For this project I chose to highlight the things that people love the most about traveling in Italy. For the project I used a combination of interview recordings with one of my friends who recently spent two months in Italy, as well as video I shot during my time there this summer, and audio recordings of my father that I did earlier this year. I wanted to create a sense of flow between the ideas and form a connection between the things that people love most and value most about these nations. I chose to open with the narration provided through the recording of my dad, talking about the pace of life and how different it is in Europe compared to the US and I chose to have that narration going over a video clip of the Italian countryside and the water taxi ride into Venice- some of the most peaceful and relaxed things I have ever experienced.
From that narration of my father discussing the way of life in Italy, I chose to cut to the first interview clip of my friend Alex. She starts the clip talking about how different the way of life is in Italy creating an outstanding connection between her points and my father’s. She then goes on to talk about two of the things she loves the most about Italy being the amazing art and architecture. When she started talking about the art and architecture I made the choice to cut away from purely an interview and use her voice as a narration over two photos and a video clip taken by me that showcase the art and architecture that was at the center of the Italian Renaissance. The first photo shown is one of the ceiling pieces in the halls of the Uffizi gallery in Florence. The video clip pans across showing the front of the famed Florence Cathedral, commonly known as the Duomo. The last photo of the voiceover is a shot overlooking the rooftops of Florence including one of the famous domes that adorn several of the dozens of cathedrals in Florence.
I also made the decision to end the project with a final narration from my father about his final views on what he admires the most about Italy and the Italian way of life. With the voiceover I included a final clip and one last look at the grand canal in Venice shot from the steps of one of the Venetian cathedrals I found this summer.
I encountered difficulty in my editing in that originally the interview video clip would not play the sound that accompanied it and so it took me a while to figure out how to get that audio working again. I am hoping that in the editing process I will be able to solve the issue of the interview audio being far quieter than my dad’s voiceover in the beginning and the end of the project. I also hope to be able to find a way to fix the issue of the blurry video and images.
Cassandra Barnes 
Hello, Cassandra! The thing that bothered me the most was the quality of your video. I know it is not possible to go back to Italy and take some new recordings, but that was something that I still had to mention. Also, you should try to adjust both volumes of your audio recordings to the same, because right now the male voice is 5 times louder than the video audio sound. Overall, I really liked that video, because all the clips, recordings, and audio were put together nicely. I really wish you had the same kind of video quality you had for the audio male voice recording. Hopefully you will figure something out and the final video story will look a bit better. You can also try and add some music on the background. Overall very great work and I wish you the best of luck for your final video story!
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Hi Cassandra, I really like the idea of your video as it gives a few different perspectives on how people have enjoyed trips to Italy. One of my concerns I had with the video was the video quality. I understand the videos in Italy were taken a while ago so the quality obviously isn’t as good as it would be now, however, for the interview portion I believe having that be good video quality would certainly be beneficial to the overall project. Another one of my concerns was the audio being extremely loud in some portions of the video, and being very quiet in other portions. Specifically with your father speaking, he was much louder than your friends interview, so maybe balancing those volumes could certainly help you with making the video sound better. However, I still like the idea for the video a lot and I think a few adjustments like the ones I’ve mentioned could certainly help with the project and make it look great as a final product!
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Hi Cassandra!
I love your draft story, it was very interesting for me to watch because I have never been there, and I don’t know much about traveling there. I like how you opened it up with one of your own videos that you took while you were there, it gave it a nice authentic feel to the story and helped the viewers have a visual while hearing about it. I also enjoyed how you took different video aspects and put them into one whole story, by adding your dads voice as well as part of the narrative. One thing that I would suggest is trying to work on the video quality because when watching is seemed kind of grainy. Other than that, this is a great start and you will only need to make minor changes in order to have it complete for the final submission. Keep up the good work!
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The number one thing that needs to be fixed with my draft is the video quality. I have no idea how to go about fixing that yet but that is my number one concern. On my phone, which I used to get the footage, it is all clear and shows up perfectly yet when it plays on my computer the video is insanely blurry, and it takes away from how amazing some of the visuals in my project are. I also have to mess around with the audio settings to see if I can get the two different narration tracks to play at the same volume rather than having the voiceover from my father being two times louder than the audio from Alex. I am very happy with the project I have and the way in which it was laid out and so I do not plan on changing much, if anything, outside of fixing the video quality issue and restoring them to the quality they are at in my phone and fixing the audio so that one is not far louder than the other.
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