A video editing project produced in 2020, highlighting a DJ’s big day

My mental movie was created on Adobe Premiere Pro. The video takes you through the day of a DJ and the biggest day of his life. He’s headlining a massive festival and he starts the day by going through his music making sure everything is done and prepared. He takes a nap to get some rest before the show and ends up sleeping longer than he wanted to. After he wakes up, he freaks out and rushes to the festival. He ends up making the show and kills his performance. 

I chose this day because it relies heavily on the use of music and sound effects to emphasize emotions and what’s going on. I started the video out with ‘No Sleep’ By Martin Garrix playing. This progressive house song is a very upbeat feel good type of song with the lyrics talking about taking risks and living out your dreams. That message gives off a perfect feeling for the entire video. I used a low “dun-dun” sound effect at the moment I got the text from my manager asking where I was. The sound mixed with the shocked expression I had on my face did a perfect job of capturing what was going on in my head without actually having to say anything. Hectic, “in a rush” type music played afterwards as I hurried out of the door to hustle to my show. After I got to the show, I ended the video with No Sleep playing again, indicating that I made it and am living my dream. Music does an amazing job of showing emotions and setting the mood.

All the steps of design thinking are being used in our emoji project. I watched a video on design thinking and it used a taco party as a metaphor for design. It actually did a good job of explaining the process and helped me with the steps I want to go through for my emoji. It talked a lot about being able to adapt and change your design as you go along depending on what would fit the situation/audience best. It also talked about just because you may like the design, someone else might not and you have to be ready to make changes mid process.

The steps in design thinking are empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. For my project, I will be empathizing with the sports community. The community within sports  that may not be fully represented to their full ability or not as well compared to others. The sport I’ll be looking at is american football. While there is already a football emoji that’s the only one that exists. For other sports there are multiple emoji’s with humans interacting with sports. Such as playing basketball, golf, volleyball, swimming, fencing, wrestling, etc. The definition of my emoji will be a human interacting with a football by either catching or throwing it. For ideate I’m going to come up with multiple different sketches and rough drafts of what I want my design to look like. They will each be unique if their own way and differ from one another while maintaining the same theme and message. After I come up with several different ideas and sketches, I’m going to choose three of them and use them as prototypes to see if they would be the best fit for a final design. After talking with Richard and my friends about my few prototypes I’m going to choose a final design to test and create into my emoji.

Some hard dates I’d like to set for myself are by 4/3 I want to have several sketches completed of different ideas. By 4/8 I want to have my three prototypes I will have narrowed from my previous sketches. And by 4/17 I will have my final design ready to be shared and presented.

Media Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAhpfFt_mWM

We live in a world where it’s so easy to steal someone else’s work and take credit for it as your own. As shown in the video we watched in class, “Copyright Criminals” there was lots of controversy surrounding “sampling” a sound. Famous drummer, Clyde Stubblefield, was involved in a lot of sampling as artists used his signature drum lines in their songs. As many times as it was used, Clyde wasn’t getting paid a single penny for any of it. This was just one example of artists taking another artists credit and putting it in their own music. Sampling is extremely common in rap music to this day. Big names such as Drake, Kanye, Kendrick and many others still sample other music. It’s not as big of a deal as it was because it’s easier today to give credit to those artists. It’s also easier to find the sample being used because the search system we have with the internet now can find almost anything.

I actually have some personal experiences that relate to this subject. Over the past few months I’ve been getting seriously into DJing and producing music. After doing lots of reading and watching videos teaching myself, I’ve learned that big time producers in the music industry, such as Metro Boomin, DJ Mustard, Skrillex, etc. use samples of other beats/songs in their own. I’ve watched a video on how Metro Boomin produces some of his beats and he takes a snippet of another beat (giving credit to it) and cuts it up and edits the pitch of it and turns it into his own version of the beat.

I use a music editing/making software called audacity that allows you to cut up different sound clips and create your own sounds with them using the original as a sample. I’ve made a couple songs and tried to post them on Soundcloud, however only one of them posted while the other one keeps getting taken down for copyright. I looked in the Soundcloud copyright settings and am still unsure as to why one posted while the other didn’t.

Music isn’t the only thing that can be taken down for copyright. Almost anything you curate and put on the internet can be such as images, videos, articles, etc. As talked about in Chapter four of Lessig’s book, using content without the permission from the original content creator, it is seen as piracy.

