Oh my goodness! I can't believe that our First Quarter Projects are due in like.. 3 days!! Yikes! That seems so very, very close, and still yet we have so much left to do! I still have to adjust all the audio levels and put in b-roll! I also wanted to turn in a rough draft of the project tomorrow so that Mr. M could give Kaycee and I some feedback on how to make it better. That way, when we turn it in on Wednesday, it will already have been looked at by Mr. M and we would have had a chance to go back and fix mistakes. I personally think our story is interesting! I'm really proud of cutting it down five minutes, and though it's VERY far from being perfect, I do think Kaycee and I have done well for First Quarter. I hope everyone else likes it too!! Well, I'll write again next week and keep y'all posted :) Maybe I'll even post my first quarter video!

Have you ever stopped to think about how much music affects our lives? Well, I'm here to tell you, music sure does make a difference in life! It can enhance things so much, and make things just so much more personal! Have you ever listened to a song that changed your mood? I know I have! For me, the song "How to Save a Life" by the Fray always gets to me. I can be in the best mood, and then whenever I hear it, it just makes me so sad! And when I hear the song "Price Tag" by Jessie J, it always makes me happy! It's incredible how music can change the way you feel and really intensify things!

Since music has so many amazing abilities, it's no wonder movies use it to make them just that much better. Think about it! To help you get a better picture, I'm going to talk about one specific show, "Once Upon a Time" (since my family is watching it right now). Once Upon a Time uses music to set the mood and help the members in the audience feel more apart of the show.

Like I said, "Once Upon a Time" uses music to help set the mood. When an evil character makes up a wicked plot, eerie music starts to play. When a really hopeful scene happens where good finally conquers evil, light and happy music starts to play. This just helps the scene get even more in depth!

Another reason why music is so important to have in movies and shows is because it helps the audience feel more apart of it. This is because, like I mentioned earlier, music can have a very personal effect and sometimes helps the viewer understand the show better. It also may create a connection between the actors/ actresses or situation that they are going through in the show and the viewer!

In conclusion, you can see what big effects music makes when someone watches a movie. It helps to set the mood of the scene and helps the audience feel more apart of the show. Music sure is amazing!

Hi guys! So, this blog is supposed to be about skills in Media that I feel I have mastered. And actually, I don't really think I've "mastered" any skills in Media. But, there are skills that I think I do pretty well, so I guess I'll write about those :)

The first skill that I think I do pretty well in Media is managing everything. I have only been late for a blog once, and I'm pretty consistent at turning things in on time. For example, I made sure to turn in my script for this quarter on time and get our radios done on time (even with argumentative writing, transcribing, and interviews to do). When the Media Class demands a lot of time and effort, I try to do my best to meet those demands.

Another skill I think I'm good at is keeping organized. I'm still not the best at it, but I've made lots of improvement (you should have seen how disorganized I was in 3rd Grade!). I try to keep organized when it comes to writing blogs,  getting radio events, labeling clips, and when I find new information for our project. Keeping organized makes Media a lot easier!

Lastly, I think I'm pretty good at writing scripts. I try to clearly explain the story in an interesting way when writing scripts. However, one thing I've noticed is that my scripts always tend to be long! I guess it's because I just try and cram all the information that I can in the script, even if some of it is unnecessary. But for the most part, I think I do a pretty good job writing scripts.

So, managing everything, keeping organized, and writing scripts are three things that I think I'm pretty good at in the Media Class. Thanks for reading!

Oh my gosh!!!!! I can't believe it! I cannot believe that after editing our First Quarter Project together, it came out to be 8 minutes!! Aaahhhh! I know that my scripts always tend to be to long, but I never would have thought that my First Quarter Project would be EIGHT whole minutes! It's going to be a real big challenge to shorten my project down at least 5 minutes! However, that's just something I'm gonna have to do. There's absolutely no way to get around that. The hard thing is that I feel that every sound byte that we have in the script is kind of important to the story. I like the way it's written now. So I think that cutting out unnecessary sound bytes is going to be the toughest part of shortening the script for me. But, I'm so grateful that I have a partner who's a really fast learner and who gives great advice. Last class she went through the script and showed me all the places where she thought we could take out some sound bytes. So hopefully that will take out a few minutes. Another tip I'm trying to use to make our project shorter is to speed up the people's talking. Sounds a little weird, right? At least I thought it was. But, what can I say? Final Cut Pro is amazing! By pressing the "command" key and then the "J" key, you get to a setting where you can speed up the clip from 100% to whatever percent you want! But, if you decide to ever use this, just make sure you don't speed the clip up to fast, because the higher percent you go, the squeakier the audio gets! For example, when I booted the clip up to 125%, our interviewee's voice sounded, well... like a chipmunk! It was funny, but definitely not suitable for our finished project! In conclusion, hopefully by doing whatever we can to shorten our project, it will turn out to be three minutes long, yet still be a great, sensible news story!

