EDLD+5363+Multimedia+-+PSA+and+Project+Reflection

media type="youtube" key="Ek7efg9prGg?hl=en" height="344" width="425"

Reflection:

Create a PSA, was the assigment. That is so much better than "create a movie" because at least the PSA reserves certain guidelines. The team chose Cyberbullying. At first the ideas burst forth. Susan Mannas and her son created a rap which she posted. The text came from the Megan Pledge, somewhat, and became the basis for the production. Other documents were posted by Lupe, but not used. This was the pre-production phase, where we talked about what was needed. Some communication, at this point, was completed through the revised document, but most communication shifted through gmail.

In the production phase, Sara and I both filmed our own students in video and audio. Sara's students created some original music as well. The shots we discussed were students at computers. I instructed my students to make some happy and some irritated faces and gestures. Sara's students showed different emotions as well as they texted. Miguel created an intro with the ideas we discussed. I created slides using Google Presentation of the text from the original rap, and later text from Sara's student's song. After a partial group chat, Sara, Susan and myself, I created a wiki for all of our work. We hoped that by uploading all the footage we had the editors would be able to begin their work.

Moving through production phase, I was getting irritated that the editors were not creating any work yet, since all the footage was posted. Susan Mannas, who has already written the rap, mixed it and posted several usable audio files to be added to a completed video, actually, in her nervousness, created a video. She was going to post it Sunday morning, hoping that the real editors would post first. We were unaware at the time, but we also seemed to have lost a group member who said in an email that she would do some editing.

It was Saturday morning of Sept 25, that I realized my name was written in as an editor. I did not put my name there, but it must have been included there in a revision. I was shocked and upset, because I was waiting for someone else, the ones who had not contributed much at this point and the true editors, in fact, to finally participate. I spent Saturday morning creating a video that needed some edits, but would be a starting place for the final project. Miguel chimed in that afternoon to post a video he created. My version was selected and Miguel later added some an edit to it.

On Sunday night, September 26, Lupe joined Sara and Susan and me in gchat. She had not participated in much since she posted those original documents from other sites on the first week of the work. Lupe offered a suggestion or two at that point, but it was too late, in my opinion. I was working on final edits to the video and reposting it. YouTube was losing a chunk of the audio file and Susan spent a great deal of time figuring out how to convert the movie and get it to load correctly. She was able to complete that on Monday, September 27.

In the post-production phase, there was a group chat on September 27. I was unable to attend, but I understand that Lupe was given a job to complete at that point.

Overall, some of our group worked spectacularly well. Sara, Susan and I were energized and truly conjoined ideas on this project. We are all so grateful it was a PSA, with a time limit because it forced us to maintain focus, Initially, Miguel thought it could be any amount of time and suggested 3-5 minutes. I am so glad we were limited.

There are parts of the PSA that I am not fond of, like where I feel there is an audio gap. I do like other aspects, such as how I showed the "JUST THINK" slides several times, as if to send a subliminal message to "THINK". I am not happy that I had to take screen shots of some of the video footage because I couldn't get it to download correctly. I tried to piece it together smoothly. Probably one thing I love about it the most, is how particular I was with the audio and video matching. I wanted the slides to "SHOW" the text as it was spoken and I like the way that turned out. I am grateful for my new knowledge of creating a video production. If I hadn't have been crunched for time and irritated, I probably wouldn't have worked so hard on that part.