Over the course of the semester, there was much work to be done for this class. My favorite project was definitely the Audition audio story. I actually really enjoy listening to podcasts in my free time and at work so it was interesting to see how they are made and to be able go out and make my own. I also found that the program itself was fairly easy to navigate and use.

I felt like I learned a lot of skills throughout the course that could possibly help me in the future. Aside from Illustrator, which I learned how to use a little bit of in high school, most of these programs were completely new to me. I feel like I am leaving the course with at least a basic understanding of how to use each of them and the ability to expand on my knowledge in the future if I need.

I am studying political science here at WSU, and I really don’t think there will be a use for these skills in any career I might take. This is not to say I’m not happy to have the knowledge, but I can’t see myself in a career where it would be required.

I thought that the class went over a lot as far as skills go, and there is not really anything that I thought I missed out on.

As far as outside sources go, I would occasionally look up a tutorial on youtube every now and then to fill in the gaps left between the tutorials and class readings. Aside from that though, I pretty much only used the internet to look for inspiration.

This class was challenging at times, but overall I thought it went by smoothly once I got into the rhythm of how the class worked.

The final draft of my Premiere project has come a long way from where it began. The video itself was created to focus on showing viewers how to do an oil change on a KLR 250 motorcycle. I really wanted a professional-looking tutorial that would be easy to understand and follow. I shot the film I needed for the project before I did my draft project. When I went to do my draft, I realized some key shots were missing from the storyboard and thus I had not collected enough. I put my draft together with out them and promised to get more shots for the final draft, which I didn’t end up doing because of a lack of time, so I had to go with what I had.

The first draft also lack a few other essential items, such as music, an intro, and credits. The music was retrieved from a free-to-use website that is credited in the end credits of the video. In addition to the music, I added an intro to the beginning, which I played with until it reached a point where I thought it looked pretty good. This included adding a bold font to the text. When it came to figuring out a color to make the title, I struggled. I ended up settling with white text with black stroke so it would stand out from the rest of the background. I added all of these along with transitions between shots and text which read which step was which. The idea to add text for the steps came from the peer draft review. The final draft ended up being just a beefed-up version of the first draft.

Overall, I think the video came together nicely and looks pretty good considering what I had to work with.

I left a lot of room for improvement on the premiere draft, and much of what I have done already will need work. The idea was to create a simple video tutorial for basic motorcycle maintenance that would last about a minute or two, and be useful to people who want to do the same kind of work to their own bikes. I tried to follow my storyboard closely, and I think that I did a good job of at least placing the shots where I wanted and where they would be the most effective. I thought that the introductory shot and the establishing shot were the best, but some of the others I might end up needing to film again. I found that there were a couple of shots missing that I could have used, and ended up having to rely on some shots that didn’t quite match up to the script.

This draft left much to be desired though, and the final project will reflect this. I want to include a title across the establishing shot, something I tried to do for this draft but couldn’t quite figure out, and some credits to follow. In addition, I want to re-record some portions of the script and add music in the background. That will fade in and out as I talk. I will have to continue searching creative commons for a piece that will fit my movie well.

Overall, I think this project is coming together smoother than I first thought it would. Besides the various portions of the movie which need to be re scripted or shot again, the film will end up looking good. Mostly I can attribute this to what I believe is a strong storyboard and list of shots that make the film look more like a feature than some homemade tutorial.

Storyboard draft: KLR 250 Oil Change

After working and completing the Audition final draft, I’m actually fairly pleased with the outcome. As I had previously stated in my first draft post, I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to go with the project at first. I had considered creating a simple recording of myself walking around my bike and talking about it, but then I decided that this would be too boring, long, and wouldn’t produce a very good final project. I then had the idea that morphed into my final project. The idea was to start with morning sounds, then go into the sound of me starting my bike. This was to show that this is part of my morning routine. I then went on to me talking about my bike in short segments, which were originally broken up by sounds of my bike. The first draft was a good representation of where I wanted to go, but it needed to be further refined. I started out with a blank slate and pulled all of the sounds I had from the first draft into the new document. I then arranged them how I wanted and made sure to cut out the extra bits.

I decided to add some music to my piece because I thought it would really make it a lot more exciting and interesting. I did a little bit of searching on Soundcloud and found some free to use music that I really enjoyed. It was upbeat and had natural pauses that made it easy to place in the storyline. The link is below. also below is the link to the alarm clock noise that plays in the beginning. Other than the music and this alarm noise, all of the sounds in the story are my own. Overall, I think the project really pulled itself together and the result is one of my best so far.

Royalty Free Music: http://www.soundotcom.com

https://freesound.org/people/kwahmah_02/sounds/250629/

I started out on this project not really knowing where I wanted to go with it. At first, as seen in my audio collection assignment, I thought I would simply do a walkaround of my bike in which I would just talk about it. But this idea bugged me for a couple of reasons. I thought that it was too simple and would not be interesting at all; I also thought there would be no way I could talk that long without messing up or just rambling.

So then I had the idea of trying to create a short storyline out of the project. I thought that it might be kind of cool to start out with an alarm clock and short snippets of morning noises in order to gather interest. Then, jumping into me starting my bike and then talking about it would be a good transition. I decided I would break up the text of me talking by adding in sound of me riding between lines.

Once I was able to compile all of these components together into a single piece, I listened to it to make sure it was smooth and the transitions worked well. At this point I realized the piece still needs a lot of work, but I’m really happy with the way it has turned out so far. In the final version I will probably try to smooth out some of the sound and transitions and might re-record some of the talking parts. Most of the noise I recorded was my own. The only exception is the alarm clock noise, which I got from Freesound.org from the following links. I had to get this sound online because when I tried recording it, it didn’t turn out well because my phone recorder is not very good. I might also try to add some music as a background in the final product, but I have yet to find a free to use track that I think would fit well.

https://freesound.org/people/kwahmah_02/sounds/250629/

I plan to have audio of myself doing a walk around of my bike, then starting it before going on a ride.

I ended up going down a completely different path with my final logo design than what I had originally planned with my drafts. The design incorporates the letters of the word “DUAL-SPORT’ into the actual figure that forms the bike silhouette. I came up with this design after I became frustrated with trying to edit my original draft into something more appealing and less complicated. Some of my inspiration came from other works that incorporate letters into their shape, such as the “Monkees” guitar logo. I really wanted to emphasize simplicity, and I feel that this new design really did that.

I first began by pulling up the picture of a dual-sport motorcycle which I had used for my Photoshop project. I then used the pen tool to draw shapes over top of the image. These shapes were the letters that form the word and the overall bike shape. It took a lot of time to create the letters and to fit them in the way I wanted. I had to have them form the shape of the motorcycle when put together. The other task I had was to remove the empty space in some of the letters and in the wheels, which I used the shape builder tool for.

Next came the task of coloring, something which my original logo lacked completely. I decided to make this task somewhat simple by making the entire bike crimson with a 2 pt black stroke, with the exception of the “O” and the wheels. I made the “O” grey to represent the engine, and the tires black.

Overall, the design turned out better than I thought it would. Ditching my original idea was the most important task to undertake, because the moment I did that was when I was able to come up with something much more interesting.