Reflection Post!

December 11, 2018 / mackenzieannlarsen / Leave a comment

Hi everyone!

This has been such an eye-opening semester. Coming to WSU has been one of the hardest experiences of my life, but I am glad that I chose to take this chance.

This class was definitely not what I expected it to be. The motivation that I had to have to accomplish the numerous projects was hard to maintain, but I did it, and completed every assignment.

The topic that I chose for my projects was the religious class that I was taking called Institute. At institute, I learn more about my gospel, and am able to have good interactions with the other people there. I wanted to tell people about my experience at Institute class, but also kind of show them why I go to institute. I go because I want to continue to feel the comfort and hope that I feel when I go there, and the assuring feeling that I am doing what is right for myself.

So, this semester I made various projects that correlated to my overall institute topic. I created a nice poster for the first Photoshop project. Then, a logo for the institute in Illustrator. The third thing was an audio story about my life and interaction with my gospel. The final one was a tour of the institute building, with an explanation of what was done there.

My overall favorite project from this semester was my logo. I felt that the sun design really captured the tone and symbolism that I wanted to convey. It was able to show the love that I felt about my religion and the light that it has brought into my life, and can bring into those of others. I also really enjoyed the process of making this logo, and felt that I was really able to demonstrate my creativity, and was able to with ease because of the simple but effective tools in the Illustrator software.

I learned a ton of skills throughout the semester, and think that they will be useful in my future as well. One skill that I found to be something that I would actually use was the video editing done in Premiere. I enjoyed the creativity from this, and the ability to create what looked to be an amazing, painstakingly made video, that was actually rather easy to pull together. Another skill that might be helpful to me in the future is the photo editing done in Photoshop. I was able to blend different images to make a cohesive piece, that I really enjoyed. With some work, I think that I could get even better at it. This class offered a great introduction into the Adobe programs, and I feel that I learned more than enough from it.

As the semester comes to a close, I am amazed at the work I did in this class. I thought that having an overarching topic would cause a problem, and I would run out of ideas to base my projects off of, but I found that my projects turned out well, and worked really well together. I am very happy with the pieces that I created, and with this course.

Final Video Story!

December 7, 2018 / mackenzieannlarsen / Leave a comment

For my Video Story, I wanted give my audience a tour of the Pullman Institute Building that is located just off of the WSU campus. I wanted to show the viewers where it is, what it looks like, and give them a sense of what we go in the building.

I really enjoyed using my Institute journey as my topic, and I think that this video project brings all of my other projects together, and encompasses my whole topic. I really wanted to bring people the knowledge of this program and what it is, and the love that I have for it. I wanted to spread the hope and happiness, and just invite people to learn more. This project let me do that, as I was able to put out a video like this.

My inspiration came mostly from videos that I have seen on different social media, showing the same kind of transition from outside to inside, and then various details of the inside. One of the people that critiqued me said it kind of looked like The Office opener, so in a way, that influenced me too.

As I shot the footage for my video, I wanted to start off with a darker scene outside, so I captured most of my footage on a rainy day. This is because I wanted to continue to convey the element of light that I feel for my religion and institute program. As the video continues, the inside of the building is a warm light, that is bright and shining. This helps to show the change that one would feel when they opened up and came into the institute building to learn of the gospel, or just meet some of the people there. My last images are outside, on a bright sunny day, which gives the feeling of everlasting pleasure and happiness that I feel after coming to institute and learning more about my gospel.

While working on this, I used a lot of the offered transitions, to give variety, and minimize the appearance of the jump-cut shots. I used a lot of the dissolving transitions and the fade to black or white. I wanted something that was not too dramatic, but also gave a good transition between parts. Thankfully I knew how to do that because of the Premiere Tutorials that we had to do a couple of weeks ago. With my video, I wanted to focus on the lines of the building, and keep them as symmetrical as possible for a more polished, professional design.

