Post-grad Recap

I've barely had time to think since graduation on Monday. My parents and sister came out from Ohio and my mother-in-law drove down from Washington to attend the SOJC graduation ceremony.

There were about 400 graduating seniors from the program. I hadn't realized how many of us there were! I only knew about a tenth of them, almost exclusively Electronic Media majors. I'm glad I went, but by the end I was certainly ready to get out of the sun and have some lunch.

After obtaining some nourishment my family and I went to my house where we divided our efforts between packing up my belongings and preparing for the celebratory cookout my roommates and I had planned. We had people coming and going until about 1am. It was a lot of fun and I'm really glad I got to see some friends before I left. I could never have pulled it off without all the help from my family! Throwing a good party, I can handle. Preparing to move simultaneously, not so much.

Tuesday morning we had a fairly leisurely breakfast at Keystone Cafe before my parents and sister headed for the coast. My husband and my mother-in-law and I went to the DMV to get a trip permit for my car, which I hadn't been driving on account of my expired tags. She then helped us finish the after-party cleanup before beginning her long return drive to the Seattle area.

Robert and I then finished loading up our Volvo wagons and cleaned my near-empty bedroom to the best of our abilities. I wrote notes to my roommates and to my new sub-letter, and then we headed west to meet up with the rest of the family in Yachats.

It was nice to see the ocean and to have some down time with my family, but I had a hard time relaxing. After dinner I attempted to attend a production meeting via Skype, but finally gave up after getting disconnected about a half dozen times.

In the morning we got bagels, then began driving north on 101. We made a brief stop at Devil's Punchbowl, which was less crowded than the last couple times I'd been. We had thought about stopping at Three Arches, one of our favorite spots on the coast, but Robert and I were eager to start unpacking and the weather had become pretty dreary, so we headed east at the first opportunity.

I've been back in Portland for just over two days now. It's hard to believe I actually get to stay. I have to make a trip to Eugene next week to pick up the rest of my things (mostly books) and I'll be down there periodically to work on Broken over the summer, but Portland is my home once again and I am thrilled to be back here among this city's wonderful people and culture.

I still have a lot of unpacking and organizing to do before I can fully dedicate myself to the job search. I am checking Craig's List frequently, and trying to apply for at least one position every day. In a couple of weeks I'm meeting with a career counselor. I'm very grateful for the graduation money I received, which I hope I can stretch until I find some paid work.

For now I'm going to do my best to take it easy and enjoy my family's last few days in Oregon and try to get settled so that I can be as productive as possible next week. Here goes nothin'.

The End and the Beginning

I finished my last final project around 1am, which was earlier than I expected. I was thrilled that I got done in time to meet a friend for a couple of drinks before my long walk home (late night public transit would make this city so much more livable).

I think I pulled more all-nighters this term than in the rest of my college career combined. I can't remember what it's like to wake up feeling rested.

I wish I could relax today, but I've got to go to the DMV to renew my expired tags, and clean the house in preparation for out of town guests and for my sub-letter, who moves in next Thursday.

My sister, whom I haven't seen since I visited Columbus a year ago, flies into Portland tonight and my husband will bring her down tomorrow. They will both be staying with me for a few days, which I am very excited about. My parents, whom I last saw on the same trip to Columbus, and my mother-in-law get into town Sunday. We're having dinner at Agate AlleyBistro, my favorite campus-area restaurant. The SOJC Commencement ceremony is at noon on Monday (follow Twitter hashtag #jgrad10 for updates) . Afterwards I'm having a cookout to celebrate and to say farewell to my Eugene friends.

After a day at the coast with the family I will begin my life in Portland as a job-seeking graduate! I am both excited and terrified.

I've been applying for lots of jobs and internships. So far I haven't had any callbacks regarding paying positions.

I got a voicemail asking me to come in for an interview for one internship in Portland, but I wasn't able to go because I wasn't finished with finals. I called back and left a message saying I could talk with them on the phone or come in next week, but they haven't returned my call.

