Essay #3 Reflection

I enjoyed making the video for Essay #3 because I feel like it is something I will be able to show my kids in the future, or just re-watch it for myself to remember what my first semester of college was like. It will be nice to look back and reflect upon it and see how my life/ideas about engineering has changed since then. For the interviews I chose the most important people in my life that have to do with my college experience. My parents because they support me through everything and my roommate Pat because he is my best friend at Manhattan and the person I spend the most time with. The equipment that I used was just the camera and microphone on my iPhone and iMovie to put the videos I took altogether. The interviewing skills I developed were to ask the right questions and also to gather more information than I needed. The first thing I did for my project was take the interviews and once I had those and gathered the pictures I feel like the story was already there I just had to piece it together. The different types of media I used were, audio recordings of myself narrating the video, interviews, newspaper articles and video. I used subheadings to help me piece my work together and tell the story of what people were looking at too. Subheadings along with my audio narration hopefully clarified to people what they were looking at during the video. I had fun making this project and although it took a good amount of time I feel like it was time well spent because I will have this video to reflect upon the first semester of college for the rest of my life.

"Man On Wire" Reflection

"Man On Wire" is a documentary from 2008 about a tightrope walker from France, Philippe Petit, who took his tightrope walking talents to the largest stage in the world, The World Trade Center. This documentary, directed by James Marsh, is a beautiful story about the "artistic crime of the century" where Petit becomes an american celebrity after completing his tightrope walk between the towers in 1974. I loved watching this story because it was so well put together and Philippe Petit is an amazing storyteller. The home videos of him practicing on his wire while he was in France are so cool to see because it is like he knew he was going to be famous and make a documentary before tightrope walking in front of the whole world on the biggest stage. A good portion of the documentary was reenactment of them in the building which was very well done and seemed extremely realistic. This along with Petit's vivid storytelling painted a beautiful picture and made you seem as if you were in the World Trade Center Tower with him setting up the cables. The interviews with various different friends and others who were involved in this incredible story gave a second perspective on how Petit acted before and during his show. There were even interviews with guards who were in on the plan which I also thought was cool. I think a reason that this story is so incredible is because it is unable to replicate what Petit did now that the Towers are no longer standing. It gives people an insider view of these towers and I was too young to remember what they looked like but this is the closest I can get to them now.

Peer Review Workshop

My favorite part about Brittany's presentation was how well it flowed. I loved her story and how she talks about what her home life is like because I am not from the city and do know what it is like to live like that. I also loved her interviews they were well placed in the video and well thought out. Although I did not bring my project to show her, since we both did a movie we were able to talk about different strategies we used. I liked her idea of adding soft background music to the video during slideshows and also taking videos of surroundings. Being able to see somebody else's video was extremely helpful for brainstorming ideas for mine. Although mine was already about 90% done I got some good ideas for details such as transitions and music. One thing I thought that she could improve was something that I also had trouble with in my video. Her audio when she was telling the story was sort of plain which does not reflect how she normally sounds in person. In my video I feel like I was very monotoned at parts and could have been better with sounding more excited in my audio. Overall, she had a great video and was extremely helpful in giving me new ideas from a different perspective about how to improve my video.