After I posted my draft, I knew that I wanted to add narration into the video, and was told by most of those that critiqued me to include it also. So I recorded myself, and imported that into Premiere, then used the razor tool to edit out the bad portions. At first, I was only going to add the narration, but I decided to add another level of complexity to my video by adding the music. I found the music on a website titled “Free Music Archive”, by a user named Livio Amato . This music named ‘Musa, 6th melody’, was put under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license, which allowed me to use it if I attributed it to Livio Amato, with acknowledgement that it was changed.

I really enjoyed putting this music into my video, and how it added a layer of professionalism. After I added the music, I changed the size of it, and then the volume settings of both the narration and the music, using the Keyframe adjustments, so that it faded in and out smoothly.

Overall, I am extremely happy with my video, and how well it actually turned out.

Raw Footage and Storyboard!

November 27, 2018 / mackenzieannlarsen / Leave a comment

Visual Elements	Audio Elements
0:00-0:10 Footage of outside of institute building from angle 1	Simple music, maybe piano, fades in
0:11-0:25 Slide into a 2^nd angle, moves across screen	Talk about where the institute building is by campus
0:26-0:36 Add 3^rd angle video, of building	Continue talking about the building
0:37-0:57 Show picture of dedication prayer	Explain what the dedication is
0:58-1:18 Start at front doors, video flows into the foyer	Explain what people do at the building
1:19-1:29 Show foyer footage, then the hallway	Put in interview of Sister Kizerian, talking about how students gravitate towards the institute building
1:30-1:50 Pictures 1, 2, 3 sliding across screen	Explain the friendships that grow here, why it is such a good place for students
1:51-2:00 Pan out from the tree art	Music fades out

Final Audio Story!

November 1, 2018 / mackenzieannlarsen / Leave a comment

For this audio project, I have had a really hard time finding a story that would connect well with my topic of LDS Institute. I first was going to create a story of the missionaries that teach the courses, and how they came to be missionaries, and what it has been like for them. Though this was a good idea, it still did not feel right to me. So I kept brainstorming, and still could not find a good story to go along with my topic. Then, I thought of what I was trying to convey about my topic in general. I revisited my introduction post, and realized that my story should be about my journey at institute, as I had said in that post. With this thought in my head, I created a story that would kind of show my path to going to institute, and my church, and how I have struggled with finding consistency in my life.

I listened to a few of the podcasts on the “Introduction to Audio Storytelling” reading page, and that those were very interesting. The only problem I had with those was that they were so long, and my story could only be at maximum two minutes. That was one of the biggest challenges with this project, and proved to be a struggle in the editing stage.

In my story, I tell of how I moved a lot in the last five years, and a little bit about the toll that that has taken on my life. This is something that I don’t really speak about very often, because it is such a personal time period for me. I struggled a ton in those years to make friends, and even went into a few spells of depression. When moving to Pullman, I really didn’t want to feel this way, and wanted to find a place where things could be ‘normal’. I found this place to be institute. In my story, I have little actualities from the institute teachers, who are really important to my journey of going to institute because they were the ones to fully persuade me to actually come.

To construct my story, I first interviewed both Brother and Sister Kizerian. I actually did these interviews separately, to avoid any times where they might have overlapped while talking, and this system helped me get clear, high-quality responses from them. I then recorded myself in segments, which helped me to break them apart, and situate them how I wanted them. This did cause some problems in that sometimes between takes, the clarity or volume of my voice would change slightly, so I had to retake them, or adjust the sound levels. I also added some areas where it would fade in and out, to create a better sounding arrangement.

The interview material that I got was pretty lengthy, so it took quite a long time to cut out pauses, and move around the sounds into a more pleasing arrangement. I also had to sort through and get rid of a lot of material that I could not use for the story. This was rather a pain.

For my editing, though I didn’t get many critiques on my draft, I had to change a few things in my audio arrangement. I had to rerecord a snip it of one of my segments, which helped a lot in making my project sound better. The little sound scratch was fixed and made the sound much more cohesive. I also deleted the long stretch of silence between a segment and an interview, which helped greatly with the flow of my project. I decided against music, because I felt that I it would not add much to the overall feel of the project, and would distract too much from my message.

I am very happy with my final result, and the message I am sharing through it.