Time flies, huh?

Surprisingly, this semester has gone by pretty quickly for me.  After spring break, I thought it would drag on and on.  Luckily, the past four weeks have been very busy for me, so the time has passed quickly.  I can’t believe it’s already time for finals!

When I enrolled in electronic communications, I didn’t know what to expect.  All I knew from past classmates was that it involved blogging.  And obviously, that part was true.  I learned about so much more than that, though.  Before taking this class, I barely knew how to use Garage Band, and I own a Mac Book.  Basically, all I knew was how to record.  I’d never played around with editing or the Garage Band sounds or anything like that.  After doing the Cinema Scoop podcast with Greta, I learned how to put in sound effects and edit the podcast to make it sound somewhat professional.  So much more work went into podcasts than I ever imagined.

Personally, I found the podcast to be the most difficult project of the semester.  Making my soundslide and video projects was a lot of work, but putting it all together was so simple, thanks to the Soundslides and iMovie applications.  I’m really glad I got to learn how to use iMovie because I think it will be very helpful in the future, whether it be with school, my career or just everyday life.

Our final project was to make a mockup of a portfolio website.  As this was the last project, I was a little scared.  The projects had seemed to get more complicated throughout the semester, and making a website sounded hard.  But thanks to Adobe Fireworks, it was simple.  Hyperlinks, pictures and layouts were unbelievably easy with Fireworks.

We worked a little bit with PhotoShop as well in class, which I thought was fun.  I’m far from being an expert, but I’d eventually like to save up to buy Creative Suite while I’m still a student (discount!) and I look forward to using other programs like this when I take a graphic design class in the fall.

Overall, electronic communications was a very worthwhile class and I’m so glad I took it.  The projects were a lot of work, but in the end, I definitely think working as hard as I did on them is worth it.  I know I’ve learned a lot that will be able to be applied to my future…whatever that may be.

The video-making process

I really enjoyed this video project a lot more than I thought I would.  When it was assigned, it sounded hard, but my nerves and mind were set at ease once we started working with iMovie.  I loved the program!  I have a Mac Book laptop, but I’ve never really gotten into any of the iLife programs.  iMovie was so fun and easy to use and I’m so glad this class introduced me to such an awesome program.

Although putting the video together on iMovie was pretty simple, other aspects of the process were not.  In my head, I pictured getting a few takes of my friends making fun of silly Facebook statuses.  Easy, right?  Little did I know, it would take more than just a few takes.

I also recorded my voice-overs on my iPhone voice memos app because I felt that quality would be the best.  I recorded all my voice-overs as one file, thinking that would be the easiest…it wasn’t.  I thought I’d be able to cut the audio in iMovie just like I was able to cut and edit the video.  I ended up having to go into Garage Band and edit all my little 5-second clips into individual files in iTunes.  Even though it was tedious, I have to say if that was the most frustrating part of this process, I don’t have much to complain about!

Overall, I enjoyed making this video.  I’d say it’s my second favorite project we’ve done next to the soundslide.  The video was a lot more fun to put together, and iMovie a much more fun program than Soundslides, but I thought my pictures for my soundslide were more visually appealing than my video.  I hope everyone enjoys watching my video as much as I enjoyed making it! 🙂