Wrap-Up Blog Post

Over the course of this semester, I have completed a variety of intriguing projects for Com 210. Among all the that I learned, my favorite project was the video project by far! I think that I enjoyed it most because I had already learned so much from the other tutorials and projects that I felt more equipped to tackle the final project. While turning my clips into a video by editing the effects, transitions, and different aspects that went into the story, my absolute favorite part was filming my best friends while we were having some of the greatest times here this semester. The skills that I learned in this course will enable me to effectively run the blog, website, and advertising responsibilities of my best friend’s jade carving boutique. This summer, I am taking a break from the Pacific Northwest and living in Santa Barbara with her, where I will be working in her store. In my future, I see myself going to nursing school and traveling with that profession as much as possible. While this class did not influence my decision-making in choosing this career path but I will use the skills I learned as a creative outlet and they will only benefit me in my life. I felt that this class was really informative but I did feel that some of the technological aspects were frustrating. My computer could not download Adobe but I found some other programs that enabled me to accomplish some of the same things as Adobe. It might have been a little less stressful for me if I was able to use those programs more and if the instructions were directed at them in addition to Adobe. Overall, I really enjoyed this course and am excited to discover what my newly found multimedia content creation knowledge will enable me to accomplish in the future! Can you say video memoirs of college and of my kids? So excited!  Thanks for this experience and I hope you enjoyed it as well!

Final Video Story

For my final video project, I chose to use videos that show my interacting with my closest friends and roommates here at Washington State University. These women are my support system and I know that whatever comes my way, they will be right there beside me. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I live with my Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters Brookie, Hatch, James, Lex, Al, Kenz, and Phillips. Each and every one of them has inspired me in different way to be the best version of myself. And since my topic is me, I chose to show you all the people that have impacted my life the most and have enabled me to grow in countless aspects of my life. From encouraging me to embrace my hippie, free spirit to wiping my tears when my heart has been betrayed, I cannot think of a moment that these lovelies were not there for me. I hope you enjoy my video story and that it gives you some insight into how I became the person I am today!

For my draft video story, I compiled a series of videos I had been recording over the semester of my friends and I. The video settings range from football games to cliff jumping to tailgates at our house, Cloud 9. This is a very rough draft of my video story because I had a lot of difficulties with uploading the media to Adobe Premiere Pro CC for some unknown reason. Once they uploaded, though, I spent a lot of time shortening the length of each clip so that the entire video would fit into the time frame of 1 to 4 minutes and so that only the best parts were utilized.

For my final video story, I spend the majority of my time working on editing out awkward pauses, adding smooth transitions, deleting the original audio, and inserting my best friend, Emily Brummond, singing her version of “Bottle It Up.” I inserted some titles to describes the scenes. I also decided to end my story with a picture of my friends to wrap the whole thing up.

I really enjoyed creating this video story and I hope you enjoy it as well!

Thank you!

Click the link below to see my Final Video Story:

FINAL Audio Story

For my audio story, I could not decide who to interview and what to ask them when the topic is about me. I did not want to awkwardly ask my friends questions about how they felt about me or anything like that. So I decided to interview people that have influenced me and made me the person I am today. My family and friends have had such an incredible impact on my life and by getting a glimpse of their personalities, I feel that you will begin to understand more about how I became the person I am today. I began my interview with a brief explanation about why I chose to talk to my interviewee. I wanted the focus to be more on them than on me. One of my very best friends, Lindsay Hatch, was willing to take some time to let me ask her a few questions about herself. I chose open-ended questions that will hopefully give you an idea of how amazing a person she is and how she has influenced myself so much with her determination and compassion. She is adventurous and goofy. Having her in my life has been so influential and positive that I felt I had to highlight that in my blog. For my final story, I went back through my raw audio footage and eliminated the silent pauses and filler words that took away from the effectiveness of the story. I also inserted a silence pause after my introduction to that it would flow nicely into my interview with Hatch. I hope you enjoy and learn a little something more about me! Enjoy!! (:

Draft Audio Story

For my audio story, I could not decide who to interview and what to ask them when the topic is about me. I did not want to awkwardly ask my friends questions about how they felt about me or anything like that. So I decided to interview people that have influenced me and made me the person I am today. My family and friends have had such an incredible impact on my life and by getting a glimpse of their personalities, I feel that you will begin to understand more about how I became the person I am today. I began my interviews with a brief explanation about why I chose to talk to my interviewees. I wanted the focus to be more on them than on me. I am planning on conducting a few more interviews with my close friends, but these past two weeks have been crazy for us and we have not had time when we are all home yet. Therefore, I have my introduction and an interview with my friend and roommate, Lindsay Hatch, in my draft audio story. The questions I ask each person will vary, but the questions are to give you an idea of what kind of people they are. I am considering putting a background song behind their interviews but I don’t want to distract the listener too much from what is being said. This is a draft story and there will be more to come. Enjoy!

Final Logo

The topic of my blog is “about me,” which made it difficult for me to decided exactly what logo would best describe me. Even though this activity is just for an assignment, making the decision of what represents me as a whole took a lot of time and trial and error. I am not at all artistically gifted so I knew right away that I had to choose something simple and straightforward. Therefore, I chose to make an raindrop with the colors that I believed best represented my topic and my hometown of Seattle, WA. Seattle is more that just a city for me; it is the epicenter of my youth. I admire Seattle’s open-minded nature and the beauty of the diversity of its inhabitants. Seattle has been a pioneer in social issues including legalizing gay marriage and medicinal marijuana. These qualities of strength and perseverance have inspired and motivated me to embrace all the things that make me unique and, most importantly, to not be afraid to stand up for what I believe in.

I began my logo illustration by constructing a circle using the ellipse tool and manipulated the top anchor to create a raindrop effect. Then, I spent some time perfect the shape of the droplet and making sure the proportions were correct. It took a lot of time to figure out exactly which colors to use for the gradients. I wanted to choose colors that complimented each other and best represented the essence of my topic and Seattle. Initially, I had inserted me initials, “E*T*G,” into the droplet. But after thinking about it, using just my initials was ineffective for a logo and confusing. Therefore, I changed it into an evergreen tree, which I constructed using the star tool and erasing everything but the top triangle. Once I made it the exact shape and size that I wanted, I replicated it two more times to create the body of the tree. Then, I used the rectangle tool to create the shape for the tree trunk. I am a lot happier with the evergreen tree instead of my initials because, for me, it represents the Pacific Northwest and Seattle. Even though I am more than where I come from, I believe that Seattle and the PNW have helped shape who I am today; we are all products of our environments. Hope you all like it!

ERIN-FINAL-LOGO