Student Reflection

by April Nwatah 


If someone asked to see pictures of my work in the community, and I showed them this picture, they might stand there looking confused and think that I misunderstood them. But with the Facebook Video Project, I spend every other Friday morning right here at my desk editing videos and uploading them onto a Facebook page for Spanish speakers in the community.  

Minus a couple of goofy videos that I made in the 8th grade for some of my friends, I don’t have much experience editing videos. Although I’ve had my MacBook for about 2 years, I never explored iMovie until this class. Some people learn things like editing by reading or watching tutorials then trying out what they learn. I just kind of learn as I go. I envision what I want a certain part of the video to look like, then I play around with iMovie to make it happen. If I can’t figure it out, then I Google it. But basically, every week is a new learning experience.

Sometimes the process is frustrating and I often need to think on my feet. For example, normally I check out a flip-camera from the UGL a couple days in advance to have it ready for filming on Friday. However, a couple weeks ago I forgot to check it out in advance (whoops) and when I went in on Friday morning to check out a camera there were none left! My roommate has a smart phone with a nice camera so we used that to film a lot of video clips. But for some very strange reason iMovie did not accept the format of the video clips from her phone. So after spending a lot of time researching how to convert the files and brainstorming other options, we ended up reshooting most of out footage with a digital camera (after testing and making sure that the video clips from the digital camera would be compatible with iMovie).

I really love learning. I’m quite thankful that there are always concepts and lessons to be learned in things as seemingly small as editing videos. Although I’m graduating in a couple weeks, I’m looking forward to learning outside of the classroom through day-to-day experiences (kind of like this course, except it's every moment of every day!)

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