In order for a digital content creator to best bring together digital archiving, rights and curation, certain guidelines need to be made and followed to ensure they’re not crossing any copyright/piracy lines. The legitimacy of one’s work is very important. In terms of music, any sample being used should be written in the information about the song, and should be talked about in any video, just like Metro Boomin did. For any sort of image/video/article being used, some sort of citation needs to be present. Whenever you’re taking someone else’s work for your own, the permission of use from the original creator should be required. If a digital content creator can follow these guidelines, they shouldn’t be running into problems such as copyright taking down they’re content, or even a legal case coming up in the future.

In order to successfully run a digital cooperation that uses data analysis responsibly, certain guidelines need to be met and followed.

Based on the information and discussions we’ve had the last few weeks in class, data can be displayed in many different ways. You can record data for almost everything in the world. From the amount of time you spend in front of a TV screen, to the number of steps you’ve walked in a day. Data is everywhere and can be very interesting, however, it can also be very scary. The way technology is set up now with social media, google searches, downloads, etc., people can track what you’re looking at without you even knowing. There may be information out about yourself on platforms that you had no idea were there. From my personal experience, I get suspicious of certain sites I’ve been on. I might be looking to buy a pair of shoes on Amazon, then ten minutes later be scrolling through my Instagram feed and see several ads “randomly” pop up for different shoe sales. It’s come to the point where it happens so often now I’m not surprised by it and I expect it. But, data analysis shouldn’t be looked at as scary, it can be an amazing thing that tells a lot in the correct way if following these guidelines.

In order to protect privacy of the consumer, the digital cooperation should have a detailed settings page that clearly shows the user what information they’re putting out. The settings should also come with a private setting that allows for only selected users to view the information being put out. If the user would like, they can switch the setting to public allowing everyone to see. There should also be a block user feature that allows for others to not even be able to see certain profiles. The settings/privacy page will offer a lot to the consumer and make them feel more comfortable with using any app.

The consumer should have lots of control over their data as well. They should be able to choose what data they’d like to put out and what they don’t want to put out. If the cooperation wants to be responsible they shouldn’t secretly be giving out any information that wasn’t warranted by the consumer. Once data is put out there, the consumer should have the ability to take it down as well. Data shouldn’t be stored forever unless they want it to be. Once the data is taken down by the consumer, none of the data should be stored anywhere except with the user to put out again if need be. While it’s extremely difficult to take something off the internet “forever” due to others being able to record the data and put it out to a third party before it gets taken down, the option to take it down forever should be made available.

The internet and data analysis can be a complicated thing with how advanced technology is now. There can be lots of misunderstandings and misconception, however if run appropriately, data tracking can be a great tool for many people. Since the start of class, I have learned much more about data and data tracking than I had previously known before. I have also learned about new technologies that are shaping our future today. I believe data analysis will play an important role with the growth of our society in the future and I’m excited and curious to see where it takes us.

Culture and Technology have a very close relationship. Culture impacts technology and vice verse. In today’s world there are countless different cultures and technology is rapidly improving by the minute. I watched an interesting Ted Talks video on a UCLA professor named Ramesh Srinivasan, where he spoke about how the two impacted each other.

Srinivasan believed that different culture’s use different technology, and particular cultures see the same technology differently. He used an aboriginal map as an example, saying the map means a lot to aboriginal people but non-aboriginal people have no idea what it means. He also talked about a piece of Zuni pottery that’s being displayed in a museum in England. The pottery is displayed as a “Lump of concrete” by the museum, however if a Zuni were to look at it, the pottery tells stories about their culture and means significantly more. The different views allow technology to evolve over time. Srinivasan states, “When different forms of knowledge meet, it can be very powerful… Being able to inform one another can lead to many discoveries.” I agree with this statement, and I believe that this creates many forms of data collection and analysis. For example, a stat that’s being kept track in the United States may be the fast food restaurant that makes the most profit every month. However, in places in the world with greater poverty, that might not be a stat that’s being kept track of at all.

In the Ted Talk, Srinivasan stated that approximately five out of the seven billion people in the world have some sort of mobile phone or access to one. Approximately 2-3 billion of those people have access to the internet. The way people in other cultures use their cell phones and internet access may be different to how I would use it. Social media isn’t a big thing in some cultures, where as it’s taken over in the U.S. It’s rare nowadays to run into someone not having at least Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Especially within the youth. The reality is though, that in other places in the world, there are kids that have never even heard of these apps let alone having them.

