ENTREE #6

Still making progress. Our team met at the library on Thursday and passed out surveys to about 40 students. We also recruited 5-6 students to be on camera and answer our survey questions. We are almost set for our video now. The only thing really left to do is the long and tedious editing.

Friday, was another productive day in the war group. We met in Hoveland Computer Lab to start our editing process. We are still trying to get a feel for the flow of the documentary and how to use the great footage we collected. I finished putting together all the survey answers and got the totals from the students and from all the military people we gave them to. The totals we’re both surprising and predictable. We are probably going to use the survey answers as text in the video to show what students really think.

Only four more days and I think we will be more than ready to show a great film.

ENTREE #5

Well our group met tonight and we a still just cruising along. I heard that the interview that Devin and Jenna did last Thursday went well and we now have just about enough footage to make an outstanding documentary. We are still planning on doing some random interviews with students in the OSU quad and we made arrangements to meet this Thursday to do that. Other than that we are waiting to get server space on the OSU server that way we can save all our editing and we all can have access to it. Until next time…

ENTREE #4

After a long weekend without a computer I thought I would just check in and let everyone know what is going on. After our interviews late last week I took off for Lake Billy Chinook and was without work for a couple of days. So what I am now working on is getting some questionnaire information compiled so that we can use it in our documentary. At class tonight I’m sure our group will meet and we can all get caught up with everyone’s latest developments. 

ENTREE #3 / 21 May

Last night our group went to the democratic parties nomination celebration and the Obama headquarters in downtown Corvallis. We ended up getting interviews with 3 different students and got their comments on their views on the war and how they feel students are effected by it. We even were lucky enough to get an interview with the OSU democratic leader. We ended up doing the interviews outside and I think the worked out well. We got wireless mics and I think that helped keep surrounding sounds out and concentrate on the voice of the interviewee. Here are some clips of the shots we got.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD-2093B_iI&eurl=http://devinarobinson.wordpress.com/about/

 

Today I scheduled a more formal interview with one of the best soldiers the Oregon Army National Guard has to offer. I chose to interview him because first of all he is a student at OSU, secondly because he is in the military and has been to Iraq, and finally because of his achievements he is a spokesman for the Oregon Army National Guard. Devin and I got together and picked up a lighting kit at the library and we had the wireless mic from the day before. Devin also brought his tripod, which will help in the quality of the video. We did have to wait outside the the house of the soldier for about 15 minutes for him to get home, but once he did he let us in and we began to set up. He helped us out by clearing out a good place for him to sit down in his living room. He even cleaned the wall that was going to be in the background. Devin set up his camera while I took care of the lights and the mic and in about 15 min we were ready to shoot. The interview went well, he seemed like he had alot of experience in talking about these issues. We had him talk about his time in Iraq, his jobs, how the military has effected him, how the military has helped him with school, along with many other things. I really feel like we will use alot of what he said and I appreciate all his help. So we are well on our way but I am very optimistic. 

ENTREE #2

This past weekend I went to drill and didn’t have alot of time to work on any homework. One thing that I was able to do was make a questionnaire and have soldiers fill it out. I was able to get about 50 guys to fill out the questionnaire, and I tried to keep it restricted to soldiers ages 18-25 and anyone who is enrolled in school. In just glancing over the answers I feel like there was a wide range of opinions. Today we have class again and our group will be meeting and figuring out our schedule for the next week. We will be shooting all of our interviews for our film and I believe our goal will be to have all shooting done by next week. 

Final Project: ENTREE #1

So in class on May 13 our group met and put a pretty good plan together for what we wanted to do and how we were going to accomplish our goals for our final project. Which is going to be a documentary type video about the Iraq war and its effect on students now and in the future. We want to include several interviews with a variety of different types of sources, statistical data found by survey and the Internet, and many good shots from around town, campus and the nearby armory. 

Today, May 14, Devon and I were planning on starting our shooting for our video, when we already ran into our first hick-up. We were planning on shooting the grassy field in front of the library, which for the past week had been filled with miniature flags representing friendly and enemy deaths in Iraq, but when we got there the flags were all torn down. We were also going to ask some students to comment on the flags, but there was no point with all the flags not being there. However we did make up or questionnaire and we made many copies which we are planning to hand out around campus and several other places. So work has started, and although we already got screwed with one aspect of our idea we are in the works and the wheels are in motion. 

