Starting Over

These last couple of months have been a real challenge for me, but I've learned so much about myself and I think it will help me down the road. First of all, I have to take Capstone over again because my project wasn't passable. I can use the same ideas, but I just need to take the project to a new level and really take the time to make it look more professional. In order to help me with this project, which I am fortunate enough to be able to work on from home, I finally broke down and bought a Mac and Final Cut Express. We worked with Adobe Premier at school, but I've heard so many good things about Final Cut and Mac that I just decided to buy it. It was a lot of money, but I think the quality of the final project will definitely benefit from it. Plus I can always use it for side projects and what not down the road. 

Anyway, back to my project. There are really only 4 major things for this project that I need to make sure are complete before I turn it in. Most of these I've learned from experience. 

1. Set up meetings. I need to set up three meetings with my client, President of the Chamber of Commerce Tom McKinley. The first meeting is just to solidify ideas for this project to ensure I'm capturing everything he wants in this video. I have some ideas from the last project I made, but I really want to set some things in stone. I've set Tom an email, but am still waiting for a reply. I'll send him another email and probably a text message by the end of the week. The second meeting will be set up a little later on down the road to show Tom my rough draft of the project. The purpose of this meeting will be to make any last minute changes to the video before I show it to the Chamber. That will be my last meeting. I will present the final video in front of the entire New Wilmington Chamber of Commerce as well as my professor. This meeting will probably be towards the end of the summer. Another detail I have to work out with Tom. 

2. Create a REAL WORKING Timeline. The last timeline I had didn't really do what it was supposed to. I had it set up because I knew I had to have it in order to pass, but I didn't really follow any of it. I now realize that having a timeline and following it is an essential part of this project. I understand that some things can be updated and changed if need be, but I can't use that an excuse to push things back that I just didn't complete. I really don't have any excuses this time around. I'm working about 40 hours a week, but I'm done by 7 every night so that leaves me the rest of the night to get my editing finished. This project is my number one priority.

3. Create a PROFESSIONAL treatment. The last treatment I created was very elementary according to professional standards. Maybe it's because I hadn't created one in a long time and had just forgotten, but I have found the template we are supposed to model our treatments after so that should help. There are some details about the treatment I need to verify with Tom, but I think for the most part I have it all under control.

4. Gather release forms. This was a big hiccup in my last attempt at this project. I was unaware that these were needed for this type of a project. I was under the assumption that I was clear because it was a school project, I guess because I was so accustomed to doing things for The County Line where we don't need release forms. That was a HUGE assumption that could have really got me in some trouble. I know now that I need release forms for EVERYTHING so I have plenty of those printed out.

Other than that I think I have a much better understanding of where this project is going and what I want it to look like. I just have to get used to a Mac system and Final Cut, but I think in the end the money I spent will pay off.