Bye Bye

Finally, the Digital Journalism class is over. December has rolled around and we are officially done with the first semester of our senior year. The Amazing Videos team's members are graduating in just a few months. Below you can see some of our work. It has slowly progressed from the minimal Final Cut Pro skills to the last video done about Alec Harrison, which is the best we have done so far, in my opinion.
Thank you for visiting our blog!

Here is our last video for digital journalism class on Alec Harrison

Alec Harrison is a senior at Roger Williams University. This video was supposed to be about someone interesting, and let me tell you, Alec is as interesting as they get. Not only is he an incredible musician, but he is just as good of a graphic designer. Although his first love is music, he realizes that it is a hard occupation to make a good living at, and therefore was quick at picking up graphic design. Alec not only sings, but he plays the guitar and piano and makes his own beats to his lyrics. He recently created a calendar for a project in a graphic design class, which he decided to share with us. Alec Harrison is most definitely on the track to success.

Cars

Recording video while in the car can be tricky, so parts of the video above are a little shaky. Since the assignment was requiring a song to be represent the theme of the video, I believe the song used fits the theme perfectly.

As far as the Final Cut Pro skills used while editing this video, the group learned how to work with some other features such as reverse video, lay music on the bottom of cut video and so on.

Hope you enjoy!

Talented Lacrosse Player

Emily Schall is a senior at Roger Williams University and has been a defense lacrosse player for the past eight years and four of those years have been played at Roger Williams University. She loves playing on a team which is what she will miss most after she graduates and can not wait for lacrosse season to begin in the spring!

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In regards to Final Cut, we have improved our skills quite a bit. This is the first video we used sound and video transitions. It is no longer as choppy as it used to be. However, we learned that some transitions are better than others and what to use when.
Another new tool we used was the lower3rds which added an identification to our subject.
Enjoy!

RWU Farmers Market

Since I am usually not the reporter, it was hard being in front of the camera. I know appreciate more the work of those who have the courage to be filmed. I wish I did not have a piece of paper in my hand, or if at least the shot was closer so the viewer could not see it. The people we asked to speak to us were really nice and opened to the idea. We also shot a lot of Broll so we had stuff to pick out of.

Some more Final Cut Pro

I am very excited because we learned how to do a couple more things in Final Cut Pro. Learning how to use other tools such as lower thirds, volume adjustments and transitions definitely made the video quality improve.
We also learned more about how to write and read the script, and how to more efficiently frame our shots. I would have never thought that color takes such a valuable part in videos, and now I know which colors go together as opposed to clashing.

RWU Revamps Smoking Policy

BRISTOL, RI - The student affairs department at Roger Williams University has
taken serious strides to reducing the number of cigarette consumption on
campus. Last spring semester they implemented a smoking policy that punished
both students and staff from smoking in areas outside the designated smoking
area. These isolated areas consist of gazebos and parking lots.   
    The immediate improvement was far from seen. The weak policy regulation
and minuscule consequences resulted in smokers continuing their regular
habits. Rather then giving up regulating smokers the student affairs council
went back to the drawing board to revamp the policy. The new action taken on
smoking violators is far more severe. There is no longer a warning. Instead an
immediate 50$ fine and a hour of community service. Multi offenders are
slapped with a 100$ fine.
    "There are no longer people lined up outside of academic buildings or
residence halls smoking. There is much, much less public smoking happening
across campus. There has been a reduction of cigarette butts littering the
campus and the smoking gazebos that we used as designated smoking areas are
getting very heavy use," said John King the RWU Director of Student Affairs.

video on new elliptical machines

So from this point on I have decided to be extremely honest on how I feel about each video we produce. Origionally we decided to do our video on the Tai Chi class the wellness center was putting together. We figured this would be extremely newsworthy and would make a great story. I e-mailed the wellness center to make sure we would be able to do an interview with the lady in charge of the Tai Chi class and they said it would be no problem. Well, we got to the class 20 minutes early and from the start, the lady was extremely rude and to put it bluntly, a jerk. She would not even let us use her voice in an interview and we were furious. Due to this little mishap we had to think fast. Because I am an avid gym goer I was aware of the new elliptical machines that were put in the gym with ipod accessibility. I came up with the idea on doing the story and luckily my teammates agreed that this was going to be good. Even though we had to put the story together pretty much on the spot, I believe that it came out pretty well. Everyone that we interviewed was very nice and helpful, and unfortunately the sound was not very good in some interviews with students so we were unable to use them. I now have a greater appreciation for our gym and am really coming in to my shell as a reporter. Tune in for next time!

Recreation Center Adds New Elliptical Machines

Who is Amazing Videos?

From Left: Leslie, Mike and Ioana

Final Cut Pro

After many time consuming attempts, I finally managed to upload our team’s first video to our blog. It was an amazing experience working with such a high tech computer program. At times, it was really frustrating since either Mike or I, knew what we were doing, nor did the computer know what we wanted it to do. It was even more frustrating when groups around us had already finished cutting their final video and we didn’t even get to our first voice over. After two and a half hours of hard work and aggravation, our first video was done. I’ll admit it, its not the best student produced video; however, we promise we will get better at shooting video, talking on the camera, taking broll, and finally cutting video. Stay tuned to our blog for more videos about to come. Our next subject is the local farmers market that takes place on the Roger Williams University’s quad, every Friday afternoon.

Construction

Hello everyone

What is going on people,
Welcome to the hottest blog to ever hit the Internet. Leslie, Ionna and I (Michael) are going to be posting on this very frequently. Letting you all know what is going on in the world of digital journalism. Our professor Michael Scully is teaching us all the latest technology that the media is embracing. If you are not up to date with these high speed changes you are going to be a lost soul. You don't want to be one of those people who are still using a-tracks and VHS players. Your best bet is to stay posted with this blog and see what advances in channeling information are taking place. As we progress in the semester you will surely enough discover that even you can be a journalist. Yes that's right, even you! With a couple key pieces of equipment, half a brain and access to the Internet you can express your thoughts, opinions and news to reach audiences across the world. One of the best uses of this technology is the ability to cover stories that affect you and your community. Your local news stations are not going to have the time or the funding to report on your town's high school basketball results, yet there is a population that want that information. That is where you come in. It may not be cutting-edge reporting, but it will draw people to your posts. Wants you establish an audience you can continue to expand your publications.

The media these days are going through a difficult time. More and more people are getting their news and information from the Internet rather than traditional newspapers. If you pay any attention to newspapers at all you can see that the industry is going down the toilet. I am a frequent reader of the Boston Herald, the sports pages in particular. Tony Massarotti is by far my favorite sport's columnist. All indications told me that the Herald held him at high value. Front pages would provide inducing statements like: "Tony Massarotti writes inside." Just a couple weeks ago the Herald got rid of him like yesterday's newspaper. Only days later he got another job with the Boston Globe. Not working for their newspaper, but writing for their website Boston.com (which is head and shoulders above any other newspaper website I've seen). This has been happening at an alarming rate. The newspapers don't have the money to be paying their reporters, all their customers are turning to the Internet for their stories. As this transition occurs the reporters and columnists are following suit. The competition for Internet journalist are at an all time high. Which is resulting in more quality columns found online. Now is the time to jump on board the new aged media.

If the latest technologies seem too overwhelming to bear, you are not the only one. It is new to everyone. We are not claiming to be experts, as we are learning for the first time ourselves. Join us as we dwell into the forefront of digital media!

Today we created our blog

It was very easy creating it, lets hope it will be just as easy to post our videos here.