This is my final project video “The Meet”. I was going for a mob themed short video, probably from watching too much Sopranos. This was only my 2nd video I’ve shot, the first being the P5 video. I started with trying to think up ideas and just started drawing out a story board, slowly adding frame after frame of what I wanted to happen next. I drew the storyboard up to the meeting and thought, “what if it’s not really what you think?”

The planning process was a big part of the video’s success. I had to find a time when I could get enough of my friends to fill all of the parts. One of my friends in the video lives in Portland, and the other two U of O students, so the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend was the only time I could get us all together. I used my suits for the costumes and had to get cigars and liquor for props.

Another thing was finding a place to film, a place that would be okay to smoke a cigar indoors. I ended up using a friend of one of the actor’s place. Luckily he wasn’t working that day and I used his garage as the meet setting. He was playing video games in the same garage with somebody and we had to keep asking them to be quiet without being bossy.

Another difficulty encountered was the outside lighting. I wanted to film the outdoor scenes at a dusk-like setting. Only once it started to get dark, it started to get dark really fast. I had to hurry up doing outdoor scenes and it ended up getting too dark for me to film the piano transaction scene. I had to go back to the same place the next day during while the guy who lives there was home on a work break. I hadn’t filmed the scenes of putting the keyboard in the trunk and driving away and wanted the location to be the same. I finished the drive away scene and then the same problem from the day before happened. It got dark really fast.

We started the piano transaction scene and decided to film it in the house’s driveway. It was getting dark and only one light above the front of the garage worked. I had my friend back his car into the driveway for him to open the hatch in the video and had my other friend face his car toward the garage with its lights on for more light. It wasn’t as bright as I thought it would be, but it was enough to just see what was going on. I guess they were in a dark alley or something. As soon as I finished filming the last scene I needed, I was going to suggest maybe trying it one more time when the car whose lights we were using died. We had to jump the car while it was freezing cold and dark outside while trying to hurry to get the person who lived there back to work. We got the car running, loaded up all the props in the car and were on our separate ways.

Even with all the difficulties encountered and the overall stress experienced through the process of planning and production, I had a really good time making this video from beginning to end. Its really cool to see just an idea of mine actually manifest into something that I can enjoy watching. It also helped that I filmed with people I’ve known for a long time. I am looking forward to making future videos and hope I can just get better each time.

As I’m assuming you all know, I love snowboarding. I don’t just love snowboarding because I think it’s a fun thing to do with my free time. I love snowboarding because of its general atmosphere. No matter if you’re just starting out, a pro, or simply just taking your time, no one makes fun of you for it. Everyone comes together to hope for snow. We all are out there because of one simple reason: we love it. No one makes us be there, no one forces us to spend money on a season pass, we do it because it’s what makes us happy. When something makes a large group of people happy, there is not a day when countless smiles aren’t returned. Doing something you love, with the people you love? I don’t see what gets better than that.

For this project, I started out using my GoPro. After using it, my dad took the case off to clean it and put it back in his pocket without its case, where it later broke to an unfixable degree. I ended up losing most of the footage I wanted to use, however I did record some things on my phone. Using my iPhone was the reason for this long-shot footage. I clearly forgot to ask if it was okay to use swear words in the music I used so I’m sorry for that in advance! I didn’t realize it was so bad until I had already uploaded it to YouTube!

This class has been too much fun to put into words. Going into it, I was unsure what I wanted to get out of it. Now, I get to have skills that I never would’ve learned otherwise. Thank you guys and thank you Teresa! It has been a blast!

I was not granted appropriate weather for the shots I really wanted to to get with the exception of 2 days. During which I captured 2 images of the type I most wanted the get the trees with the streaked clouds and the ocean beach. I did enjoy creating all the images time of course always being a factor. I was not able to even do all the locations I wanted to do the light painting and the burning steel wool type shots. I also really really wanted to get a hyperlapse star trails shot but no clear skies for like two weeks so no go there..but I will still be paying attention after this project and class as my interest is not just for the purposes of an assignment or class. I feel that any kind of creative work has to be a personal pursuit if one really wants to excel in this field not just photography of course but anything artistic. I think experimenting and discovering problems and obstacles then finding solutions for the things that are pursued outside the bounds of assigned or contracted (paid) work can and will serve to make you more able to attain the confidence and experience necessary to be a successful Multi Media Designer and artist of whatever particular artistic focus one chooses to pursue.

No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.
Alexander Pope

To sum up my experience, is difficult. I learned so much, and Teresa Hughes inspired us all so much, while the class moved so fast that sometime  I think I my brain couldn’t contain it all. My appreciation of media as art, and art as media grew and took on a different perspective as I challenged myself to come up with what I thought was interesting imagery in my creations.

This final project started as one thing and evolved into something else… a visual collage of images that touched my heart and told my own story of how much I love my pets/animals and how I think others who have pets know that same feeling.

I tried to show how close we get to our pets and how they are the only thing on this planet that give us unconditional love, no matter what we may do to them (you know some people should not have pets, but that’s another story).

Anyway… This is how we enjoy them and how they give back without words so many messages that we are their world. I thank them for being there, everyday… and if you’re a pet owner, you do too.

To sum up my experience, is difficult. I learned so much, and Teresa Hughes inspired us all so much, while the class moved so fast that sometime  I think I my brain couldn’t contain it all. My appreciation of media as art, and art as media grew and took on a different perspective as I challenged myself to come up with what I thought was interesting imagery in my creations.