I interviewed for another internship over Skype this morning. I really hope I get it, because the work sounds like it would be right up my alley. I think it would be a great opportunity for me to develop my skills and get professional experience.

I don't know if having a degree will help me get a job, but I do know that my experiences at the J school and with the University Film Organization over the last two years have given me confidence in my abilities and have helped me to figure out what I enjoy doing and what I'm good at, as well as what my weaknesses are and what I need to continue to work on.

My greatest fear is that I'll end up working in food service again with no benefits and no intellectual stimulation. I really hope I can find work (paid or not) that will enable me to continue learning and doing projects that I care about.

I know that I have to commit myself to making that happen no matter how busy or tired I am. If I am forced to take a full time restaurant job in order to pay the bills, I have to make sure I don't lose sight of my aspirations. As stressful as being over-committed can be, I know that not doing work that I'm passionate about is far worse.

Adrenaline Film Project

My team for the Adrenaline Film Project didn't get into the competition, but I was asked to be the lead mentor assistant, which was a great experience.

One of my primary duties was driving mentor Jeff Wadlow around to the sets of the various groups. He would watch what they were doing, then make suggestions or, if they were really in trouble, run the show until they got back on track. I got to learn a lot just by being there for the process.

I also really enjoyed getting to spend a lot of time with the student coordinators Tomas Valladares and Stephanie Strahan, with Rom Alejandro, another mentor, with the other festival organizers, and all the teams of filmmakers who competed.

Some friends of mine from the University Film Organization , Brian Leonard, Jonathon Wheatfall, and Doug Potts, did get into Adrenaline, and made a post-apocalyptic short called The Hut, which has great set design and lighting.

I think it was a fantastic idea to hold the first Cinema Pacific festival during the first year of the new Cinema Studies major at UO. Students are so excited about production right now. I think this was a wonderful opportunity for local filmmakers to see great films, learn new skills, to meet one-another, and to see what they can accomplish in a short period of time!

I think all the participants have a renewed interest in making short films, and many have told me they plan to join the UFO, or to get more involved with it than they were in the past. It's perfect timing for us, because we are currently in pre-production for a short, and could really use more skilled, passionate people to make it happen!

All the Adrenaline films will be up on YouTube soon.

To see all the tweets from the event search the hashtag #UOAFP on Twitter.

Latin American Cinema

I have just begun my Latin American Cinema (J467) take-home final essay exam.

I've really enjoyed the class, but I think the subject is far too broad to adequately cover in a single term. The other two foreign film classes I've taken focused on much more specific topics: a single country (Germany) and a single genre within a continent (Asian Fantasy Cinema).

Gabriela Martinez, who teaches the class, is very knowledgeable and I think she does a great job of leading class discussions. I know far more about Latin American culture and history than I did a couple of months ago, and have been exposed to a lot of films I probably never would have seen otherwise. That said, I am really struggling with trying to keep all the details straight. It's difficult for me to remember what happened in which country. All of Latin America is a lot to cover in such a short time.

I think I have retained the most about Mexico and Argentina, both of which we covered early in the term. I remember a fair amount about Brazil, which we also spent more time on than the subsequent countries. Most of what we covered in the second half of the term (Chile, Bolivia, Cuba) is a blur.

I think we could easily have spent the entire term focusing on Argentina and the Dirty War, or documentaries from the continent, and it still would have been a lot to grapple with.

Writing these essays is going to require a lot of reading and reviewing of my notes. I hope that by the end of the week I will be able to say something intelligent about three of the six topics I have to choose from!

Men in Film

It may seem ridiculous to discuss "men in film." Isn't it obvious that men make films? Aren't most filmmakers men? Why would we need to use the qualifier?

We assume that filmmakers are men unless we are told otherwise, and most of the time it is, unfortunately, true.

I like to think that we are making progress. Maybe Kathryn Bigelow will win an Academy Award this year. Maybe people will start thinking of filmmaking as something that people can do regardless of gender.

