I finished the promo video for Young Sound Seekers last weekend, and I think it came out well. Rendering out the final cuts was a bit annoying, though. The first time I rendered it out, I forgot to change the first clip to something more stable and had to remove a walking clip because I couldn’t keep it stabilized. During this render, I muted the student interviews track so I wouldn’t hear that repeating as I worked on it. However, I forgot to unmute it after I finished working, so it wasn’t in the second final. So, I unmuted the interview for the third version and sent it over to Eve. When she got this version, though, the file size was half the other versions, and she couldn’t play it even though it was a .mp4 file. Something went wrong either when I transferred the file to One Drive or when Eve downloaded it because everything was good on my end. So, for the fourth and final time, I rendered the video just to be safe and sent it over using We Transfer, which worked. After I sent the video to Eve, she added some of the interviews she took and title and end cards. I am glad that I was able to get this video done and provide a quick turnaround for her to be still able to include the parts she wanted. Now that I am done working on the video, I will record a quick testimonial about my experience with Young Sound Seekers for Eve. 

I had a meeting with Eve this week and which was very productive. I was told that the video was good overall, but I needed to make a few changes. Some of the clips were shaky and required to be stabilized. I tried to edit them and apply a stabilizer to them but there wasn’t a good point that the effect could use as a reference so I just got rid of the clip. Another note I got was to remove some of the clips of the students recording sounds around Davis Hall. I had to change them not because they were bad, but because Eve wanted a larger focus on the students recording at the parks and the students learning how to edit the recordings. Eve and I worked on the video at Trilogy Coffee where we decided on what photos to add. She also told me that my student interviews were a little muddy and needed to be altered a bit. What I did before was throw the files into Audacity and use their noise removal because the AC was being picked up on the mic. This time I put the files into Reaper and EQed the files to remove the sound, while the AC is still a little audible it is not that bad and the student’s voices are not too affected. Today, I will recut the interviews and add them to this new version while adding some space to include some of the interviews Eve took.

I finished the rough cut of the promotional video for The Young Sound Seekers camp. I sent the video to Eve to get her thoughts about it, and we are meeting tomorrow to go over it. Overall I think the video is good, but in the end, it’s not about what I think it is what Eve and the Atlantic Center for the Arts feel about it. The process I had for making this video was to divide and concur. I started by filtering the video and photos that I thought were good to include and putting them in a separate folder. Then after going through what I recorded I listened to the interviews I did with the students and find the timestamps of good statements to include. Once I had everything I needed prepared I opened up Hitfilm Express, the editing software I use, and sorted the media I had based on the location they were recorded at. Dividing up everything this was helped me a lot because it stopped me from constantly going through the files I had, and allowed me to know where everything was. Working on this video was generally pretty smooth, except for the fact my editing software would randomly crash; however, this got me into the habit of saving after nearly every action I did. One time after working for around 10 minutes without saving the software crashed and I decided that was a good time for a dinner break. This was an odd experience for me because usually when I work on Hitfilms I don’t go through this. I think what caused this problem was that were so many media files to keep track the software was struggling a bit. This road bump didn’t stop me though and I was able to finish the rough cut in a decent time.  

This week was a little bit of a struggle for me. On Tuesday, I got hit with a cold that made me want to rest all day, and it carried over till Thursday. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t productive though. When I was awake and had some energy I went through the moments I captured and sorted them into what would be suitable for the video. I also got some interview videos that Eve took that feature some of the counselors from the camp. I had worked all day yesterday, so I wasn’t able to go through them. For this 4th of July weekend, I plan to first put all the visual elements together in my video editor and focus on that. Once I am done compiling the visuals I will look through some of the recordings I took from the studio time to see if there are any good sound bites I can put over the video. Some ideas I had of sound to put over the video were using the recordings the students took over their time at camp. Another idea is to have their interview answers and things said while in the studio. There will be some clips that will have their audio like when the students are interviewing the park rangers that came to visit. I don’t have any plans and I am not scheduled to work till Monday, so I hope to finish a rough draft of the promotional video. Once I am done with the video I will send it over to Eve to get her thoughts on it and see what can be improved.

Camp finished yesterday, and overall I had a great experience. Helping out at the camp was not just an enjoyable time but an educational one. Helping out CDCVI and the Atlantic Center for the Arts allowed me to understand the struggles of visually impaired people better. Meeting and talking to Andy Slater was also a great experience I had a ton of great conversations with him during the mornings when we would get coffee. I enjoyed the time I had both inside and outside the Davis lab. 

Now that camp is done my next step is to work on making a promotional video for the camp. I am meeting with Eve sometime tomorrow morning to go over the things we both got. In this meeting, I would like to go over some ideas I have for the camp and create a more focused idea of what the promotional video will have. I have some ideas in mind already of what to do, but I just want to run them by someone else to get their opinions. Tomorrow and Tuesday I will go through the footage and photos to create a refined folder of what will be included in the video. I have hours of footage and hundreds of photos so going over them and sorting them will be very helpful at the end of the day. Even though the camp was very exhausting I think I was able to capture a lot of good photos and videos to edit together. 

