Okay, folks!! That's a wrap!!!

As the yellow exporting bar finally reached it's render goal of 100%, I got that feeling that I believe that all creators get when they finnish one of their works. They take a deep, proud breath and breathe a sigh of relief mixed with a sigh of accomplishment. That was me tonight. Seeing that bar fill up and then ding was like music to my ears.

After a month and a half of planning, writing, filming, editing, designing, printing, more editing and waiting, I have finally completed my final product. My film, "Living Life Offline," is finally complete!!
I feel very proud of this accomplishment given the amount of time and the resources I had to work with which was a sparse portion of each as my time was also being shared with other projects and my equipment and financial situation was minimal.

The process to get here though was very difficult and was sometimes, sorry, most of the time very frustrating as there are always unexpected bumps in the progress followed by redoing something that you thought was good but wasn't, to forgetting where certain files were and then staying up all night fixing it and so on and so forth...

But, I still had a great time making this film and if anything, it has confirmed that even though this field isn't easy it is a great feeling to make your vision come true and that makes it all worth it. Plus I actually enjoy shooting and editing so that helps a lot too! I look forward to a future full of creation, inspiration and sharing my visions with the world.

If you're interested in seeing the film, I will write a blog with a link to the Youtube link or you can view it soon on my film's Facebook page

The home stretch

As the date for showcasing our projects nears, I scramble to get everything in order for presentation.

Most of it is assembly work. 98% of the shooting is done along with the editing, audio, motion graphics  and the poster for the film is done.

I plan on doing just one or two more interviews before I wrap this whole thing up since I only have interviews given by younger college aged people and a teenager. I wanted to cover a larger range of age so hopefully my older interviewee has time to answer a few questions for me.

Other than that, I feel like the bulk of the project is done.    
My attention now turns toward working on blogs and and getting things ready for show.

I'm working on organizing my deliverables like my interviewee's signatures and information all filled out and getting ready to work on an online portfolio in a few days. I also will have to set aside some time to get some research information ready for the show.  
Here's where it would have payed to not put them off so long but I'm confident in my abilities to have everything ready for the show. 

Research Update: Getting the facts in place.

The time has come yet again to update you guys on the status of my project and I have some great news: Everything is going well!

I have been busy creating motion graphics for the intro, filming interviews, collecting more research and editing my studio footage. All in all, things are moving along very nicely. 

But to be a bit more in depth, I want to elaborate more on the research I am doing for this project. Due to the the lack of applicable information regarding the creation of ethnographies, that is the video documenting ideas and concepts with facts not playing as much of a roll. Not to say that they don't but they're not as critical to the idea.

The research I am doing for this project though relates to information regarding studies done by universities, software companies and doctors about the media and how it relates to the public on a personal and social level.

One of my sources for the medical side effects related to media.

 So pretty much that means that I'm looking up numbers regarding how many hours a week people spend online, health fallouts branching from an overexposure of media and also information on what kinds of mediums spend a lot of time on. As for the actual information I collected, well, you'll just have to wait and see it in the film which I will eventually provide a link to.

Other than that, there's not too much else I felt like I needed to research. As i stated, most of this project is mostly a collection of a group's ideas and concepts of what they think about my topics of discussion. 

Proof of Attendance: Artomatic Show

For the whole month of October, Jefferson County has it's own art spotlight with the opening of the Artomatic art gallery.  Located in Charles Town at the old Rock & Tile building, the gallery features local artists from around the area ranging from photographers, sculptors, painters and musicians and is open to the general public free of charge, which is why I decided to swing by. The Shepherd University art department also had a presence there with some pieces by students and professors so that was another reason to go.

I went to the Emerge art show earlier in the day so art was still on my mind and I was ready to see some local work and compare works and compare I did.

While I did enjoy some of the works at Artomatic, mostly the Universities' pieces, I felt a definite change in atmosphere in this art environment compared to Emerge and not on a finance level, but on a creative level. The art in Artomatic felt more like a hobby exhibition than an art gallery and Most of the pieces there failed to engage me as the day's earlier exhibition. It may have had something to do with me already have gone to a show, but in terms of concept, composition, creativity and execution, the works were a bit lacking.

Most of the artists were local and a bit older in years so the whole thing had that feeling of a social art hangout spot for them to meet, share their works and maybe, just maybe sell a piece to a casual art collector looking to spice up their place, which isn't a bad thing. It's just not what I was expecting from an art gallery.

Overall, I didn't have a bad time, but I would have loved to have seen some more interesting, contemporary work.

The show will be held every weekend until october ends, so If you want to experience some casual art or take the family out, then this is a great event and if you are a serious artist, don't pass it up because art is still art. It may not be next level, but where there is creative energy, there can be inspiration.
 

Proof of Attendance: Emerge Art Show

Once a year in Washington D.C. there is an art show called, "Emerge,"

and it features some of the nations finest contemporary independent and gallery artists.

I was able to attend this event along with fellow students a few weeks ago and it was truly a wonderful experience. The event was held at a hotel and from the parking garage to the restrooms on the 2nd floor almost every area of it was chalked wall to wall with work from different artists.  

In the brief 2 hours thatI was there I must have seen over hundreds of paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations from artists all across america. 

From chandeliers in the swimming pools, to beautiful paintings made from oil and silk, the amount of variety in the artist's creations were both fascinating, provoking, and inspiring.

As stated in an earlier blog, I mentioned that the more art I see the more inspired I am and that still rings true in this case. In fact, I saw so much great art that by the end of the day I had a bit of a headache from all the pieces and it took me the rest of the evening to process it all before I finally was able to rest my mind. 

Emerge was definitely worth the time and money to attend and I highly recommend that artists and art lovers attend this event next year and partake in the great joy of contemporary art.   

Film Progress: A few quick tests, mistakes and rain that wont go away.

Planning the film is complete and production has begun. So to start, I decided to run some microphone tests, white balance tests and focus tests. It's a good thing that I did all of these because they were all things that if I had just started filming could have ended disastrously. 

So after an hour or two of film tests, I was confident the quality of the shots I was getting. But then it started to rain. Now I'm glad I wasn't outside filming today, but it still managed to disrupt my filming schedule by raining just loud enough to where it could be heard on my audio.  

Normally rain is cool. Not today.

  

While I could deal with that later on in post, I want to make sure that my audio has great quality because having a clean sound is just as important as having great shots. With luck, I can get a lot of filming done over these next few days to bring me back on track with my schedule.

I do recognize that I’m producing this work on a fairly short time base (a little more than two weeks) but I am very determined and I plan on working very hard during this time to produce something to the best of my abilities and hopefully everyone who watches it will agree with me! 

Proof of Attendance: La Vie en Rose showing

Usually french films are not something I am too interested in, but with some persuasion and the possibility of some snacks, I decided to attend the showing of, "La Vie en Rose," a movie about a french girl who who went from a hard life on the street to becoming a famous singer riddled with drug abuse problems, illness and marital affairs.

 The french class at shepherd was hosting this showing above the rams den and was giving their students credit for attending. So including myself, Zachary Waters and people from that class, there was a huge crowd of about 12 people watching this film.

After a 2 hour run time, the movie finally ended. If you haven't guessed already, my opinion of the movie was not one of positivity. While it did have a few elements I liked such as the story and the acting, I had a lot of issues with the technical executions within the film like shaky footage, confusing flash forwards and flashbacks and just an overall long run time that I feel could have been condensed.
So while this experience was not the most amazing, I still got the chance to try something new and kept an open mind about so it wasn't a bad time after all.