When I go to University Film Organization meetings or take film-related classes, I see that at least half the people present are women. Women clearly do not a lack an interest in filmmaking. Women have the desire and they are making the effort to learn the skills.

So why are "women filmmakers" such a rarity?

Certainly in the past there have been a lot of barriers. My grandmother wrote in her diaries about her love of film. She went to the movies multiple times a week in the 30s and 40s. When I was growing up everyone in the family went to her to ask whether a film was worth seeing. Years after her death, we go to movies together in her memory.

Early in her life she wrote of her desire to act, but eventually decided she was too shy and gave up on the idea. She was a talented writer, but never in her diary did she write of a desire to write a screenplay. The notion probably would have been laughable. She also loved photography. She kept a huge collection of family photos and always had a camera ready at family get-togethers. Would she ever have had the audacity to dream of being a cinematographer?

My grandmother worked tedious secretary jobs until she married my grandfather and spent the rest of her life raising their five children. That's what women of her generation did.

Today most women work. Too many women are still stuck in pink collar jobs, but many women have positions that they wouldn't have dreamed of holding a few decades ago.

Why have so few women made it as filmmakers?

A few months ago I attended What is Film? in Portland. It was a really interesting and informative conference, but I was really struck by how few women speakers were present. All three of the keynote speakers were men and most of the panelists who work in the film industry were men. Many women were in the academic panels on the second day. This suggests that women can find their way into positions where they get to talk and write about films, but most of the films are still made by men.

Lately I've spent a lot of time looking for production jobs and internships on Craig's List, both in Portland and Eugene and I've been shocked by the number of listings that use male gender pronouns such as "cameraman" and "sound guy." The people (presumably men) posting these ads may not be deliberately excluding women, but their oversight has an impact.

I am certainly hesitant to apply for any such position.

Will a woman be considered based on her experience and abilities or will these producers automatically assume that she's not what they had in mind?

If a woman is hired by someone who thinks of a position as something a man does, will she be scrutinized? Will he assume that any mistake or shortcoming is the result of her gender? Will she have to work twice as hard to prove herself?

If these filmmakers assume that people with production skills are men, what other areas does their sexism permeate? If they do hire a woman, how will she be treated? Will she be seen as a novelty? Will she be sexually harassed? Will she be given "pink collar" duties like making coffee for the men? Will her input be taken seriously?

If a woman feels men on the set are being sexist will anyone take her complaints seriously? Will anyone back her up?

I wonder if the men who post these ads ever think about these things or if they care. I wonder if they know that they may be the gatekeepers preventing another generation of women from becoming filmmakers.

Finals week will seem like nothing after this.

After many consecutive late nights in the editing lab I finally finished my multimedia piece. As it turns out, I need to make a lot of changes to it, but I think it was the best-organized and most consistent solo video project I've done so far.

I only slept about three hours last night and then got back to campus to do add some final touches. I was there from 10am until past 1am.

In class today our instructor informed us about what days we're doing our finals (six minute newscasts). I'm going Tuesday, which is the first day. Our script rough drafts are due tomorrow, and I haven't even started mine yet. Before I can get to that I need to finish a paper for History of the Motion picture.

Despite having virtually no life outside of school, I always feel like I'm behind. No matter how far in advance I start on a project, I always seem to end up pulling an all-nighter (or a few) to get it done. I don't know if I'm exceptionally slow or if I just need that pressure in order to make final decisions. Maybe I just make too much work for myself. I think I tend to get over-ambitious, especially when I'm shooting. I always seem to shoot way more b-roll than I need and it takes me a really long time to capture and sort through it all and then I struggle to keep it organized. I hope it will get easier.

I came home to try to get some rest for a few hours before I get up to do more homework, but I'm not sleepy on account of too much coffee and stress. I don't have time to sleep for long and I'm so exhausted, I wonder if it's even worth taking a nap.

