For this semester project, I was given the task to create two one-minute videos about using different themes within media. I chose to do an interview about a new organization at KU, the Middle Eastern Student Association (MESA), and a video about how Taylor Swift’s tour, The Era’s Tour is on track to become the highest-grossing tour of all time. I typed a short essay about my experience throughout this semester project.
MESA interview:
Taylor Swift video:
After making these videos, I was assigned to write a 700-800 word essay explaining the process of gathering, creating, and editing the video. The essay is attached below.
This social media project has been a very exciting project for me, as I got to show a lot of my creative side and love of interacting with my community. Thinking about what I wanted the videos to be about, I knew I wanted to do an interview and I knew of this new organization on campus called the Middle Eastern Student Association (MESA), so I figured I would reach out to them and see if they were able to participate in an interview! I chose this group because I am not very familiar with Middle Eastern culture, so I thought it would be a great way for me to learn, while also informing the KU community about it.
I attended their second meeting, a belly dancing workshop, where they taught members how to belly dance to Middle Eastern music (I asked for permission to record). I got to participate, which was very fun. I interviewed the president of MESA, Fatemeh Farassati, afterward. I chose to interview the president because I believe she could give me the most information and details about the group and its history.
I started my interview by asking simple questions like “Who are you” and “What is this organization about?” and then progressed into more informational and detailed questions. Starting slow and comfortable in the beginning definitely created the basis for the rest of the interview. It also naturally led to other questions being answered. Even though I didn’t use some of them, it was still a great part of the conversation and helped the interviewer not feel awkward or pressured. Some of the answers were not used simply because I could not fit all of them into a one-minute video, in fact, I had to cut down 11 minutes of the interview into one minute.
A video interview has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. As an advantage, recording an interview allows the audience to see emotion and tone in the answers that a text-only interview could lack. Talking to someone who is so passionate about Middle Eastern culture, you could feel the passion and direction the organization was headed. A disadvantage of a recorded interview would be that the audience could process the information at their own pace by reading the content, instead of hearing another person say the information at their own speed.
Editing this interview was quite easy, as I have done multiple interviews for one of my J-School Tech Tool classes, so going into this I knew what could make a good interview. Displaying the b-roll over the jump cuts was something I tried to do throughout the entire video to keep it smooth running. Including a lower third at the beginning showcasing the president’s name and leadership role is a must in an interview. I also included a dissolve effect at the end to seamlessly end the video.
I struggled more trying to figure out what my second video would be about. My roommate suggested making a video about how impactful Taylor Swift’s tour has been economically and how it is expected to be the highest-grossing tour of all time. I thought that was a great idea because there is an endless amount of information about Taylor Swift on the internet, so I figured getting the information would not be too hard.
Once again, trying to fit so much information into a short one-minute video was the hardest part. I had previously planned on talking about how much money Taylor Swift herself has made, but I could not squeeze it into the video, so I left that out. I wanted the focus to be on how her tour is expected to be the highest-grossing tour of all time. I started by introducing Taylor Swift as a multi-award winner, then went into details about the numbers.
Recording a video about this gave me the opportunity to showcase emotion in the video, with hopes of getting the audience to truly understand this incredible feat Swift accomplished. Making an article about this would have the advantage of inserting links to information throughout the text.
Editing this video was also relatively easy. I cut my video down to about one minute. I decided to add pictures of what I was talking about when I talked about them. For instance, when I mentioned Swift is a 12-time Grammy award winner, I inserted a photo of Swift on three occasions at the Grammy’s holding several awards. I found moments throughout the video to insert photos that relate to the topic to engage with the audience.
I was stressed about this project going into it but had more fun than I anticipated!
Zachary Roberts 