End of Term

It is the end of the Fall Semester and I have learned that I know nothing. Hooray for me.

In some sense, this is a good thing since before I didn’t even know that.

I am officially on the next level, this is the level of acknowledgement of my ignorance, now I can focus on getting better.

It is always best to keep a positive mindset, and to take projects one step at a time, which lessens the feeling of being overwhelmed.

I am happy I have become more familiar with Adobe design programs, which will come in handy in my career in advertising. I know it’s a big thing these days to be well-rounded. God, how I long for the days of martini breaks and smoking in the workplace. Although I would enjoy neither, one must admit they were simpler times.

It seems back then we were allowed to be just writers. Idea people. These days, the writer must also have dabbled in design, in typeface, in everything. After being a jack of all trades, then comes the writing. First prove we can do everything. That is how it seems.

I guess, like journalism, the field of copywriting is a becoming obsolete. I must be chasing a dream again.

But I know the basics of adobe now. I know that the hardest part is turning on the program without a bias towards being overwhelmed. Creativity can be my sword, adobe, my shield. I need to create a proper portfolio soon.

Experiencing this class, I have tested the waters and now can get started.

Inspiration

This is the video I have had my eye on imitating since I came up with my Feature Report Project. The content of this piece is irrelevant. It is three minutes long, has a voice-over, plenty of b-roll, and something almost resembling the interview I need, but not quite.

It’s rhythm is just like a well-written article. How it begins with a close-up, almost an abstract level of a close-up of the waves, with the voice-over starting not with the subject’s name, but building curiosity with an immediate monologue articulating the theme of the video. The slow motion and the music creates an interesting rhythm similar to that I hope to achieve. This Vice mini feature thrives on the ramblings of an articulate person, and uses masterfully to build momentum with the help of some light background music, and has its own climax and what feels like a resolution in the end.

It is simply, in my opinion, superb. This is what I am going for.

Here is Vice’s Moving Portraits, Title Shots: Conor McGregor.

Passion

Tomorrow we are shamefully late in beginning the shooting of what is up until now to be named; “Moving Landscapes,” a mini documentary/feature about the mind and method of the visual artist. The video I envision creating, the overwhelming ambitiousness of it, seems like what a noob mountaineer would probably feel at the foot of Mt. Everest knowing he will have to climb to the top as the leader on his own expedition.
You see, I have never thought of myself as that much of a leader, or in these terms, a director. I always felt more like the talent. Like the Russian Ballet dancers exploited for their ability to stand on their toes so that they go home with oozing, puss-filled blisters gauzed-up in their slippers every night, while getting paid beans.
But in these days, collaboration is everything. And when no one has any ideas, we must be the ones to seek others out for collaboration, and then direct until our vision is achieved. Life is a constant struggle, it seems. It would be sad to die and have struggled with nothing left behind to show for it. This is why the artist’s job, to pass on ever-lasting beauty, is among the only jobs worth my full passion.

This tutorial was what helped me finally get my project exported. I kept getting these 18 second clips, that were from some random portion of one of my sequences. This is a tutorial on how to export media in Premiere Pro CS5, the version I am using from home, which is different from the one at the lab. Hence my struggles. After all the forehead grabbing, I realized it was the little yellow toggle thing that was limiting my video, seemingly arbitrarily, to 18 seconds. My frustrations melted when I figured this one out. Now I’m sitting and waiting for the darn thing to painstakingly export.