Personal Websites are the Future

This website is a catalyst into the future and being able to promote and present oneself in a professional matter.  In the world today being qualified and stating that on a resume doesn’t cut it. More and more people are attending college and competing for jobs which makes things a little more cut throat.  Having the website ups the ante and is a clever and current way to grab people's attention and promote oneself. Also, considering that everything is so digital now a days, a website is the perfect way for people to easily see.  Websites make people more visible. The website, when linked to various social media accounts, will create a bigger platform and increase networking.

The website contains a clean and concise biography so that anyone can read it and understand the professional and somewhat personal essence of the person.  Contact information is clearly stated so that anyone can come into contact with the person through various platforms. It also contains the most prized pieces of work that want to be shown off.  

The wikiHow project was a slight intro to this project since it involved coding and being very precise.  The wikiHow project embodied writing and pulling from current knowledge whereas the website project is similar but rather than teaching  someone how to do something it was teaching someone about ourselves. The Twitter project led well into the website because of the professional Twitter that was made.  This Twitter was now able to be linked to website for anyone to click on. The Twitter project also required short consie thoughts just like the website bio. Most people avoid reading when there are very long paragraphs so the bio for the website is most effective shorter but still just as informative.  

Saying that designing this website was tedious would be an understatement.  This website required organization to the max. Before anything was done pictures had to be prepped and web ready in a specific size, along with PDFs saved properly.  Every picture and link had to be properly named and put into the right folder or else things would get too confusing and there was a potential to “break” the website. The process of inserting pictures and links in place of old pictures and links wasn’t too hard.  When things would appear red, which means something is wrong, it meant reading over the code and looking for the mistake, which was the most annoying part.

After getting frustrated multiple times the final product was worth it.  Now the www.(insert website name here).com will be on business cards, resumes and everything else professional.  Having a website is more personal than a resume for instance. It is the perfect opportunity to tell someone about oneself deeper than just qualifications and a way to show off portfolios.  Having a website solely dedicated to promoting oneself is the future. Many people who own businesses have websites for themselves, but freshly emerged college graduates having a website that promotes them and shows off their various works is the future.

Pro Video Editing

Video Blog Post

Samantha Christopher

Making the self and group videos for class was a tedious and long process, but enjoyable when seeing the final product.  Shooting the self videos was fun. It was an opportunity to stop and think about what in the everyday life should be highlighted and how it should be done.  Nothing specific seemed worth capturing rather everything seemed worth it. Various angles and wide/close shots were taken to get the right feeling. In terms of the group video, shooting was a bit harder because instead of being natural, scenes had to be acted out to portray the topic politics, specifically the politics of women.  

At first politics seemed like a very hard topic but after narrowing it down to the politics of women in society everything began to work.  Working with Breanna and Kristina was amazing because they are both strong independent women with passion and many ideas. After bouncing various ideas off of each other for a while the final concept was created.  The focus was on three women who live vastly different lives. One woman was married and a stay at home mom, the other woman was a young girl who likes to drink and party and the last woman was a working woman with an office job.  ( Not saying that a woman can not be all of these things at once, but for the sake of the project they lived different lives.) Each of the women encountered a man who violated them and overstepped their boundaries. The married woman was in an abusive situation with her husband, the scene depicted the man forcfully grabing the woman and shaking her after she stepped in front of the tv and gave him a beer.  The party woman was being followed/drugged while out. The working woman experienced an unwanted encounter with a coworker/boss as he touched her in a sexual manner while she was working. The video ended with all three women with red tape on their mouths and ripping it off in unison. This symbolized the end of silence for women in these situations and situations alike. The three woman coming from different walks of life was meant to show that all woman, no matter race, ethnicity, size, lifestyle, demographic etc experiences some sort of sexual inequality and/or abuse.  The message was strong and important to the world today (especially because of Trump), which made the whole process of shooting and editing the video more worth it. Before shooting, the concept was formulated and the scenes were drawn out in order. The physical shooting of these videos were all done in one day when all of the group members met. Some shots were taken 2-3 times from different angles so that there were a few choices. The whole process took a few hours due to roll changes and wardrobe changes.

