Finished PSA

For the last 3 weeks I have been working with a group of fine ladies, Ing Mu, Ranada Smith, Julie Barber, and Melba Gilbert. We hardly knew each other when we started but that changed very quickly as we were given a seemingly daunting task of creating a 60 second PSA from scratch. I entered the assignment with trepidation, as I have never been in a successful group. I have always been unhappy with the end result or been an inactive member of a group. I was glad to be wrong with this group of ladies.

From the get go we worked very well via email. We decided on cyber bullying as our topic as we collectively felt that it was a current and relevant topic. I personally liked that I could use this in my class yearly as well as share it with the campus for internet safety week.

We divided tasks by offering our strengths. I offered to help with the script, take photographs and record audio. I used photographs that referenced technology used in cyber bullying and Ing used photoshop to alter them to match our video. I used audacity to read the script that Ranada put together and edited it also using audacity. Melba shot video and then Ing used Adobe Flash and Photoshop to edit and create our PSA. All of our footage and images were original and Ing received the music from a free sound effect site called www.freefx.co.uk.

As a group we had to be flexible and be able to change things when necessary but this was really no problem. The best part of working with everyone is that via email we were able to share our vision. In the end no ones toes were stepped on and we were very successful with our end product.

Podcast- Movie Maker

Powered by Podbean.com

Microsoft Movie Maker Vs' Cyberlink Power Director

This week we needed to use a free yet relatively easy video editing program. I unfortunately have the world most unreliable laptop could not at first download movie maker, which is among the highest rated and easiest rated free programs. So I chose to download for my free 30 day trial Cyberlink's Power Director. The download was easy, i looked at reviews from cnet.com and they gave this program 4 stars. After downloading the program I think this was highly overrated. At first glance everything seems very easy, their icons are all pictures that can set things such as blending effects, artistic washes to your video as well as the normal attributes of a video editing program. The most basic program is that it has so many bells and whistles that it turns out to be too busy to navigate and the sequence editor is very touchy, you will end up clicking on 30 things before the portion of video you need. Frustrated, I ended up at my parents home using their already installed but yet lovely Microsoft Movie Maker. This program is free in most Windows Vista-7. It was incredibly easy to use, drag down menu, easy addition of music and the splitting feature was very nice. For the basics this is the best. I can see my students using this as a entry level video editing program, a start so to speak. In later courses such as multimedia or animation I can see where adobe's suite can come in mighty handy. For fancy fade outs and artistically overdone effects other programs may suit your better but for basic editing that ANYONE can do, Movie maker is gold!

Web Conference Week 2

I did not get to attend the web conference this week. I have had a huge amount of technical issues and am having to use my parents PC for the most part. But I logged in and viewed the conference after it happened. I along with others are/ were very confused about our assignment. It appears that we are only responsible for the podcast portion, so audio only. Dr. Abernathy answered everyone's questions and immediate feedback and guidance was offered. Web Conferences are a great way to interact with classmates and professors but I find the timing of them to be frustrating, especially the second week of school. I honestly feel like I am drowning in this course due to the timing...