Questionnaire.How is the course format? I enjoyed the format of this course. I appreciate when teachers allot class time to work on assignments - rather than overloading us with work to do outside of class. I also like that there were no grades on Canvas - simply completion marks. At first, it was unclear to me if we'd get a letter grade for this class or receive a pass/fail, though. I could've simply been distracted when you went over this, but I think making that more clear would be beneficial to students in the future. How was journaling every week? At first, I thought the blog posts were pretty tedious. After reflecting on them, I realized they were very helpful for this final assignment and for recognizing my growth as a creative. What will happen to your site? This is my professional website, so I will leave everything as is. I'm glad I finally have some blog posts so potential employers can see how I write on a day-to-day basis. How did you grow as a creative? I grew tremendously. I'm so thankful I learned new platforms! Prior to this class, I'd never used InDesign, Canva or PremierePro. I really enjoy all three and I know this knowledge with benefit me in my future PR classes and career. Final Thoughts.I wanted to say THANK YOU, Croom! In the midst of such a high-stress semester, I always enjoyed coming to your class. I'm not going to lie, PremierePro did give me a little anxiety, but now I'm confident in that platform. Thank you for caring for your students this semester and always asking us how we were doing. I've really appreciated your guidance!
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Blog Post Reflection.Croom advised us to reflect on our blog posts from this semester to get inspiration for our final projects. I'm really excited about the final project, by the way. We get to choose from nine different media to create content that reflects on the most important lesson(s) we learned this semester. While reading through my early blog posts, I was actually kind of impressed. When I wrote them, I didn't think they were written that well at all. But, looking back, I actually liked how they sounded. I could really hear my own "voice." Sadly, as we got further into the semester and life became more stressful, my posts became less personal and lacked voice. If I could go back, I'd spend more time on these by adding more entertaining elements. From reading my posts, I realized my top two favorite platforms were InDesign and Canva. I've only ever worked with InDesign in this class, so I'm wondering if it would come back to me naturally if I decided to use it to create my final project. I also noticed I have some good Photoshop tips in my post from Feb. 23, which could come in handy if I decide to use Photoshop for my project. I decided I'm proud of how my direct mailers turned out. I put a lot of strategy into creating them, and I think they're pretty appealing. Through my reflection, I also updated some improper grammar and weird sentences in (basically) every post. I should have proofread more... Final Project Brainstorming.My worst quality (indecisiveness) is eating at my right now. I'm having trouble deciding what medium to use for my final project ... So, I'm resorting to a pros/cons lists. InDesign Pros:
Canva Pros:
Stop Motion (Stop Animation Video) Pros:
The Verdict.
4/25/17Croom had something unique planned for class today. Instead of working on our Premiere Pro video projects, he organized a guest speaker for us. We heard from Kacie Kinney, who is a local realtor and Gaylord College alumna. She talked about how she uses her Gaylord College PR skills in her realty career. The most important lesson I learned from Kacie was about the importance of differentiating your "nature" skills from your "nurture" skills. In other words, every person is born with skills that they just have - skills that they're good at and always will be. These are your nature skills. On the other hand, everyone has those skills they want to be good at, but they take a lot of work to refine. These are your nurture skills. This lesson stood out to me because as I'm thinking about what career path I want to pursue, I should really focus on finding something that combines my nature skills with my interests. Kacie said she likes to have a 70-30 balance in life: 70 percent of the time doing things that come naturally and are enjoyable, while the other 30 percent is spending time doing things that she isn't as good at and aren't as fun - but necessary in order to grow as an individual. Another thing Kacie talked about had to do with career goals. She said, "Everyone's ultimate goal is to help people." I want to find a career that I enjoy and truly benefits others daily. 4/27/17I worked on my video for several hours before class. I got everything done, except the stabilization of some clips. I finally got the hang of Premiere Pro! It took a lot of trial and error (and watching YouTube tutorials), but I'm proud of my work. One thing I am disappointed about is my footage. I wish I had more time to get better, more stable footage and B-roll. I also wish I could have gotten more B-roll to coordinate with the interview content. This week we began constructing our two-minute interview videos using Premiere Pro. On Tuesday, Croom walked us through a few tips and tricks. For instance, we learned how to apply adaptive noise reduction to audio clips using Adobe Audition. The cool part about the Adobe Creative Suite is the changes saved in Audition can be easily transferred over to the project in Premiere Pro simply by clicking "Save."
In Premiere Pro, Croom taught us how to stabilize videos. Since stabilizing takes a long time to process, it's important to only stabilize necessary footage (instead of the entire clip, which could take days). On Thursday, we worked diligently to edit our projects. Our videos were originally due Tuesday before class, but Croom could tell we were all stressed out with school and gave us an extension until Thursday at 1:15 p.m. (And the favorite teacher award goes to...) We will continue working on our video projects next Tuesday and Thursday, but I'm definitely going to allot some extra time next week to perfect it. On Tuesday, we visited "The Cage" in Gaylord and checked out some really nice (and expensive) Nikon D7100 cameras. The kind man working there walked us through how to use them. We learned about attaching microphones, how to focus them and how to capture videos. Between Tuesday and Thursday, my group and I individually composed our interview questions. On Thursday, we met in class for a few minutes and then went off to film. Brian, Rachel and I made our way to the second floor of Gaylord to conduct our interviews. We found an appealing group of chairs outside of Lindsey + Asp. Since we are the only group with three members, we only conducted two interviews. Each of us will use the footage we like best to create our two-minute videos using Premiere Pro. First, we set up the cameras, tripod and microphones. It took us a little bit to get the audio working, but we eventually figured it out. (Really glad we tested it). To start, I interviewed Rachel about her OU experience. I was in charge of the Nikon camera, while Brian videotaped from another angle with a handheld camera. After we got seven minutes of footage for Rachel's interview, we moved the cameras and chairs around, and she interviewed me. Rachel asked me about my perceptions of OU and Gaylord College. After we wrapped up my interview, we walked around Gaylord to film some B-roll. When we finally made it back to the classroom to look at our footage, we realized my footage of Rachel's interview was 100 percent blurry (hence the title of this post). Croom showed me how to focus the lens (that auto switch really comes in handy), and we went to find another spot to re-do her interview. Cameras are tricky! |
Sami CanavanI'm a public relations junior and Italian minor at the University of Oklahoma. This is my journey through Public Relations Publications. Archives
May 2017
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