My favorite project to work on was the visual story. I based my whole blog topic based off of this project. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I liked editing even though it was tough and it was probably the most time-consuming project. I also felt like this project had the most meaning for me. I was vulnerable and have shared a part of my life that I rarely do.

The skills that I have learned in the class that I believe I will use in the future are the editing skills from the visual project. I am planning on being a news reporter. As a news reporter, I have to know how to edit my story before it goes on air or the internet. Another skill that I have learned that I will most likely use again is Photoshop. I loved altering pictures and I have been using the app frequently and have gotten better since the first project.

As I have mentioned above, I want to be a news reporter. Recently though, with helping as crew in Cable 8 Productions, and how much I loved working in the last project, I have thought about majoring in Broadcast Production and helping out behind the cameras. I liked editing and the process it takes to make a video. I think my favorite part of editing was making sure the audio was consecutive and would not be able to notice parts that I took audio out. I had been helping out on Late on Cable 8 by editing and being a crew member. That is why I am possibly thinking about changing my major.

A skill that I wish I could have learned is how to filter pictures. I kind of learned in Illustrator. Adobe Lightroom is an app where people can edit their pictures. I feel like learning how to edit pictures without distorting them, would be perfect for people who want to work with social media.  I feel like making pictures more pleasing to the eye attracts followers to look at people’s content and engage more. 

Resources that mainly helped me were the Adobe tutorials they provide. When I found Adobe Lightroom, I used tutorials Adobe provided to learn how to use their functions. I feel like following the videos really did help me learn the functions of the app. 

I made a visual video that consists of various pictures of me growing up to enhance the matter of fact that I have grown up with a heart problem and have had many surgeries. I decided to do my blog about my heart problem so I could speak about my surgeries and show myself growing up. 

I decided to use pictures of me growing up because I wanted the video to feel like a documentary. I love watching documentaries about people. In documentaries, when information is given about the person, they put pictures of the person and narrate their life. I really like that concept and I thought it would be perfect for my project. I also thought having pictures of me growing up would be better than doing an interview. It would be awkward if I just stared at the camera and talked about my life. I reshot the video and added more pictures. I reshot my videos because the first time I made them, I had not stabilized the camera and was shaking. This time I made sure to use the technique provided in the readings. In my draft video, I used the 10-second method but for this video, since I used an abundance of pictures, I was not able to. I did stay consistent with using Jumpcut transitions. At the end of the video, I made the video fade to black to let the viewers know it was the end as well as saying thank you for watching the video.

In the video, I used pictures I had brought to WSU and some that I found when I went home for Thanksgiving break. I refilmed my videos in four different clips. I used the same audio from the draft video. I mainly used the cropping out tools to edit out parts of the audio and visuals I did not want. It was still hard to precisely cut out the audio and make it sound like I had not cropped out parts. I was messing around with the editing column in Premiere, and that is how I discovered the fade to black edit. I decided to add it at the end so all of my video would not just jump-cut frames.

The first three pictures in the video were taken by Lisa Dorsing. She had given me a USB drive with the pictures and told me that I could use the pictures however I wanted to. The fourth picture was taken by my mom and I had asked her if I could use it for the video and she allowed me to. The rest of the pictures were taken by either by me, my mom, or random strangers. I made sure to ask my mom if I could use the pictures she had taken. Also, I made sure to ask the people in the video if it was okay that they were in it. I know I did not really have to do that, but I thought it would be courteous.

I created a visual video that focused on my heart problem and what I have gone through. This idea relates to my topic because my blog is about my heart problem and how it has affected me and now I am focusing on what has happened because of my heart problem.

What inspired me to do a video with a few pictures of me growing up was the beginning of documentaries when a person is talking about their life and they show pictures of them growing up. I have watched a lot of documentaries and that was kind of my research. I based it off of what I have often seen. I felt like using pictures instead of doing an interview of me just talking would be more pleasing. I tried using some basic shooting principles, like shooting horizontally. I know that I don’t have a stable hand, so for my final draft I will focus on stabilizing the camera. For the first clip of the video, I tried using the 10-second method and making sure that I stayed on one picture for 10 seconds. I recorded 4 clips that I edited into one for this project. 

For the video, I used pictures that I chose to bring to WSU. I thought it would be unique. When using Premiere, I combined the 4 clips I used and edited out parts of the clips for the time limit. Between changing clips, I used the jump cute, because I change between pictures and talk about something new. What I found most difficult about the process was cropping out audio and visual parts of the clips. It was hard to get the precise timings to cut to make the clip continue sounding like a video without knowing that I cropped out some parts. I mainly used the marking in and marking out tools to help and used the extract tool to edit. I also had trouble exporting my files but I figured it out after a while.

The first three pictures I used in my video, Lisa Dorsing had taken the pictures. She had given me a USB drive with the pictures and told me that I could use the pictures however I wanted to. The fourth picture was taken by my mom and I had asked her if I could use it for the video and she allowed me to. The fifth picture was taken by a random tourist in Mexico. The last picture was taken by my grandma and I had called her and also asked if I could use the picture in the video and she also allowed me to.

