Hi-
Can the following people change their audio tracks to a SoundCloud format AND make sure it works/it is properly uploaded and can be played.. and re-upload it to our blog:
-Stewart
-Sarah
-Katie H.
-Amanda
THANK YOU!!
Going into this project I had a good idea that I tried to do. I was going to try to film my roommates having a fake bad fight. When trying to film them, the fighting was good but only lasted a minute. After several attempts, I realized it was not going to work as well as I had hoped. I learned that citizen journalism is difficult to fake, but has to be taken in the moment. The importance and impact of the videos are not usually realized until later.
For this project, I was at a loss for ideas. I did not have much time to develop my idea as I was not in class on Monday. However, I knew I wanted to create a scene of news worthy material that was realistic at a college. I wasn’t sure how to accomplish this right away. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish it alone. I gathered some friends together to have them act out a fight. I was trying to capture a college fight in the scene. As we tried and tried nothing seemed to be looking realistic. I didn’t have the best actors I guess. As time moved on an idea came to me.
This was an earthquake in Easton, PA. While an earthquake may not happen here at all, I wanted to make it feel as though students were going crazy because they had no idea what was happen. This project was difficult because capturing the feelings realistically was harder than I imagined. In the end, I think it turned out pretty realistic for the small amount of footage I had. Doing this project made me realize that this can occur at other schools and could be very scary.
I was also unable to upload but we can view it on dropbox in class.
I spent that past two night trying to attempt to find an example of citizen journalism and failed miserably. I kept my eye out and my phone ready for the opportunity but it never came. I feel like in my life here at Lafayette I will not encounter anything worthy of citizen journalism like you’d see on TV or social media. I am not around fights or police brutality, or anything worthy of reporting besides who hooked up with who that night. But I also felt like citizen journalism is something that you can not be on the lookout for, people end up in the right place at the right time or more like the wrong place at the wrong time. The only example I was really around was the National Championship for men’s basketball and I was not even the first to report it because I was not at the game, only watching the game on TV. I feel like things worthy of reporting are not always happening and for those that catch it, they are extremely lucky and again caught in the right place at the right time. To get an example of citizen journalism, I would need to have more time to find something and be vigilant for the rest of my life.
I could not upload my video, unfortunately, because supposedly the file is too large. Nonetheless, the approach I took on this assignment of citizen journalism is think about things that should be recorded as news but are not. After several trials of trying to find a decent material that was interesting, I decided to choose the video I took while attending a Speech and Debate event on campus. There was so much power and talent being expressed on the stage and I felt like the size of the audience did not do it justice. Nobody from the newspaper or from the audience was there recording. Therefore, I decided to record it because, once recorded, more people were going to be able to see it later on. My role as a citizen journalist in this assignment was like an advertiser: trying to find things that other people should see.
This video is a recording from a local sports bar. My friends and I went out to go watch the final game of the March Madness basketball tournament. We were really expecting a bigger crowd at the bar considering a team near by made it to the finals. This can be seen in some of the shots away from out table which depicts how empty the bar was. The game ended up being incredibly close and one of the best finals the tournament has ever seen. The approximately 5 min long video captures the last 15 seconds or so of the game which included an amazingly lucky 3 point shot by UNC to tie the game and a perfectly executed 3 point buzzer beater to seal the deal by the champions Villanova. The video captures the incredulousness of the onlookers as we witnessed one of the most clutch ending of a basketball game ever. This historic moment is captured using only my phone and features many of my friends who were more or less oblivious to my filming or this project. When a game is a close as that it is not uncommon for individuals to pull out their phones and record reaction videos. However this one was rather mundane considering the emptiness of the bar which stands in contrast to the tremendous athletic feats displayed throughout the game and particularly at the end.