This final project started as one thing and evolved into something else… a visual collage of images that touched my heart and told my own story of how much I love my pets/animals and how I think others who have pets know that same feeling.

I tried to show how close we get to our pets and how they are the only thing on this planet that give us unconditional love, no matter what we may do to them (you know some people should not have pets, but that’s another story).

Anyway… This is how we enjoy them and how they give back without words so many messages that we are their world. I thank them for being there, everyday… and if you’re a pet owner, you do too.

For this project I decided to create yet another humorous video featuring a lousy mid-day public access talk show and an even lousier guest who has a few words to say about a very random topic. Originally I had a drastically different idea but after being unable to find any willing actors I decided to do something simpler. Something that only involved just me which was particularly challenging due to the fact that I couldn’t actually star in it myself so I came up with the idea of a talk show with a guest who had a censored voice. A lot of ridiculous ideas came to mind about what he should talk about including hipster scarves, gluten-free bread, maple syrup, and others until I thought about what would be something everybody loves nowadays and shortly after I came up with the idea featured in the video. Then came production. Modifying his voice was surprisingly easy. I searched the internet for a voice modifier until I realized that audacity could modify it. After that it was pretty simple I just had to select out the guest talking points and change the pitch. Then came finding all the images online which I needed and then putting everything together in a video. I tried to make the audio at some points cut off suddenly so it would make it seem like it was a low-budget show. All in all i’m pretty satisfied with the whole project which miraculously came out at a run time of 2 minutes and 59 seconds which is one second before the deadline I would like to point out. I hope whoever sees this enjoys it and make sure that when it comes down to who had the best final project, you’ll remember this and think to yourself; “yeah his was good but i’m thinking that other one was slightly better”.

Hello again,

It feels strange to be done with my final project for this class. It was a bit of a struggle to get it done, but I am happy with the result. This term has been all about problem solving. I am new to the art, traditional or digital. I have learned to work to my own abilities. I wanted to tell a simple tale with a good moral in it. I chose to build  off of the mythos of the FAOLADH (irish werewolves). I have always hated the negative stigma placed upon wolves. I get that people fear what they do not know, but in this day and age, with all the information in the world in our phones, we still make ignorant, fearful decisions. Sometimes the thing you fear the most might be your only hope. The story is about three little kids on the way to the main township from their rural home. A shady childsnatcher sees them, but before he can act he is stooped by the faoladh that patrol the Queen’s road. This was also a story my brother used to tell me when I was afraid to walk to school by myself. I hope you all like it and maybe down the road I will do a more fleshed out version. I wish you all the best and much love to my fellow indigenius people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zwt2UDIQ8Q&feature=youtu.be

This is a goofy slideshow I made for my final project in Introduction to Media Arts.  It’s a story about a boy who keeps getting bullied at school.  It was a really fun project to put together and went together a lot faster than I thought it would.

The most challenging part was coordinating the timing between all the slides with the music and sound effects.  I had to splice sound effects where they would sound best in the music, I had to time slides to match certain spots in the music, and also had to time other sound effects with specific slides.  On top of that, I had to make each slide had a proper amount of time exposure to fit the priority of the slide.  So it was a tedious process that took a lot of refining.

Overall, I am happy with the outcome.  All the sound effects are fitting and I am happy with the song choice and felt it fit the comical arrangement I was looking for.

By: EJ Olson

For my final, I wanted to work more with video and really try and hone my video production skills. I’m already familiar with Adobe After Effects, but my Premiere skills are lacking. I also focused on really using what I’ve learned in my Concepts of Visual Literacy class and merge them with the technical skills acquired during our Media Arts course.

I attempted to build suspense, using a few quicker cuts, extreme close ups and a heavier, anxious soundtrack. The POV shots are used to help the viewer feel attached to the scene, and hopefully feel some tension and anticipation. As I reach for this new, mysterious weapon, the audience is hopefully asking, “what’s he going to do with that??” Of course, we find out I only wanted a closer shave!

Production for this was difficult (shooting oneself is always a challenge—sorry Teresa!) and editing took several days, as the saber effects are a frame by frame process. It was tedious, but rewarding. I learned just how difficult it is to keep continuity when cutting these scenes together, but I think I did a quality job (for the most part, I had some issues in the first 15 seconds or so).

I’m looking forward to video production next term!

Music:

“Heavy Brigade” courtesy of PurplePlanet.com

“Live (A Little)” – My Mantle

This project and I did not get along at first. We had a lot of ups and downs but in the end it all came together. This is probably my favorite project of them all because we had a lot of free reign to do what we wanted. I choose to do clear cutting because it is something that I feel is becoming a problem. Oregon is one of the smallest states with the largest logging production. There are places all around I used to hike/bike that were surrounded by trees and now there is nothing but stumps. The sad fact about this is the timber being cut down it’s not even for locals, it is being hauled to China because apparently it’s cheaper that way.

This project was truly a lot of fun in the beginning I thought I was never going to get it done. Problem after problem kept coming up and I was certain I was doomed. For starters if you’re going to hike up a mountain to take pictures don’t leave your keys in your car and proceed to lock it….with the camera inside. If you are going to interview someone, always make sure you have a back-up, just in case the first one cancels…last minute. Even with all the problems and I just want to quit moments it really was a lot of fun, nearly froze to death on a mountain, but fun:)

http://oregonforests.org/content/ask-forester