having done these in the past, I know that they do not connect whatsoever. It is stated in the syllabus that we could go back to last week if it gets difficult, but I didn’t want to do that. I did the first two daily creates and thought I would just wing it. I almost waited until tomorrows daily create because I had no idea how to connect todays to my other two. Then it hit me, I was saying everything that I wanted in the other two, so for the third, I made it yet another thing I wanted and did not have. I enjoyed having only 8 stars for this week. I wanted to do two four star assignments to complete the requirement. I found my first four star assignment, but was at a loss for the second one. There are very few four and five star assignments for the assignment bank. It ultimately leads me to pick the lesser of the two evils. I enjoyed my first assignment bank. It was to create a Buzzfeed quiz. We didn’t have to incorporate our theme into anything this week, so I took it upon myself to make a quiz about what secret agent the viewer would be. I am very familiar with Buzzfeed and their quizzes, so this proved to be very easy. After around twenty minutes, I had my completed quiz, and I was excited that I was able to incorporate our theme! My second assignment bank was the one where I picked the lesser of the two evils. I knew I wanted to do two four star assignments, so doing anything less wasn’t an option. The assignment I chose was to create a creepy story on reddit. This assignment intimidated me as I had never used reddit. It was pretty self explanatory and the hardest part was writing the story itself. I was quite pleased with the outcome, and it allowed me to be creative, which I really enjoyed. Then we had to chose a 4 to 5 star assignment to revisit and redo. I chose an assignment I did quite a while ago where I told a movies using GIFs. I remembered really liking this assignment, so I was excited to do it again. I thought about doing a spy movie, but realized I hadn’t seen any recently, and didn’t want to mess up the storyline. So I chose Bird Box. This movie was greatly popular a few months ago when it came out, and I remember it being a great movie. I brought up Netflix to skip through and rejog my memory. Then I just wrote up the synopsis and added GIFs to complete it. Then we had to do our favorite posts of the week. I actually really love doing this. I’m quite bad at commenting, so this forces me to remember to comment while spending the time to explore and find great posts. It essentially kills two birds with one stone. This is one of my favorite things we do in the class. I also love how after everyone has submitted it, Professor Bond shows who had the winning post. I think it’s a great idea to help us strive to want to constantly put out amazing posts and work. AND WITH THAT WEEK NINE IS COMPLETE!!!

A short little summary is in store for everyone this week! Spring Break has come and gone, and in its wake comes a new brand of work! That's right, we're finishing up the Radio Show! … Continue readingA More In-depth Weekly Summary for Week #8 (2/22 – 3/15)

This week was honestly quite simple. I prefer to have one large thing to do, rather than a bunch of small things. The radio show allowed me to solely focus on one thing and not have to stress about getting quite a few assignments done, like we normally have for the class. I think this week was a great way to come back after break! First, I wrote about my progress with my radio show for this week. This was a super easy task, and the words were just flowing out of me. My group has been absolutely amazing and I hope to work with them many times this semester. We all worked so well together, and we were able to get everything done on time. There is nothing worse than having a group where everyone has to pick up another persons slack, but we had no problems of the sort. Everyone worked hard and got their work done, and we’re almost done before the due date! Next is commenting. I’m writing this a bit early, and because of this I haven’t done any commenting yet. However, since a majority of everything is done, I can see myself commenting everyday this week! I set up an alarm on my phone like I said I would in order to ensure I do this too! As soon as I finish this post I am going to go and start commenting. 🙂 2 Daily Creates: Here ladies and gentlemen, is our radio show!!!!! Give it a listen 🙂 and with that…. WEEK 8 IS FINISHED! I hope you all love the radio show, and leave me a comment of what y’all think!