If I can just get through the next five days, the worst will be over. I just have to finish this paper, write my script, put together all the video I need for my newscast, write two more papers, and do my newscast, and then all I have to worry about is final exams for History of the Motion Picture and Latin American Cinema, which by comparison to what I'm going through now, don't sound too bad!

I

Red-winged Blackbird

I'm really glad I chose a topic (parks) for my multimedia project that enabled me to spend a lot of time shooting outside!

Here's a cool little guy I saw at Golden Gardens who may or may not make it into the final cut of my project.

I Live at the J School

I feel like I have no life outside of the J school these days. No time for a social life, and often skip other classes to work on Electronic Media projects. Would never get them done otherwise!

This weekend I took one of the J408 workshops. This one, taught by Andre Sirois,who also taught Video Production last term, was on sound recording and editing.

We went over equipment, such as different types of mics (some of this I remembered from previous classes, but the review is always good), cords, headphones and digital recorders.

We also watched some videos about how sound works and went over different ways it can be used.

We took digital recorders and mics on our lunch break and experimented with recording different types of sounds, then returned and uploaded the files. Andre showed us how to do all kinds of stuff in Soundtrack Pro and then gave us some time to experiment with it.

He later emailed us a packet he put together with lots of helpful info, which I'm glad to have, as I was way too tired to retain all the details at 8am Saturday morning after a long, busy week with many late nights.

I fell asleep before 9 (unheard of) Saturday night and slept for more than 13 hours! I felt really rested for the first time in weeks. It seems I'm at the J school past midnight at least three nights a week.

I spent most of Sunday and Monday shooting b-roll at parks for my multimedia package. I've done a lot of editing, but have a long way to go. It seems like I always have a hard time figuring out how to organize my sound bites until the last minute when the pressure's really on. I'm kind of overwhelmed at the moment. I really hope it all comes together. If nothing else, at least I should be able to make my audio sound good this time!

Yesterday I registered for Spring classes. It will be my last term if everything goes according to plan! I'm really excited for Documentary Production with Jon Palfreman. I'm really looking forward to working on a more in-depth project. I also really admire Palfreman's work, and feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from him. I hope that there will be more creative freedom in this class than there is in Reporting for Electronic Media.

It's Going to be a Busy Term!

Week two of winter term has begun. I don't have any Monday classes, but managed to stay busy today.

The weather wasn't bad so I walked to campus. I submitted another application for office space for the University Film Organization. I really hope we get it. We really need a physical space! Also did some online planning for a group assignment and then headed over to Cafe Yumm for the first My Eugene meeting.

I'm really looking forward to getting started with my internship। It sounds like it will be really flexible, so I won't have to worry about time conflicts, which is great for me, because I'm often busy with UFO and We Make the Media activities. There are seven other interns, all of whom are J school students, and we each chose a couple of assignments we're interested in working on. Additionally, we each submit three events to the calendar per week, so if anyone knows of any cool stuff going on around Eugene, please let me know about it!

Internship with My Eugene

This winter I will be starting an internship with the community news site My Eugene. Jaculynn Peterson, who runs the site out of her home, interviewed me over the phone yesterday and told me a bit about it.

She started the site when she was new to the city, and used it to record her discoveries about her new home. She now has between six and 10 thousand unique visitors per month, and receives far more story suggestions than she can keep up with on her own.

She has decided to take on a number of interns and to redesign and expand the site. She says we will work on group projects as well as individual assignments. She plans to schedule a team meeting soon so that we can all meet each other and to discuss the plans in more detail.

I think this is going to be a great opportunity for me to get experience with local, non-commercial, multimedia journalism, and work with some like-minded people.

Finals Week Begins

I spent most of the weekend working on my J331 group dramatic short. We are nearly done shooting it, and I started editing yesterday. The rough cut of the first scene I edited is up on Vimeo.

We are meeting with our actors at noon tomorrow to get the last few shots we need, and then we can focus on editing (and our other finals). I have a paper for my Media Aesthetics class due on Tuesday, and then I can devote all my time to the short films.

