Day 5

Today, I collected some shots of Ms. Sherry talking about PATH, how Cleo affects the students in PATH, Cleo's training, and how she is a part of the York community. These shots were in different places to change up the scenery a little bit so that it's not just in a boring chair (I chose two locations in her office) I also collected two additional short clips of her certificate and York ID.

I am (probably) officially done with collecting clips. I am going to start my editing process now. I have to find good background royalty free music that isn't too distracting, and that is going to be the most challenging part of the project because I can edit fairly quickly (I have made multiple videos before and found that I can edit videos quickly).

I have decided that the final project will be more of an explanation of who Cleo is and what she does (a more serious production), rather than a more comical "day in the life" video.

Day 4

I feel like I have achieved nothing in the past few days because I have collected a lot of footage, but I'm not sure how to use it. I was pretty sure I wanted to make a 'day in the life' video of Cleo, but with the footage I have, it's really hard to get in a lot of the things that she does every day. I realized that most of the time, she kind of just sits in Ms. Sherry's office. If I were to do a 'day in the life' video, I wouldn't be able to use a lot of the footage that I collected. I might end up making a little video montage with some background music. I'm really not sure what I want to do.

I was going to have Ms. Sherry do voice-overs, but I might end up having her narrate the whole thing and then have some shots with only her face (like an interview). It might end up being a more professionally set up video, like a documentary.

I guess my next step in this process is to find some music. I can either do that, or contact another music maker/composer for permission to use their music. As this project is falling to it's pitfall, I feel the need to save it from its misery.

Another thing I'm planning to do is to find someone that has had their life changed by Cleo.

Instead of making one final video, I might end up publishing this one early just to get it over with, then start up my own public Youtube channel.

Day 3

During Christmas, I got my own Canon 1100D (Rebel T3), which is an entry level DSLR. It has both auto and manual focus, which solves my main problem. Quality wise, even though the video is the "medium HD" quality level of the Fujifilm x10, it looks as though it were the "high HD" quality. It is in HD (720). Over the break, I tested out the camera in different light settings, both light and dark. I am extremely happy with the quality and compatibility. I hope there won't be an issue needing to use different lenses, but if I ever need to, I can use my mom's lenses, but I don't think that will be necessary, because my lens is 18-55mm, which is quite versatile for this project.

Today, during the shoot, I re-shot the office shots, and they turned out much better than the ones I had shot because I could transition slowly in focus. Overall, today's shot was quite productive.

I learned to take multiple takes on everything just in case one of them didn't turn out right.

For the near future, I am planning to start editing and finding free, royalty music to put in the background of some of the shots. I also have to start writing my voice-overs for Cleo, which will be voiced by Ms. Sherry.

Day 2

Today's theme of shooting was more of Cleo's life in the office. I shot short introduction clips of Ms. Sherry working in the office. I also shot more scenes of just Cleo playing with a toy and also with Ms. Kiest. These are the parts that will probably have a lot of narration, more towards the beginning of the video.

During the period of time between Day 1 and Day 2, I looked at the previous clips I had collected. I realized that I didn't achieve the high-quality clips that I had hoped for. I was originally shooting in medium HD, but today, I switched to full HD.

Another issue I ran into was focusing the camera. I was trying to do over-the-shoulder shots, with the shoulder in view and the background blurred, but about a second after I pressed 'record,' the camera would auto-focus would make the background clear. There might be a way to use manual/auto-focus on the camera and I would have to learn how to do that. A lot of the time, fast auto-focus is useful, but for more basic and still shots, it can be a burden.

Since I collected mostly video footage today, I only have one good picture:

Day 1

Up until now, I have taken some pictures of Cleo in Ms. Sherry's office and I took some more pictures and collected my first clips of footage of her. Ms. Sherry and I took Cleo up to the field and she ran around for a bit.

My next step in my plan is to collect more footage of Cleo in her everyday life.

Throughout the first day of filming, I came across some difficulties. Since Cleo likes to run around on the field, at first, it was really hard to stabilize the camera to capture the perfect moments. From this experience, I learned to keep the camera on most of the time, so I wouldn’t miss any vital shots. It was important to me to also keep the camera stabilized at all times. I found from filming that day, it was best to sit on the bench and pan the camera for the running shots, rather than running along with Cleo.

Overall, I am pleased with the images I have collected so far. Here are some of the pictures:

Proposal

Needs and Opportunities ; 

I need to first tell the audience what a high school therapy dog is, and differentiate the difference between a therapy dog and a service dog. The main point of my project would show the day in the life of Cleo. I think it would be a fun and entertaining way to show what Cleo’s job is during the day.

Audience ; 

My wide audience will include hopefully most of the world. This video will hopefully be entertaining, but at the same time educational and informative.

for kids: they will think it’s entertaining to see what a therapy dog goes through everyday.

for teenagers: teenagers just love cute animals. It’ll be fun to see what the dog goes through in a normal day, but at the same time, they are (hopefully) mature enough to understand the concepts of a therapy dog vs. a service dog.

for adults: adults want to see what a therapy dog goes through, so when their kids are exposed to these types of dogs, they won’t be afraid of harmful events.

Product ; 

I am hoping to produce a 3-5 minute video of Cleo’s life, with possible interviews in the beginning of the video of Ms. Sherry explaining what a therapy dog is. My goal is to get at least 100 views (a lot for me, since I have no videos yet and maybe a couple subscribers)

Reality Check ;

I am going to need my mom’s camera (easy access for me). The thing I worry about are the people I am going to find, and also having a reasonable sound system. I might have to invest in a mic, or maybe borrow somebody’s. If I use my mom’s Canon 5D Mark II, then I think I could add an external mic easily. However, for her smaller Fujifilm x10, it would definitely be a lot harder (almost impossible, but the audio system is generally good).

For the actual “day in the life of…” part, I will need no mic on the camera because I will have voiceovers.

It won’t be a huge problem for me to attempt to get 100 views on my video because I have various social networking accounts with lots of followers.

tumblr: 5.4k+, 1k+, 50+ (on all my different blogs, approx. amount)

polyvore: 2.4k+

(I can also get my mom to post my video on Facebook for me)

approx total: 9000 followers (maybe with some repeats)

Also, it might take me the whole year to produce the video, so I’m not exactly sure how the views would work, but I can always try to finish the video earlier.

Why this Project? ;

I really want to do this project because I love filming things and I think it would be a great experience for me to start out with a “day in the life” video, since it takes no additional complicated equipment for audio. Since I have little experience editing videos and adding in sound, this will be a great beginner’s project.