Final Budget

Headline: MU Catches the Snitch

Slug: MU Quidditch
Text story: As a sport from a fictional book, we will explore how MU began a Quidditch team, who the players are, and who they compete against. We will also follow them during practice and see how they adapted the fictional sport to be played on the ground.
Writer: Katie Roach
Editor: Luke Leonard and Jessica Salmond
Due date: April 20th, 2012

Stills Slug: Photographs will depict the team practice and interaction. Detail shots will include pictures of equipment, and wide shots showing the Quad, where they practice and shots of some of the players in action.
Photographer: Jessica Salmond
Editors: Luke and Katie
Assignment dates: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Sundays at 5pm (time of team practice).
Due Date: April 20th, 2012

Video Slug: Film will show exactly how the game is played. By filming actual Quidditch matches, we can give our audience a better understanding of the rules, strategies, and team interaction. Close up shots of the equipment and play will also be included.
Videographer: Luke Leonard
Assignment dates: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Sundays at 5pm.
Editor: Luke, Jessica and Katie
Due Date: April 20th, 2012

Final Deadline: April 22nd, 2012
Copy Editor: All team members.
Web page designer: Primary – Katie Roach. Jessica and Luke as secondary designers.
Usability Testing: April 22, 2012
Finish Date: April 22, 2012

We’ll need to have all members involved in the publication to consent to being shown in photographs and in video for our project. After we speak to the team we will ask whether they are okay with it and if they want to they can sign to the following agreement.

I, as a person depicted in the web publication “MU Catches the Snitch”, give permission for my photographs and opinions to be published to public domain. I also give permission for the use of footage I am depicted in, in the publication, to be used as necessary for the production of “MU Catches the Snitch”.

J2150 Reflection

What things in J2150 were indispensable to me?

• Learning how to edit in final cut was 100% a self-learning process, however J2150 did push me into learning it for the sake of the class projects and now that I’ve learnt it at the most basic level, I can say it’s a skill I learned through J2150.

• J2150 taught me how to use the Zoom H4N which is a product I’m familiar with but had never actually had a chance to use properly. Equipment like that is often used in professional production which is a great thing to have some experience using.

• J2150 took me out of my comfort zone by forcing me to think quickly and come up with a published story within an hour. Prior to this class I’d had no experience with interviewing people on the spot, let alone trying to turn an interview into a publishable story. I think the mobile assignment was one of the most challenging but necessary assignments.

• The use of different equipment in general was excellent. The fact that we had such good equipment at our disposal was really beneficial.

• The structure of the course was very good I thought – the way the small weekly projects was broken up into progressive skills was great. It would have been nice to settle on a final project very early in the course and used each weekly project as another piece of the final project which could have been each students’ own dense, comprehensive website with lots of content.

What could I have done without in J2150?

• I think learning to create slideshows wasn’t necessary. I felt like that’s the type of project I’d have been creating in my early years of high school. And if it’s a skill that is required for the course maybe we could have used better more advanced software that we are more likely to use – ie. using a video editor like final cut or imovie to create slideshow rather than a really average piece of free software found online that doesn’t have universal methods of exporting or the capability to host high-res photographs.

• J2150 didn’t really teach me much that I didn’t already know — I found that what it did do was push me into teaching myself things. I think a stronger focus on software editing and camera skills would be a benefit to the course… using Lynda.com tutorials made me feel like the course was very lazy.

• The only other thing I found frustrating about J2150 was the Twitter quizes. I can see how they were beneficial in terms of learning to keep up with the news. But to be honest most of the twitter quizes I answered with google searches and I never actually took to Twitter in terms of news reading.

Bump in the Road

Myself, Jessica and Katie are working together on our final project. We initially (as you can see in an earlier post) intended on producing a story about a man who crafts hand-made violins.

Unfortunately after we contacted him, he was in a grump and decided that he didn’t want to do another story for students. He suggested to us that he has a friend who is a blacksmith of sorts but we decided instead to think of a new story.

We have since chosen to do our story on the University of Missouri’s quidditch team. They are a group of students who meet for practice three times a week playing a grounded version of the fictional sport created by J.K. Rowling for the Harry Potter books.

Mizzou Rec Mornings

It’s quiet in the University of Missouri’s Recreation Complex at 8.30 in the morning.
Every 5 to 10 minutes a panting student wanders out past the front desk into the chilly morning air. On about the same interval one or two students make their way in, swiping their Student ID’s at the desk for admission.

Sophia Silva, 18 and Allison Palumbo, 20, are at the front desk awaiting the next student to let in and making sure any paperwork catch-up gets done.

Sophia Silva, 18 checks the class schedule while Allison Palumbo, 20, and Josh Kootman, 22, review the week’s traffic figures.

Their Facility Lead, Josh Kootman, says since they opened at 5.30am it is quiet but doesn’t get steady until the afternoon and evening hours.

“At 5.30 the amount of students is minimal.We get mostly routine people who are optimized in the mornings. It doesn’t really pick up until class is let out.”

The basketball court is completely empty at this hour. Josh says between the hours of 4-8pm it’s packed.

“We are maxed out from 4 till 8 when there are lines for the cardio theater and basketballs are all out on the courts.”

