Is it technically week 12 when I’m writing this, yes, but don’t shame me for that. It’s been a busy and hectic week as we’re getting close to the end of the semester, but here’s what I’ve been up to:
Interviews with CRHC Volunteers
On Wednesday, one of my team members, Hannah, and I went downtown to the CRHC to do interviews with some volunteers at the CRHC. Last semester, I did a couple of interviews for my documentary (see History Projects tab to watch) on cassettes, so I was super excited to get another opportunity to do some more! I think interviews enhance these kinds of projects because it makes it feel more personal or more human. Seeing an actual person discussing what message we’re trying to get across, in my opinion. makes the project feel more connected to the public audience and more like a human interaction type of experience.
We filmed on my iPhone which was different from my previous experience where we used just the basic camera you can find at the HCC, but it was much more simple and great for shooting the kind of content we wanted to make since these are going to be used on Instagram Reels rather than a YouTube documentary. I also checked out the basic audio kit from the HCC to have some good quality mics, and these were super easy to use! I just plugged in one of the pieces from the kit into my phone and the mics automatically connected. I think we really got some good footage and audio from these tools.
“Try Being an Influencer for a Day”
(let me know if you get that reference)
Over the weekend I was living my influencer fantasy as I was editing the videos on Canva to post on the Instagram. I used Canva for the previous video we made this semester as well as the documentary I worked on last semester, and I really like it for some simple basic video edits. I mainly use it to cut clips out, add music, adjust audio, and add some images and captions. I also posted some photos that our team member Caitlin took while we were at the center a few weekends ago, I’m trying to get that engagement up!
Using social media as part of our outreach has been a really fun and exciting experience. Growing up with social media, obviously I know how it can be used to spread information and connect people, but using it for this project has challenged me to learn and think more about the behind the scenes. I’ve been using ScreenPal (which I can’t say yet if I’m a fan of or not) for generating audio descriptions, captions, and time stamps. When posting on Instagram, I have to think about while I’m editing if the text I’m adding will show up in frame, and when I post I have to write alt text. Overall, it’s about making the page as navigable, cohesive, and descriptive as I possibly can. I definitely still have more to learn, but this has been a really rewarding process.
