Thursday, February 28, 2008

Company Blogging Basics

In producing this podcast, I feel more comfortable using iMovie. I also feel more comfortable with all of the necessary steps from filming to posting online. With these new skills, I think my next two podcasts will improve. I think this podcast is a little more visually appealing than my first podcast. However, I think I will make my next podcast a bit simpler by including fewer images and a few head shots. I may even conduct interviews for my third podcast. In my first podcast, I had a hard time matching up the audio and video after inserting b-roll. But after working with the software this time, I think I can do this more easily for the next podcasts.

After reviewing my podcast, I think I like the way my screens match up with my words, especially at the beginning the podcast. I also worked hard to find images that corresponded with what I was saying.

There are several things I think I could change to improve this podcast. First, there were several images that were blurry, especially the blog screenshots. I think the screen shots were necessary to provide a visual image of different elements of blogs. However, I’d like to find a way to improve the quality of the images. If anyone has ideas, let me know. Second, I think my podcast could be improved by including transitions between images and text screens. Finally, I would like to add music to at least the beginning of my podcast. I think this will improve the podcast and make it a little more interesting. So, I plan to research how to incorporate music into my next podcast.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Reflecting Upon My First Podcast

I have learned several things after creating my first podcast. First, shooting footage does take a lot of time. However, it seems like editing the footage take more time. Although I did learn how to do some basic editing, I think I need to do some more homework on how to do a few more advanced editing techniques. For instance, in my first podcast, I wanted to insert my B-roll footage between the sections of me sitting at the table talking. I thought this would make the podcast more interesting. The difficult part about this is getting the voice to line up with the footage AFTER the B-roll. I got 2 sections of my B-roll, my diplomas and dogs, inserted, but it got more and more complicated. So for my next podcast, I plan to do some searching on Atomic Learning. I’m hoping I can find a step-by-step tutorial that explains how to line up the voice and image.

Upon reviewing my podcast, there are several things I would like to change. First, I’d like to add more B-roll. For instance, I should have included some footage of my husband because I did mention him a couple times in the podcast. Ideally, I’d have enough B-roll so that I would only show me talking at the table at the beginning and at the end of the podcast. I think this would help make the podcast more interesting. I think the podcast is a bit dry at this point.

I’d also take off the last section of the podcast, especially the part where I roll my eyes at the camera. I would just reshoot and replace the last part.

I think I will enjoy this process more as I learn more editing techniques in iMovie. This should help because I will be able to create exactly what I’m envisioning.