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.