It’s much easier to collect data and statistics now than decades ago as well. When I think of stat collection, I think of professional sports leagues and mainly the NBA. In today’s world, there are stats being kept for everything. Dribbles per minute, number of passes to a certain player, you name it, there’s probably a stat for that. Back in the day, the world didn’t have the technology to keep such detailed stats like they can now. Due to the constant improvement of technology and different cultures wanting to advance in different things, there will always be room for development and bettering technology and data collection tools.

The link to the Ted Talk I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo8iNn2CCE4

I enjoyed this class throughout the whole year. I believe I learned a lot and am a lot more comfortable in my multimedia storytelling skills. My favorite project for the semester has to be the logo design project. While every project we did included creativity, I thought the logo took the most creativity. I liked how I was given the opportunity to make any logo design I wanted that I believed would fit my site topic. I also enjoyed using Adobe Illustrator the most. I am more of a visual learner and love creating artistic designs. This project fit what I liked perfectly. There were also many tools on Illustrator that allowed me to expand my creativity and create lots of different designs. If I didn’t like how something looked, I could easily change and tweak it to my desire.

I learned a lot of multimedia storytelling skills. I enjoyed the format of WordPress and found it extremely easy to use which was helpful. Being able to create media for other people to view is a valuable skill to have. It lets you display to people what you have in your mind. I’m not completely sure what I would like to major in just yet, but I know if it has anything to do with this class, I am a lot more prepared and confident now than I was.

Like I just said, I’m not completely sold on my career path at the moment. Multimedia content and design is absolutely something I will consider more seriously now after taking this class. All the practice we had with the different Adobe Softwares helped me better understand the class and I can apply those skills I learned in the future. The tutorials for each software helped a lot with getting used to the programs. If I come across having to use those programs again in the future I’ll be very confident in myself and my ability to create high quality content.

There isn’t really anything I wish that we had covered in the class. My expectations were met and I couldn’t have asked for much more out of the class.

I used Google multiple times during each project to look up and remind me how to do simple things in each shortcut. We learned a lot in the tutorials so there were times I forgot how to make a simple edit. After I Googled it, I quickly found what I was looking for. My memory started to remember everything from the tutorials as well. Other than Google, I didn’t use any other sites to help me very much.

Overall, I’m more than happy I decided to take this class. I had originally not signed up for Com210 in my schedule. After doing more research on the different classes WSU had to offer, I found myself really interested in taking Com210. I talked with my Academic Advisor and was able to fit it in my schedule. I’m glad I was able to make that change and hope the skills I learned will come up again in my life.

For my Final Video Story, I made a compilation of videos I’ve taken myself at live concerts and music festivals I’ve been to. I have plenty of videos so choosing which ones I wanted to include were tough. After I selected them, I emailed them to myself so I could import them into Adobe Premiere. I put each clip into the visual section, one after the other and added video transitions into each switch to a new video. Once I got enough footage to fulfill the time requirement, I started recording my voice on my phone. I recorded an intro, conclusion and a talk over each new artist/video clip.

Once I got my voice recordings, I put them over each clip and muted the video during the time span I was talking. The razor tool was crucial for this step. I used this tool to split the video clip into two sections. One section where I was talking over it and the other where I wasn’t talking. This allowed me to mute only the part of the video I was talking over. This created no conflict between the audio from my voice and the audio from the video.

For my final draft, I had to delete my previous audio recordings and record new ones. This was because the quality was extremely poor and it was hard to understand what I was saying. I’m extremely glad I recorded new audio clips because they’re much easier to understand now on my final draft. Since there were new audio clips being added, I had to use the razor tool to readjust where I wanted to split my video clips. This was necessary because I needed to adjust where in the video it should be muted to not conflict with my voice. I also added text over each new video clip into my final draft. This text consisted of the artists name. I liked this touch as it gave another visual to look at over the video. One thing I spent a lot of time trying to do was make the videos fit to the whole screen. I had lots of difficulty doing so because of the way I filmed the videos on my phone. Unfortunately I couldn’t fix this because I recorded these videos a long time ago. While they don’t fit the whole screen I’m still happy with how my project turned out and can still see all the videos clearly.