Digital Story 2 reflection

I began my second digital story with a very strong desire and a VERY specific outcome in mind. Well, that all went out the window when the plans did not go the way I had hoped!

The Best Laid Plans....
My intentions for my second digital story for this KA were grand, and NOT as well planned out as I had hoped. One must always remember to have a back up plan in the world of production. In my case I had planned on going to the Democratic Party of Orange County's presidential election coverage and video taping the evening, focusing on a few specific people, and following their emotional roller coaster as the evening progressed.
What transpired was an error in communication leaving me with NO required press credential to film inside the event, and thus NO ability to create my planned project!! I was very upset, and completely unsure of what the hell I was going to do. Never to back down from a challenge I decided to video tape myself throughout the election night and document my personal roller coaster of emotions as the evening's events unfolded.

My Story Core:
The principle core of my story was simple, too simple in hindsight. The problem was my fears of losing the election, having no faith in the system, and losing my faith in my country. The transformation began to occur throughout the night as the election results came in. However, there was a good amount of tension-release and tension-renewal throughout the evening and the process. In the end the ultimate transformation came with the Obama victory, and solution being my renewed faith in the system, government, and my country, as well as a new hope for a better future.

My intentions for my second digital story for this KA were grand, and NOT as well planned out as I had hoped. One must always remember to have a back up plan in the world of production. In my case I had planned on going to the Democratic Party of Orange County's presidential election coverage and video taping the evening, focusing on a few specific people, and following their emotional roller coaster as the evening progressed.
What transpired was an error in communication leaving me with NO required press credential to film inside the event, and thus NO ability to create my planned project!! I was very upset, and completely unsure of what the hell I was going to do. Never to back down from a challenge I decided to video tape myself throughout the election night and document my personal roller coaster of emotions as the evening's events unfolded.

My Story Presentation:
Having taken an Apple Final Cut Pro certification editing course I felt as if I was truly ready to utilize the editing to make this a special piece. I utilized the video diary as the primary video, and cut it into segments with narrated video and still clips. The video diary segments was the footage as it happened on election night in November 2008. The interlaced segments were a combination of still images and video clips I felt would provide dramatic support to the overall piece. I intended for this piece to be a very dramatic and powerful expose into my experience that night. I do feel that the diary footage is powerful and well supported by the cut in materials.

The Outcome; The Best Laid Plans.....Again:
All the best laid plans don't always work out. In my case I don't think this digital story had the same impact as my first story did. I believe it is good at best, maybe just okay, maybe mundane and boring at worst (I know I should probably not bash my own work, especially when it is counting towards a grade and me making SAP, but I want to remain honest here)!! I believe the piece flows, well at times, and slowly at others. In some of the diary I am a bit long winded. In other parts of the diary I repeated myself thus rendering the footage useless in the final piece. I also believe the piece to be a bit lengthy. However, had I shortened the piece much more I think it really would have lost any effectiveness it has.
As far as production values go I think I did an okay job editing the piece together. There are a few things I continue to learn and practice with my editing that I will eventually work out and improve. I think I fell into the cliche traps that McKee warns about in his book Story. I used an image of a flag with patriotic music to open my piece. In hindsight it probably would have been better to open the piece with just the narrative and music over a black slug (screen). Some of my edits were a bit poorly timed, but that is due to my skills as and editor and not due to my design or understanding of story.
Overall I believe the piece captures the essence of the core I created. I followed the script and kept to my story map. But overall the piece, while meeting the requirements of the KA, probably will not be nominated for a student Emmy any time soon.

I do believe that this type of exercise is invaluable to both media producers and media psychologists. The process we undertook allowed me to have an much better insight into how good media is produced from the very beginning. It will allow me to improve my story planning, script writing and pre-production planning while I improve my post production skills! As a media psychologist the knowledge gained from this project allows me to better analyze not only the message being delivered, but it allows me to analyze the amount of effort that went into the planning of a story being presented. That I believe is an incredibly important element for me and my colleagues.