Reficiation....

This is a project that I actually didn't mind putting the work into. It was great because it was not a paper and so I felt more compelled to work harder on the assignment. With the digital doc. it seems more personal than a paper as someone will actually be "viewing" your work and "viewing" what you have learned. For these reason, I put more time into this assignment than I would have had I just wrote a paper on what I learned. I enjoyed it, I felt proud of it, and I had fun too. Okay, so I felt proud but also dorky too. I didn't like hearing my voice. If I could change one thing about my digital doc then it would be re-doing my voice over. It really sounds like I am "reading" what I am saying. I am reading it, but it's really obvious. I would have liked to make my voice sound happier and "lighter". I sound too serious but that stemmed from not being sure about how I was using the microphone. When I recorded my voice I had the slide show playing at the same time in order to match what I was saying to the pictures. Let me step back, first, as I wrote my paper, I wrote in what picture would go with what I was talking about. So, as I was talking into the microphone, I had my paper in front of me and... I was also watching the pictures scroll thru. I think I was feeling very serious at the time in order to get all of the pictures to match up with the voice. I also, didn't want to mess up what I was saying caz' then I'd have to start over. I didn't want to start over because I wasn't even sure how I was able to get the program (microphone thing) to start in the first place :). So, actually this is funny....at the end of the video, I'm talking about running my first waterfall in my kayak. I'm talking about my affinity group and how they supported me achieving this goal. I'm suppose to say, "my girlfriend pushed me off the rocks". What I mean by this is that once I was in my boat, she slide my boat off the rocks and into the current to help me align for the drop/waterfall. What I ended up saying was "my girlfriend pushed me off MY rocks". It sounds pretty twisted and I knew I had said it wrong at the time but just went with it. Now, every time I watch the video I start laughing because of what is being said.

I think one thing that was neat but frustrating was that I had no idea how to use the program on my Mac. I have never done this before, so I spent many hours trying to figure out one stupid little thing. Like, the title at the begging of my movie took at least an hour because I couldn't figure out how to make it it's own slide as the words kept showing up over my first picture. This was frustrating but eventually worked out. Another thing that took me forever was trying to figure out how to do the microphone. My mac is a pretty nice new one so I knew that I probably had a microphone, so I'm like picking up my computer looking at it and trying to find the microphone. I think it was pretty dorky because it just goes to show that I don't really know what I am doing. Eventually, I somehow stumbled onto the microphone program in IMovie and so once I opened it, then I had to record because I didn't know if I could find it again. Each time I went into IMovie I found new ways to "tweek" my video to make it better. I was definitely learning as I was going.

So, I had originally planned on doing my video about learning how to be a wife and thought for days that this was my project. I even took pictures of my house being dirty while my husband was asleep (in the afternoon) on the couch. I thought this is perfect because he just sleeps and doesn't care and I could never do that with a mess in the house. Anyhow, then I realized that I didn't know where else I would go with the project. So, then I decided to do it on kayaking because I thought there would be more substance to the video. I wanted to portray that I am learning a sport with a group of professionals and also a group of guys and how hard that was for me. I definitely was "forced" thru the basics of kayaking fast and quickly running very hard/technical water in order to hang out with my affinity group. Of course, their not going to slow down to have me on the river with them. Anyhow, this is what I was trying to get across in my video but I'm not sure that message is portrayed.

In conclusion, I had fun with the project and although I spent many hours working on it, it didn't seem like too big of a deal because I enjoyed doing it. I've even showed a couple of friends so far.... :)