alexishildenbrandt Uncategorized

The Ability To Change Their Life

When a child’s happiness is stripped away from abuse, trauma, or troubling life experiences, it becomes incredibly difficult for them to learn and behave. Parents begin to struggle with how to manage their kid’s tendencies, learning behaviors, and overall demeanor. A Child’s Haven is the hero in this situation. 

A Child’s Haven is a place where children can receive therapeutic care. It functions as a daycare but has onsite therapists who can talk with a child if they have an episode due to anger, sadness, frustrations, etc. Hadley and I are fortunate enough to work with ACH this semester to produce two success stories for them in video format. We both believe that this place can work wonders and benefit these children so much for their lives in the future. 

Success Stories & Vision

Emily Harper, the development and marketing manager for ACH, is who Hadley and I are working closely with this semester. She has communicated their vision to us so that we can make it happen. The goal for the end of the semester is to capture two separate families and their experience with their child being at A Child’s Haven. We have already conducted one interview where we talked with mom, Shantel Ritter, about how this therapeutic child care has helped her son, Jahlil. 

Hadley and I interviewing Shantel

Shantel said in our interview with her:

“I think he is learning how to identify his emotions at this point and how to regulate. He’s learning some coping skills and how to calm himself and self-soothe a little better than he’s ever been before. So it’s amazing.” 

This is the kind of experience that Hadley and I are going to be capturing through interviews and b-roll. We want real, emotional stories paired with heart-warming b-roll of the child learning and practicing the things he or she is being taught.

This is where we will use what we have learned in Design Is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton regarding emotion. We want to really evoke emotion from the viewers so that they might feel led to become a donor or recruit children to the learning center.

“A great story does more than represent emotion from a distance. It makes us feel an emotional charge.”

Ellen Lupton, Design Is Storytelling

I plan on using Don Norman’s three layers of user experience in the creation of these videos as well. Understanding the visceral, behavioral, and the reflective layers of a story can really drive it forward to produce the best thing for your audience.

What’s Next?

As mentioned, Hadley and I have already filmed one interview and collected a small amount of b-roll from an open house event on September 14th. We are going to film all of our b-roll this week to start piecing together the emotional aspect of the stories. Once we have our b-roll, we can create a real plan for the layout of the video even more than we have already done.

Working with A Child’s Haven is an honor. I want to produce the best possible videos we can for them because what they are doing at their facility is going to change the lives of the children who spend time there. I can’t wait to turn these videos into an emotional journey for the viewers to go on.

“Emotions affect the design of anything… The success of a product lies not just in its basic utility but in its meaning in the lives of its users.”

Ellen Lupton, Design Is Storytelling
ejclifton Eleanor Clifton

Creative Content Critiques

Through the course of this class, I had a pleasure to work on and complete two very different projects. One project is a personal project that reflected my bond with my grandmother and the other being a group project that worked with the Furman Reflection committee. Through both projects, I was faced with barriers. Whether that be not being able to express emotion in my writing or working with others. Overall, I am happy where both projects are and how they turned out.

Like all content creators, you can never be fully happy with the end results. I can sit there and nitpick over the smallest details, that to others they cannot notice. In the following sentences are things that I believe could be improved upon to create a better coherent and comprehensive project.

Group Project Improvements

Looking through the videos we created for this, I wish I had more time to refilm some videos. There are some shots that the lighting is overexposed causing a harsh light across the interviewee.

Rish’s Reflection Video

I also wish I could have better B-roll for Rish’s reflection video that reflected his words better.

In Gabe’s reflection video I noticed a section where the music rises over his audio, causing a moment that is hard to hear. We did well with his selection of b-roll! I learned a lot more about video editing through this process because I wasn’t making a video for myself but for a client.

Individual Project Improvements

El James

Through my individual project, I have learned so much about myself. Being pushed to open and expand my writing was something I have never experienced. My writing typically is very clinical and blunt, but for this piece, it needed to be expressive and be able to paint a picture.

Through many trials, I finally was able to produce a piece that I am very proud of! The improvements that I would like to make are having more videos of my grandmother. Whether that be in her garden or in her house cooking, I think it could another level of emotional connection to my reader. All in all, I am very proud of this project, I don’t see myself making drastic changes anytime soon. But if I do, they will be subtle and yet very effective.

Premiere, for most, was a challenge to work with. I like to pride myself that I know the basics of the software. But for these projects, I wanted to elevate them and use more advanced skills. After several trials and fails, I figured out how to create several moving graphics that complimented the videos and brought another level of complexity to the editing.

Overall, I was able to learn a tremendous amount of knowledge that I will use through my next two years at Furman. Through the skills I learned, I am eager to showcase them in other classes and even in the work environment. Growing my portfolio to show that not only can I write press releases, but I can also write heartfelt ones too, makes me a diverse job candidate.

 

 

 

 

 

ejclifton Eleanor Clifton

Projects, Pre-Production, Proposals… OH MY!

Projects.