There are a lot of awesome people in the Media Class. Well actually, let me restate that. Everyone is awesome in the Media Class. I feel that everyone in the class is very smart and talented in our their own ways, and we compliment each other well with all our different strengths. In this particular blog though, I really want to thank some specific people in the class who I feel deserve a round of applause (and maybe a few Hana Makai tickets as well :) ) for helping me when they really didn't have to. The first is Ben. He helped me a lot after I found out my audio had the hiss sound. He said the same thing happened to him and his group when they were shooting an interview in Oahu, and he showed me how to auto tune the audio on Final Cut so that it sounds a little bit better. I know that this will help me a lot and I really appreciate him showing me how to do that. The next is Brandon. I'm not sure if you guys know this, but I have a very bad memory, especially when it comes to directions. My mom gets so mad at me when she gives me a list of things to do, and I end up skipping a few things because my memory is so bad. Anyways, I was having trouble remembering how to set up and record my radios so Brandon gave up practically all of his lunch one day to help Kaycee and I. I know that that was a big sacrifice for him- especially since the cafeteria was serving cheese nachos that day :) Lastly, is Leanna. She is probably the first person I go to if I have a question about something in Media. Why? Well, she's just so nice, helpful, nice, smart and did I mention nice? I probably have annoyed her a LOT by asking all the questions I do, but she still somehow always manages to be kind to me and take the time to answer my questions :) Anyways, Ben, Brandon, and Leanna definitely deserve a round of applause and a big thank you! They are examples of how to be awesome!!

Hi, blog readers! I'm here today to write about the biggest difficulty I face in media. What is it, you ask? Well, the biggest difficulty for me in Media would have to be filming. I know, I know, filming is a huge part of media and it's very important to be good at it. n fact, it's probably the most important part of making a project because it's the one part that you aren't always able to go back and fix. I mean, you can go back and fix a script all you want, but if an interview goes bad, there's not always another chance for you to go back and reshoot it, or another chance to reshoot b-roll of a one time event. Anyways, in the next few paragraphs, I'll talk about why I think filming is the biggest challenge for me, what went wrong with filming this quarter, and how I plan to become better at filming. So just keep on reading!

Okay, so there are two main reasons why I think I'm not the best at filming. The first is that last year, my partner would always be in charge of filming every single time we did an interview (so I never really got any practice), and also, after the interview that we did with Bethany Hamilton that went horrible, from that point on I would get super nervous before an interview or filming in general, thinking that something would end up going wrong. It's silly, I know, that just one bad interview could make me think all the rest would be bad, but that's just what happened.

This year, if you read my other blog about Kaycee and my first quarter project update, you would know that our interviews didn't go well. Why? Because of the stupid audio!! Grrr! I'm so mad! I honestly have no idea why the audio came out with a hiss! It wasn't the camera that caused the bad audio, it wasn't the mikes, it wasn't the DSLR mini sound box, and it couldn't have been the memory card or headphones. I seriously have racked my brain trying to figure out why there's an artificial hiss in all of our interviews but one, and I'm just so confused. And discouraged. But, oh well. I'm going to keep on trying to figure out why our interview audio has a hiss (because there HAS to be some explanation, right?) so that next quarter, our interviews can be, well... perfect!

So like I said, I want to learn about why our audio had a hiss this year so that I can become better at filming. I want to practice using the T2i more as well, because honestly, this quarter was the first time I ever interviewed someone using a T2i (last year we used Vixias). Lastly, I plan to become better at filming by thinking positively instead of negatively. Instead of thinking "I bet this interview is going to suck", I'm going to think "If everything is prepared and I do my best, this interview will be great."

Anyways, now you know that filming is my biggest challenge in Media. And although I haven't had the best history with filming, there's no need to think that I will always be bad at filming. By learning about why the audio wasn't good, getting used to using the equipment more, and having positive thoughts, I know that I can change from being a good, well more like a... developing filmer, to a great filmer!

What's up, guys? I'm here today to write about something very cool that happened last Media Class! What was it? Well, some very nice people from the TV Program "Kauai Shining Stars" came to do a story about our very own CKTV! Awesome, right?!  And what made it even better was that  I got to be the student reporter! It felt kind of weird though because I'm used to filming other people, not other people filming me. But I think it was really good for me to do because it showed me that even the professionals have to take some time setting up, and testing things, and changing where their interviewee stands, and changing the mikes, and what not. And it also was just a fun opportunity! Who knows? Maybe I'll be a news reporter when I grow up! Hehe :) But anyways, I can't wait to see the show air! I'll blog about when it does and keep you updated! Bye!