In a way the self portion of this project mimicked commonly watched festival “after movies,” movies composed of handfuls of videos from the weekend creatively put together to create a specific vibe.  The self video was an opportunity to create a feeling and a specific vibe for someone. There was ample freedom to take the video in any direction. Keeping with the festival aftermovie feeling the self movie manifested into an uplifting pure feeling.  The video is supposed to embody family, friends, love, work/responsibilities, freedom, happiness and adventures, all wrapped into one person. Yogi and Bear, the featured dogs, represent purity and happiness and mostly love. Family being pictured represents love and closeness and importance in one's life.  The Grill was showing the work aspect of things, and the friendly relationship with coworkers. The many scenes from festivals represent freedom and constant adventures. All in all the video was supposed to portray balance, balance between work and fun, family and friends, adventures and stability and loving it all.  Some of the videos used were already shot and others had to be shot for class. The newly shot videos weren’t hard to create. The GoPro came everywhere (to work, school, home, friends houses etc) for about a week and when the moment was right the videos were shot.

The difference between videos and words is that words are more cut and dry.  Although words and sentences can always be left open to interpretation, they are more tailored to mean exactly what they say.  That is why picking the right word for things is important because only certain words can portray exactly what needs to be said.  Videos on the other hand are more left open to interpretation, which is why being assigned the abstract topic brought the most freedom.  One can focus on different aspects of a video and see completely different things. Photos are similar but they capture specific moments, a pause in time, versus a video that captures more of a feelings.  The moment is still there in a video, but now the power to feel the energy around the moment is there. The essence of videos and capturing the right moments was used in both the self and group video. The self video was more of a capture the moment and feeling sort of thing, where as the group video was more of a express a clear message through motion and movement thing.

The editing process of the videos was tedious, considering there are so many effects options and a specific time frame to keep in mind.  After watching many YouTube videos and taking time to play around with things the editing came out just fine. The cross fade effect was the effect that was most commonly used throughout both videos.  It is more minimal than most of the effects and casually lead one video into the next, versus over dramatised pixelated transitions. Full on effects of the video were not really used besides making almost all of the group video being black and white.

Both the group and self video turned out better than expected.  The message of the politics of women in society was strong and presented well.  After showing it to friends and family they understood the message without having to explain it.  The self video was more of a freedom of expression video which is what made it so fun and personal.

Twitter the New Medium of News Distribution

Twitter is like no other form of social media.  What makes it unique is that it falls under the category of microblogging due to its character restrictions.  This forces users to be strategic about what they post and how they say it. Along with being strategic, Twitter is a quick form of socialization that happens between close friends and strangers.  Not only socalization, but advertising is prominent on Twitter. Everyday organizations tweet in order to stay relevant and communicate with the publics. On top of this opinion leaders post about products/organizations and create more interaction among the publics.  Small businesses thrive on social media platforms like Twitter, where they have the ability to share their products/beliefs for free. For advertising purposes retweets are everything because they allow posts to reach a whole other audience of followers.

The Boston Marathon article talked about how Twitter is useful because it has this immediacy to it that allows for information about tragic events, such as the bombing at the Boston Marathon, to circulate quickly.  Its downfall is the inaccuracy of information. The article compared journalism to a funnel, starting with a large pool of information and slowly weeding out inaccuracies and rumors until it has no errors and is ready to present to the public, in its most accurate form.  They went on to say that Twitter is almost the opposite, the funnel is flipped upside down and a vast amount of inaccurate information is being shared. In situations like this Twitter isn’t used for socialization, rather it is primarily used to make the people aware of what is going on.  After awareness is made, Twitter shouldn’t be used to further educate on the matter, this will just create misconceptions as the article suggested.

The saying everyone is a journalist applies to Twitter.  Whether someone is listening or not Twitter serves as an outlet for voices.  Since Twitter is a quick paced environment, posts can circulate and get big quickly.  The fact that almost everyone carries around a phone with a video camera makes them journalists in a sense.  There are countless situations where incidents/the aftermath of incidents were recorded and posted on Twitter, then quickly circulated to the public.  True journalism gets lost in a way due to vast amounts of posts and videos on important topics, making it hard to weed through the information. All in all Twitter is an outlet that gives users the power to express themselves/their worldly views in a journalistic matter.  In this day and age social media isn’t just about socializing, it's about connecting with key publics, reporting, and sharing beliefs, most of the time political. Getting political on Twitter is not the most fun, but many people do it. Younger people especially take advantage of politics on Twitter because most don’t watch the news or make a solid effort to educate themselves on what is going on in the world from a political standpoint.  So the fact that political figures post everyday makes it easier for younger people to stay in the loop. Contradicting views can easily cause Twitter fights, but that necessarily isn’t a bad thing. Twitter gets the people talking, and anyform of talking/argument is good. People need to be aware about what’s going on in our world politically and they need to talk about it. Twitter makes it easy for people to have conversations about important matters and that's the beauty of it.   