For this project, I struggled to come up with an idea because I didn’t have a lot of time over these past two days to find an event occurring somewhere on campus. But, I thought of the idea of filming the “public” laundry in soles hall because one of my pet peeves occurs here. I live in soles hall and there is a large laundry room for off campus housing and the courts to utilize the laundry room, but this causes a high volume of traffic. Not necessarily on a Monday or Tuesday night but Saturday and all of Sunday becomes a bad time to want to do laundry. One of the pet peeves that happens is that people put their laundry in and then leave it there for hours on end, taking up machines that could be used. This behavior leads people to have to move the clothing from the machine to the dryer or to leave the clothes out on the counter. This becomes a problem when people start randomly moving clothing and misplacing items and I end up with so many missing socks, (and at most I have been a minute late to come and pick it up or move to the next machine so people just assume.) It’s also an issue when people just throw your clothes into the dryer because I have a bunch of clothes that don’t go in the dryer so this is also an issue for me. So, I decided to film the laundry room to hopefully capture someone moving someone else’s laundry and dropping items, but like I said tonight was not a high volume night for laundry so there was nothing suspicious occurring,
As the citizen journalist, I felt kind of awkward standing in the laundry room filming random people doing their laundry, because they weren’t doing anything wrong and its not typically something you see in that room. As soon as I started filming someone walked in and put their clothing into the washer and could tell I was filming but we didn’t know each other so it was definitely uncomfortable for the both of us. I wonder what would have happened if someone did come in and move someone else’s laundry while I was in there filming, if they would continue to do so or maybe choose not to because of the camera. I waited around to see if anyone else would come in but there were multiple washers and dryers open, so there would be no need to touch other peoples stuff.
Going into this assignments I had my doubts about being able to produce some sort of citizen journalism video and within the 48 hour period nothing in my experience offered any sort of opportunity whatsoever. Going into Tuesday Night I realize that if I wanted to be able to post anything worth capturing, I would need to either stage a scene or go out of my way to an area guaranteed to produce something, anything remotely interesting which was simply something I couldn’t do.
In the end I did not record any video, but this did not deter me from gaining a lot from the experience. This gave me true insight into what manifests this type of media, and that is the spontaneous nature of environments where there is little to no prior warning of what unfolds. I offer that time frame to account for the arrival of news organizations and the battery/memory limitations of smartphones. I also believe there is a specific mentality of the kind of person who records these events as a citizen. Not only must the decision be made quickly to began recording, but a sense of heroism and distrusts are key ingredients. I also believe that urban environment’s seem to produce more of these situations as there is way more content in a concentrated area.
Despite my failure, I did not want to rob the class of a video, so I am posting this one that has leaked rather recently and felt like it would be a prime example to show since it is almost a reversal of the videos we had watch in class on Monday. It is a rather peculiar situation and not one I am sure occurs frequently which in my mind makes it much more revealing. It is also interesting to hear the camera man speak at the end where he states “I doing this for everyone’s safety”. This is the icing on the cake for me as I am definitely interested in the mentality of the cameramen or camerawomen involved in these “works” and that it takes place in a college building with all students involved.
Here it is:
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UPDATE: Just now in class I realized I had an old video I filmed from where Professor Rhudy was leaving Lafayette which I was able to catch on film the last day of class where we broke out in song.
(Video file too large to send/upload–view from laptop)
For this assignment I chose to film in and around Wawa at night. I thought this would be an interesting location because it was off campus, yet somewhere Lafayette students frequent. It serves as a place where students interact with Easton residents as well. Since Cattell Street is usually pretty busy and the parking lot sees many different people come in and out of Wawa, I thought something interesting might happen. When I heard noises coming from buildings or cars nearby, I would focus the camera to explore what was happening. I also focused on people I saw walking in the area. Towards the end of the video, I chose to go inside Wawa and see if I could capture anyone purchasing things or interactions among the workers. However, I quickly learned from an employee that videos were not to be taken in the store, so I did not get to spend much time in the store itself. Overall, the video I took did not capture any particularly interesting events or interactions. However I do think as far as location choice goes, Wawa is a hub of various activity that could possibly lead to something, like a traffic incident in the parking lot or an interaction between a Lafayette student and Easton resident.