My all time favorite project during this semester was creating a video story. I put a lot of time and effort into this project and it was fun to edit it down to the required elements. Working with the vast tools on Premiere was new to me. The possibilities were endless. The special effects I was able to learn some shortcuts along the way. 

Some of the skills I believe I will use in the future are photoshop, premiere, and illustrator.

I’m not entirely sure how this will fit into my career path, only that it likely will. The skills I learned this semester are going on my resume. I will be using my skills to volunteer and assist my local bicycle club with a banner for the upcoming Sunday Portland Parkways 2020.

 There were so many skills offered in this semester course. I have barely scratched the surface of the capabilities adobe offers. It was a great deal of content and I learned skills I didn’t even know existed. It was challenging and rewarding. 

The resources COM 210 provided were sufficient to my learning experience. I did use Youtube as well, to assist with some more intricate special effects. However, the video provided in the course content was sufficient too. Most everything was trial and error. I don’t think by any means I am a master at this product. I would venture to say I am somewhat proficient. I will continue to work with this program going forward as I need it for my volunteering efforts. I’d really like to get a little quicker. WSU provided a very comprehensive course. While there were many moments I didn’t think I was going to get through this, I’m happy to say I survived it and ended up really enjoying the process and having fun while learning. It doesn’t get much better. Thank you, WSU. 

For my final Video Story, I chose to make changes based on the feedback from peers. The location is the same as my draft shoot my story from Vancouver, WA at the new waterfront area that was recently developed and opened to the public. 

My blog topic this semester is related to bicycling, road, mountain, cx, road racing, loaded touring, gear, components, best safety practices, etc… 
This project relates to my course topic design as it relates to “anything bikey!”

The topic of my final Video Story is, ‘Night Time Bicycling Best Practices.’ 

Dusty Johnson accompanied me on the project and it was an honor to work with him again. Dusty shares the same passion for cycling that I do. He rolls a mountain bicycle, while I typically roll a road-bike. Whatever you bicycle ride, safety is IMPORTANT. 

From the original 2 minute draft of my story, I was able to clean up and swap out music tracks and shortened the pano. The total time of the final video is now My title fades out in the beginning with a still pano using freesound.org nebulatechnohouseloop. The feedback I received was that my music was not fitting on my video draft story. This music track was more upbeat and happier and I think that was great advice. I added 5 seconds of no video with the music track only. Other feedback my peers gave me was to be able to show Dusty as I introduced him.

More cutting and clipping to get rid of the choppy parts and dead spots to align the audio with the visual of Dusty. I used the same tools as before. I right clicked on the specific clip and it brought up a menu that allowed me to  uncheck the enable box and drag off the video feed to a different bar. This ‘grays’ out the portions not wanted. Also, it allows me to not completely lose the footage if I changed my mind and want something back. One peer said they didn’t like the plane sound flying over head. After reviewing the clip a few times, I decided to leave the plane flying over head as it was more real time.

I work a lot with “video effects.” For example, on my still image pano at the beginning of my story with ‘effects control’ panel it was fun to use the add/remove key-frame functions. Working the position horizontal, left clicking and dragging very slowly to find the end of the frame and then for my final end point, dragging slow to the left. In addition, I was able to control the velocity to slow the frame down or increase the speed of the still shot. I picked a 4pt fill gradient for the title and used 4 different colors, as well as shadows and outer stroke.

Thank you or viewing and giving me the feedback I needed to make changes to produce my final story.

Kathleen Hellem