There's A First Time For Everything.

The iMovie project was an interesting experience because it caused quite a bit of meltdown and frustration on my end. It was also a multitude of firsts for me; I have never shot videos with intentions to create a message out of it, nor am I familiar with iMovie and making/editing films in the program. Overall, I feel the message I wanted to convey through my project was successfully interpreted and I am proud of the outcome despite all of the issues along the way.

Before I began shooting for the project, I sat down and made a list of what it means to me to be a Buffalo State communications student. Sleepless nights, LOTS of coffee, textbooks upon textbooks, constantly keeping up to date on current news issues, social media, and typing, typing, typing! Once I had my list gathered I started to think how I could represent these things so that the viewer knew my message was that being a BSC communications student is no cake walk, but instead very, very stressful. I found a way to do that through the self-portraits, the music, and the video effects used in the movie.

Shooting was complicated at first because of having to adjust lighting and where I was shooting something in order to make the shot usable and better looking than just shot in a few seconds. I also have never filmed anything with the intention of making it movie worthy so I had to develop my shots so they would look well in my project and represent a message.

My next issue was how to transfer my video files from my Surface tablet to a Mac computer. At first, I tried to send them via an email attachment but that would not work. Next, I tried to transfer them via an adapter but those were too expensive. Finally, I was able to figure out how to transfer the files onto a flash drive and upload them to a Mac laptop to edit them through iMovie.

Once my files were transferred I had to learn how to operate iMovie, it is a program I was never familiar with. Once I watched a tutorial and I realized it was similar to Windows Movie Maker, I was able to navigate much better. I wanted my movie to have a dream quality to it, so when I was picking out my effects I used a lot of the Romantic and Old-Fashioned filters. Also, I slowed down many of the frames to depict the feeling of dragging on or drawn out time. Having to add in audio was helpful because the audio I used for my project I felt enhanced the feeling I was trying to develop in my project.

Throughout the entire creation and development process I continued to go back to how the viewer would see this movie. I knew the points I wanted to get across but would the viewer understand that as well? That was a continuous thought in the back of my mind.

The most awkward part of filming had to be filming myself for the project. I was not comfortable with being in front of the camera and I also felt very awkward acting a part. But when I placed it in the film it helped develop the message I wanted to portray which made me feel less self-conscious.

The iMovie project was very stressful and probably aged me about 5 years but I feel confident with what I created and I feel this project was a great learning experience in developing videos and creating videos that portray something that needs to be interpreted through something other than print or photographs. Creating a video allowed me to steer the viewer into any direction I wished them to be in. With a photograph the audience can infer what is happening, what the message tone is, and what the author is trying to portray. I feel this project was a good learning experience to show that what you make is 100% up to the creator and really allowed me to step out of my comfort zone by forcing me to make a short clip that portrays a meaningful message. Anyone would be able to throw movie clips together but to make them have meaning and allow the reader to grasp that by watching it made me feel proud of my project.

I feel that if I had more time and resources I could have really enhanced the quality of the video, but as far as first takes go I would say mine was pretty successful!