iMovie Woes

           Before this project, I never used the iMovie program. I’m primarily a Windows user so any program on a Mac is foreign to me. I wasn’t comfortable with the program until I finished my project. There were a ton of issues that hindered my experience with the program.

 I have to say that this program is annoying to use. The first thing that upset me is that you can’t just simply drag and drop your videos into the program; you have to manually import them through one of the menu buttons. The functionality of the program isn’t user friendly at all. Another annoyance with the program was that it was that there wasn’t a native way to edit your audio. I had to use another program to cut my song clips so they would fit into my project properly. Again it’s not a major problem, but it was another annoyance that hampered my experience with the program. I don’t know how many groups encountered this following issue. There was a known issue with the software where iMovie wouldn’t save your projects properly. Once you encountered this error, you had to start your project over. I ran into that particular issue, but I didn’t mind it all. I was figuring things out so I wasn’t taking my rough cut too seriously. My group definitely experienced the weirdest issue out of all of the groups. For some odd reason, Lauren’s project randomly disappeared after she made some edits to her video. Lauren worked with our professor, but they weren’t able to find her initial project.

Aside from having issues with the program, I also had a hard time shooting video for this particular project. I know how to use a camera and a camcorder, but I didn’t know what I wanted to focus on. There were so many aspects of my life that I could’ve focused. It was hard to condense my overall message into a one minute and twenty second video. It was also tough for my group to meet outside of class because our schedules are different, and we’re pretty busy outside of class as well. I work a full-time job so my schedule between personal and school life is pretty strict. I have to set a schedule for everything I want to do. If I didn’t do that I would lose my mind in all of the madness.

My favorite part of this project was working with a great team. I worked with Jessica and Lauren. I didn’t know them previously, but I’m glad I ended up working with them. From the beginning of the project, my group wanted to make sure we had everything lined up properly. We exchanged phone numbers, and we constantly contacted each other constantly about our project. My group was always open to new ideas, and they were always there to keep me on the right path. There were times where I wanted to give up on the project, but they were there every step of the way to help me push through this project. I know my overall experience would’ve been different if I didn’t work with those two individuals. During this class so far, we primarily do blog posts and exercises that allow us to work individually. I love that the topic for my group was separation, and we pulled together to make a great end product. This project not only put us into a group where we had to collectively share ideas and work together, but we had to rely on each other to do their own part of the project. If one person slacked off during the project, everyone else would be affected.

This project was the hardest to complete because there were so many instructions that we had to follow. We had to produce a final project that met all of the required criteria. I never worked on a project so much that I couldn’t wait until it was over. I always enjoy a challenge, but this project pushed me to the limit. When I couldn’t get the program to do what I needed to do, I wanted to pull my hair out. The only thing that I’m going to take away from this project is that I never want to use iMovie ever again. There are so many other programs that make the video editing process so much easier.

For the final part of the assignment we have to upload our assignment to YouTube and Vimeo. The two sites are different from one another. Vimeo is more lenient in the sense that you can upload your own personal video with music, and they won’t pull down your video for copyright infringement. YouTube on the other hand is less lenient when it comes to sharing your videos. If you use any songs that you didn’t pay the rights for, YouTube will pull down your video instantly. YouTube is more popular than Vimeo so more people will most likely see your video on YouTube.

By using video as your means of communication, you are able to stress a point better than you would with still photos or with text. Most people nowadays are visual learners so shooting videos just makes more sense. With shooting a video, you can also add music into the mix to instill a certain emotion. With video, you can incorporate text as well. Some people use text to guide their viewers through the video and other people use text to highlight important parts of the video. Communication as a whole is dynamic because it’s always changing. The way we shoot, edit, and publish video is always changing whereas print and photo formats will stay the same for the most part. You can incorporate those two formats into your video, but videos will always be the strongest format because more people can relate to video more than they can with text. With the evolution of social media and web 2.0, we need to see things to believe anything nowadays. Communication will constantly change whether you’re ready or not.

In conclusion, the iMovie project was definitely a learning curve for all participating groups. From this experience we can only go forward from what we have learned. We can also share our experiences with others who haven’t experienced the program for themselves.