reflection after viewing the projects

It was so wonderful to see everyone’s project tonight.  I throughly enjoyed and learned a lot from each project. Seeing all different mediums come together in a three hour class is absolutely fascinating and educational in itself. Tonight we saw a magazine design, a blog with a documentary on it and a how to piece, a website created and enclosed a documentary and video. I thought each group worked extremely hard and it was foreseen in the the final product.

One of my favorite moments was when Pam was tearing up over my group’s documentary.  It made me feel like my group portrayed the message that we wanted which was to touch lives and send an educated message. Seeing her tear up made me feel good because I saw all of my hard work paid off in one 19 minute video.

I also enjoyed the Solar Vehicle Team documentary made by Jake and Lindsay. I think its awesome the opportunity that came to Lindsay from doing this project.  It makes me see that something as small a class project can lead to something more and can lead to furthering future careers.  Knowing that a great opportunity came to her from this only helps my confidence and my willingness to continue growing, learning and creating new projects. That is an experience that she will never forget and a life changing and hopefully career changing event in her life.  If she can do it, I can too.

Introduction to my project

The Iraq War: A Student Perspective was created off three students interest and curiosity about what students think of the war and whether it affects us.  We personally wanted to interview a vast array of different and diverse students that come from all backgrounds.  We took our journalism and multimedia knowledge and decided to do a group documentary, which could capture the thoughts of many students on film. Once we decided on our multimedia format and topic, we then came up with questions to ask all 67 students. With Nick’s occupation in the National Guard we were able to get quality interviews from soldiers themselves that served in Iraq, which helped to provide insight to see what it was really like being in Iraq.  We also interviewed Megan, a student who has grown up in a military family and is marrying Derrick an ROTC cadet and a student that will be deployed when he graduates.  These three students, Nick, Devin and Jenna tried to maintain the professional journalism stance by creating a nonbiased documentary telling the stories and opinions of many students.  We hope that we touched the lives of the New Media Communications 301 spring term class.  We personally learned a lot from this documentary and we hope that you all do to. Now lets take a look into the lives of the three creative, new media students.
Nick Conley is in his fifth and final year of college. He started his college career at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, NM where he played baseball and earned his commission as an officer in the United States Army. After graduating with an Associates of Arts degree.  He then moved back home to Oregon and attended Linfield College for a year. Conley transferred to Oregon State University where he has spent the past two years and will graduate with a Bachelors Degree in Liberal Studies with a focus in New Media Communication. For the past three years he has been a member in the Oregon Army National Guard where he is now a First Lieutenant. After Graduation Nick plans on going to courses for the military and by May of next year he is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq with the Oregon Army National Guard 41st Brigade. Conley brought his knowledge of the Army and his film skills to the project.  It was his stimulating questions to soldiers that brought the soldier prospective to the project.
Devin Robinson studied film for two years after high school before becoming jaded with the Hollywood system and the LA way of life.  Robinson did some traveling in Europe, returned to Oregon and became a waiter.  After a few months of that he decided it was time to go back to school.  Now he is in his senior year and studying New Media Communications at Oregon State. Robinson was enticed into this war documentary project because of the age similarity between the common college student and the common US soldier and what they thought of each other. Film and video are his favorite mediums and he was happy to bring his  technical and aesthetic knowledge to the project. He was the creative, master producer where his film skills shined like the Hollywood red carpet.
Jenna Santelli is graduating from Oregon State in a week and half with her study in New Media Communications.  She is going to be moving to Utah in a month to start her journey working at Salt Lake Community College in the Sports Information Department where she will continue her passion for writing sports. Santelli’s dream is to become a travel writer and travel world one article at a time. She has been to Thailand where she volunteered and kept an active blog. She also studied Spanish in Costa Rica. Santelli submitted her resume and this project to a National Geographic Correspondence Program that would help jump start her travel writing career.

Today Devin, Nick and I met to view our documentary and we went over the whole viewing. We started to add in the stat calculations that Nick generously looked at.  I am finding other stats tonight that relate to the Iraq war and the how it effects people our age. I need to make sure that I do a sufficient job fact checking the information that I find online.  I decided that I am going to check the facts that I receive with three or four different sources so that I have a credible source of statistics. We will one last time tomorrow before class to go over our project.  It looks good now, and it will look even better tomorrow.  I will attach part of the interview that I did all of the questions for.

Meghan and Derrick interview

Interview questions that I came up with to ask Meghan and Derrick.  I came up with these questions, asked them and helped to set up the lighting for the interview and Devin filmed it and did all the adjusting.

How long have you both been together, and how did you meet? (Both)

What was it like growing up in a military household and living on fort? (Meghan)

How did it affect your family when your dad was deployed to Iraq for a year? (Meghan)

Why do you think so many students from Oregon State end up getting deployed overseas to Iraq and other places? (Derrick)

Tell me a bit about the ROTC program at OSU (derrick)

On a scale from 1 to 10 how important is the war to you? (Both)

Do you think that the war will affect your financial future and if so how? (Both)

Why did you join the military? (derrick)

Why do you think students join the military? (Both)

Does your mental state change knowing that you are going to activated and probably deployed? (Derrick)

Since you are going to be Derrick’s wife, what are you most nervous for when  he get deployed? (meghan)

Since you are going to be deployed, what are you most nervous for when that day does come? (derrick)

This interview took about an hour and it was full of lots of information and quality content.

