Well it has been a long time coming, but now I will tell you all about my involvement in the Band Documentary!

Now I have recently been short on updating my blogs due to my busy schedule and heavy involvement in a documentary that my class in making over the Marching Band's season. Now since I am both a band kid and an e-commer I volunteered to help out with this video. I wanted to take on a leadership role, yet I didn't want all of the responsibility. So I asked a friend of mine if we could be co-head-editors. Now we both agreed that this was a good choice for us and thus the editors were found. Another friend stepped up for directing and we gathered a few kids to film and we were off. Now we did miss a lot of the season because our project started so late, but we pulled it off. Now it was hard for me especially, I couldn't film festivals I had to perform and more than once we were very limited in the people who could make it out there to film. I would do what I could though and spent most of my time editing and organizing. Now the season went off pretty well, only a few minor problems that I don't feel the need to highlight in this post. Now came the not so fun part of interviews. Now don't get me wrong I don't mind doing interviews, we just kept having to redo them that I got sick of the repetition and the impasse that we were at. We can't write a story without interviews but we also don't have much time until the project is due and the interviews have to be good. So we put ourselves in a big catch 22 and ended up stuck for about a week until we could get the time to just film all of the interviews.

Now that finally finished up and the leadership team got to the hardest most tedious part of the whole video, editing. Now my first job was audio syncing from all of the interviews. I would take two camera angles, match the better audio up to the better shot and then export that out. That alone took me one entire day of editing and a few hours at home. Now it has been a stressful few months with this video as we have a few weeks until deadline and the other two editors have been busy and are in a different hour. Now that has made editing a problem but we began evening editing sessions as soon as we could and we have been working together to create an awesome video. Now I might talk more about this whole project when it is over but for now all I can say is that I'm glad that I took on this role. Working with my friends has been a blast and I don't regret taking this role, but trust me I look forward to more free time as soon as the video is over.

The 10 things I learned from watching the first 3 episodes of Star Wars!

So over this Thanksgiving break my family and I decided to binge watch all of the Star Wars episodes. Now we started in chronological order with The Phantom Menace, followed by Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith. Now we are finishing up the last 3 in these next couple of days, but I figured that I would tell you the ten things I learned from the first three.

1.  Dialogue is crucial to every movie. Just trust me on this if you are planning to write dialogue say it out loud before submitting it. Anything that sounds robotic or uninteresting probably is and needs to be fixed.
2. If you are going to write romance into a movie please don't just open a romance manual and use all of the first things you see. Please it is overused and so very annoying and very not fun to watch.  
3. Fight Scenes can really turn a movie around. The fight scenes in all of these movies had me intrigued beyond belief and kept me watching as the plots got harder to watch. 
4. The hair and makeup people were insanely good, every time we see the queen she looks stunning. They seriously should've gotten some great pay for their work. 
5. Plot lines should be drafted, run by more than a few people and then rewritten, and then reworked yet another time. 
6. Jar Jar Binks. This is one character that I cannot stand. He has literally no point to the plot or any part of the storyline. 
7. I seriously love the lightsaber fights in these movies. I know it sounds strange but they are pretty amazing and I want to learn how to remake them.  
8. Wilhelm Scream works in all galaxies even those long ago and far away. Just saying
9. Padmè's character in the first movie was well written, second movie was eh but my lord the last movie was the worst of them all. If you are going to establish a strong female character than at least do it well and don't just quit halfway through and make her dependent on the men. 
10. Teenage Anakin is very moody and kinda creepy. Lets not lie that guy's lines are terrible and every look is crazy creepy. 
11. (Bonus I know it's awesome) Pew pew pew is the best sound foley ever used and if you disagree with me than pew pew pew at you too. 

I know that was a bit silly and short, but I hope you enjoyed my list, and May the Force be with You.

Reflection.. Something that is good for all of us to do every now and then.

Now I know this is a little late, but I would like to reflect on my time up to now with e-Communication and how much work I think I have put into bettering myself and helping the program with projects. This past semester has been crazy busy, I am still in denial that it is almost over. Yet it is time to face the music and talk about what has been going on throughout the semester. Now I have been up to my neck in band footage for a while now, but to get the full story we start at the beginning with an eager yet unsure Jessie fresh into her junior year. Now I was very scared coming into the year that my filing or editing skills would be terrible compared to those in my class, and I shied away from any major roles. That is until they needed people to step up for the all school video. So I did what I always do and tried out something difficult. I became a day editor and helped a little over the evening to get all the footage ready for the major edits. My confidence in my own skills and work grew and that is when I took the role of co-head-editor on the Band Documentary that our department is making as part of a fund raiser. Now I then started overthinking things and became very convinced that my skills weren't good enough for the project, but since I can't just quit (It's not in my DNA) I kept with it and finally overcame my fear of not being good enough.

Now my key issue was self-confidence, something that I struggle with outside of the film-making department, and I knew that in order to get anything done I would have to work on small projects to reassure myself that I was good at what I do and that I wouldn't completely mess everything up. Now this took some small projects and helping other out a lot, but I was able to convince myself that I can still edit (thank goodness I didn't loose that skill, that would be a problem) and that my storylines were still applicable. Now this has shown through most in the past couple of weeks when I took charge on filming interviews and editing together short clips as well as working on a few side projects for friends. I also maintained communication with the band families and our video group, which helped me feel more at home. Now this all led to the past couple of days (and the next few weeks) where me and the other team members on editing (Drew and Elizabeth) get together and edit for hours after school to hit our deadline, and make a kick-butt video.

Now this semester as a whole has really changed me and helped me grow as a person. I have made some of the best friends ever and learned more about myself through the work that I do that ever before. I have realized that my work is important to me and the relationships I build through this work are just as important. The people I work with everyday (including my teacher) help me to better understand who I am and what I want to work on. I know that once this crazy video is over and we have all of the copies distributed. I will start planning my next adventure in Videos and I can't wait to better explore myself and hopefully entertain a few people along the way. I have learned to believe in myself and to let the future take me where it wants, because in the end it is in control not me. So thank you to all who have helped me most to grow these past few months and thank you to all I annoyed in the process. You have helped me to get this far and have helped me prepare myself for what lies ahead both in e-Comm and in life.