Sunday, September 30, 2012

Lights, Camera, Action?





photo by potzuyoku
This past week I visited in Jefferson County with the Early Head Start program at TA Lowery. To be honest, stepping in I did not know what to expect. Last week was the first time that I felt that my project officially became hands on! I came in contact with the families face to face and was able to get some pretty amazing pictures, if I do say so myself. I'm still working on how I am going to incorporate the video as the sound was a little... well, off. The video that I took inside of the classroom was some of the better footage where I was able to capture more of the pure footage with the children at play. This week I will be meeting with more families one on one to get some clips to use for voice-overs in the two short videos I will be creating. 



If there is one thing that I learned this week, it is that MOST people are extremely awkward when a camera is around. It seemed like even the children knew that they were on tape! This week's helpful hint from Monica was to use a still image and do a voice-over since some people do not feel comfortable in front of a camera. I feel like this will probably work better over time because they will become more comfortable with a microphone present lying on a table opposed to a camera in their face.

I still have a LOT of work to do, but I'm ready! This week will conclude my filming, then it's on to the fun stuff-- putting it all together:)!

Until next time...

Sunday, September 23, 2012

EHS!!!!!

UPDATE! Super super excited for things to come this week! Tomorrow is the beginning of what could possibly be something EXTREMELY huge for my future! I can officially say that I have the pleasure of working with West Virginia's Early Head Start program and will be helping to design a website for them. I have an extremely early meeting tomorrow and I could not be more excited.

Children are my absolute passion and the fact that I get to use my degree of designing a website and then with an incredibly great company makes me SO incredibly floored! To be honest, I will most likely be adding more or an additional post to my blog later about what all went on at the meeting. Right now I am just preparing to blow their minds away with some of the amazing ideas that I have come up with. Since I am meeting with them tomorrow to dive deeper into what they would like to see on their website, I have only been able to do the first ten basic pages for the site-- but you have to start somewhere, right? 

Monica has been so incredibly supportive in this and my hope is that I can produce something that will both please her and EHS-- I think I can do it! In addition, my information that I have researched and found on West Virginia's sexual activity and STD facts have been SUBSTANTIAL and SHOCKING! I believe that incorporating something like this into the website will help give people a better idea of what is going on in their surrounding area. I would ALSO like to design a USA map that Monica showed me how to do in Game Design (of all classes, didn't expect I would be using the skills from this one) to give people a visual understanding rather than a bunch of text to have to cypher through for information and quick facts.


SO PUMPED!


LET'S DO THIS!


TOMORROW-- Only The Beginning!

photo by mahalie

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Progress Report - What's up!?

Alright, so here's the scoop. Basically I have broken my project down into two different elements. I am currently trying to work with a specific company in particular for this project, but if for some reason that does not work out, then I'm going to have to go a different route. It is not going to be a huge change, just a different way of approach. I have already contacted this company a few times, so if for some reason I do not receive a response by Monday, then I already have decided what direction I will go in because I will run out of time.

I have already decided that I am going to incorporate short clips into my website, so today I met with Multimedia producer and Independent filmmaker Will Sutherland to teach me a few tips on how to take some short clips and let me see some of his work. I now have the honor to  use one of his cameras to make things hopefully come out a little better than your average phone video camera:). I have also looked at many websites such as GYT.org and started reading up on sexual activity and any and every possible aspect of sex that is humanly possible.

Within the next week, I will conduct a survey to random students to collect data for my project. The following week, I plan to begin the clips so that I can shoot and edit them while the weather is still nice. In addition to all of the craziness going on in the background, I have already started on my outline and will soon be writing my first ten pages-- until next time! More information to come soon, can't wait:).


By chinogypsie

Friday, September 7, 2012

ResearchResearchResearch

So after doing some research, I have come to the conclusion that not only is my project awesome, but it's SUPER awesome :) . I say that because the more I brainstorm, the more ideas come to mind with what I would like to do. Although I have not specifically selected which adoption agency or child care center I would like to zero in on, my knowledge of not just statistics in the U.S., but WV is astounding! I do not want to give out all of the information here, because I would like to compare statistics and make sure that everything I'm putting out there is accurate-- plus, I want you to visit my site;)

All I can say that this moment in time is that I value children to a completely different level than myself, and I fully intend on representing them and giving THEM a voice because I believe that so many go unheard or cared for as they should.

In addition to my research, I recently have decided to sponsor a child in Honduras. This is something that I have wanted to do for an extremely long amount of time and was not always financially stable to do so. Right now, however, I feel that I can and have decided to make this commitment. Her name is Stefany and she is a beautiful little girl that is only one year old. For what seems like play money to some Americans allows her to eat, get school supplies, and clothes for a month and be able to be taken care of in her country. I believe that being able to provide this for her will be able to help me connect more with the development of my project (and even more in life) throughout the years as I get to see this little girl grow up. I am truly blessed.


Well! That's all for now:) ...until next time.


photo by ben.chaney

Honduras.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

CAPSTONE: My Cornerstone

So this is it-- my FINAL year at Shepherd already and I can hardly believe it. I have pretty much been thinking about capstone since last year and have been going back and forth on what to choose. There were so many different projects that I saw and LOVED and so many different ideas. The best and worst part of it all is that Capstone is LIMITLESS (sort of). You are supposed to use everything that you have learned and focus your energy into ONE TRULY AMAZING THING to make you look like the WOman! Right now there is only one thing that is going through my mind that I know for a fact that my passion will not die down in (ever) and that is children! So this semester I am going to be gearing my focus on developing a website for them! I want to either find an adoption agency or something of the like in need of a webpage and then develop one for them! I also want to be able to include statistics about West Virginia and the amount of children that are in need of families, teen pregnancy, and success stories. I am SUUUPER excited about this and I CANNOT wait to start.

Until then... this is only the beginning:)

photo by HellN