The last bit of content

Today we did our last interviews and we asked our survey questions to about 30 more students standing in front of the library.  We got about 6 students to participate answering the questions on camera which, was awesome.  Tomorrow we start editing our content in our documentary.  I feel that we have worked superb together as a group and that we all took vital roles towards the success our project.  I have throughly enjoyed working with Devin and Nick on this project. Team work equals success!

Tomorrow I am going to learn how to edit a documentary and film in general. It shall be educational and fun.

Meghan and Derrick interview…

Meghan has been in a military family her whole life with her dad being in the Army. She lived on Fort a for a while till moving to Portland. She met Derrick in high school, and they have been dating for 5 years. Derrick is in the ROTC program at Oregon State. Once he graduates, he will be active for deployment and thus could end up in Iraq or somewhere else. They are getting married in August of 2009 after Meghan has finished her Masters for Education at Western and Derrick has finished his undergraduate degree at Oregon State.

I enjoyed the footage that they told us and I enjoyed being on the ride in their journey about their lives.

I learned a lot about lighting and setting up how to film a documentary. For this interview I helped to set up the lighting at Meghan and Derrick’s house. I had never set up lighting for a film documentary before until today. Devin told me about how to determine what is good lighting and what is bad lighting so therefore I learned about a lot about lighting.

Last night= success!

Last night was extremely successful.  We filmed 3 or 4 interviews by asking the interviewees the survey questions that we came up with as a group.  

The survey questions are as follows:

Name an Age:

Do you know anyone that is or has been to Iraq?  y/n

On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is the war to you?

Will the Iraq war affect your financial future or future in general? y/n and why

Does the war affect who you will vote for president in the upcoming election?

 

We used these questions to do our interviews.  I feel that we are working well as a group and we all have good ideas to contribute.  We also are getting the college of Democrats President and the College of Republicans President to interview. 

 

We planned out and interview for today in which Nick and Devin went on and I am planned out an interview tomorrow night that we all are going to attend. Just talking to students we are networking to get in touch with other people and finding out new things. All in all, things are going so well.  I am proud of our progress.

 

project progression

Today was annoying because I had about 30 students take the survey that my group created yet, only half of the people actually returned their answers to me.  Now not only do I have print out more not because people are so willing to give me back their answers but because people just did not give them back.  I also only have about 10 actual answers.  I am frustrated.  I also had to cancel an interview last night do to my car breaking down coming home from Portland.  All in all, it has been a rough 24 hours.  However, I did reschedule the interview and hopefully it will get done before this weekend. 

Taking a step in the right direction with our project

 So I talked with Megan, one person that we are going to interview as a sidebar story.  She wants Devin, Nick and I to interview her and her finance on Friday.  I am a bit anxious to get this interview started. I feel that she will provide excellent content for our documentary and she will give us a sense of where she is coming from.  I think that setting the scene by interviewing them at their house is keen for our project.  It sets us up an intimate and personal interview in which they can feel secure and be honest.  I have heard her story is completely moving and touches everyone.  I heard there are tears involved, which only capture emotion for our piece.  Emotions are key to a great documentary! 

I started the survey process today by passing out some surveys to my first class.  My goal is to get 50 participants.  Hopefully I will succeed at my goal calculations. 

 

That’s all for now, till next time tat-tat. 

I am in my last core class for my New Media Degree at Oregon State entitled Writing for The Media Professional. In this class we are creating multimedia projects over the topic What affects students presently and in the future.  We as a class came up with many different sub groups all, which relate to students.  My group decided to look at something that is forcing our nation to borrow money from China; The Iraq War.  We decided to look how students at Oregon State specifically are affected by the war on perhaps a very personal base, or on a more general base.  So many students at this University are affected by the war whether they have a friend that has served in Iraq, a boyfriend/girlfriend, a parent or other family members and even a neighbor. We decided that we are going to create a documentary which will focus on this topic.  I have a great sub story about this girl that I know in my class.  My group mate Nick is the National Guard and thus has endless stories, contacts and ideas to create the best project that we can create. I feel that Devin, Nick and I are going to create a wonderful 10-20 minutes documentary on OSU Students affected by the war.  We are taking surveys, interviewing students and capturing stories all in one piece.  We have a great plan of what we want to accomplish for this final project.  Devin has endless knowledge of cameras which is important for our group.  Nick has a vast array of military knowledge and I myself bring creativity, fun and a decent hand for writing.  I am excited to start the taping, the interviews and creating my first ever documentary. 

 

Look out for our Facebook group in which students can post thoughts, or take our survey pertaining to our topic.