The End of LUComm197
My final thoughts on my Lehigh mobile storytelling class
This class has been a last-minute, yet extremely helpful surprise.
Coming from Syracuse, I was honestly pretty frightened to take a class from another university. I also am a musical theater major and have never done mobile storytelling, so all in all I was way out of my comfort zone.
From the beginning, Professor Matt Veto was so welcoming and made it extremely clear that he would be available for anyone who needs help or has questions at any time. There is nothing better than a professor who responds fast.
In the first week, I also had other people in the class reach out to me, so we were able to create a connection initially. This eased my nerves immediately. Especially for this class, that was so helpful when it came to testing my ideas on an outside perspective.
One of my favorite elements of the class was how social-media heavy it was. I had never used Twitter before and didn’t really know what the point of it was. I then learned how important Twitter is when wanting to stay up to date on media, news and pop culture.
It gives you a chance to share your own voice and connect with others across the world. I really enjoyed finding accounts that resonated with me and continuously posted content that interested me and — more importantly — educated me.
I took interest in a lot of Broadway stars’ accounts, as well as politicians, and it was also interesting to see what my classmates tweeted throughout the class.
I found that Twitter was a large hub of information when it came to the Black Lives Matter movement with updates, commentators and personal stories.
Finishing the final project showed me how much I really learned in these six weeks. The only video experience I had before was snapchat and the occasional iMovie project for my Spanish class in high school. Davinci Resolve is definitely a better editing system than iMovie. From watching Veto’s many demonstrations, I saw how many different elements go into making these movies, like how important it is to get smooth transitions between clips, which involves cross-fading the audio, and how adding b-roll clips makes the video more interesting and further tells the story that the video maker is trying to tell.
I also learned that the sequence of a video is very important. When shooting, you usually take many random clips that seem like they could fit well into the video. Once you start editing, you need to go back into your material and start to piece a story together from these clips.
This takes some creativity and imagination to find where the individual clips can fit in to make it complete. This definitely took lots of trial and error, and I think that I won’t totally get it right until I continue to make these videos and practice with the Davinci program.
Using this different software taught me what is captivating to an audience, and if I choose to continue to pursue a mobile storytelling path, this will be super helpful for building a following.
Overall, I think that with the help of this class and the tools and programs recommended to use, I have a better grasp on how to tell a story through video and media, and as a performer, I will be able to use this knowledge in online storytelling to promote shows, theaters and my “brand” as I grow older.