Just recently Twitter was used as a way to encourage the public to register to vote, and vote in the midterm election.  Politicians, organizations, celebrities, and peers were all tweeting about how important it is to vote in the midterms. Not only were they posting links to register online, but some people were getting clever with it.  People would tweet something along the lines of “OMG I can’t believe what happened to Ariana Grande!” with a link attached but the link was actually to the voting registration site. The constant conversation about registering and going out to vote had an impact on the younger crowd.  Mac Miller's death has been sworming social media since late September. Many people found out through Twitter about the rappers death, as tweets were rushing in. It wasn’t until two days ago that the official cause of his death was released, a mixture of alcohol, cocaine and fentanyl were found in his body.  It was deemed an accidental overdose, it was a mixture of all three of these substances that killed him, not an overdose of just one. Since this news was released many people are talking about how people need to stop doing coke. Coke laced with fentanyl is lethal and if it can happen to Mac it can happen to anyone.  The Twitter world is buzzing about this tragedy and is now trying to communicate with everyone the dangers that coke can bring. About a week ago a synagogue was attacked by a mentally unstable man who professed anti-semitic sentiments. Local Pittsburgh police department and government officials were communicating with their residents via Twitter.  Residents were able to contact their friends and family and keep them updated through Twitter.

Electric Forest, Jon Taffer, and Seaworld were the three accounts chosen for the Twitter project.  Electric Forest is a festival that has been around since 2008 and has had major success. This festival has the ability to open minds after attending and being exposed to/experiencing what it has to offer. The festival grounds are beautiful and the experiences of the attendees are important to the festivals success, thus why it seemed fitting to follow them and tweet about it.  Jon Taffer created the extremely popular and successful show Bar Rescue. For anyone working in the restaurant/bar business watching the show and learning from Jon Taffer is key. Being able to praise him and his expertise and ask him questions were the driving forces to following him. Many famous people come to mind when thinking about who to never follow, but no one that was worth tweeting at.  Seaworld seemed perfect because most people do not support their company, and are passionate about nature and animals. Although Seaworld would never be followed for real, there was excitement thinking about tweeting at them in opposition. These three companies/people are all very different but things that instil passion.

At first Twitter seemed way easier than blogging, but they are both equally as hard.  Having so much to say about the companies and people made tweeting hard. Despite being an everyday Twitter user, having to cut back thoughts and cleverly word things was tough compared to blog posts where there is freedom to shape thoughts with practically no restrictions.  With Twitter a point has to be made then if a visual or link is added it is to back up that point. This is different from Instagram where the visual is the point being communicated then the caption backs it up. Also the caption doesn’t have character restrictions like Twitter, so a picture with a lengthy description is common.  Facebook is famous for monologs, people tend to post multiple paragraphs preaching about their day or their beliefs. Seeing a post of such length causes friends/followers to avoid reading it, or they just skim. Twitter is the most efficient due to its quick and thoughtfully worded atmosphere.

The Twitter project was fun but challenging.  Tweeting objectively at organizations and classmates was tricky. On the other hand, tweeting about things that instil passion and sharing that with classmates in a form that everyone is familiar with made it more lively.  That familiarity made it easier/more fun to actually read classmates tweets and respond.

wikiHelp

Writing a wikiHow was a unique experience.  In some ways it was easier than imagined, having never thought about the extensive knowledge held about how the internet/websites work.  Being exposed to the web and social media almost twenty four seven gave a leg up on the assignment. Visualizing how other websites look and sound was a helpful mental guide throughout this process.  In other ways it was harder than imagined, realizing how tedious and precise of a process it is. Picking a topic not already done before, taking the time to do the task and plan out the steps, writing it and getting down to the nitty gritty with coding was lengthy.  Specifically, writing objectively not subjectively while trying to explain to someone how to do something was a challenge. It involved really “slowing down” and thinking about the words in which to choose and the sentence structure, something fairly new.

Reading over other wikiHow’s tremoundlesy helped shape the new wikiHow.  Seeing how the parts and steps were broken down made making the outline more accurate.  The other wikiHow’s were so, for the lack of better words, dumbed down. Simple actions that most would assume were explained, and in detail.  This brought about the realization that not everyone holds the same knowledge/worldly experiences, so never assume. Also the realization that wikiHows are made to teach someone how to do something step by step with no missing details.  The words “well how does one do that?” were on repeat, in the attempt to stop assuming and explain everything as detailed as possible. Instructions such as, “Set up the tent” were too vague, and later translated into something along the lines of “Take the tent out of the package and read/follow along to instructions on how to set it up. Once set up properly package away.”   This wikiHow was used as a guide because it similarly was talking about how to prepare for something.  It had parts and steps to each part that explained more thoroughly.

