Design Portfolio

Overall, I have mixed feelings about my internship.  On one hand, the experience was great and the people I worked for were helpful.  But it definitely wasn’t what I expected in terms of what they told me I would be doing.  There were many days when I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the projects I was doing, having so few to do in such a broad time range.  But other days I felt like part of the team and my contribution was worth something.  It definitely got me more  interested more in video editing and motion graphics.

During the summer I completed three video editing projects: a Back to the Bible board meeting, an annual lecture series featuring guest speakers, and an interview with a cancer patient for Footnote.  I was surprised that these three projects took up the most of my time throughout my 2 months with the company.  Part of the reason was my lack of familiarity with the equipment and that the computers I used weren’t exactly the best options to edit on.  With not having much experience with video editing, these projects introduced me to the basics of editing – how to log, use multicam, and export.  I was introduced to primarily Adobe Premiere Pro but I also used Final Cut.  The edits I made were simple and I used the same process with all projects.  The interview video was a fun one for me.  It let me deal with footage that was going to be used for television airing.  These videos were less about being artistic and more about learning.  Admittedly, the company videos weren’t the most exciting projects – most outsiders like me with no prior exposure or knowledge to Back to the Bible would find the information in the video uninteresting.

I also briefly spent time doing some design work.  In the beginning, I was hired to do both video and design work but later it was decided that I should concentrate on video.  I thought this was the best decision since I did not have the experience and would use this opportunity to learn.  While I had different projects lined up for when I did do design work, I really only got to work on two: A banner for a website and some business card brainstorming ideas.  I had different ideas for business cards, but many of them I was unsatisfied with.  They wanted a style that was minimalistic and clean, but still stylish.  Some were unfinished and others just could have used more work.  The banner was the one project that I completed.  Meeting the requirements was difficult to do, because some of the designs that were asked of me were styles that I wasn’t accustomed too.  It was good practice to keep the requirements but at the same time utilize my design knowledge.

Here are ta few business card designs I made. Any black shapes were meant to be cut out.

Back side:

Front side:

This is the banner I did for one of Back to the Bible’s websites.

Finally, here is a sample of the type of videos I’ve been editing. The following is the first speaker of the lecture series video. All the videos pretty much follow the same type of very basic editing. The segment is from a five hour long video.

http://dropbox.unl.edu/uploads/20100810/9b77933236c8363c/speaker1.mpg

Weeks 7&8

6/29 – With the amount of footage I have on my external hard drive, I’ve found that working directly from it is extremely frustrating because even one simple edit seems to take a minute or two to render.  Transferring it to the computer’s hard drive is not an option, since it is shared with others and there is simply not enough room. With having me working on Adobe Premiere Pro version 2.0 on Windows XP, I really haven’t found this last few days of editing very efficient.  I haven’t had a problem until now.  What’s a little frustrating is that while I had my short stint as the graphic designer intern, I was able to work on a MAC and use CS3.

6/30 – Early this morning I finished the lecture series and started to export it.  The finished product was just a little over 5 hours long. I had started to begin exporting it and it would be a couple of hours.  Later, I was told that there was going to be a slight change.  In the lecture series there were seven different speakers, and I was instructed to put each speaker in a different track.  This was so that when the DVD is burned, people have the option of watching certain ones instead of having to sit through the whole thing.  Obviously, this was frustrating as well, but it had to be done.  It seems like not only my projects, but a lot of the other interns have had similar situations so I definitely can relate.  It’s good to have the real-world experience to having to adapt to unexpected situations.

7/1 – The rendering and exporting of the video took about 3 to 4 hours, so I had to leave the computer on overnight.  When I came in today, I found that my hard drive still did not have enough space and so the export failed.  So, today was mainly continuing on exporting the lecture series video and continued on doing the lynda.com tutorials. Again I had to leave the computer on overnight and hopes everything works.

7/6 – It looked like the export went well.  After I looked over the video, I told my supervisor Jamie that I was done.  I asked if there was a new project for me to do, and she said she didn’t have any for me at the time and I should continue on tutorials.  While I’m bummed that I didn’t get any new projects, I did find some interesting videos on lynda.com.  They were documentaries about designers and design agencies and I decided to watch them rather than do tutorials.  I watched videos on Kit Hinrichs (graphic designer), New Deal Studios (Specia/Visual effects), and Trigger (Interactive design studio).   I thought it was a good way to spend my time and while it was only watching videos, I still felt productive.  It was a good day.

7/7 – So today I learned that I made a mistake with the lecture series.  Instead of putting each speaker on tracks, I was supposed to put them in different timelines instead and exporting each timeline separately.  I misunderstood the directions and I felt really bad.  Since this had only been my second major editing project, it definitely was frustrating yet I felt a little incompetent.  So the day was spent fixing my mistake.  I ended up getting two of the seven speakers’ bits exported.