Josh took position as Facility Lead after working for 3 semesters as a climbing technician. The “ton of responsibilities” he has says keeps his interest peaked. He’s also responsible for keeping the staff safe and managing the facility.

“Another thing I love about this job is the networking because there’s so many people to meet and it’s easy to make friends.”

Josh says, and Allison agrees, that although necessary tasks like cleaning window sills and stacking weights aren’t the job highlights, it definitely has it’s perks.

For now they just need to make sure everything is in order and await the morning rush after 9.

The basketball courts in MizzouRec are empty at this early hour. Later in the afternoon they’ll be completely packed says Facility Lead Josh Kootman, 22.

Allison’s water bottle sits on the front counter keeping her hydrated throughout the morning shift.

By Luke Leonard.

Final Project Mission and Aims.

For the final project we have chosen to report a story about a man living in CoMo (Columbia, Missouri) who hand-manufactures violins. We want to compare his work with those violins in local music stores. We also want to speak to the customers buying his product and what it means to them that the product is hand made. 

The following is a one-sentence summary of our mission in writing this story.

Quality craftsmanship and tradesman skills are disappearing with the growth and advancement of industrialization and technologies, so it is important to retain the passion and care that characterizes traditional production.

5 Questions to help focus our story:

1. How does a traditional craftsman compete with mass production?
2. Do people still appreciate handcrafted products or is general modern society content with something made by a machine with thousands just the same?
3. What kinds of new skills does he have to develop to keep up? Advertising, social media, using the internet?
4. What are the differences between a mass-produced product and a handcrafted product in terms of quality?
5. Who makes up his customer-base? Is interest in handcrafted instruments decreasing with each generation?

Celia Murray on Studying Journalism at Mizzou

Filming Interviews

So this week for class I was required to make a short video about a minute or two long. Again using Celia as my subject I had interviewed and filmed that interview in advance. 

I took some footage of Celia working on her computer doing some study as the segment of interview that I chose to use was relating to her studies.

I am usually quite comfortable editing and I’m very comfortable using Final Cut Pro prior to the new version 10 which I absolutely whole-heartedly dispise. It’s an awful piece of software it’s like an amateurish version of the same older software. The new interface is dreadful it’s like stepping back to iMovie. 

iMovies is a great piece of software for an average person to put together a film. It’s very easy to use – there’s no “rendering” and all the clips you import you can preview easily and work off a well designed timeline. FCPX however took that same style and in my opinion has just taken a biig step backwards.

The only really good benefit I can see with the new version of Final Cut is the fact that you don’t have to let the video render for 15 minutes before you can watch it back after editing. I would rather have the old software back and ditch the render-free style.

Anyway enough about that.

I came across issues with matching audio with video. Having two camera angles for the interview was a great idea visually — I am very happy with the result — however getting the audio to lineup with both clips took a lot of fiddling around. It turned out parts of the audio came out better in the built-in mic on the camera versus the Zoom H4N which I used to record the raw audio.

After much fiddling around and fine tuning I did get it all to work.

I will upload the video on the next post (shown above this).

For now I’m going to do some online shopping – bye!

Film for thought.

This week coming for J2150 we have to create a short of 5 film shots. I’ve taken a few previously as test footage but I’m not entirely happy with them. This weekend I’m in Chicago to explore the city, see the sights and just generally enjoy some time away from college. 

It’s great just to be in a big city again it almost feels more like home. When we saw the sky scrapers from the distance it was so exciting — it almost felt like a new sight to behold having lived in little Columbia for so long.

I’ve been carrying my camera with me so far all weekend and I’ve been thinking about what to film if at all. I want to have some great footage but at the same time I don’t want entirely footage that’s going to be irrelevant to my assignment. 

I think for now I’ll just enjoy my time in the big city and put my study thoughts aside for now. 

Until next week here’s a picture of chicago from Lincoln Park – cya!

 

Assignment Progress

Last weekend I went ahead and held the interview for my final project due later this semester. I borrowed a DSLR camera, a tripod and a voice recorder/mic from the college and combined it with my own DSLR camera.

I set up both cameras for video.. one hand held and close up – the other was on a tripod and recording traditional medium shot style. 

I used two desk lamps together aswell to light the interviewee from behind and from the side too – so her hair looked great and gave the whole shoot a warm feel. (The lights were yellow which gave a warm color temp).

We got started on the interview which was quite interesting because Celia has never been involved in an on camera interview and I had never produced one either! The great thing about on camera is you can just let the cameras and mic roll and capture everything. Later on I’ll be able to go ahead and condense everything down into a short 2 minute video. It could be tricky however to get everything in, with such a small time frame. I want to combine video interview with photo slide show AND photographs also. It’ll be a struggle.

I had about half an hour of video footage including the space inbetween answering question. I managed to condense the audio down to 3 and a half minutes which is fine except that’s JUST the audio interview without any pauses, music or video. 

I hope it all comes together but for now I just have to keep working at it and I’m sure sooner or later it’ll all come together. 

Snowy Eyes

Celia Murray is rocking her beanie complete with fluffy edges. The snow looked great caught in the fine hairs of the beanie.