CLAM SOCIAL ISSUES

My Social Issue project was a really interesting project for me. At first, I had no idea what I wanted to make my topic be, and considered doing immigration as an issue. The problem with that topic was that it was not personal to me. I finally stumbled upon the issue of the American stereotype in Germany. It is the perfect topic because it is so personal to me. It is an issue that I along with every other American faces when they go abroad.

I decided that the best way to communicate my message to viewers was to use interviews as the main piece of the project. I chose to interview two of the Australian exchange students at Bamberg. During my interview I strategically asked very specific questions because at first the interview began a little awkwardly. The interviewees were a little shy, but after the first couple of questions they really opened up. In order to counter the interview with the Australians, I interviewed another American exchange student, Whitney. Whitney’s interview was really successful because she was able to tell me about specific reactions that she has received to being an American.

In putting this video together, I really wanted the interviews to be the majority of the video since they were successful and telling. Rather than using my voice in the interviews I decided to insert inner subtitles. I wanted to completely remove myself from the video. In the end the video turned out really well. I think I successfully communicated to viewers the issues with the American stereotype.

CLAM Professional Project

For my professional project I chose to focus on the influence of history in the German businesses. German history is what interests me the most and is incredibly relevant to understanding how the Germany economy operates; especially with how recent much of Germany’s economic history is.

In order to create this video I outlined the project so that I could figure out what type of theme I wanted to use. I decided that it was important to provide viewers with a little background on the German history, specifically the division of Germany and the competing political systems (capitalism vs. communism). I was planning on focusing strictly on the tourism industry in Germany, but after my trip to Berlin and seeing in person some of the remaining effects of the division made me want to expand my content.

As I made the video, I tried to keep in mind the many principles that we learned about the digital medium. In choosing my music I wanted to use a song that did not overpower the content of the video. I used the link from the rhetoric soup website in order to find the perfect song. After finishing and publishing my project I had to figure out a way to send my video and upload it. The file was too large to just send in an email, so I had to play around with some other options.

CLAM PERSONAL PROJECT

Making my video on my personal experiences while abroad was definitely the most enjoyable project for me to make. It was fun getting to look through all of my photos again and getting to relive some of experiences so far. My personal project was a little different from most because my semester began so much later than everyone else’s. I have only been in Germany for about a month and a half, so I had a much more limited amount of material to access for video content. Nevertheless, I still had plenty of to use and talk about in my project.

My first task for the personal project was to figure out what type of angle and perspective I wanted to use in the video. Because classes have still not begun and I have not actually experienced “student life” yet, I chose to focus my video on the trips that I have gone on since arriving in Germany. After choosing a theme for my project, I began to storyboard it out. I am a little bit old school so I just made a rough storyboard with pencil and paper and then made an electronic outline. My outline was the biggest help because it provided me with parameters for the video. These parameters helped me know what types of photos I needed to be taking while on my trips. My outline also helped me choose what type of mood I was trying to convey in my project, which also helped me to choose the right type of background song (carmel latte).

After taking all of the photos that I needed for the personal project, I began to try and create my video. This is where all the trouble began. My internet connection is not the best so downloading and uploading is not the easiest task on my computer. My MacBook’s iMovie software was great and made making the actual movie very easy and fun, but trying to download the music for the video was very frustrating. Also when I tried to upload my video onto my blog and into an email, the upload took so long that my computer froze and I ended up losing all of my work. So I was forced to remake each of the three videos. I ended up using a friend’s computer because she has a stronger internet connection, and was able to redo my personal project.

Overall I am very pleased with the way my project turned out. I tried to use what we learned throughout this course with image presentation. Hopefully the message that I tried to convey translates through my video.