7/8 – Jamie told me today that I’d be getting a new project involving motion graphics and that the producers would tell me more about it later.  This was definitely exciting.  After going through the After Effects and other software tutorials, it definitely got me excited to work with those programs.  The last few days didn’t go that well, so this was a morale booster.  Unfortunately, I still had to export the rest of the speakers in the lecture series, so the majority of my day was waiting for the videos to render and export.

Also, I learned today that ABC Family has offered to pick up Footnote but the bad news was that it wouldn’t get a good time slot. While I kind of hoped that the producers would accept since this was a big deal getting an offer, they wanted a better time slot.  ABC Family offered them one that was in the early hours of the morning, but ideally Footnote would be shown around midnight.

Weeks 5 & 6

6/15 – I’ve nearly completed my first project, the board meeting video.  Something that I finally figured out to do was Multi-Cam editing.  I tried to at first, when I first got the project but it gave me a lot of trouble.  I found a tutorial on it today, and it really made things easier for me.

I’m really impressed at how well I’m beginning to pick up the tools and tricks from Premiere Pro.  I’ve really been just teaching myself since I’ve started the internship.  While I think it’s great that I can learn on my own, I’d really like more feedback than what I’m getting now from the producers and editors. I definitely need to work on communicating with them.

6/16 – Big day. Finally done with the board meeting video.  For the rest of the day I just continued work on the other project I have left, the lecture series.  I’m really looking forward to getting this one done in hopes of getting some more interesting projects.

6/17 – Today I got a break from editing.  Episode 2 of Footnote was completed, so all the staff got to watch it.  Following that, the interns and producers had a meeting with our counterparts in the Pittsburgh offices.  Basically we talked about plans for future episodes, and fun stuff like Footnote apparel and merchandise.  At the end of the day, there was a surprise party for the company president that I didn’t know about.  It was a good chance to interact with some of my fellow interns.

6/22 – Today as I walked in, I learned that the producers and editors were going to be gone for shoots around town this week.  This was kind of frustrating because no one told me before hand, so I wasn’t prepared.  I continued work on the lecture series.  I quickly found out that this one would be a lot more challenging than the board meeting video.  Since I had a lot of footage, I had a lot more waiting to do while the video rendered.

6/23 & 6/24 – Just continuing work on the lecture series.  As the lecture series video gets longer, the longer I have to wait for the video to render.  I’m hoping to get done next week. With everyone gone and me just having to wait on the video, I brought in some homework to do for an online class I’m taking.  I’ve felt really unproductive these last few days and I’m really anxious on working on something that I hope will be a lot more interesting.  My supervisor realizes that the stuff they’ve had me doing isn’t the most exciting stuff, so I hope she’ll let me do some experimenting with motion graphics and continue with tutorials.

Weeks 3 & 4

6/1 – Today I continued work on the board meeting edit.  It went smoothly until I found out that one of the tapes was logged in under the wrong format.  Consequently, I had to re-capture the footage which equated to about an hour of waiting time.  I feel a lot more comfortable with Premiere Pro, having worked with it the past few weeks. Today was also the day that a few other interns started working, one of whom was also a graphic design intern.  Jenny, my design supervisor, and I had a prior conversation about how there would also be a third design intern coming in later this summer and expressed how difficult it would be for her to manage all three of us.  We both agreed that it would be a lot better for her if I did primarily video work, since I was the only intern working in two areas.  I am actually excited about this decision, since it will give me a lot more time to get a hang of video editing.

I also participated in my first team meeting with the Footnote producers and the other interns.  They discussed with us plans for the next month and ideas for future episodes.  The goal is to have a 13-episode season. Some of the ideas for future episodes included sex trafficking, love and marriage, evil, and homelessness.  I learned that ABC Family, MTV, and TLC have all reviewed the pilot episode.  The most likely landing spot for a fall premiere would be either ABC Family or MTV.

6/2 – It was a rough day.  I had continued working on the video of the board meeting and finally finished it. Or at least I thought I did.  During the meeting, many of the speakers presented slide shows and video clips.  But most of the video cameras only shot the speakers, so none of the visuals could be seen on video.  It turned out that the producers wanted the slide shows and video clips to be included in the video.  Adding the video clips would be fairly simple, but since Premiere Pro doesn’t accept PowerPoint, I had to take a screen shot of each individual slide.  This definitely was frustrating, because many of the presentations were lengthy and I have to wait to get all the presentations sent to me.

