Living in DC

Our newest independent video assignment was to create a video between 60 and 90 seconds that shows what it is like to live in this area.  We also had to make sure that there is background noise, like people talking.

On Sunday, January 20, the day before the inauguration, my family and I went into DC for the day.  Even though I don't exactly live in DC I thought it would be pretty cool to film this assignment there.

The day we went had perfect weather.  It was sunny and around 60 degrees.  I tried to capture some of the pre-inauguration excitement.  There were all sorts of people walking around, talking about their plans for the next day and everyone was really friendly - and they were all there for the same reason which sort of created a kind of invisible bond between everyone.

Anyways, I edited this video on wevideo.com which has pretty good editing for a free online site.  I turned down the sound from the clips I filmed because you could hear the wind and such, but no worries Mr. Mayo, you can still hear people talking.  I also decided to add some music which I got directly off of wevideo.  They provide it for their users to use in their videos.  And the music I added doesn't even drown out the sound of people talking!

I hope you like my video (as always, its a bit jumpy and stuff - I haven't quite figured out all that stylistic stuff yet.)

*The first person you can hear singing is James Taylor practicing.  During the merry-go-round scene you can also hear a recording of Bruce Springsteen that was playing through the jumbotrons. 

Challenges of Making a Documentary

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on how we are making a documentary for our media class.

Well, at first I thought this would be really easy - an interview with our principal on she choose for our school to have a closed lunch, what some students think, and some interviews with the stores that agreed not to sell food to students during school hours.  Throw in some B-Roll (secondary footage) of kids eating lunch and the Woodmoor area (the place near our school with all of the restaurants), and, wa-la! we would have an A+ op-doc.

Unfortunately, this is not the case (as you've probably already figured out).  We were on a roll when we got our interview with the principal talking about the policy and her decision (and she agreed to a really good idea we had which I'll come back to later) and the head security guard who came up with the idea of not having businesses sell to students during the school day.  We even got some really good interviews with students.  Things started going downhill for us when our idea (which I mentioned before) didn't work out.  Our idea was to try to leave campus and see if the security guards stopped us and then continue on to Woodmoor to see if the businesses really didn't serve us food.  Our principle said that our idea was great, as long as our teacher came with us (which he agreed to) and we had parental permission (which we did).  On the day we planned to execute our plan, we found out that our vice principal had said no to the idea.  Not only were we disappointed because we wouldn't be going out for lunch, but that was going to be a major part of our documentary.  Then, later that day when we tried to interview the business owners and managers after school, they wouldn't agree to go on camera and we were not allowed to film in the stores.  I get that they want to keep their privacy but those were all going to be important parts of our video.

We are currently making a new plan for our video (we did write down the interviews with the managers) so we can just do voice overs of those but our documentary won't be all that we hoped it to be (I hope this isn't a regular occurrence in film/documentary making).  I think we'll be able to pull it all together and still have a great documentary though!

I think we're going to be done sometime in February so I'll be sure to post it on my blog then!

This is the Woodmoor shopping center near our school.  They have a Starbucks, Chipotle, Subway, a delicious deli, a bakery, and a bunch of other restaurants.

Image Source:  Woodmoor Shopping Center

Change Project

This year, we have a year long project called the change project.  I guess it technically started in the summer when we had to write a proposition for what we wanted to do for it.

Basically, this project requires us to find a way to instill change in our community.  I originally was hoping to do something relating to healthy eating and nutrition but my group (if you look on the right side of my blog there is something that says "Change Project."  If you click on one of those tabs you can go to my group members' blogs) and I instead decided to try to do something relating to books and a library.

We decided that since we obviously are not able to build a library we should expand one.  We contacted Children's Hospital in DC and they agreed to work with us.  Them agreeing was really exciting because it was the first major step in our project that was completed.

The hospital can only take new books though, so instead of doing a used books drive as well as purchasing new books we had to find a way to raise enough money to purchase enough books to actually make a difference in their library.

We had a bake sale at an event at our school one night, and although there was another group there having a bake sale as well we still managed to make a ton of money.  After asking for donations we got even more.

Then, we got really lucky when we contacted Scholastic Books, a book program that we have become familiar with throughout our time in school.  Anyways, with Scholastic we found a really amazing deal where we can get 50 books for $50.  With the amount of money we have raised there is going to be a huge difference in the hospital's library.

So the reason I finally thought to do a post on our Change Project is because we plan on ordering the books sometime this week.  Hopefully it all works out! 

 

This is just a picture of a library in general, not the one we are donating to.

Image Source:  Children's Section