Another struggle was figuring out how to properly compartmentalize the steps and the things you’ll need list.  Considering the topic was on how to prepare versus how to perform a task there was no specific way to do things.  This required thinking about what was most logical for a first time festival goer reading this article. Once that mindset was put into place it all came somewhat easy.  Researching the festival would come first then buying the ticket and so on. The things you’ll need list was lengthy because all supplies had to be listed from personal items, tent items and more.  The list was never fully complete until the coding process, random items would come to mind and get added. Collaboration amongst friends/fellow festival goers was a huge help to the process. When going to a music festival packing/preparing is a group effort, what one person may forget the other will remember.  Most of the times roles are delegated at the beginning, this person has a tent, the other has a canopy etc. Packing it all alone usually isn't the case, so writing a wikiHow and trying to remember it all was tough. Guidance from friends was especially helpful when it came to the tips and the warnings. It was like a group of veterans pulling together to give the best tips for first timers.

Taking and editing the pictures in Photoshop was a fun part of the process.  After taking a bunch of pictures process of elimination was used when picking the final five used.  Editing the pictures was also tedious but very needed. Not only was it important to change them over to the correct size and resolution but playing around with the lights and darks made a huge difference.  Photoshop was also used to edit out mistakes in the picture and blur logos and things of that sort. The blurring technique was used in this picture.

Coding the wikiHow was the final fine tuning of it all.  Using the copy and paste method from a previous wikiHow article was more than helpful.  After everything was put into place it all came down to a few re reads to make sure everything looked right.  Being able to save the wikiHow and preview it in the final format put the coding to the test.

After the upload of the wikiHow to Prepare for a Camping Music Festival a notification appears saying something about being similar to other articles.  This was somewhat defeating considering all of the hard work put into this article.  There was initial research upon this subject and it was concluded that there are a few articles about music festivals but none about camping at one.  Thus there was need for knowledge on this subject because it is a hard type of trip to prepare/pack for. All in all this was a stressful yet rewarding process.  The feeling of accomplishment for starting and finishing this project is a reward in itself, even if the article doesn’t remain posted.

Advocates and Defenders

Social media is constantly progressing in a way that forces users to adapt and progress along with it.  Younger generations have the ability to quickly pick up the constantly changing environment and do with it as they please.  Social media offers a massive platform with what seems like endless amounts of freedom. This environment is wonderful but intrusive at times, especially among younger generations.  When sites like MySpace and Facebook first came about people were eager to share details about their personal life, but as the years went on people realized that oversharring is possible and can be dangerous.  Not much has changed in this aspect, but people still openly subject themselves to the possibly dangerous and intrusive nature of social media. Social media is glorified for its ability to connect the world in a way that was never once possible, heightening the realms of communication.  Now that people are more native to the social media world its wonders diminish because users are so used to sharing their opinions on a daily basis. People have grown a sense of entitlement when it comes to sharing everything and anything they think online. Differing opinions cause Twitter and Facebook feuds on the daily but when musicians and icons are involved it shakes the social media world.  World renowned dj, Bassnectar, recently made a nasty post degrading artist Chris Dyers work after Chris accidently revealed details about Bassnectars upcoming event.

Bassnectar hired Chris to create a poster for his upcoming New Years Eve event where the location and theme related details were unreleased to the public.  Chris posted a picture of part of his artwork on Instagram unaware that he leaked the location of the event. Bassnectar was of course upset about the leaked information, thus lashing out.  Chris made an Instagram post explaining himself and humbly apologizing to Bassnectar stating that Bassnectar never made him sign a non disclosure agreement and that the post “..was done with no malice, or as a leak to harm them…”  The leaked information and Bassnectar’s tweet caused fury among followers, some siding with Bassnectar and others siding with Chris.  This situation was started negatively by Bassnectars remark, but had some positivity within it due to many people defending Chris and his artwork.  The series of events was negative but eye opening to the public. This is just one example of one situation where someone influential in the music industry didn’t think before they posted and caused controversy.  Similar situations happen all the time especially when it comes to sharing political views on social media. All in all every social media user will have and typically share their opinion, especially on matters that involve celebrities and social icons.  There is no telling where social media will take us next but it is likely that users will become more comfortable sharing their opinions on little and larger influential matters. That being said more negativity and controversy is inevitable but on the up side, more conversations will be made.