Hey guys! So, school's been going on for about 5 weeks now I think, and within those weeks, every group in Media has started their First Quarter Projects! Kaycee and my First Quarter Project, for those of you who don't know, is about KIUC's goal of 50% renewable energy by 2023 for the island of Kauai, and how Solar Energy is the main way they are getting there. Originally, it was supposed to be just about two very large Solar Farms on Kauai, and how when completed Kauai will have the highest percentage of photovoltaic power of any utility in the U.S., but then we learned that the Solar Plants are the main ways that KIUC plans to achieve their goal of 50% renewable, and we decided that we can incorporate those two ideas together to make an even better news story! So far, I think we are going pretty well on our project. I mean, we are done with interviews (we got SIX!) and only have two left to transcribe, and we have some really good sound bytes! But on the negative side, I personally don't think the audio of our interview's is the best quality, and also, we still have lots of b-roll to shoot and collect.

Like I mentioned earlier, we are all done with our six interviews and have only two left to transcribe. I think this is pretty good, especially since we have had radios, argumentative writing, blogs, and other media responsibilities on top of everything we need to do for our project. We were fortunate to get an interview with Sharry Glass from Apollo Kauai, Mike Tresler (aka Lindey's dad!) from Grove Farms, Shelley Paik and Gregg Matsuo from KIUC, Ben Sullivan who is the County of Kauai Energy Coordinator, and Mayor Bernard Carvalho who is well... the MAYOR!! I think having all our interviews done and only two left to transcribe is a huge accomplishment because, well, it brings us one step closer to a finished project!

Another accomplishment is having great sound bytes. The people we interviewed said some great stuff, which is awesome because it will make it so much easier to write the script and for people to understand our story. Another plus is that I think we have lots of different perspective's. I mean, we kind of got the communities point of view when we interviewed Sharry Glass, we got KIUC's point of view, we got the point of view from Grove Farms, and we got an energy coordinators point of view and the mayors. Having all these different perspectives will give the story more depth and make it more interesting.

However, our Media Project does have a few downsides as well. First of all, I really don't think that the audio is the best :( For the first interview we had, after we played it back  on the laptop, we heard a slight hissing noise so we changed the mikes, headphones and T2i Sound box, thinking one of those caused the audio to have a hiss. In the next two  interviews, the first one had pretty good audio with all the new equipment, with just a slight bit of wind here or there (but you couldn't hear any hissing), but then the next morning, we used the exact same equipment and you couldn't hear any hissing through the headphones when filming or when you played it back on the T2i, but sure enough, when I uploaded the inter interviews to the computer and started to transcribe, there was a hissing noise!! Grrr!! I was SOOO mad! I still am mad! But I guess there's nothing I can really do about it and at least you can still hear them talking okay. Another downside is that we haven't collected that much b-roll. However, I do have some people to contact to get pictures of what we need and even video footage, and so I think between that and filming our own b-roll, we'll be good.

In conclusion, you can see that our project is going pretty well. Although the audio is not the best and we don't have that much b-roll (yet!), I think our project definitely has the potential to turn out really good! Wish us luck on completing our project!!

  Hi guys! It's me Haven, and I'm back in action! My second year of Media has begun, and I'm ready to blog! Woo hoo! Oh yeah! Anyways, since this is the first blog of the 2013-2014 School Year, it's basically gonna be a little bit about myself relating to media, and what I'm looking forward to this year. Enjoy!

As I mentioned earlier, this will be my second year in Media. During my first year of Media, the four main projects I did were: a News Story on mongoose on Kauai (which wasn't very good), a News Story on Bethany Hamilton (which aired on Hiki No I think twice!), a PSA called "High Cost of Drugs" (which was a finalist in the Olelo Youth Xchange PSA category) and a music video to the song "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield (probably my favorite project out of all the ones I did). I was also apart of the movie trailer team for STN, and we won second place for our move trailer called "Breakpoint". The most challenging part of media for me is probably filming (I still get really nervous before filming interviews), the easiest part of media for me is probably writing the script, and the most rewarding part of media to me is when I turn in my completed project and feel accomplished and proud of the work I did :)

This year in media, I'm really looking forward to well... pretty much everything! I'm excited that I have a great partner (Kaycee) and I get to teach her all about media, I'm excited to put together all my projects, I'm excited to learn more and more about media, and I'm especially excited to go to Florida for this school years STN!! Media is going to be great!

However, even though I know this year is going to be a blast, I also know that Media is also not always fun and games. It is filled with many challenges that you have to work through to be successful. But in the end, it's all worth it, and I'm so glad to be apart of CKTV Media Productions this year!