Critical+Decisions+and+Commentary

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= = =The Pitch=

The reason I felt that interviewing Maya would be interesting to not only me but my peers, was because she is someone that strives for what she wants by continuously practising painting, drawing and taking photos so that she can improve and reach her goals. I think it helps everyone realise that you cant just get where you want without working towards it. She talks about her struggles and where she finds her inspiration.

=The Planning Process=

To begin this project I first had to think who I wanted to base it around. I knew I wanted to do it as a interview but I needed to find an appropriate subject. As soon as I thought of Maya I knew it would be perfect. The reason being that she is a upcoming artist, who has loved what she has done for many years and is continuously growing in ability. I organised questions that would be good to ask her, this I found hard. I researched a little on artists and what is the best type of questions to ask. From this help I then came up with 14 questions. I then emailed Maya the questions so she has some idea of what I would be asking her, then this meant the interview would flow more naturally. I then met up with Maya over a coffee and completed the interview.

After the interview was completed I then arranged another time with her to look at her artwork and take some photos. I was lucky enough to have gone to her expedition in Port Lincoln where I got numerous photos which were perfect to use. Another visit was then arranged after this as she was completing some Uni homework, and this was the perfect time for me to take a short film of her painting.

Once I had all my photos together I started the Storyboard, when putting this together I felt that I needed some more photos of her actually completing some of the drawings, I contacted her and lucky for me she had several that she could email through to me.

The next stage for me, since the planning was completed was to organise what software I would be using for the editing and completing. I began to edit my audio and put together my photos using Movie Maker on Windows which was on my old laptop. While working on the project about half way through my laptop decided to crash. I lost all my work so then I had to start again. This time I opted for my MacBook, but was rather weary as I hadn't used the software before. Luckily for me I found many different tutorials on the Internet which helped me to use iMovie. I had also chosen to to the editing of the audio in Garage Band as I was familiar with this from the previous project.

=The Editing Process=

This process I found a lot easier, as I was familiar with the program I was using to edit the audio- GarageBand. I began listening to my entire audio which was around 11 minutes in length. I found it rather hard to chose what parts of the interview I wanted to use. To make this process easier I used a copy of my transcript and put lines through what I thought wasn't needed. Once this was completed I then moved onto cutting the sections out using GarageBand. This process was long, as I felt most of the interview was relevant and even though I had cut out all the my talking, the umm and ahhs, pauses and background noises it was still 6 minutes long. After playing with this for hours I finally got it down to just over 2 minutes.

I was quite happy with my recording, but felt that there needed to be some background noise. I wanted something acoustic that would suit the mood. I searched through numerous songs and then remembers the copywrite laws. So I then looked through all the sounds that GarageBand offered, I found an audio clip which I feel was perfect. Once completed I then converted this into my iTunes so it was ready to be put into iMovie to play behind the photos.

To complete my digital story I then used iMovie to place all my photos in the right sequence. To do this I created a storyboard which allowed me to rearrange photos so that they suited what Maya was saying. I then adjusted how long they were played for as some needed to stay up longer then others. Once this was done I then needed to add transitions, this needed alot of playing around with as the lengths needed to be changed so that the effect was noticeable. The final step was to add the interview audio, this was simple to transfer from iTunes to iMovie as it explained it well in the tutorials that I watched. The final step was to watch the whole thing put together and make minor changes where needed. I then uploaded my project onto YouTube which was easy because I already had an account, so I signed in and then uploaded.

=The Final Product and Challenges= Overall I was happy with the final product, considering all the trouble I had with the first laptop. The hardest part for me was cutting down the interview, but once this was done I understood why it was needed. The only thing I would do next time is get the person I am interviewing to speak slower and pause inbetween sentences, as this would make the cutting of the audio a lot easier. I also had many photos that I had taken and that I had received fro Maya, this was also tough to choose what ones I would use as I loved them all! I showed Maya the project and she was very happy with the final product this then made me feel happier with it.

Please click here to see the final product

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