Weekly Blog 10/27

This article is about how the American economy grew even during the hurricanes, which were predicted to hurt its growth severely. The author does a good job on using graphs to show data on economic growth in the last decade. They also use quote from sources like the President and top economical experts.

What they could have done better is related it to the title a little better. The title refers to the hurricanes like they are the main focus of the article, but it is only about how the economy is still growing and not anything about how we beat predictions of a failing economy.

What I can use from this in my own stories is the good combination of statistics, graphs and other graphics, quotes, and survey results. All of these combine to make an easy to follow, well informed article.

(Article can be read here.)

Weekly Blog 9/29

This article is talking about how 2 British politicians are calling the royal family rude, ridiculous, and other insults. They also ridiculed 4 year old George for wearing expensive clothes to school. The people who verbally attacked the family are described as "fact-challenged" and "delighted in the attacks". The reporter does a good job of naming the politicians and stating what they accused the royals of. They also used a lot and a good variety of stock and file photos.

What they could have done better is to get photos from the event and describing exactly what the event was for. Rather than directly quoting the entire statement by the people in a separate paragraph or section, they took out portions of the quotes, usually one word, and for this I feel like the whole version would work better.

What I can implement in my work from this is using a good variety of pictures and getting stock/file photos

(Article can be read here.)

Weekly Blog 9/15/17

This article is about how Breitbart News, popular news organization and website, is taking on Steve Bannon, former White House political strategist, as their chief executive. What the author does well is give context for the story, providing backgrounds on both Breitbart and Bannon. It also goes into depth as how Breitbart is supporting its new hire, how they are trying to pump his reputation as well as their own.

What the author could have done better is present the news and their argument in an unbiased way. Most of the article comes off as knocking Bannon and questioning his abilities, as well as trying to discredit Breitbart and other news sites associated with them. They even goes as far as directly insulting the site, by saying that they have "shown a near-endless capacity to throw darts, it has not yet mastered the spear, let alone the missile."

What I can use from this in my own work is the way the author used a variety of images from a variety of sources like Google, Newsweek, and even Breitbart itself. This variety makes for and interesting story and a more clear one, too.

(Article can be read here.)

Weekly Blog 9/8/17

For this week I read the article 'First Responders Sue Texas Chemical Plant for "Gross Negligence" After Fire and Explosions'. It is talking about how when the chemical plant exploded after the flooding, police and firemen were getting sick and falling to the ground in the roads and everywhere. The author does a good job of relaying the results of the lawsuit, with a verbatim statement from the plaintffs.

One thing the author could have done better is include more in depth medical or scientific details. Pretty much the only description was that the responders "had fallen ill", with no words to what exactly they got and their medical condition. They do quote another publication that had info that the lawsuit was for 'serious bodily injuries'.

What I can implement in my work from this is the long, verbatim quotes from officials or others involved with the events in my written stories.

(Article can be read here.)

End of Year Reflection - Video

End Of Year

In this post I will go through the guarantees presented in eComm, something I will takeaway from each, and talk about those for a bit.

Technology

This is where I definitely learned the most, lots of technical skills and techniques for both animation and video. This would be skills like making titles in Premiere, green screens in After Effects, and camera/tripod usage and physical techniques. I learned these skills in the numerous projects we did, and the skills I learned were both part of the curriculum and self taught. These are important because they help me do better, more professional work, in eComm and in my own personal work. Some challenges I faced were in working with the cameras, some of them get stuck or don't work or break when you use them. My strengths in this area would be my editing skills and a weakness would be that I have some trouble when recording audio at correct levels and without background noise. I have improved my editing skills a lot from last year, and learned an entirely new program, Premiere Pro. Something I need to work on is making sure production equipment is not in the shots for a video, as that accidentally happened a few times. With what I learned I will film and edit videos for family members and their acquaintances.

