Mission Accomplished!

"New media is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked information and communication technologies in the later part of the 20th century. Most technologies described as "new media" are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, interactive and impartial.[1] Some examples may be the Internet, websites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROMS, and DVDs. New media is not television programs, feature films, magazines, books, or paper-based publications" (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media)

Our most recent project in Social Media class was to interview three people using our phones and then to edit, process, upload and add subtitles to them. The questions revolved around social media and its usages.

Episode I was fun because I was interviewing my best friend and the "friend" she kept mentioning was actually me. It was the first one I did so it was obviously quite difficult for me to grasp the whole thing at first.

Episode II was also fun to shoot and there were PLENTY of bloopers (that I plan in including in the blooper reel later on). But I found that I was getting used to the subtitles/annotations so it was simpler.

Episode III was a bit more difficult...My first interviewee backed out and the next one that I had lined up as backup backed out as well. So I made a few phone calls and shot the video, edited and did the annotations in less than an hour (which would explain why there MIGHT be a difference in the work between this one and the other two..)

The three videos don't differ much expect for technical aspects such as lighting since two were shot at night, and one was shot in broad daylight. One of the two shot at night was in a well lit room indoors while the other one was actually shot outside. The sound also differs depending on the volume of the speakers voice and how far the phone was from their face. The last two episodes, the interviewees were quite uncomfortable with a phone "all up in their business" so the sound quality differs a bit.

The shakiness is similar in all the videos as well as the opinions expressed by the interviewees. My hands tend to shake because of the amount of nicotine I take into my body, so the shot was never quite steady (which is why I like to use a tripod while using a real camera. and probably why I would never be a good surgeon). The opinions of all three were quite similar in the fact that all three used the internet on a daily basis, however they didn't find twitter or blogs very useful. In fact, two of the interviewees said the exact same thing "I find them useless"

I recorded on my Nokia e71 (my trusty companion) and then bluetoothed them to my laptop (took mere seconds) and then edited the videos, added a little intro, processed them and uploaded them to youtube.

I used the simplest program ever to edit the footage and take out what I didn't really need: Windows Movie Maker. I've been using it for years now and so it took as much time to cut down the footage and insert an intro as it took to shoot the footage. It was very easy considering I'm used to this program. There wasn't really any difficulty in this stage.

Adding subtitles was by far the most difficult step in this whole process. It took so long because I did it through YouTube (the videos below have no text but if you go to my youtube page, you can see the videos with the subtitles (http://saso-underneaththeblue.blogspot.com/). Youtube kept freezing and the process was just so slow no matter what computer I switched to. It would freeze and type things I didn't want to type and eat up letters...it was just a horror to use...

My lease favorite part was the subtitles. They took up too much time HOWEVER they were very helpful, especially in episode II where the twins start to speak over each other, so the subtitles helped the viewer understand what was going on and who was saying what. But all in all, it was STILL my least favorite part of the project.

My favorite part was definitely everything else besides the subtitles. I enjoyed the interviews, editing and uploading (since the files were so small they took no time to upload at all.

This project was quite an interesting experience, especially the subtitles, which I struggled with a LOT. In fact, at one point I hit save, and then Publish and it told me my annotations had been published but when I went to view the video, they were GONE. I almost had a small heart attack..Never again will I underestimate the amount of work it takes to do subtitles or criticize the one making them for spelling mistakes or leaving out whole sentences. It's hard work. Takes FOREVER.

EPISODE I - SAM AL-HAMAWI

EPISODE II - ABDULLAH AND YOUSIF AL-HAMAWI


EPISODE III - AYMAN ABDEL HADI