Talent Interview

In an assignment titled, "Someone Talented", we were to find someone with a particularly interesting talent and report on them. This package was more about visually stimulating camera shots rather than news reporting like we had done in the past. For this piece, Team 007 decided to interview Hilary Wehner, who is an extremely gifted clarinet player for the Roger Williams University Pep Band. She also held a major role in composing and writing the Roger WIlliams University Fight Song. Take a look at this video to see more about Hilary and also hear her wonderful musical talent.





Unfortunately, Team 007 suffered while putting this package together. Due to demanding and conflicting schedules, Max was forced to interview Hilary on his own, and also edit the film. Due to these circumstances, our final product suffered as well. However, like James Bond, Team 007 doesn't stay down for long, and we are ready to bounce back and give our next news package "1007%."

Senior Wishes

For our next news package assignment, we were given the topic of "seniors." This was a very broad assignment, so coming up with an idea was a bit challenging. Team 007 and I decided on the idea of "Senior Advice to Freshman: Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Was a Freshman." We decided to keep the same rolls as last time, and I was once again the producer and reporter, while Ben Camobreco played the roll of the camera man, and Max Covill edited the project.

For this news package we chose a beautiful sunny day at Roger Williams, and set up our video camera in the quad between the library and the School of Business. We stopped people who we knew were seniors (and jumped at a few who we didn't know) and asked them the question, "as a senior, what is one thing you wish you knew when you were a freshman?" We got a great mix of answers which included everything from where you can find condoms on campus, to a warning on how fast school flies by. We were even shocked when I asked one senior what he wished he knew, and his answer was "you." I was very thrown off by his answer and obviously began to blush quite a bit.

We interviewed about 14 people, so we could pick our favorite ten responses, and looking back on the completed video, I wish we replaced the clip of me getting hit on. It was very funny at the time and I thought it would add a whimsical feel to the movie, but i think we should have saved it for the "Blooper Reel" instead. Another critique of our news package was with my sign-off. Again, to keep the movie light-hearted, I decided to do a 007 pose when I said "Team 007." We shot two different sign-offs, one with the pose and one without, and we felt that to go along with the fun feel of the movie, we would use the pose. Looking back, it did take away from our professionalism, and should have tried to keep it a bit more serious in places like that.

Team 007 again worked very well together for the assignment. We have been listening to our criticisms in class, and we are taking it all in, and hopefully our movies will continue to improve.

Construction Chaos

Professor Scully broke our New Media class up into groups of three or four people to work on news packages for the rest of the semester. My team consists of Ben Camobreco, Max Covill and myself. For our first assignment I took on the roll of producer as well as the on-camera reporter, Ben was the camera man, and Max was the editor on Final Cut Pro. Our group chemistry was very nice because we were all able to fall into our rolls easily.

For our first news package assignment, Professor Scully asked us to report on Something happening on the Roger Williams University campus. My team (which we named Team 007) decided to report on the construction that is taking place all around North Campus. We chose this topic because it is something that every Roger Williams student sees every day, and the detours and blocked roads lead to a very messy commute to campus.

The current construction that students are seeing now is the underground foundation being put into place for a new dorm that will be located in the area that is currently the tennis courts. Other plans for campus renovation include new north campus classrooms and new tennis courts. The entire project is expected to be completed by the Fall of 2009 and will cost roughly 89 million dollars.

I am very happy with our finished product. For our first news story, I believe we all did a very good job. I especially like our B-Roll which shows images of the construction in every area. The weather was a bit nasty when we decided to shoot my stand-up, but there really wasn't anything we could do about that, but next time we will check the weather report and try to shoot on a nicer day.

Wheaton Tennis Tournament

This afternoon, my tennis team and I took part in the Wheaton Invitational Tennis Tournament. Wheaton College hosts the tournament annually and we have been fortunate enough to have been invited every year. This year was much smaller than previous years, and only four teams were in the draw; Wheaton, Bentley, Holy Cross, and Roger Williams.

This particular tournament is an individual tournament and opposed to a team one. It consisted of three singles matches and two doubles matches. Each player is guaranteed two matches. If you win the first round, your second match was the finals. If you lost your first round, you were put into a consolation bracket. My partner Leah Ribchinsky and I played at the #1 doubles position and unfortunately lost our first match 2-8 to Wheaton. We also lost our consolation match against Holy Cross with a final score of 4-8 (insert loud groan here).