I also decided to do some research on Footnote today and I came across an article and a short summary. 1, 2

Finally, today I found out that my video editing supervisor, Jamie, would be in Pittsburgh for the next ten days to do some filming and editing with Footnote’s main motion graphics director and editor.  She left me with essentially three tasks: 1) Continue working on the board meeting video 2) Start a new project that was similar to the board meeting. This one involves logging and editing a lecture series given by Back to the Bible’s president.  The amount of footage for the lecture series is about three times as much as the board meeting. 3) Begin tutorials from lynda.com – a site that posts training videos of software.  Back to the Bible has paid for an annual subscription.

6/3 – I decided to take a break from the board meeting edit and decided to spend the whole day taking a look at tutorials while at the same time starting to log the lecture series.  There were 18 DV tapes that I had to log, each with anywhere between 45-60 minutes of footage.  The tutorials were very interesting, and I enjoyed taking the time to watch them. I mainly watched a video for Premiere Pro but looked at some for Adobe After Effects as well. Today was the first time I felt like I was learning for the entire duration that I was working. Some of the tutorials I looked at included basic editing, transitions, capturing, and using audio and video effects.

6/8 – Today I continued with the tutorials and came back to finish what I could with the board video.  I still have yet to receive all of the speakers’ PowerPoints.  After talking with one of the producers today, I learned that while the videos I will be making will be shown to some of the top execs in the company.  She told me that after these larger projects are done, I’d be doing some more little “fun stuff”.  This definitely gave me the motivation I was looking for to finish these projects.  The fact that some important people will be viewing this definitely makes me want to make some well-done videos.  I decided to go back and to do some more revisions to the video as I wait for more PowerPoints.

6/9 – With Jamie gone, I feel really isolated. She usually sits next to me, during my internship hours. It doesn’t help that I have the same projects I’ve been working on for a while now. The tutorials still keep me active and awake, but the logging and editing of the videos is really boring, in all honesty.  Today, I started to take a look at the After Effects tutorial, which was over 16 hours worth of videos to watch!  I started with some basics, but wanted to take a peek ahead and saw some pretty neat videos – Color corrections, basic animations, and even lightsaber effects!  So far, these tutorials are my favorite part of the internship experience.  This in some ways is kind of disappointing because I was hoping I would have some more of a direct contribution to the Footnote TV show. But this is understandable, because of the lack of experience I have with video.

6/10 – Nothing new. I continued looking at tutorials and logging the lecture series video.  I had a small project involving a short promotion clip called “Meet Jack”. The premise of the clip was to advertise one of Back to the Bible’s services, 411God.  411God is an application that sends bible passages to one’s cell phones periodically throughout the day. “Meet Jack” was about a man named Jack, showing his life before and after 411God. My job was to remove an old logo from the end of the video and fade it to black. While the edit itself was simple, getting it onto a DVD was a little tricky. I hadn’t realize that I had to deal with settings such as widescreen and HD. This gave me a chance to explore deeper into Premiere Pro and sort of learn for myself how to get things right. This small project took only about 45 minutes, but it was a nice break from my usual routine.

Here is a YouTube video from a few months ago showing a little bit of Back to the Bible here in Lincoln and some of the people I work with.

First Week at Back to the Bible

Introduction

Back to the Bible is a Christian company that utilizes different media (radio, internet, television) to engage the public in reading the Bible.  It is an international company with the headquarters in Lincoln, NE.  One part of Back to the Bible is a new television show that has just finished its pilot, called “Footnote”.  Here is an excerpt from my orientation packet about Footnote:

It’s hard to explain just what Footnote is without sounding like we’re exaggerating. It’s more than a new television show. It’s more than a new brand of Christian entertainment. No, Footnote is a long overdue revolution – the next level in media production. It’s a fusion of Bible-based research, social networking, and cutting-edge television to create an immersive experience. The Bible is yanked from the shelves and thrust into the grit and mess and pull of the new decade via Footnote’s progressive exploration of modern issues through a biblical lens. Each episode’s topic will be based on the research of the Center for Bible Engagement, and each topic will be explored from different perspectives throughout the episode. These perspectives might be shown through a mini-documentary, a comedy, an expert interview, a man-on-the street segment, or an art piece. By the end of each program, these elements will merge together to reveal a compelling, honest outlook that is specifically targeted to have daily impact on viewers’ lives. Imagine a blending of the multiple stories on a theme similar to This American Life, mix that with the humor of VH1′s I Love the 80’s and have the talk about everything approach of Fox’s Red Eye. We want to talk about the things in the church that no one is talking about, and yet always have an underlying theme that the Bible matters to you and your walk.

