The First Two Weeks...

Outline of This Week and Next

For this week, Feb. 22-28 I plan to spend about...

• Three class periods in WISE (at least)
• An hour and a half writing blogs throughout the week
• A half hour with my mentor, Steve Cass from the digital media department at IHS
• A half hour watching and reflecting about a previous student's WISE project (about Ithaca)
• An hour looking through textual and online resources to find out my technology needs, along with testing out equipment and figuring out how to get it
• An hour and a half watching Bill Cunningham New York (as suggested by Mr. Cass) on Netflix

For the week of March 1-7, I will be...

• Attending our weekly class meeting
• Watching two more documentaries on netflix (TBD)
• Spending an hour and a half writing posts and reflecting on the documentaries I watch
• Meeting with Mr. Cass for a half hour
• Getting some footage out in the snow by Cayuga Lake

That's all for now!

Enjoy a photo I took last fall from Ithaca College campus:

The Beginning!

Dear Reader, 

Welcome to my blog! I hope you are as excited as I am to dive into what gives the gorges town in upstate New York its unique edge that creates a community as beautiful as Ithaca. I love to work with digital arts and photography, as well as many other mediums. Having a subject that interests me is incredibly important. Exploring the culture of my hometown through the lens of a documentary film will help me to appreciate the people, places, and overall local feeling that sets Ithaca apart from the reality of the rest of the world. This is not only significant for my audience, but also for me as I head off to college next year and leave behind the community that I've grown to love. For the next 16 weeks I will be working on my WISE project which will include research about documentary and the creation of one that depicts Ithacan culture.

I had a great experience shooting and editing videos during a semester in digital media class last year, but I want to explore more options and further my skills. I will learn more about the process that goes from planning, to shooting, to creating the finished product. Along the way, I hope to gather a variety of stories and opinions through "man on the street" interviews with the local people. There is still a lot of research to do in figuring out the shots, equipment, interview questions, and places/people that I want to incorporate into the film.

Many of my goals during this project deal with answering my research questions and become more comfortable with digital media. Both textual resources and human resources will hopefully aid me in figuring out technology questions I may have during shooting and post production. For editing, I will need to become moderately proficient with the editing software Adobe Premier Pro. The factors that go into creating a "good documentary" will have to be felt out over time, but I hope to learn the answer to this through experience and through watching other documentaries. Overall, my finished product will probably be about a half hour in length but may change once I begin to work with the footage I collect.

Aside from the technical aim of my project, I have personal goals to work on. First off, I aim to improve my time management skills. In order to accomplish the short term and long term parts that go into my project, I will create a structured schedule that lays out a weekly plan of action to motivate myself with deadlines and mini-goals. This should assess my workload and ensure that I do not become overwhelmed or fall short of my goals. It's also important that I become more at ease with talking to people I don't know. Hopefully over the course of the 16 weeks, I will see improvement at approaching and inquiring with strangers and record my thoughts on this matter.

I can't wait to get started and explore my question: WHY ITHACA?
Thanks For Reading!