I feel like every week gets easier and easier, but it also takes more and more of me to complete it. This week offered a great opportunity to catch up overall and eliminate some stress. I, however, was not able to do a majority of the assignments until today, which didn’t prove to be a problem as I am completing this hours early. I did not rush through any of the assignments, and I can not tell if the course load is getting easier or if I am starting to learn the basics for this class that made it hard in the beginning. I can safely say that audio is my least favorite medium we are working with. This is the only one I don’t have some form of experience with, so even though I am learning how to use it, it is still alien to me. Everything takes more time to understand and it takes more for me to convey what I wish to. There are so many sources that we have to go on the internet for, when I like being able to do these things myself. For example, in photography we have to chose or take photos to convey our meaning, but with audio we have to use ones provided in order to do so. This makes the work not as sacred to me, and it makes it less original. I am aware that we could make our own sounds to solve this, but some sounds would either still sound the same, or we would be unable to capture them. My favorite we have done so far is writing with photography as a close second. The only thing that drops photography is the lack of opportunities to take nice photos in the winter (because it is waaaay too cold for that) and not having access to photoshop. With writing, all you need is your brain and the internet. This week was the first week to introduce our radio show. I am honestly quite nervous for this assignment, as I am still new to editing audio. I am not nervous for the work leading up to it however. I know I can provide enough information to have at least five minutes if audio time, and I know I can facilitate my ideas correctly. Our first assignment of the week was to talk about our process and progress of our radio show. As stated in the post, this has been really easy due to google docs. It is amazing to be able to put all of our ideas cohesively into one document. We also created a group chat where we can talk about our ideas before we firmly type them into the document. This eliminates any confusion regarding our show, and makes everything organized. Using a google doc and group message is honestly the best way to go about this assignment. We also had to create a radio show promo. I chose to do a poster, as this intrigued me the most. I was confused as of how I would create this poster. I even thought of doing it myself with a piece of paper and creativity (and then taking a picture of it after), but I chose to look up different ways to make a poster. I came across an app that looked promising, and it was! I actually really enjoyed this app and would use it for future assignments. It was user friendly (wow I sound like a grandmother), had everything that was needed, and it was free! I chose to do a poster that was simple, as this would not overboard the viewers, and it would leave questions that would make people tune into our show. Commenting has got me once again. I always try to comment, but it is so inconvenient to open my laptop everyday to comment on the websites for this class. Due to it being so inconvenient, I tend to forget to do it. I don’t ever forget to do any assignments either. But somehow, I also overlook daily creates, and always end up completing them. So my goal for next week is to comment as much as I can. Hopefully with this goal every week, one week I will get it. I also will set a reminder in my phone every night before bed to NOT forget to comment!! Next was assignment banks. Now normally these are my favorite, but the audio assignment banks are such a hassle to me. I can rarely find ones that interest me and have a high enough star rating to fit the stars we have to do. I found ones that interested me after some digging, and I was able to relate 2/3 assignments to our theme. I liked not relating every single assignment to the theme, because all of our other assignments were also related to the theme, and I wanted a breath of fresh air. My first assignment bank was to take a tongue twister and say it as fast as I could. I chose to do ‘sally sold sea shells by the sea shore’ because it is widely known. It said to put background music in, and I did the sound of waves crashing, but it ended up sounding like static in the background. I used the memo app on my phone to say it as fast as I could and then I uploaded it to Soundcloud. I have found that this is the easiest method for me, and it makes these audio assignments more manageable. My next assignment was to create a place with sounds. After I created the morning routine a few weeks ago, this assignment wasn’t a challenge. I went on free sound and downloaded sounds to create my place and then edited them into audacity. After that I recorded the media from my phone and uploaded them to my Soundcloud. I chose to relate this assignment to our theme in an unconventional way. Since our focus was on our radio show this week, I chose to make a radio station as my place. I chose sounds such as radio static, computer typing, and stairs to facilitate someone going to work at a radio station. I am quite pleased with how it turned out. My last assignment was the most flexible. I had one picked out and I wasn’t very happy with my choice. Once I was done with my other assignments, I decided to go back and have another look at the bank. I chose one where I had to make a tagline to be a person on The Real Housewives. I chose to incorporate my character into this, and I feel like it worked flawlessly. I used a spy tagline that means ‘always secret’ and recorded my voice as if I was her auditioning. I am very glad that I switched assignments, as I am happier with the result of this assignment bank. Daily Creates: I’ve lost the count on what week it is, but all I know is now I can finally sleep peacefully for Spring Break!! Week I don’t know is finally in the books :))

As Spring Break approaches, I've buckled in and held on tight to my vision of a perfect radio show! That's right, it's time to start the big big project! … Continue readingWeekly Summary #7 and #8 (2/22 – 3/15)

This week, I began my journey into the world of digital storytelling through the art of designing, creating, and problem solving. … Continue readingWeekly Summary #6 (2/15 – 2/22)