This week I finished almost all of my writing components. I really enjoyed this portion of our project because I really enjoy writing about things that have actually happened to me. I am trying to write some poems as well and add those in with my memories. I will be putting pictures next to the writing as well. Julia and I are completely done with filming. Once I upload the final clips onto my laptop the filming process will be completely done. We are more than half way done with editing the video. I really cant wait to show it on senior night. People have been telling me how excited they are to see it as well which is really cool. As the weeks wind down I feel very confident about where we are in our project. I am half way done the book I am reading about writing memories. One thing the book suggested was taking a bunch of years of your life, writing a page about them and keeping each sentence to about 3 words. I tried to do this for the last four years and it actually was very helpful. It gave my my final idea of what I had wanted to write about. We are right on track in time to finish our project and I am really excited about how it is turning out. My only concern is that I have no back up of the video. I dont know how to email it to myself or save it on a USB just in case my computer were to crash or anything. So maybe someone can help me with that.

Thursday May 9
This week Julia and I recorded some more. We made a list of everyone we didn't have from the senior class and tried to get them all in the video. We still have a few more people but we have gotten most of the senior class. We also edited the video which took a really long time. It took forever to figure out how to turn the volume of people speaking up and the music volume down. We want the video to be perfect for everyone and make sure everyone gets a part in it. I am really proud of what we have done and we will finish filming this week and finish the video over the weekend. I have also written my senior year memory and my freshman year memory. I need a junior year one and a sophomore year one as well. I am really having trouble thinking of memories. I obviously had amazing high school years but its hard to think of just one memory that can do it justice. I get sadder every day thinking about leaving LA.
I also will be reading my book this week and doing a write up on it and what it taught me about writing memories/memoirs.

This week Julia and I finally uploaded all of our videos. It was so relieving to have everything on my laptop and getting ready to edit. Before we started editing we went through all the videos and watched them in full. We had so much footage but it was so much fun watching everyone speak about LA. Because even when I was filming I didn't really get to listen too closely to what people were saying because I was focused on making sure I was recording them right. It made Julia and I really sad to watch the videos. I went through after and cut out some of the unimportant parts that could possibly be bloopers at some point. I realized how hard this project will be, emotionally. This week I wrote my senior memory and typed it up. It was so easy to write once I got in the zone. All my thoughts just started flowing out on the page. Its so much easier to write when you are writing about something that is important to you. I started writing about all my friends, and about how long of a yea it has been but at the same time it is flying by.
The thing I am most excited about right now is that we should be done with the video by late next week. Once the video is done, everything else will be easier. I thought that the biggest challenge would be writing my memories but I realize now that has been the best part. Once I thought of all my memories and started writing everything else just came naturally. I think Julia and I are on a great track right now and I am very confident we will meet all of our deadlines.

I am excited that we are almost done with the video it feel good to know we are on the right track to getting all of our deadlines done on time. I am a little bit stressed about putting the scrapbook together but I know we will be fine!

We finally uploaded all of our videos onto a USB and now we jsut have one more day of filming then we are done! once we finsih editing hopefully this week we will be done with the completed video.

I started working on my first memory. I wrote a poem about it and I wrote a formal memory. Im not sure which I will use yet but I like the poem a little better for this particular memory. I might use the poem and the normal writing in the scrapbook but im not sure just yet. That is a little detail I need to work out.

We are still having technical difficulties with our video and uploading them but I have worked more on my memories. I have been struggling to think of a good memory for sophomore year. Im sure I will think of one though.

For homework this weekend I worked on the midterm presentation and watching over the interviews  we have taken so far. For the midterm we plan on talking about what we have done so far with the video and why we are doing what we are. The main reason being how sentimental i am.

In class on Friday, I began to write my first memory down on paper. I just started jotting down details of my freshman year trying to brainstorm a good memory to write about. Immediately the football game vs BB&N popped into my mind. I wrote down every detail in bullet points of what I remember about that night. I really do not remember much of freshman or sophomore year so I have been using pictures to job my memory. This is another reason that the scrap book will be a good idea, because it is true that pictures can tell a story and we will have lots of pictures to go along with our memories in the scrap book.

I am really happy with the way our video interviews are turning out. Julia and I spent most of the class time this week video taping our peers. I think so far my favorite question we have asked was "Who is someone who has made your time at LA memorable" One girl answered that Ms. Mac bought her ben and jerrys and let her cry to her when she was having a bad week. That is something I would have never known probably if not for this project, which I think is really cool.

This week julia and I worked on filming. We went around asking and interviewing people about their senior experience. For some reason alot of people had trouble answering our questions. For example one question was "When you were a freshman what did you think your senior year would be like?" And it was a really tough thing to get people to answer this question. It took them alot of time to think about it and most people said they didnt even think about senior year as a freshman. It was interesting to see how some people remembered things differently.