video....

I can not remember a time when I was more annoyed than I am right now. Editing has sucked the life right out of me. Taking the videos was fun. I love the idea of sequencing, and combining or splitting shots. After taking the videos, I soon realized why editing is such an important step. When you go out and shoot, everything comes out really choppy. In order to get the best quality, I noticed that my videos had to be short. The longer the video, the worse the quality and the harder it is to work with. However, the beauty of editing is that your viewer never has to know that your videos were ever choppy. By the time you publish it, your video is this solid, smooth story that simply rolls across the screen. Or at least that is how it is supposed to be.

Not for me. Not tonight. I have been trying to fiddle with my computer for about 5 hours. At this point in my life, if moviemaker never existed, in my opinion the world would be a much happier, less violent place. For some reason, the videos I took do not function properly once they are placed into the storyboard. It is as though the video can not keep up with the sound, and it looks more like a slideshow of still photos than it does a video. It aggrevates me. It aggrevates me because it works right above the story board when you double click on it in the collection screen, but not on the storyboard (where it actually matters). In a state of complete frustration, I took my camera and went to three different mac computers to see if it would work in Imovie. Nope. The computers would not even allow me to upload the material. So, I tried it again on a PC cluster computer in the libarary, but they do not have the proper editing tools. Therefore, I decided to simply upload it the way it stands on my computer. I have about an hour of video cut down to three minutes, and it would be pretty good if it actually worked, but it does not. And, to top it all off, it has been uploading to youtube for about 30 minutes and the upload is at zero percent. If you ask me, it is way less stressful to get an article done by deadline than it is a multimedia presentation. I mean, technology can really knock you down (emotionally and sometimes even physically.... trust me).

As for Fred Fields presentation, I really enjoyed it. It was nice to see all of his pictures and to hear from a professional how to approach people. There is something reassuring to know that even sometimes professionals can get nervous on the job. I feel as though I got some really great examples, heard a few really great stories and learned a lot about what makes a good photo. I also liked how he tried to get the class involved and to see what things we were interested in. Overall, it was a solid experience.