Last Time Blog

I have always loved talking to people. I find myself always giving the same answer to the question, “so what do you think you going to do after university?”. I always say, “if I could, I would interview someone everyday, and live off of that”. Not sure if that will ever happen, but I managed to incorporate this dream of mine in my university project (at least I’m not depending on being paid for my ideas…just yet)

Initially I wanted to do a ‘first time’ blog, where I asked people about their ‘first times’ that they felt or experienced a specific feeling or event. But thru research and bouncing my ideas of friends and family. I realised that perhaps ‘first time’ is a little far-fetched. I don’t think I even remember the ‘first time’ I felt helpless, and people would probably fill the gaps that they didn’t remember with cliché stories and details. That’s not what I wanted, I wanted real emotions and real stories. So I changed it to the ‘last time’ in hopes of the person remembering all the details, and showing the emotion they were feeling at the time.

My questions were the last time you felt helpless and the last time you felt empowered. I wanted to have a reason behind the people I talked to, not just randomers. So i decided to talk to people who usually were perceived as very strong, or were going through a hard time and no one really knew about it. So I interviewed a paramedic, a Nigerian doctor, a recovering alcoholic, and an unemployed New Zealander. They all were very responsive to my proposition and all agreed to participate in my project right away. I would explain to them that I felt it was important to share their stories, of where they came from, what they’ve seen and gone through.It was very difficult to get more people, to be honest. In the beginning I wanted to get at least 6, but not everyone was as helpful and willing as they were.

This project was a slight challenge for me, I have worked with blogs and WordPress before and feel quite confident creating one now. But I was never very confident with film, and this project was very film and interview based. Editing was also never my forte, so I found that the hardest challenge. Even looking at the final products, I can see the quality of the editing looks a bit amateur. In theory I wanted to keep it as real as possible, trying not to edit a lot out of the interview, and adding in lots of fancy effects (even though I did try). If I were to do it again, perhaps perfect my editing skills before starting the project would have been intelligent. But I loved the actual action of filming and interviewing at the same time. It was very cool and interesting as to the direction of the film, and what you want your viewer to see and what feeling you are trying to portray through the film.

All in all I am quite pleased with the interviews I managed to obtain and think they were very good in conveying the overall message of my blog. Yet, the best part about this whole project, was getting to ride in a speeding ambulance through central London..with no seat belt on 🙂

http://lasttimeblog.wordpress.com/

Weco-The Green Connection, and Me.

WECO is an environmentally friendly wiki, which updates its readers on environmental issues, restaurants, technology, and campaigns. It is a portal for anyone who has an idea, update or a review to go and upload their posts onto the website. In theory the aim is for the site to be very user-generated stimulated.

My role in the website was editing my section, which was experience, looking at environmental issues like carbon footprint, environmental art and fashion. This also meant I had to find articles on the internet, either from newspapers or other bloggers which fit the criteria of the section. My personal stories for the wiki were a longer article about air travel and its carbon footprint and effect on the environment. My second one was going around London finding vegetarian places to put in our Eat section.

Overall I thought the group could have worked better together as a whole, but I think the final product we came up with was very satisfying. The layout and colours are very simple, making it user-friendly, hopefully encouraging people to take part. Also, we had different sections and topics available to cover so the target market was very wide. The aim is to have information about all the environmentally events, campaigns, locations, and general things going on in London. Our base would be London, just because it is a city which is already very ‘organic’ orientated, and are very open-minded and socially involved, so it would work great. It is also a very original idea, in the sense that it is a place for environmentally friendly people to talk and learn more about each other and the things going on around them.

My favourite aspect of the project was talking to other bloggers about posting their work in my section. I thought it was very cool that other people were writing about the same topics as us, and they were willing to contribute to our project. One blogger even offered to post up a post about WECO.

I thought it was a very good idea, and the layout was fun with the icon nav bar. I liked how we had a very special tone to our layout, with specific colours and style of images. I think if it was a real website, and we had advertising it would do well in the market, especially now that everyone is becoming more and more eco-friendly.