December - another semester crawls to an end

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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Another semester is coming to an end.  It’s so strange.  On one hand it feels like some of these days and moments have been the longest in my life, it also feels like it’s going by so fast.

I created a podcast, as another assignment for the Video Production class and was proud to discover how easily I seem to take to video and audio editing.  Since I have two friends, Rose and Graham, who are bibliophiles I decided to make my podcast about the love of books and interview the two of them. 

They were keen on it and in fact it turned out to be an embarrassment of riches where I got 10 minutes worth of recording that I had to edit down to 2.  Also, Graham, who can become extremely enthusiastic when discussing a favourite book kept talking about the subject of the book, the Russian silent film director, Sergei Eisenstein, He was so enthusiastic about Eisenstein I couldn’t get a question in about the author.  This was supposed to be a podcast about books, so some opinion of comparison of authors was important, but no, Graham just went on and on about Sergei.

I realized I did not have a book review story.  So what does a good journalist do when her interview does not fit the focus of the story, and there is no time to get other or more interviews?  Well change the focus of the story of course!!!  To solve the time problem I simply edited out Rose, and changed the name of the podcast from The Ardant Bibliophile to Crazy for Classic Films.  To break up Graham’s long monologues I recorded and edited in suitable questions to make it seem like he was answering my questions instead running on his own steam all that time.  That’s media folks!

My ezine was a mixed success.  I could not get any interviews with anyone in the animation department which meant my original idea of writing on the college’s worldwide reputation for producting world class animators was impossible.  This was an ezine which could have been of interesting not only to everyone in the college but in the town as well because it champions the achievement of a local institution.  I was forced therefore, to find animation stories in the neighbouring big city.  However, there really is no mass consumer market for animation stories.  No one wants to read about the doings of Shrek and his family, or even less, about the doings of Shrek’s animators.  So the only market for an ezine on animation is people who are interested in the technical aspects of animation – usually people inside or thinking of going inside the animation industry. 

But I am a total outsider.  I couldn’t write stories about the technical or production or financial aspects of making animated films.  I write lifestyle features, from a sociological point of view.  That’s what my 4 stories were about.  They would have been fine in the Sunday section of a newspaper that people could read lazily over breakfast in bed, but again, no one would want to do such a thing with an animation publication.  The articles are a fun read, but there is not a drop of useful information for animators in them.  These are people who would subscribe to an animation ezine least because it’s a fun read.

So, the result was, my ezine, Northern Lights, looked good, it was well written, I got an A for it.  But I have absolutely no confidence about being able to sell a subscription for it to someone, should I be required to do that.

As the year would down to a close I realized that once again, I had not received a penny of payment for the Studio Monitor job I did.  For the 3^rd semester, once again, the money was not coming into my account.  Emails flew everywhere, all the papers re-filed again and an inquiry went into progress as the college broke for Christmas.  Also, I noticed that my funds were running really low and I may not be able to live out the last semester on what I had left.