Checking In

It's been six months since I graduated from UO and I haven't really addressed work here in quite some time.

Over the summer I found some marketing work, some of which I enjoyed and some of which I did not. I was grateful to have some money coming in and to have the opportunity to gain some experience in communications, but I knew that what I really wanted to pursue was production work, and I knew I wouldn't have time if I was working full time in an office.

In September I got a part time job as a Promotions Assistant for a broadcast company that owns a bunch of local radio stations. At first I was working a lot of events, but now I am primarily doing video work, which I love.

The hours are irregular (I've had anywhere from 2 - 30 hours in a given week), so needless to say, I am not making bank at this job, but I feel very lucky to be doing work that I enjoy and that provides me with valuable experience in my field.

I am also happy to have the flexibility in my schedule to pursue other opportunities. I've managed to pick up other production gigs from time to time. Some are unpaid, but when I do get paid I make a lot more than I do at my regular job. I hope that as I get more experience and meet more people in the community more of these opportunities will arise.

Right now things are very slow, so I'm trying to keep busy and get involved in as many things as I can.

I've been considering joining professional organizations such as OMPA and SPJ, but it's difficult to justify spending the money on memberships when I'm making so little. I keep visiting their Websites and trying to decide how beneficial they would be. I think this is something that will have to wait.

I've applied for some other jobs with no luck. I did receive one call, but I missed it and didn't hear the voicemail until a week later and they had already filled the position. It was a position that would have required a long commute and it wasn't something I thought I would want to do long term, but I was still frustrated to have missed the opportunity.

While I keep checking Craig's List and a few other sites that post media job openings, I am trying to focus my energy on being productive, regardless of pay.

Last week I spent some time updating OJM's social media and am helping them redo some digital slides with information about upcoming exhibits and events to show on a flat screen TV in their lobby. I haven't done graphic design in a while, so it's great for me to get to brush up my Photoshop skills in a low pressure environment. I also volunteered to transcribe some interviews for a local filmmaker who's writing a book. It's a bit tedious, but I enjoy listening to interviews and I'm happy to be able to help out.

Six months ago I feared that I would not be able to find work in my field at all. I do worry about money and I sometimes get frustrated that there is no obvious next step, but I try to remember that I have made progress. I have not resorted to applying for restaurant jobs. I am doing things now that I wouldn't have dreamed of before I moved to Eugene in 2008 to finish my Journalism degree.

Despite financial fears and uncertainty about the future, I feel pretty good about what I'm doing right now. I don't feel stagnant or trapped like I did when I was working in food service. I am enjoying my existence more than I have in a long time.

There is no straightforward path to a meaningful career in a fast-changing landscape. I think the best I can do right now is to try to stay informed about what's happening both in my field and my community, to be open to different kinds of opportunities and to try to get as much out of them as possible. My hope is that if I can make myself useful to people, develop my skills, and continue to remain flexible about my goals and aspirations, that in time I will be able to make a living doing work that I care about. If I can accomplish that, I believe I will feel successful.

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.

Playing with Text in Final Cut Pro

When I was still getting comfortable with the basics of Final Cut Pro, I didn't dare take the time to try to get creative or do much experimenting--it was hard enough trying to find all my clips and get them into the timeline in order.

I've gradually started playing around with various features. I think customizing the text is one of the easiest things you can do in FCP that really changes the feel of a video.

I wish I knew more about text design. I've never taken a typography class or really studied it on my own. I learned a bit about typefaces in the Visual Communication class I took at Portland Community College a couple years ago, and I recently watched Gary Hustwit's documentary Helvetica, which was really enlightening.

I've been aware for a long time that text has a significant impact in visual media, but there are so many options, I've always been a little overwhelmed by the idea of trying to do much with it.

As a teenager I was a big fan of Courier typeface, I think largely because I associated it with typewriters and DIY culture. I still have a fondness for it, but it's not appropriate everywhere.

It's hard not to love Helvetica. It's so modern and easy to read. But it's also EVERYWHERE.

In FCP the default font is Lucida Grand. It's a simple sans serif font and is quite readable, but something about it bothers me. It looks lifeless somehow: it's like Helvetica with less personality.

When I finally got around to using different fonts in FCP, I knew I wanted to make sure my text was easy to read, but I also wanted it to stand out a little. I didn't want something distracting, but I also wanted it to be a little more eye-catching than Lucida Grand, and less common than Helvetica.

After a little experimenting I settled on Stone Sans. I wanted a sans serif font that stood out a little. I think it's really easy on the eyes. It's very uniform and looks both bold and comforting at the same time.

According to MyFonts.com, the Stone typeface family, designed by Sumner Stone "solves the problem of mixing different styles of type on the same page. Most combined type styles, because they aren’t designed to work together, often have radically different characteristics such as cap heights, stem weights, and proportions."

I guess I picked a good one to experiment with.

The more I look at it, however, the more I feel like I'm watching credits from a cartoon show. Maybe I've just been looking at it too long, or maybe it's time to try a different one.

Here, I use the Blogger default font Georgia in "small" size.

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.

More News

I turned in my second news package today. I think it turned out a lot better than the first, though I still struggled to get it down to two minutes.

From a technical standpoint, I think it turned out pretty well. The biggest issue I'm having is getting the audio levels for all the different clips properly adjusted. the variation seems to be much more exaggerated when played on a TV than on a computer.

In terms of content, I think my story was pretty well focused and organized. I was really happy with the sound bites I got from my interviews, and I felt like I had a better sense of how to "write to" the bites this time. I still couldn't fit everything in that I wanted to, though.

I did my first stand up for this assignment. I really dislike being on camera, and I think I come across as kind of stiff and awkward. I hope it will get easier if I have to do more of these in the future.

I'm thinking about re-editing the piece and making it into something more to my taste.

I'm now starting on my last project for this class, which is a three minute multimedia piece using video and still images. I think I will feel more comfortable with this format, but it may require more planning.

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.

Video Production

Last February, which you may note is when I stopped writing here, the University Film Organization began shooting a feature length film called In the Rain. I am director of photography for the project, and as it turns out, that's a big job.

It's been especially tough because the club has almost no funding, which means we have to use all our own equipment, which is far from professional. It can be really frustrating for me going from working on small class projects with really nice cameras, tripods, lights, etc. to working on a huge long-term project without such things. I often find that I'm unable to do what I would like to because what we have is inadequate. Even doing simple moving shots like tilts and pans is near impossible if your tripod doesn't allow for smooth movement.

We planned to finish production before the end of the school year, but that didn't happen, and then many members of our cast and crew left for the summer. We have just begun shooting again, and only have about 10 scenes left before the film goes into post-production. We've been keeping a production blog, which contains a lot of photos and updates about our progress.

I've been elected president of the club for the 2009/2010 school year, and that has been keeping me pretty busy. We have a lot of new members this year, some of whom bring a lot of skills to the table. I'm really excited about working with them, as well as our returning members from last year.

I have started looking for video production internships, and am not having much luck so far. I hope to start one this winter or spring. Chambers isn't offering any right now, but said they might in the spring, so I guess I'll have to keep checking back with them. I'd really like to get some hands-on experience using professional equipment in a professional environment.

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.