As the graphic design and video editor intern, a lot of my work will be centered around Footnote but I’ll be doing work for Back to the Bible’s other projects such as newsletters and websites.  Either MTV/MTV2 or ABC Family will be the eventual home of Footnote and will be premiere in fall of 2010. Here is a trailer for their first episode, which deals with pornography: http://vimeo.com/10348424

My weekly internship schedule will be 20 hours a week, Tuesday through Thursday.

Week 1

On my first day I worked with one of the editors, Jamie. My projects were fairly simple. My first project was to log several hours of a board meeting on Premiere Pro. Eventually, I will have to edit the footage so that those in the company who  missed the meeting will be able to view it. Having never used Adobe Premiere Pro, I thought it was a good first project for me to become familiar with the basics of the program.

On days two and three, I primarily worked on business cards for Footnote staff.  I was given several variations of the Footnote logo to work with and a color scheme (orange and white) that I had to adhere to.  I was enthusiastic about the project at first, but it was surprisingly difficult to make something I like.

Week 2

Tuesday I was given the day off because my supervisor was home with a sick child. On Wednesday, I was given my first assignment that directly related to the Footnote program.  The second episode that is currently in production will be about Death and Evil.  I had to look through the video library at Back to the Bible and look for B-roll for the episode.  They gave me a list of specific things scenes they were looking for (i.e., elderly people, cosmetic surgery, leaves falling). The amount of footage that I had was huge and it was probably the least exciting thing I’ve done with the internship to date.  Nevertheless, I was excited that I would be able to have some sort of contribution in Footnote.

On Thursday, I did some editing with Final Cut Pro. Earlier on the week, the film crew went down to Kansas City to interview a man with terminal cancer that was told he’d have a few months left. My main job was to edit the raw footage and make DVDs for his family. There was about 2 hours of footage and I was able to get it down to about 1 and a half.  The fact that this would be given to the man’s family gave me extra motivation to do as best of a job I can to edit.

Google Envelopes

From switched.com, a look at a new form of snail mail developed by students at Syracuse University.  Using Gmail, the Google Envelope would be able to send paper versions of e-mails inside envelopes that show the delivery route.

Gmail users could, in theory, simply click a ‘Send Envelope’ button to receive a printout of their missive along with an envelope that, itself, would be an enlarged GoogleMaps itinerary, directly displaying the quickest possible route of delivery.

I think that this is such a great idea. Not only does it make envelopes aesthetically interesting, it could potentially revamp the postal service. While it’ll hard to challenge e-mail in terms of speed of delivery, I still enjoy receiving letters through mail. It is a lot more personal and meaningful.

via Switched.com

Content Aware: Ridiculous New Photoshop Feature?

A post from Seattle’s The Big Blog features a new Photoshop tool called “Content Aware”.

Photoshop’s soon-to-be-released “Content Aware” tool basically uses a computer algorithm to create content in a photograph to fill a blank area or cover up undesirable elements in the image. The process of removing and adding content was time consuming and sometimes obvious to a trained eye with previous versions of Photoshop. The coming tool is easy and seems almost impossible to recognize.

I’m torn between the issue. While, yes, it does seem like it will make photo editing so much easier…but on the other hand, should we even be calling it photo editing? It definitely looks impressive, but as the article states, photographers and journalists abide by a strict code of ethics that forbids any photo manipulation.  This could potentially add a new life-changing dimension to photography in general. Nonetheless, I’ll definitely be interested in trying it out.

Check out the video preview and and also a parody video:

via The Big Blog

Enter The Sandman (Smooth Jazz Version)

From Youtube user AndyRehfeldt, a video featuring a version of Metallica’s hit that’s different than we’re used to hearing. I love that he mixes two completely opposite genres and creates one really interesting piece. Two others in his Youtube channel were particularly interesting as well that deserves to be checked out: a Disney version of Slipknot’s “Wait and Bleed“  and a death metal Jonas Brothers song. I thought these three were his best. Some of the other ones he posted weren’t as good.  But it’s amazing how cross genre remixes completely changes the dynamic of the songs.

via AndyRehfeldt’s Youtube Channel

Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey is a graphic designer whose most recently known for the Obama “Hope” poster. Some of his other work include his “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” campaign and the movie poster for “Walk the Line”.  I especially enjoy his use of color and simple geometry.  His work relates to my final project in that I will be taking photographs of myself and dividing them by color “pieces” as I make my collage .

via Obey Giant

Jonathan Yeo

Jonathan Yeo is a British artist who is best known for his portraits. In 2007, Yeo was commissioned to do a portrait for the George W. Bush but before he was finished, he was told that his services wouldn’t be needed anymore.  He then decided to a portrait anyway, one with cuttings from pornographic magazines.  I had come across this while looking for final project ideas, and it caught my attention.  It made such an impact on me that I decided to make my final project a collage. Check his website for the full-size, more offensive image.

via JonathanYeo.com