For my logo design, I wanted to focus on my pacemaker. My idea for the logo came from dealing with having a pacemaker and having to face daily challenges. I added a clock to signify my school life and that my pacemeker helps my heart have a steady heart beat. The Pace of Life means a lot to me. It needed to be added to my logo because I feel like it points out that my pacemaker is what keeps my heart beating regularly. I wouldn’t really be alive if I did not have a pacemaker. 

I had started my design with just a pacemaker and leeds connecting it to a heart. I still had The Pace of Life on there. I felt like the design wasn’t what I envisioned. I searched online for different inspirations. I came across the Ronald McDonald House Foundation. I was enlightened by the minimalistic design and the house design inspired me. I then decided to add a heart and a person running to fill up white space. The person running is to bring out the idea that people are busy and are always moving at a fast pace.

I had faced a problem in making the heart for the design. I was using the curvature pen tool. I did many attempts to make the heart. I mainly used the pen tool to make the logo design. I also had problems with angling my fonts but I feel like they look good.

On my rough draft, I had many great critiques. Someone told me to bolden the house design to make it stand out more. I tested it out, and I felt like my design did look better with it bolded. Another person told me to add lines to make my person look more like it’s running. I thought this was great, because I needed an idea on how to make the person actually look like it’s running. The last piece of advise that I added to my final design was adding a symbol of a heart to the design. A person told me how to find a symbol of a heart. I didn’t want to delete the heart that I had worked so hard to design, so I added the symbol on top of my original heart. I feel like I benefited from adding the symbol heart because it makes the heart stand out and pulls in the whole design.

I feel like I have been focusing on the heart aspect more than what makes my heart function. My idea for this logo was to focus on having a pacemaker. The idea came from having a pacemaker and dealing with daily life. I added a clock to signify school, but also that the heart has timed beats and a pacemaker helps the heart have regular beats. I added another roof to signify home life. I added the words, “pace of life”, because a pacemaker helps a heart beat and the heart beating indicates a person has life. Pace of life also means that life can go by fast, that is why the person seems as if it’s running.

Design influences that inspired the logo I made were, at first the pacemaker logo, but then, the Ronald McDonald House Foundation. I wanted to use my space and tried to make the logo look simplistic. When I was reading about how logos changed, less was better. The logos presented were minimalistic and clean. I feel like I have accomplished that while adding details that stand out. When I was drawing my logo, I had many different ideas. I was going to have a pacemaker connecting to the heart by the leads. The problem I encountered was drawing a pacemaker and connecting it to the heart. I didn’t really like how it looked. I decided to look at other foundations and Ronald McDonald House Foundation stood out. I then started redesigning my logo and started making it on Illustrator.

I mainly used the pen and curvature tool to make my logo. One of the hardest parts for the logo was making the heart. I feel like there was an easier way to make it other than the curvature tool, but that’s what I used. I kept messing up, so I did half of the heart and then copied it and reflected it. I then had a problem making them intercept. Another struggle I had was angling the fonts. That is something that I will be working on to make better.

My idea for this logo came from having a pacemaker. In the first triangle, there is a clock to signify that our heart has timed beats. I added “pace of life”, because my pacemaker paces my heart and I said life because a heart indicates if a person is living. The person is supposed to be running as if they are trying to win at life. That includes living with a heart problem and pacemaker and dealing with daily struggles.

For this project, I wanted to use materials that meant a lot to me. I decided to create a collage of pictures that focus on my heart problem and what is central to me. I used a picture of my backyard as the background because home means everything to me. When I lived at home, I would go outside and ponder on life. I would always wonder why I had a heart problem and how it has affected my life. I used a picture of my family because they have always been my biggest supporters and have dealt with a lot. They also hold a big place in my heart. The third picture I used was the heart by the CUB. I used the heart because my blog is going to be about my heart problem, so I wanted to include it. I specifically used the heart by the CUB because Pullman is my second home now. It means a lot to me, and I wanted it to be included. The text I included was to signify that all the pictures mean a lot to me.

When I started this project, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I added pictures that meant a lot to me, and I kind of went from there. I selected the top 3 pictures that HAD to be included in my blog, and what looked great together. I thought about the color theory when I included the pictures. I knew I wanted the background to look vibrant, so I hued it a bit. I wanted the heart to be unique, so intensified the colors and darkened it. For the family picture, I didn’t do anything other than crop out the background. I wanted it to look like the pictures people have with cheesy backgrounds. 

I went through my google photos to choose the photos I wanted to use. The hardest part of the project was making the picture of my family just include ourselves. I first used the Marquee tool to crop the picture. I then used the magic eraser to erase the background of the picture and only be the background of my backyard. I surprisingly spent the most time around my dad’s head. There were two other heads around his, and I needed to erase theirs without making my dad’s head look weird. When I first started with the family picture, I was using the lasso tool. This method was frustrating me because I would move my hand and part of the picture I didn’t want to be selected would get erased after I clicked crop. I had to be extremely careful, but after discovering the eraser tool, I didn’t have to be as careful. I also looked at what tools Adobe Photoshop had from one of the links provided, and that was how I discovered the erasing tool. I would recommend looking at all the links and going back through the tutorials provided before starting a project, as a refresher.

Jessica Castro took the picture of my family and I. I text messaged her if I had permission to use the picture, and she said yes.