Final Project Update 2

My project is... going. There's going to be a lot of work here at the end, but such is life. I was disappointed with the video I shot last Thursday, but I had to leave to attend a rehearsal of my own so I worked with what I had. This Thursday I'm singing in a concert and next Thursday is Thanksgiving, so I can't shoot anything else until the Thursday after that. Luckily, the group is doing a performance that night. So I get to go with a video camera, a photography camera and probably an audio recorder as well. That weekend is going to be busy. I believe we're presenting projects that next Monday and Wednesday in class, and then I can go shoot more that Thursday, which will probably be necessary, before turning in my project Monday morning. I've had a lot of scheduling conflicts, and while I have met with members of the group for outside interviews, there's only so much I can do without the whole group together. I seem to work best under pressure though, so fingers are crossed it will all come together here at the end.

Final Project Update

I'm going on Thursday to shoot some video for my final project that will also work for the video assignment. I haven't had a lot of big issues, the women I've spoken with have been very willing to talk to me, and often talk for much longer than I actually needed. That's ok though, I'd rather have too much than too little. I haven't had the opportunity to shoot many photos. The fact that the group only meets once a week and has cancelled a couple rehearsals since I've been following them has made things difficult. I'll be able to go for a few minutes next week and intend to get some then, but after that I won't be able to go again until after Thanksgiving. I need to get some more audio as well, I've got a really great interview that I'm planning on putting at least part of to a slideshow, and I have lots of audio of the group singing. I may try to get one more audio interview, or I may just use different parts of the same interview for a second slideshow. I'd also like to have a slideshow with just the group singing in the background, no interview. I'll do a video interview tonight and get some B roll, and plan the week after Thanksgiving to go back with more or less any and all equipment I can check out and get as much as possible. I don't want hours of footage to sort through, but I'd hate to feel like I need more when I don't have time for it.

Multimedia Critique: Photographer's Site

For this critique I used the Bottle Bell Photography site. When I first opened it it started with an intro and had a "Skip Intro" button at bottom. Naturally, I clicked it. The home page gave me the option to look at "Portraiture", "Forgotten" or "Moodscapes" galleries. I clicked on the Portraiture button and started the slideshow for it. I could have clicked through them individually or just played the slideshow. I went ahead and let the show play out, I thought it would give me a better idea of the site. While I understand there's a fine line between having a picture on the screen for too long and not having it long enough, I felt like these were much too short. Each photograph had a title, so by the time I'd read the title and actually looked at the photograph, it was starting to change. Especially the pages that had two photographs side by side, I really felt like I was rushed to take it all in, and I'm sure I missed details in the photographs because of it. I did like the layout and color scheme, they fit the mood the photographer was wanting to create quite well, and there were some creative pictures.

http://www.bottlebellphotography.com/gallery.aspx

Lauren Sharp's EPJ Blog~ Multimedia Critique

I looked at the Sedalia Democrat's website for this assignment, viewing their slide show of the local high school's homecoming parade. I do think this was a good way to show some of the pictures taken, because obviously they couldn't put them all in the newspaper. You had the option to just click through the pictures in a gallery-style format, or to click "play" and watch them as a slide show. It did take a few seconds for each picture to load, and because of the picture's position on the page you had to scroll down a bit to see the whole shot. As each subsequent picture came up you had to scroll back down to see it all again, something I found a bit annoying. Also, some of the pictures had captions and others did not. I personally am of the opinion that if you want captions they should be on all of the pictures. I think it looks silly if all of a sudden there's not one, and the first time it happens it confuses me because I think there's something wrong. I was always able to go up and click the "pause" button, and when I did that it would show me the "previous" and "next" buttons. The layout matched the rest of the site (which I find a bit boring, but it's easily readable, navigable, etc), and the images were clear. There was no sound with the show and I think it would have been neat to have some audio of the band/crowd underneath the pictures.

Lauren Sharp's EPJ Blog~ Portfolio Site Critique

For this critique I looked at a couple different sites before I decided to use C.S. Ling Photography, mostly because his site was the one I felt I had the most to say about. He specializes in nature, wildlife and travel. The pictures were awesome, but the website could use some major work. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with portfolio sites, but I found his to be the most difficult to navigate of the sites I looked at. To start, there are no tabs. So when I navigated away from the home page there was no back button to use and no tab at the top for me to click on. I took a guess and clicked on his logo, and that took me back to the main page. Had I not been familiar with browsing the web I'm not sure I would have tried to do that so quickly. Then, there are two line-like option things at the top that allow me to look for pictures using specific requirements. While this could be useful were I needing something that specific, I don't find it very asthetically pleasing to have it right at the top of the page. On the side, at the bottom, even in the middle between two items would be better than right at the top of the page. Again, maybe this is just showing my lack of familiarity with these sites, but I didn't see any others that were set up this way. When I finally got to the pictures and started trying to click through, I had to go back to the main gallery page each time I wanted to change pictures. There were no links on a picture's page to take me on to the next picture. No, it's really not that big of a deal. In the long run it doesn't save me a whole lot of time. But it's something that we, or at least I, have gotten used to being able to do while looking at photos online, and I found it extremely annoying that I had to go back each time. I suppose if I had a mouse it might have been less of a big deal, but since I'm not using one, it mattered to me. He had some neat pictures, but I got frustrated with having to click back and forth each time I wanted to see a new one, making me less inclined to look very far into them.

Media Organization Web Site Critique

I ended up critiquing news352, a Luxembourg website. The first thing I noticed was that it was in French, but the option to change the language was right at the top in large, clear letters. I've done enough surfing of international websites while working at Newsy to know that not all sites have it this big or easy to find, if they have it at all, so I give news352 an A+ in this area. After I could actually read the site, I found the links to be helpful and informative, without overloading me with options. As I clicked through and looked at stories, I found some variations in the way the text was set up on the page that threw me off a bit. On at least one story, the text was in a block formation with no indentations, new paragraphs or line breaks. This could have been a typo, I tried to look for others and most of the rest I saw seemed to be in a readable format. From each page I could go to other pages without using the navigation buttons at the top of my browser window, but from what I could tell they were all the same stories to navigate to no matter what I was reading. Changing them depending on whether I was viewing world news, Luxembourg news, etc, would have made it easier for me to click through more of the site without having to go to the links at the top. The layout of the site was clear and I didn't find the colors (white background, black text, blue banners) to be unappealing or distracting.