BCA 3750 - News - Aflac Duck Spokesperson Audition

This news opportunity just sort-of fell into my lap. I offered to help Bill Garvey, who is the spouse of a Madonna faculty member, with the Aflac duck spokesman audition. Aflac fired their former duck spokesperson, Gilbert Gottfried, after he posted some unappealing comments about Japan after their disaster. Aflac started a contest to find their next duck spokesperson.

At first, Bill wasn't excited about doing it because the job description said they preferred an actor with experience. However, that was not a requirement, so I convinced Bill that we should just go for it.

Bill recorded his duck impersonations with different emotional voices from angry to happy. He definitely impressed me because I really didn't have much of an idea how a person imitating a duck would sound like.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - AFLAC DUCK SPOKESPERSON AUDITION" ON YOUTUBE

What I did was record Bill's duck impersonations in Soundtrack Pro, and export the audio into Final Cut Pro to splice it all together with the good takes. Then, I exported the project into Soundtrack Pro and made a MP3.

I wish Bill luck in the contest!

Assiduous

This is one I did just for fun. After learning how to do the green screen from my Tron Legacy movie review, I wanted to experiment more with it. I also recently learned how to do visual effects in Motion, as well as 3D text in Final Cut. I have used Motion in the past, but did it more for the templates for the slates in my video. I didn't know it had visual effects until a Madonna classmate showed me. Same for the 3D text in Final Cut. It was pretty exciting to dive deeper into these programs to learn more about them.

So, I wanted to make a silly video, that really had no meaning, but just an experiment for fun.

The footage of the train station is from a video that I got from YouTube, but the crowd noise of the station I got from Soundtrack Pro. I combined two visual effects together, being the explosion with the smoke behind it.

WATCH "ASSIDUOUS" ON YOUTUBE

I used a green folder from school, and leaned it up against a wall in my kitchen, to function as the green screen. The "Venom" action figure was given to me out of a cereal box from my Grandma years ago.

BCA 3750 - News - Tron Legacy Movie Review

I love movies so much, that I wanted to do a movie review segment for Campus Closeup, the Madonna news show done for the BCA 3750 class; News Reporting. And, what better new movie to review than Tron Legacy. I knew from the start that I wanted to utilize the green screen that is available at Madonna, as well as borrow the Tron Legacy sweatshirt that a classmate of mine luckily had.

I needed to grab Tron Legacy footage to display on the green scene, as well as B-Roll for cutaways. The Apple website had plenty of trailers and clips from the movie, so I grabbed every single on. I also grabbed footage from the original Tron movie from YouTube for the first segment of the movie review.

After I obtained all the footage I needed, I went ahead and wrote the script. Writing the script wasn't particularly difficult, although I wish I changed up some of the words I used. I compared the city in the Grid to a flying saucer, but I wish I had said spaceship, because the city doesn't fly, it's stationary, and spaceship just would have sounded better.

The day of filming was quite fun. I had the help of another Madonna student, and her and I basically ran everything between the studio and the control room. So, there was a lot of running around. I loaded all the Tron footage onto a server, and had it looping behind me on the green scene. I tried to talk about the subject matter while related footage was shown behind me on the green screen. It worked most of the time, but not completely. Unfortunately, one of the servers had an issue, and I had one clip that had audio out of sync with the video, but I was able to fix that in post. Filming took a little longer than expected, but I got everything I needed, and the audio was good, so I was happy with the day of filming.

I got home, and had a pretty easy time editing it together. Definitely editing a news piece is easier than editing a film piece. What I am most proud with the piece was the intro on the show. I spliced together a few movie trailers along with some rocking music from "Fight Club", and it really helped set up the pace for the review.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - TRON LEGACY MOVIE REVIEW" ON YOUTUBE

After I completed the news piece, I put it on Facebook, and got some feedback. The best feedback I got was from a Madonna instructor that guided me on the road of redoing the green screen. In the original video, I used the control room to display the Tron footage on the green screen. The instructor helped me with adding in the Tron footage in Final Cut Pro instead. We did some experimenting together, and I was amazed at the results. Definitely adding in the footage on the green screen looked a lot better in Final Cut, than it did using the control room at Madonna. With this in mind, I decided to re-edit the piece and add in all the footage on the green screen in Final Cut. Being that I had more control over the green screen now, I was able to pull the right clips to match what I was saying during each segment of the review.

It also had to trim the edges using a crop to remove the ceiling in the studio, as well as the floor.

The only issue I had with the re-edit was I was not able to get footage from one of the segments from a camera. It was the segment that had the issue with the audio and video being out of sync. So, what I had to do was use footage grabbed from another camera, and that is why in one of the segments in the re-edit, I am not talking directly to a camera. But, I think it helps give the piece an artistic look, and I liked it.

After I finished the re-edit, I was more than happy with the end result.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - TRON LEGACY MOVIE REVIEW RE-EDIT" ON YOUTUBE

I am looking forward to reviewing another movie for Campus Closeup, but not sure what movie yet!

Joe Gagnon - The Appliance Doctor

I am in a television class at Madonna University. The class produces a biweekly television show called Celebrate Michigan, that airs at 6:30 AM on channel 20 (MyTV 20) in Metro Detroit. The show focuses on community leaders who give back to their area. A recent guest on the show was the Appliance Doctor, Joe Gagnon. To learn more about Mr. Gagnon, check out his website.

