Snow Effect!

My video assignment is going to be 1:30 to 2 minutes and it's going to be a shot of snow followed by people shoveling the snow. The video is going to a bit of an experiment, showing how a few people shovel the driveways. Included in the video will be the sound of me taking over the footage, briefly explaining what's going on, but the primary bulk of the video will not having any talking in it, instead it will just be the footage of the person doing their thing. Most of the sound in the video will simply be natural (such as the sound of snow being picked up etc…), but the occasion sound affect added in to make a difference. The primary purpose of the video, aside from being for the project in the class (multimedia), is also to show a simple shot of someone shoveling the driveway, in a way the video almost shows the frustration of what it means to shovel the driveway, and in another way it simply shows someone doing their job, as we see the person (in this case my own mother), diligently cleaning up some of the snow on the ground near her house, as well next to her own car. I am very fortunate with this project, as it has managed to snow at home in Norwich Vermont. In fact it snowed in the city for about two days nonstop, to the point where one could assume that anyone could be snowed-in their own house. This makes the project much easier and possible to do, even if my own video skills are only average at this point and shooting outside without sunlight makes the screen look very fog-like, the second of which is a major downside related to the project. Snow is a simple weather pattern. Not everyone films footage of snow, or especially of people picking up snow, but my video is clearly not unique, it is however a bit of a test run with the camera, and also one of my major assignments in the class (Multimedia Studies). Hopefully things don't go completely wrong in regards to this assignment.

Audio Video

USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/

For this assignment I have decided to look at the USA today page.

Finding the videos on the website was pretty simple and easy. Articles and videos weren't separated or put into different sections, but videos had a play press feature, making it easy to distinguish between the two types of news format, although I still wish the site had different sections for its articles and videos, I didn't mind this approach at all. 

I watched a few of the clips on the site, and the videos feel very much like that of a television news report, with a reporter narrating and footage and interviews being shown. The average length of the videos were also around the same as that of a television news report, between 1 to 2 minutes. 

There were some minor differences as well with the videos, some simply consisted of images rather than video footage. Some of the videos also tended to end more abruptly compared to that of a regular TV news report. 

Overall I think USA today's videos are very professional well done. However the videos should really be put into a different section from that of the news articles altogether and the videos themselves are very much short on content, making them not as engrossing as they might be, had they been more detailed about what ever subject or story they may be talking about.  

USA Today is a very much a professional website, but when compared to the ireport I find it to be inferior because the ireport's articles and videos tend to fascinate and engross me more. That being said USA Today videos are not badly done, they just wouldn't be my first source of info when it came to doing a report or something. 

PhotoPeach

http://photopeach.com/album/7d82v7

Ireport

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1185261

Ireport is an interesting site.

Ireport is the collective information of various people who have taken their time to create accounts for the site and make blog posts about various subjects of things they’ve encountered, things that have too happened to them, etc... Some of these people do blogs based off things that CNN assignments, for example one of the assignments / suggestions is called “Your personal essays” where CNN suggest that you write a personal story about yourself within 1000 words or less with a photo that’s relevant to the piece, this assignment encourages writers to express themselves freely.

What I especially like about ireport is after having looked at the site, it’s very much a creative driven place. It allows freedom of expression, and makes topic suggestion, given readers a clearer idea of what they may want to write about.

I don’t know if there’s anything I would say that I don’t like about ireport. It seems like a fairly well rounded site, with a good idea and enough creative control to make the articles interesting enough.

If there’s anything I really don’t like ireport it would be the insistence on having every single blog and article have a picture or video attached to it, as I don’t have an image or video for every single blog idea out there, and it kinda annoys me honestly.

Otherwise ireport is a good site, that encourages people to express their opinions and thoughts in writing, something I’m quite for.