Collaboration

In the area of collaboration, I had a lot of practice in setting up work days outside of school for filming. I learned it just through the course of doing the projects, as nearly every one required filming outside of school. This is important because if you can't figure out when to get shots, you're never going to get the shots and the video will never get done. There were some challenges, as there always are in scheduling for multiple people. Sometimes 3 of 4 people in a group would be able to film on a day but the last person couldn't so we'd have to figure out another day and keep pushing it back. A strength I have in this area is my open schedule. I don't have lots going on after school or on the weekends (during the school year, at least), so finding days to film is not too difficult for me personally. A weakness would be in forgetting to secure transportation to the filming site, so it might happen that I miss a shooting day because of that. Another part of collaboration is brainstorming and teamwork to create the final product and make ideas to begin work. I definitely need to work on my level of involvement in groups, I am usually quiet and let other people present ideas and then I refine them. I wouldn't really change anything in this area as it pretty much worked out. 

Communication

A takeaway I learned from this guarantee is the importance of having outside methods of communication with group members on projects. It gets very hard to collaborate and set up stuff when the only time you can talk is one hour a day 4 times a week (in class). Comparing the different group projects I worked on, the ones where group members exchanged phone numbers or other methods of communication seemed to go better with scheduling and delegating tasks. There's not really any strengths or weaknesses in this part, as it doesn't encompass much besides what I've already talked about, and anything else that could be included is in the Collaboration section.

Project Management 

What I learned from this is how to effectively use the whole project process: brainstorming, working with group members to do preproduction like storyboarding, scheduling the camera work, filming the shots with proper sound lighting and scenery, transferring files from one location like an SD card to all the group members, talking about edits and how to compile it into a finished product, and presenting it as a finished project. I learned this by repetition in all of the products we did this year, because I had to use it every time. My strengths here are in the post production portion, and my weaknesses are in pre-production and planning. I wouldn't change anything as it worked pretty well all this year. 

Leadership

In relation to leadership, I learned how to take a small position of leadership when everyone is slowing down and work isn't happening. Specifically, for the short film project we were missing a group member during pre-production and the rest of use were a little confused as to how to work with such a small group so I took a bit of charge and presented some ideas and we worked on from there. I don't really have a greatest strength in leadership because I'm not strong in it at all. Similarly, that would be my weakness, that I'm not good at leading at all and it definitely is something I need to work on in the future. If I could change something, I would change how I lead, because I feel like it isn't effective or good for anyone.

Conclusion

To conclude, this year was one where I learned a lot of new stuff, both technically and interpersonally. I made a lot of neat work that I'm proud of, had lots of fun in the program, and I am excited for next year when I can focus more on video and learn more advanced stuff.

Professional Article Review

In his article 'There'sA Giant Problem That The Animation Industry Will Have To Deal With', Mike Reyes talks about how filmmakers are pushing for higher resolution, higher frame rate films, and how that can be a problem. The article states that "state of the art" for animation currently is 2k resolution at 24 frames per second. What some people want is double that: 4k at 48fps. The reason that would be a problem is that it would require many more stronger computers than most studios have. According to Bruno Mahe, technical head at an Illumination Entertainment studio, this higher resolution would require 2.5 times the rendering strength they have. The author argues that making a large and expensive upgrade would be worth it, due to the massive amounts of money animated films are grossing in recent times. I agree with this, because if you can do something to make more money and you'll make back the money you spent upgrading, why not do it. The evidence presented is that an upgrade would be estimated at about $190 million and a film, Despicable Me 2 for example, grossed $295 million. In conclusion, many animation studios will have to upgrade their technology fairly soon to keep up with the rising demand.

Professional Project Review - "Life"

For this post I watched the CGI animated short film "Life" by PixelHunters. The short follows an unnamed man in a futuristic mech suit on a desolate planet. Throughout the whole short, a voice, assumed to be the person shown in blue, narrates about life and his past. It shows flashbacks to him in battles with other people in mech suits, and eventually shows him at a gate which opens to yet another red-mech suited person. There is a moment of suspense, but then there is a plot twist where a sign is shown that says "Congrats, you're retired!", and the main character is shown smiling and the short ends. The principles of design for my area of focus would be 3D modeling, animation techniques like ease-in ease-out, and general story and plot portions. One element from this I would apply to my own work is its use of slow motion and zoom to create dramatic effect on one small thing. One thing I have already learned that was in this film is designing and modeling backdrops. Based on best practice, this creator did a good job of creating a story that brought interest. One thing they could have done better is that some of the scenes were blurry or low resolution, probably a problem in rendering.