Even though the Hawks didn't do so well today, we still had a blast. Our team is very close, and we always manage to have fun wherever we go.

Playing with Final Cut

While procrastinating writing a paper, I decided to open up my video interview with my coach again and play with Final Cut Pro a bit. I decided to try to add text to the video and I found out it was pretty easy. On the Browser window I clicked on effects, then went into "video generators" and then into "text." I typed in my coach's name and his job title, and put a black background behind it to make it easier to read. I dragged the icon into the window where we put our clips, and it was added into the final video.

I feel adding the text to the movie makes it look a bit more professional and clean. It allows the viewer to see the person's name while they are talking, which is what you typically see on interviews on the news.

Interview with Chris O'Brien

In an assignment given to us by Professor Scully, we were asked to interview a faculty or staff member of Roger Williams University. I chose to interview Chris O'Brien who is the Director of Retention in the Student Advocacy office, and who also happens to be my tennis coach.

Chris O'Brien has been at Roger Williams for five years and has held his position in the Student Advocacy office silmultaniously with coaching both the men's and women's tennis teams. As Director of Retention, Chris helps students who have problems at RWU and points them in the right direction whether the issue be academic or social. Chris has also been an amazing tennis coach in the five years he has been here. After teaching for 11 years, Chris believes coaching is a "horrible bug that you just can't seem get rid of" but it is something that he loves to do and doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon.

Take a look at the video for more of my interview with Chris O'Brien.

Thanks Coach for your time!

Friend Interview With Brad Bolte

For an assignment, we had to interview a friend and post the video. I chose to film my friend Brad Bolte, because I felt he would have a good on-camera personality. He is an architecture major who plays on the men's tennis team, so I felt I could get a good interview with him concerning what it is like to be part of two demanding activites at once.

It turns out Brad was an excellent choice for my interview. He is a lot of fun and always smiles, which is a great attribute to have when being filmed. He looked like he enjoyed being there, which will make people enjoy to watch him on film. Brad is one of my best friends here at Roger Williams, and we always have a blast together, so I figured interviewing him wouldn't seem like homework, but just another fun thing we could do together. Turns out I was right!

Enjoy!

P.S. Thank you Brad for your time! I'll make sure to send this link to all of your family and friends!

First Video... And my face turning red...

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This is my second attempt to upload my show and tell video. It takes a long time to get the final product up on the blog, but hopefully once it works, it will be worth it.

PS. I really hope my voice doesn't sound like this in person.

First Video - Show & Tell

This is my first attempt at using Final Cut Pro. We did a project called Show and Tell, in which I talked about my tennis racquet. Enjoy!

First Video

Last week we had an assignment in which we were asked to shoot about 5-8 minutes on our Flip cameras for a "show and tell." We were to pick something that had a significant impact on our lives and that meant a lot to us, and to talk about it. For this assignment, I chose my tennis racquet. As soon as I heard the assignment, I knew instantly that I would do something with tennis because the sport is such a huge part of my life. My first idea was to bring my flip video out to the tennis courts and shoot a few minutes of me hitting to incorporate into my video and to talk about my racquet over there, but the weather was extremly cold, and I hadn't played in a while, so I decided to just shoot the video in my bedroom.

Shooting the video didn't take very long. I wrote down a few of the topics I was going to cover in my "show and tell" such as the specs of the racquet, and my personal history with tennis. I rehearsed in my mirror for a few minuets to make sure everything sounded right, and then I set up my tripod, and began to film.

Just a piece of advice for those in the class with roommates... Let your roommate know when you are shooting a video for class, and advise them that the reason why you have a tripod and video camera facing your bed, is NOT what they are thinking. That was an embarassing moment.

January 29, 2008

In class today I had a bit of difficulty figuring out how to post a new blog.  It seems that the link you click on is in a different place when you use FireFox, and Safari.  I'm used to using Safari, so when I opened my blog on FireFox, I was thrown off a little bit.  

Also in class today we learned that the more information you use to label your blog post, the easier it is to find when you want to google it.  Everything we post on this blog is information that is available to the entire web community, and anyone interested in my thoughts on what we do in class, can simply search for it and find it!  I'm not quite sure if that's really cool, or slightly intimidating! 

First Post

Day one of using this blog. Trying to figure it out.