Reader Response 3

In a Zimbabwe Jail: A Reporter’s Ordeal

In the article about the reporter in Zimbabwe I found it interesting how they were treated. It is amazing what we take for granted here in America. I really enjoyed the description that he used in the article, it really gave me a visual of the state of the jail and the country. His experience seems like it could have been much worse and it is good that it wasn’t. I think that the citizens of the country probably don’t get the treatment that the two reporters do, which was obvious by the food they received everyday, the lawyer they were given and the blankets that they got. I think they’re treatment was probably based around the assumption that they had money and the police knew that. In all, I believe that this article tells a good story of what the countries normal citizens go through, and what they have to deal with in everyday life, the state of their government and how it is a slow and painful process to get rid of a bad leader. 

Elizabeth Edwards

I believe in most of what this article has to say. I think that is obvious that the media spends more times making thing news, which probably don’t deserve to be, than talking about the things that are really important. But this is two sided, because I believe that the public is somewhat to blame for this. The public are the ones who are interested in the weird things that celebrities do, the news has went from what people believe in and what they are going to change, to what did this person have for dinner, or what is their weird hobby they do in their free time. I think that the media has an obligation to make things news that is important for us to know, as well as entertaining. Another thing that I think is interesting about this article is it talks about the Internet having the articles about the candidate’s views, but you can’t find it anywhere else. I think that should be flip-flopped. The print and television media should be the ones with the important news and the news about the candidate’s views and ideas. And the Internet should be the one with the other weird entertaining articles.

Athletes and Prosthetics

I got inspiration this week after I read an article in ESPN the Magazine about athletes and prosthetics. The article told about the advances in artificial body parts and told the stories of several athletes around the world making strides to become active in sports. 
After reading the article I went online to find more on the advances of individuals with prosthetics and found some interesting stories. Many of the stories have to do with war veterans who lost arms or legs in combat and are now trying to incorporate there old lifestyles in with their changed body. I found it interesting that in almost all the stories there are people becoming extremely skilled with their prosthetics and are pressuring sports, such as running, skiing and golf, to let them participate competitively. 
The ESPN story went into detail about how and why athletes with prosthetics are not being allowed to compete. The advances in technology are now so great that in one case where a sprinter wanted to compete in the Olympics was denied because a committee believed they would have an advantage over the others. This looks to be a case that will become more of an issue as technology continues to develop at a faster rate then evolution. 
The great thing about the technology as it has given people another chance to enjoy the things they love to do. Every year there is a veterans event held in the mountains of Colorado where all kinds of veterans with disabilities get a chance to ski using new and improved forms of skiing technology.

Reader Response 2

 Average person spends more time using media than anything else

 

 

In reading this article I found several things interesting. The first thing I learned was that about 30 percent of the time spent involved in media is spent with multiple mediums. This means that 1/3 of the time people are multi-tasking, which doesn’t surprise me. I spend much of my time doing homework in front of the television or listening to music. The second thing I found interesting was the fact that “levels of concurrent media exposure were higher among those 40 to 65(years old) than people 18 to 39(years old).” This is interesting because it shows that people in the workplace have learned or are forced to be doing multiple things or activities in order to survive or prosper. 

Beat Journal

          For our first beat journal I looked into the changes in journalism, and how bloging and the Internet has helped or hindering journalist. I read several blogs from pointer.com and found some good information on how the Internet has affected journalist. There are still some question to how you qualify people who write and what you read on the Internet. After reading there is a couple things that I found that the Internet has helped evolve journalism.

            First, blogging, there are some downfalls to blogging as well, but I have found that they help journalist do many helpful things. They are there at anytime for any reason, journalist can reference them for small stories not worthy of the newspaper or a whole article, but just something they witnessed and thought was interesting. Also live blogs have made it easier for journalist to write stories. Say a journalist have to write a story about the Monday night football game, well he/she can watch the game while live blogging and once the game is over they have a great set of notes to write a detailed story. This way journalist can remember important aspects of the game.

            Next, I read blogs that reference websites. I looked at the websites, but not too in depth. The Internet has given journalist the opportunity to create they’re own websites that can center on many things, including studying and writings they have done. Websites make it easier to navigate through a large amount of information and with the types of programs we have now, they are catchy to the eye as well. 

            I believe that some of the major downfalls to the Internet that I didn’t look too much into but know that they are there and scare me are how personal information is easily distributed and accessed. I feel like privacy is going to become a big problem in the near future. Another problem is reliability, to find that a journalist or a writer is trust worthy there are many steps that you might have to take. People find things on the Internet and automatically think that it is the truth. These things need to be looked at and dealt with.