 As of Sunday night I assumed that our finished product, Mystery Meat, was a masterpiece! I was very confident that all of our effort and hard work would be easily identified in our documentary. But, due to program bugs in Adobe Premiere Elements, I was not able to preview the product without downloading it to a file. Normally, this process took a few minutes and it was a simple task to perform. But, of course on this particular night my computer was running slower than dirt and I was unable to upload the video to youtube due to the length of the video. After all of the final kinks were out (37 hours of labor later) Alison, Amanda, and I were very pleased with the finished product. We are all perfectionists, so of course there were several elements of the video that, if given more time, we would have been able to perfect. We would have loved to integrate other video clips in our documentary, but to technological and time restraints we were unable to do so. This video from Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution was first on my list. In the video he shows a group of students how the chicken nuggets that they eat in school lunches are made. I would have also liked to include interviews with administrators from school districts, parents, and most importantly students who are involved with the school lunch process. Another aspect I would have liked to maneuver was the timing of the slides with the narration. There wasn't much "empty space" in the documentary, due to time constraints of internet uploading sites. This restricted the amount of content we could convey, and made the amount that we did convey come off as abrupt and “in your face” so to speak, and restricted viewers processing time. All in all, with a very limited time for the assignment and some amazing collaboration by our group, I am pleased with the final product. I also posted this documentary on my Facebook account and was pleasantly surprised to see feedback from friends who gained some insight about school lunches. (comments below) 
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 Since the beginning of the semester, I have dreaded the collaborative research project. It’s not that I do not enjoy collaborating with my fellow classmates, but time constraints and schedule conflicts can cause some havoc during a collaborative project. But, when I found out that we were allowed to choose our group my mind was set at ease. I had the pleasure to collaborate with Amanda and Alison, who I’ve worked with in the past, and our schedules and work ethic seem to sync perfectly. We found out that we would have two options for this project either a traditional research paper or a documentary. After completing my oral history project, where I used video technology, I knew instantly that I wanted to divulge into the wonderful world of a documentary. I knew it would be time consuming, but I also knew I was up for the challenge. So, with a lot of coercing, I persuaded my fellow group members to take on the documentary challenge. This was not an easy task, in fact, me and Amanda got into our first argument! It was quickly resolved and we began our collaboration almost immediately after the assignment was given.
We met at various Starbucks and brainstormed our ideas for this monumental challenge. We originally split up the work into three sections; Amanda was in charge of the script, Alison began the research, and I started to toy with the video editing software and researched various music clips and music editing software to figure out the best plan for our attack. Throughout the process, our jobs often overlapped. I helped Amanda with photos for the script and Alison assisted in the writing process as well with drafting the abstract and annotated bibliography. Originally, we had all recorded an equal amount of the narration, but due to technical difficulties with the level and tone of our voices, I had to re-record all of the narration in my voice alone. My group members stood by me with support as I rearranged the final product which was quite the tedious task, as the final product emerged. | ArchivesDecember 2010 CategoriesAll |
Rebecca's Revival
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