Digital Project
Project Reflection:
My digital project focuses on the Beat Movement of the 1950’s, as well as one of its key members, Allen Ginsberg. I chose this topic because I just recently learned about this generation of writers in one of my other classes, and I wanted to further my research on the topic and become completely knowledgeable in this area. I was extremely excited about creating this video and feel as though I have picked a topic that is interesting to my college peers, as well as future students of mine.
The process involved with creating this video was complicated, and took much longer than I expected. I first began by compiling a stack of articles and books that contained information on my topic. I read through everything I collected, and highlighted the points I felt were most important. After that, I created an outline that would simplify the information on to two sheets that I could easily read. From these two sheets, I created my storyboard which I presented to my classmates, as well as my professor in a personal conference. Following the conference, I wrote the script to my speech which plays in the background of my video. I then collected all my images and doctored them accordingly so that I could easily insert them onto my PowerPoint slides and add the text I needed. I attempted to add some humor and wit to my project and photos (although I cannot entirely predict that my jokes are as funny to others as they are to myself).I ended up creating a PowerPoint with over 120 slides, and imported each slide as an image to Windows Movie Maker.
Once I began using Windows Movie Maker, things became slightly more complicated. I added my speech track to Movie Maker first, and adjusted my slides according to my speech. This process took about three hours. I then tried for at least another two hours to add an audio track to the background, but could not figure out how to do so without completely throwing off my speech track. I tried using Audacity to combine my vocal track to my music track and several other different methods, but all to no avail. I then came across some technical difficulties while trying to upload my video to YouTube, learning that I had saved my movie as the wrong format. Once I fixed my error, it was smooth sailing from there. I uploaded my video to YouTube and embedded a link on my blog so that I can easily access my video on my presentation day.
Overall, it took me about 15 hours total to complete my project. This, of course, was broken up over several weekends, so I actually enjoyed taking the time to correct and polish my presentation. Although I wish I could have some music playing behind my voice, I am still proud of my project and the effort that I put in to it.