I got a late phone call the Saturday before Wednesday's show, asking if I could film Mr. Gagnon's radio show, that he does Sundays at WTKD 1400 AM from 2 PM to 4 PM. Always wanting more experience, I gladly accepted and went to the studio a mere 14 hours later after getting the phone call.

I had a very enjoyable time watching a radio station operate. I remember how neat and clean everything looked, and looking at all the equipment that is needed to be on air. When I was there, the station was following the snow storm that was coming in to pound Michigan, so that was big news.

My directions for filming were pretty simple. Shoot enough footage to cover a 2 to 3 minute piece to air during Celebrate Michigan. With that in mind, I knew I wanted to shoot about an hour of footage. I made sure I got shots of Mr. Gagnon on air, as while as shots of his producer operating the equipment, and the equipment itself. Looking back on what I shot, I am happy with what I got, although I think my "film mind" got the best of me because I did an awful lot of zooms and pans. I wish I got more longer still shots. I think my steady cam skills worked well, although I wish I had a tripod. Being on such short time to film, I didn't have access to one.

I did three edits of the piece before Wednesday's show, with the final edit happening right before class. I did find an awesome tool in Motion for Final Cut, which allowed me to stabilize some of the shots that I wished I had a tripod for. I was amazed on how well Motion stabilized the shots and it looked great when I imported it into Final Cut.

WATCH "JOE GAGNON - THE APPLIANCE DOCTOR" ON YOUTUBE

The assignment itself had some challenges. Besides not having a tripod, I really wanted to make the piece exciting with what footage I had. I was lucky to obtain a copy of the first hour of Mr. Gagnon's radio show that I imported into Final Cut. On the show, Mr. Gagnon has an opening theme song. To keep the pacing going, I made some adjusts to the theme song, and extended the non-vocal parts of it during the clips of Joe talking with his call in guests. I am happy with how it turned out.

The Celebrate Michigan episode with Joe Gagnon on will air some time in the future, possibly in late Spring 2011. Hope you check out! Fridays at 6:30 AM on channel 20. (My TV20 Detroit)

News Class - International Coffee Time

Madonna University has started a new program called International Friendship Program. The goal behind the program is to partner up an International Madonna student with an American Madonna student so they can learn about each other's cultures and become friends.

The first meeting of the program was referred to as International Coffee Time. The partners met each other, and found out many important things about one another.

For my news assignment, I went down there and filmed the meeting. Everyone involved were very nice and accommodating, even though there was a camera directly in front of the them from time to time. The meeting started with the partners introducing one another. After they had their direct conversations, the entire group introduced their partners to everyone else. The meeting ended with the group learning the Chinese New Year song.

BCA 3750 - NEWS - INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP PROGRAM - EXTENDED

The followup assignment involved a re-edit of the original, but shortened for length. A requirement of the shorter piece was to use new footage as best as I could. That worked out well because my partner, fellow Madonna student Karlyn Eck, and I filmed everything that we possibly could during the meeting.

BCA 3750 - NEWS - INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP PROGRAM - SHORT

One of the biggest challenges shooting the meeting was the amount of light that was in the room. I had to do a lot of color correcting so things didn't appear so blown out. Next time though, I want to plan ahead by adjusting the settings on the camera so I wouldn't need to do a lot of color correcting. The audio came out pretty good, expect I had to raise the audio levels in the shorter piece to hear the partners talk among one another, since they were not individually mic'd.

I am very happy with the turnout of both pieces. I got pretty excited when I found the shot of an Asian student clapping with a big smile on her face at the end of the extended video. It was a great shot to end on.

News Class Interview

It's mock interview time! I wanted to something fun for my next News assignment, but unfortunately, this turned out to be more-or-less a fun side video that didn't quite fit the guidelines of the assignment. My goal behind this interview was to a improv interview, where I interview a video pirate, portrayed by Brett Wheat, a fellow Madonna student. The exciting part of this interview is that it was all one take, and besides perhaps one time, the video pirate and I kept a great composure throughout it.

For interview b-roll, I found some Hardee's training video footage from the 1980s on Youtube, which pertained to the fact that the video pirate steals restaurant training videos.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - CAMPUS CLOSEUP INVESTIGATORS" ON YOUTUBE

A challenge of this interview was shooting outside in the snow. My camerawoman, Karlyn Eck, another Madonna student, had to adjust the aperture of the camera when shooting from the street, and when shooting at the front door. It was a fun challenge of the project to learn more about camera work.

I am still working on my interview skills. Even though I don't envision myself as a news reporter, speaking well is important in any job.

News Class Interview

This is my second interview I conducted for my News class. I interviewed my 12 year old brother, John, is performing very well in a math competition for Catholic schools, placing first after the first two tests among 792 students! I find out about the competition, how he prepares for the tests, and his plans for the future.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - ADAM INTERVIEWS JOHN" ON YOUTUBE

For the interview, I included some b-roll footage, along with a fun sound byte that matched the topic of the discussion.

I was impressed with the quality of answers my brother had.