I'm really happy with how both of them are looking and am pleasantly surprised at how well the members of my group work together. We're hoping to get the last of our editing done on Wednesday, so that we can relax and start celebrating before our class screening on Thursday evening.

I'm usually nervous before showing final projects, but so far I'm feeling pretty good about these, even with quite a bit of work still ahead of my group. I suppose because it's a group project, I don't feel like there's quite so much attention on me, but I think a big part of it is that I am finally starting to feel like I know what I'm doing. Even earlier this term I felt overwhelmed even with relatively small projects, but this time, once I got focused, I really felt like I knew exactly what needed to be done.

J331 Shorts Well Underway

On Wednesday my J331 production group conducted three more interviews and shot a lot of B-roll footage for our short documentary.

I watched some footage with Jenica, one of my group members, and discovered that the first few minutes of one of our tapes is useless. Not sure what's wrong with it, but it's really jerky and the sound is distorted. The footage was from our interview with the University president and our establishing shots of Johnson Hall where we met with him. We shot the interview on two cameras, so as long as we got decent sound on the other one, we should be okay. If not, we'll only have half the interview to select sound bytes from. We will definitely have to reshoot the establishing shots, but that shouldn't take long. We are very fortunate that Johnson is right by Allen Hall, so we won't have to haul equipment all the way across campus.

I think we're going to try to get one more interview next week and then we can start editing this project and start shooting our dramatic short, which is due at the same time.

I've asked Rose and Tim from UFO to be our actors, but haven't figured out our shooting schedule. Tim sprained his ankle the other day, so I'll have to find out if he's still going to be able to do it. I also need to finish writing the last scene this weekend and get a storyboard together.

This class really takes up a lot of my time, but I think it's worth it. At this point I'm feeling much more comfortable with the equipment than I did at the beginning of the term. I feel pretty confident about my shooting abilities. I'm still not as comfortable with editing as I'd like to be, but maybe by the end of these projects that will change.

Electronic Media FInal Projects

For my Video Production class I am working with a group on two final projects: an evergreen documentary and a dramatic short. For the documentary we are doing a piece on the new Services for Student Athletes building that is currently under construction on the corner of Agate and 13th.

We've done three interviews this week: one with a cheerleader who uses SSA, one with an SSA tutor, and one with the university's new president Richard Lariviere.

We did the first two on Monday evening at the current SSA building. It was a struggle to lug all our gear(two cameras, two tripods, a light kit, a shotgun mic, a boom pole, some extra cords) all the way from Allen Hall to Mac Court, but we managed. We didn't have much space in the room they let us use, but we made it work. The interviews went smoothly and we finished on schedule.

This afternoon we did our third interview, and that was a little more challenging. We were all a little nervous about interviewing the University President, and we had only a half hour to set up and conduct the interview. The room provided for us was spacious and allowed us more control over our setup than the previous one. We closed all the shades to block out the sunlight and set up three point lighting. We rearranged the furniture a little bit and got our cameras set up. All of this took slightly longer than we anticipated, but we got everything looking really nice.

We informed the receptionist that we were ready and President Lariviere came in and sat down. We got him miked and let him look at our question list, and were just about to start shooting when all of our lights went out. Someone in the office flipped a breaker and they came back on, but we lost some valuable time. We conducted the interview as best we could in the short time we had left, and we all felt that we got some good sound bytes, but it was certainly a nerve-racking experience.

We're planning to do a few more interviews in the next week and then focus our attention on shooting the dramatic short.

'In the Rain' Almost Finished!

We only have one scene left to shoot for "In the Rain" and then we begin the post-production phase. We began this project with no budget, and have all been working for free and paying for things (food, gas, lighting equipment, wardrobe, props, etc.) out-of-pocket as we go. In hopes of being able to refund the cast and crew for some of their expenses and of being able to promote and distribute the film when it's finished, I decided to give the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo a try.