Camp has gone on for three days and it has been really fun so far! At first, I was nervous about the camp with the students being around high school age, and knowing how high schoolers are I was preparing for a dreadful experience, but honestly, it has been a blast. Getting to help these kids learn how to record and edit audio has been fun and not as stressful as I first thought. Also, I feel like my presence is helpful with not just me going to fetch stuff or be an assistant but having my opinions and actions matter. Talking to Eve today about what exactly she wanted from me when making a video helped me narrow down what I should record and how I should edit the video. Before our conversation, I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to make a highlight reel of events the students have done or create a 5 minute narrative about the week and what the students have done. Now that I have the idea of making a highlight reel I can focus on the students working more than the teaching parts of the day. The hardest part of recording to me is when the students spread out from whatever location we are filming for the day. This has been a struggle because I have to check everywhere for a person and I feel like that every minute I don’t see someone field recording is an important minute that I have wasted. The last field recording trip we did with the camp was a little bit of a struggle, so hopefully, tomorrow when we all go out and record it will be a little easier.  

This week has been a good week when it comes to preparing for the camp. Right now I have my camera packed and ready to go and tomorrow I will have my clothes packed for next week. I am excited about the camp and helping out the students who are going. I had a meeting Monday with Dr. Wolek and Eve Paylor. In the meeting, we went over a general idea when it came to expectations that are expected of me, and I gained a more detailed schedule for the week. We also briefly talked about how to record sound for the promotional video. Dr. Wolek mentioned having a stand-alone microphone to record everything and using the in-camera microphone as a way to sync the video to the audio. I also learned more about what is needed for the promotional video as well as the estimated length of it. I created a shot list with ideas of what I am thinking of recording for the week and got a list of expected shots. When bringing up the idea to interview some of the students and it was well-received, however, it would be used in a longer video the organization has planned. I don’t have any interview questions left, but I plan on making it in the first few days of the camp after I am familiar with what is going on. I am excited for the coming week and cannot wait to meet students and help them out throughout their time learning.

I haven’t done much preparing for the camp this week, but next week I have some goals I want to achieve. This week I got some field recordings on a bike path nearby my house at 11 am, 2 pm, and 6 pm. I want to put these recordings together to create a roughly 3-minute soundscape. I will finish the mix of the soundscape by tonight so that this weekend when I am free I can plan out the video for the camp. I also just got done booking a meeting with Dr. Wolek to help me come up with a way to record audio and video. Before the meeting, I will check the sound quality of my camera to see if it is good enough. I do not want to use the in-camera microphone but if it is a last resort I want to prepare myself for the quality. A good idea that I might do instead is rent a camera from the library at Stetson and use that since I know that has a 3.5mm headphone jack and use the wireless mics that I used in my senior project. I might use those mics since they are really sensitive and can pick up a lot. The only drawback that I can see is that they are wireless and I need to be aware of their battery life. I am not sure what the best option will be, but hopefully, after talking to Dr. Wolek I will know the best option.

Last week I talked about how I am preparing for the Young Sound Seekers Camp, and I want to provide an update on these preparations. First, I have been using Reaper a lot and recently finished a mix of a song I found online. With this mix I just finished I am sending it to Dr. Underriner to get his thoughts. I sent him the Reaper session and the bounced mix. Although I have gained some experience with Reaper I want to practice a little bit more. This practice is messing with a recording session I did with Dr. Underriner as well as getting some field recordings and seeing if I can make a clean transition between the different recordings. For the field recording, I want to go to a bike path nearby my house and record in the morning, midday, and later in the afternoon and try and mix them and have the listener feel the time changing. It isn’t just Reaper that I have been working with during the past week I have been using a free video editor called Hitfilm Express. I originally wanted to learn Davinci Resolve but after some time on it, I realized there was a lot locked behind a paywall, also there were a lot of unneeded add-ons. Hitfilms however, is very close to Adobe Premiere and After Effects, both of which I have tons of experience with. My time with Hitfilms the past week was taking a roughly 2-hour video I found of someone playing video games and cutting it down to 20 minutes. I also added light effects like screen shake and moving certain elements into the frame. Overall, I think I have prepared my technical skills for the camp, now I think this week I will prepare what I want to do while the camp is going on. 

To prepare for the Young Sound Seekers Camp, I think I should make a list of goals I want to accomplish. First, I want to be as informed as possible about how Reaper works so that when I show up at the camp and the campers need help I know what to do. To learn Reaper I will be practicing mixing music for a couple of weeks to understand how the DAW works and try out different plugins. I will also be going outside and doing a few field recordings and using Reaper to edit them since that is the camp’s focus. Hopefully, by the time June 19 comes, I will have an excellent understanding of the software and it will allow me to help out the campers at an efficient rate. My job for this internship isn’t just to help out the campers but to also make some kind of promotional material for the camp. I hope on making something that can be used for years to help have more people want to join the camp. To make sure I create something that is high quality I will be spending some time looking at the camp schedule and making a list of ideas of things to record. A problem that I need to come up with a solution for is the sound of the recordings. Right now my camera does not have a port where I can plug a mic in. Even though there is a mic in the camera the quality of the sound is not that good. So, I want to try different things to fix this issue. An idea I have right now is to find a way to put my iPhone on top of the camera with some kind of mount and use the voice memo function on it. Depending on how that goes I may have to find a way to record video while using a zoom recorder from the Stetson library. If I do have to go with the latter I may need to ask for some help so I can record a stable video that is not too shaky. Overall I know that if I put in the work before the camp starts I know that I can help out the campers and make something worth sharing.