As someone who has been writing for years and has only recently been introduced to the largely intimidating world of multimedia storytelling, the production aspect is without a doubt more stressful than the reporting aspect when I am working on a multimedia story package.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that, although it did take me almost three full hours to complete, the video segment that I put together for the purpose of this project gave me less trouble than any of the others I’ve done throughout the semester — and I did it without any help at all! Final Cut Express proved far too complicated for such a beginner as myself. I’ve always found iMovie to be much easier to work with, which is why I was pleasantly surprised to learn that we were not required to use Final Cut Express for the final project. Using iMovie, I was able to easily add music and transitions to my clips — two things I couldn’t seem to figure out using Final Cut Express. Unfortunately I was unable to add length to my opening clip, despite several attempts to do so. All in all, I think the video is the best I’ve produced all semester.
The graph that I made is fairly basic – it is a representation of the different types of foods offered daily at Soup Freaks (soups, sandwiches, and salads). I had a hard time deciding what type of data to use in the graph, and I thought the data that I ultimately chose sufficed.
Of all aspects of this project, the photo slideshow has posed the biggest challenge by far. Despite the fact that all of the photos I planned to use in my slideshow had a .jpeg file extension, SoundSlides could not recognize the photos and would not allow me to upload them. I even tried using .jpeg2000 – no dice. I’m really at my wit’s end at this point – the semester is over; I have completed all of my finals and am so close to finishing this one but I am still laboring over this tiny issue! The most frustrating part is that I had no problems of the sort when I made my last slideshow using SoundSlides. What’s a girl to do?