We have all worked very hard to make this film a reality. Most of us are students, and are broke, so we'd be thrilled if we got back some of the money we put into it, and more importantly if we could afford to promote the film and get DVDs made so that people will get to see what we've done! If you can spare even a few dollars and would like to support our efforts, it would be a tremendous help to us!

Busy, Busy, Busy....

@MYMHM on Twitter was nice enough to send me a Google Wave invitation in exchange for retweeting a link to their latest episode, which I was happy to do. It took a few days for the invitation to arrive in my inbox, which gave me a chance to read about it a bit, mostly on Twitter, which did little to clarify for me exactly what it does. I finally got to try it out today, but so few people have access to it yet that it's difficult to tell how functional or cool it is yet. I am intrigued, at the very least.

At tonight's University Film Organization we did a lot of planning, and should be pretty busy for the next few weeks.

Tomorrow we are shooting more of a short written by club member Rose Guess, which we started on a couple of weeks ago.

Thursday night a couple of club members and I are driving up to Portland for the weekend to attend What is Film?, which I am very excited about. If we have time, we may go check out the Northwest Film Center's 36th NW Film and Video Festival, though I fear we have too much else to do.

We have also broken into two small groups to make music videos for folk musician Will Hobbs of Portland and metal band Straitjacket Seduction of Columbus, Ohio. We will start pre-production next week in club.

In addition to all of that, I have plenty of classwork to keep me occupied right now. My third video assignment for J331 is due next Monday. I also have exams on Monday and Tuesday and a project for my Media Aesthetics class due Tuesday.

I really can't afford to slack at all, as I am trying to bring up my GPA in order to increase my chances of getting into a graduate program next year (not that I'm sure yet that that's what I want to do). I will also have to take the GRE very soon.

I hope I can make it through the rest of the term without getting swine flu!

Obama and Adams in the news

I spent the long weekend (no classes on Martin Luther King Jr. Day) in Portland, and watched clips from the inauguration on CNN.com before driving back to Eugene on Tuesday afternoon. I listened to further Obama coverage on KOPB until the signal faded, and then switched to KLCC. It was a little anti-climactic for me, after all the excitement of the campaign and election night, and most of the coverage wasn't too insightful, though All Things Considered had an interesting analysis of Obama's inaugural address including a comparison to speeches of previous presidents.

What's been more interesting in the past few days is the coverage of the Sam Adams scandal, which is getting almost as much attention in Portland's papers as our new president.

Perhaps more interesting than the news coverage itself is the debate that's going on in the comment sections that follow the online stories, such as those on the websites of Willamette Week, who broke the story, and the Oregonian. The response is surprisingly thoughtful and intelligent, expressing a variety of opinions about Adams' actions, whether or not he should step down, and on the media's coverage of the story. That's something you don't get when you pick up a hard copy of the newspaper. I'm really glad to be able to follow the responses of Portlanders from my computer here in Eugene.

Winter Term Begins

I am halfway into my second week of winter term. I think the combination of classes and extracurricular activities I'm participating in are going to keep me pretty busy, which makes me almost relieved that I am not working right now (the restaurant I was at since I moved here just went under). My hope is that I won't have time to spend money.

I am now taking Writing for the Media, the last of my pre-Journalism classes. I think it's going to be challenging, but I expect to learn a lot. I am glad that I took Intro to Media Writing at PCC before transferring. It is a definite bonus to be somewhat familiar with the basic concepts. I got back my first graded assignment today, which I did not edit it as carefully as I should have. I am relieved that we are given the opportunity to resubmit.

I have joined Duck U, for which I get 1 credit, but more importantly I get hands-on experience working with professional equipment. So far I have gotten to work with a pretty nice digital video camera, and have gotten some practice setting up lights.

I am also going to be shooting video for UFO's major project for the year, a feature-length (or close to it) romantic comedy about FBI agents working in Eugene. The film is untitled as of now, but the script was just finished, and we are planning to hold auditions in a couple of weeks. I think this is going to take up a lot of my time, but I think it will be a valuable experience and am looking forward to it.