Projects are what you make of them, you can put maximum effort in and see tremendous results or put average effort in and see average data. The more time an individual works with an idea the better it can be produced and executed. Running simulations and making sure the user experience is something that is both visually appealing and easy to function is a time-consuming task. And this brings me to my current ever-growing and changing project proposal. From a simple travel video to now an idea that encompasses family values and compassion, I have come a long way.

Design Thinking

Initially, I created a travel video of my time in London and Paris with my Grandmother, Bebe, the summer before my freshmen year. Now two years later, I am now revisiting the footage to create something else entirely. The question that is mulling around my head is: How do I create something that already is made? I struggle with reviewing the content I already have because it looks good and it served a purpose… why should I rip it apart? However, I know that the current video doesn’t entirely capture the message I want the viewer to take with them.

So, despite my own creative differences with myself, I am growing and changing my project as I work through it. My current project proposal isn’t something that will be fully finished. I have a very good layout, structure, and an idea of what I want to accomplish. By allowing myself to have a slightly looser proposal, I can creatively design think through the content I have. I am a firm believer that the design thinking process is a crucial part of creating a finished product that aesthetically appealing and functional.

Design Thinking

Inspiration

Creating a long narrative formatted story is something new to me. As I work through the pre-production phase I am encountering ideas that I would like to pursue. But, some of these ideas I find myself lacking the knowledge to produce such a layout. Which isn’t something I couldn’t teach myself or find resources.

An example of such use of advanced multimedia ideas that I would like to incorporate is the NYC Times “Snow Fall” article. The use of multimedia in the article created an in-depth story. It showed the appeal of the powder skiing as well as the danger, reflecting man vs. nature. The author’s use of moving graphics created a very interesting user experience. This is something that I would like to capture in my finished project.

Another consideration with creating a long narrative story and the complimenting video is: what is the overall aesthetics am I trying to target? Throughout the pre-production and proposal phase, I have been color swatching and researching how to convey certain elements visually.

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As a marketer, I like to visualize how others would perceive a finished product. Color, textures, movements, and fonts all go into a finished product (video, website, object, clothing, etc). I look forward to the coming weeks to see where my project will go and what I decide to do on visual aspects.

freyasun Yiwei Sun

Design as Positioning the Present

For 12091km, 23 hours, a plane slithered over the vast Pacific Ocean and took me from China to the United States. Its destination was clearly marked on the map, but what about mine?

Screen Shot 2019-02-12 at 12.32.51 PM

Image from: Google Maps

The Journey

It was definitely not the first time I took an overseas plane like this — after all, I am now a senior at Furman University, an American college — but the experience wasdifferent from my previous trips.

When I spent my four-hour layover at Narita International Airport, I was in the stressful last hours before my graduate school application. I was waiting for the next flight in the lounge and typing random things into my personal statement draft and a surge of lost suddenly came. The surge was condensed into one sad realization of my life: the future was in the fog and so did the past.

Someone said that showing oneself to others is the journey of self-discovery. I agreed with this statement and as I found out, it was also a journey of struggle. I never had that strong feeling of lost again like I did that day in the airport but actually, the thought still lingered in my deep mind even as my applications had finished.

This was why I finally decided to do something with this thought when I pondered for a personal project topic.

A College Student’s Lost in Past and Future? That doesn’t sound like an easy topic for a multimedia project. A good project topic should be both interesting and practical.

During the brainstorming for the project, I listed the unique experiences I have had in the past that might distinguish me from other college students and then the answer was clear. Most of the experiences were linked to my cultural background and my identity as an international student. Hence, I decided my topic as Chinese Students’ Experience at Furman University.

The Turing Machine

Once the topic had been decided, the following planning became a pipeline business. For the project proposal, I set dates for interviews, organized the materials I had, and considered ways to acquire additional materials. It seemed that I had a complete plan for this project.

“But did I?” I asked myself. I was sure, at that time, that something there was something missing in the project. However, I am not sure what it was. I was not content with my project proposal but neither did I intentionally search for the missing stuff — I didn’t even know where to start.

On the one hand, life is full of surprises. My thoughts on this project got advanced when I was doing my homework for another course, Computational Theory. 

A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation that defines an abstract machine, which manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite the model’s simplicity, given any computer algorithm, a Turing machine capable of simulating that algorithm’s logic can be constructed.

— Turing Machine, Wikipedia

turingMachine

Image from: The Excel Turing Machine

I know most people might have never heard of a finite automata or a turing machine, so I would simply put it like this: The biggest difference between a Finite Automata (a functionally limited computing model) and a Turing Machine (an omnipotent computing model) is that the latter has a memory storage and thus, a current state.

I finally found the significance of my project for myself. Memory and recording themselves are valuable enough for the present and with the present, one would not be lost in the past and future.

On the other hand, during the process of studying about storytelling, I more and more recognized importance of design and aesthetics. Now people like to say that being visually appealing is not the only standard for good design and there are much more in arrangements and organizations of other aspects in design but I think for me, I still need to learn more about the basics.