MEJO 121 Final Project Reflection
What I learned through the completion of this course and the final project.
Throughout MEJO 121 I learned many things that helped me create the best final project I could. Especially the skills learned in the many in-class labs using Adobe Audition, Premiere Pro, and Substack. Along with many lessons through collaboration with other students in the class to visualize and execute many video and storytelling projects. All these skills were quite valuable in the smooth creation of my final project both the interview and website creation. That in my opinion came out great due to the many hands-on assignments with the resources used for this final assignment.
The first step in the development of my final project was coming up with an inserting person to interview. In class, we took time to write out questions for three to four potential people we could interview. This process made it clear to me which interview I would like to do and have a passion for making sure it was done well. These questions led me to interview my grandfather Bob Cox for my final project with a mission to capture the many interesting stories and experiences he has. Capturing these stories the right way was an important part of the class as I learned a lot about framing, lighting, and sound quality through both helpful slides and practice b-roll assignments. One key part of my project was attempting the radio cut and realizing I filmed the video out of frame and vertically hurting the quality. This mistake was a good learning experience that the first take may not always be the best and a little extra effort to re-film many parts made my interview a lot higher quality.
B-Roll both images and videos were also quite important to allow viewers to not just hear but visualize the stories from my grandfather. In class, we experimented with many types of b-roll through the Caroll Hall and individual b-roll assignments. This made the addition of a b-roll into my final interview quite easy, especially with the help from my grandmother who allowed me to scan in many old photos of my grandfather from his childhood and key moments in his life. Many of these pictures and videos, I found online corresponding to his stories to sync well within the final cut of the interview.
Once I filmed the final interview I used many of the skills I learned in class with Premiere Pro to sequence the interview correctly and put it all together. The many lessons on how to edit with Premiere Pro were quite helpful as they made me familiar with a site I had rarely used. Transitions and captions were quite important in bringing my video together to allow viewers to see the questions asked and understand the pictures and where they were from. The transitions made the video much smoother improving from the radio cut where the video was quite sudden and things just popped up. In Premiere Pro the most important feature I used was the auto reframe tool that allowed me to take the smaller scanned-in pictures to fit the frame of the video and serve as a b-roll. I would have not known to use this feature if it were not for a classmate who used it during the Caroll Hall video editing process.
Finishing up my final project with the creation of a website to serve as a tool for people to learn more was also important. In class, we walked through this process, and through much trial and error, I was able to begin to put it together to be easy to navigate. I found our practice attempts with substack quite helpful in writing background pieces on my Grandfather then embedding it within my website.
This culminated in the completion of my final project and an increase in confidence in my skill set using the many tools learned through this class. That can be carried with me and implemented across the many assignments that I will come to face.