It's the Final Countdown...

...Or not.

Tomorrow is the hand in day for my final piece of coursework for year 2 semester one at university. I spent the majority of yesterday afternoon, and the entirety of today working on it, and it has finally been uploaded and sent off for marking.
We were tasked with creating a youtube style video which talked about one of the topics we had discussed in our lectures for that module. Sensing an opportunity to talk about one of my great loves - the 'brony' fandom - I settled on the topic of 'quality'. My video goes into detail about the ways in which the show My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic attracts an audience of older teens and young adults alongside its target audience of primary school aged children (predominantly girls), and how this reflects on the quality of the franchise as a whole.

During the process of filming my 'v-log' I encountered a number of issues. Initially, I struggled to remember any of the lines I had written as a script. My constant failure with saying more than one sentence to a camera caused me to get ridiculously stressed and I had to stop for the night, as it was getting late and I knew it would take a while to calm down. I woke up today with renewed hope for filming the piece, as, at the advice of a friend, I had created 'cue cards' which i propped up just below my camera that I could reference whilst recording. Thus, the problem of speech was (almost) cured.

My next challenge was correctly focusing the camera. As I haven't got a tripod at home, my camera was placed on a pile of books at the right height and distance to achieve a good framing. My camera, however, does not have a flip screen, and I don't own a monitor. I was focusing on the back of the chair, my foot kicking out roughly to where my head would be, and eventually I asked my brother to sit in the chair. The focus problem was almost fixed then, but with my constantly getting up and checking on the camera as I recorded in segments, it was always at risk of being slightly out of focus.

When I had recorded all the clips for my video, which had taken about half of the day, I began putting them together on my computer. For some reason, there was a colour variance in the clips, although the lighting didn't change, and nor did my position - by a particularly considerable amount, anyway. I fiddled for a while in Premier Pro, and did my best to sort out the issue. The final product, I feel, did not come out too badly.

So, eventually, after blood, sweat and tears - well, maybe not blood, but there was certainly sweat and tears, and a few pulled hairs - I had completed my youtube video. There are a few things, had I the time, that I would improve on, but for a first attempt, with the constraints I had, I'd say it's not all that bad. For those interested, I bid you farewell with the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25hQafLum1g&feature=youtu.be

Turn End,
Devan.