Monthly Archives: June 2010

Creating “Away”

Posted on by cbaird

I am really excited about telling the story, “Away” because it’s about people who are trying to make the best out of a negative situation. Toni, the mother in my piece, recently moved from Chauncey to Athens so that her son Josh could come out of the place he has been court ordered to live at and be removed from the environment that got him in trouble. Given that Toni is in a wheelchair, the move shows such motivation. Josh is now at the Hocking Valley Community Residential Center (HVCRC), a juvenile rehabilitation center, in Nelsonville, Ohio for boys between 12 and 18 who have commit a federal offense. Josh is has been there since February of 2010 for theft and drug related charges.

I have been going to HVCRC since October of 2009. There are a lot of stories there to be told. I felt drawn to Toni and Josh’s story after meeting them in February. Toni was smoking a cigarette outside of HVCRC with her partner Wanda. We conversed about the things that Toni would do for her son to come out of HVCRC, finish high school and go to college. After the conversation I grew closer to both Toni and Josh and decided their story was important because it communicates solutions. Though Josh is still at HVCRC he hopes that he can get out before the end of this school year in order to graduate with his high school class.

The image was taken at an event that HVCRC put on for a special Saturday “Family Fun Day”. Josh is on the left with his cousin on his shoulders. Toni sits front and center wearing an FBI shirt.

Dania Maxwell
www.daniapatricia.com

Oh hello there…

Posted on by cbaird

How did I get this tan? You are so observant! No I don’t sun bathe on college green, i’m too shy for that. Really this quarter my attention was placed on one thing: Soul of Athens. Yes I got this pasty complexion by spending the quarter with a fantastic group of people, the 2010 SOA web team. (insert heroic music) The amount of time, energy, and pizza spent by this fine group of people is insane. In 10 weeks we cranked out a site that we are all proud of and to top it off it’s the most accessible yet.

On the web team I was on the server side team- we handled Drupal, a content management system that has been utilized by Soul of Athens for the last two years. It is a very powerful open source software. My role was to set up Drupal and create a structure for our site. Organizing how content will enter the site, be collected, and aggregated.

We created a structure that allowed the students to log into the site and fill out our custom forms and that information would appear on the site based on what we asked for. It seems like nothing, someone answers a couple of questions about themselves or fills in the title of their video and it appears on the site after you hit refresh. The first time I saw that I was bubbling over with joy! It was very cool. So all the information you see on the credits page, for the most part, was typed by that student. Same is true for the headline on the content, the description and the transcript. Once the students had filled out their story form for example, we could go in, and upload their video, the thumbnail , and click the aspect ration. In the 9th week we were able to have a gathering of the senior producers and ask them to look over their editions in Drupal and adjust or point out the errors. To have them all logged in and fixing spelling errors, or adjusting descriptions in my opinion made for a better end product. Drupal allowed us to have 60 plus people contribute to the site.

Looking back at what we did and how we went about accomplishing it I would have adjusted a few things. Mostly clarifying the structure of the forms I created, and clarifying exactly how Drupal works to the SOA class. The latter might have helped us avoid a section of Moby Dick being used as transcript filler- thankfully Jill Bateman made a last minute catch. Man that was close! It wasn’t all smooth sailing, but the content management system made the process so much easier than the alternative.

(left to right) Jonathan, me, Corey, Brandon, and the bartender's finger over the lens.

There is no question that the process is intense, and challenging. The process was also fun, and I learned so much alongside my team. Thank you Zach, Brian, Dustin, Tony, John, Corey, Sam, Jill, Jonathan, and of course our fearless (sleepless) leader Brandon.

Christina Baird
Drupal Developer & Marketing Senior Producer
www.christinaeiler.com

SOA Rollercoaster Ride:

Posted on by cbaird

This project for SOA was a lot like a rollercoaster ride: fun, thrilling, scary, and even had a few twists and turns.

When I initially started this project it was literally like I was standing in line for a ride that common sense was telling me I didn’t have to go on. I was nervous, concerned, and a little confused as to what I was doing and why. I was placed in the Shelter edition and encouraged to go out and find a story. I had a basic idea, focused on religion and how it gives people a spiritual shelter, and two amazing people to photograph, Betsy and Briju.

The actual photo shoots were the climb up the first big hill. Anticipation for creating beautiful photographs and the overall final piece was building! I can’t thank Betsy and Briju enough for opening up all aspects of their lives to me, while also teaching me about Indian culture and letting me taste some amazing cooking! (I honestly had no idea that people in India used so much coconut!) Ty and Andrea, the senior producers for Shelter, gave me tons of advice and encouragement for the story, so thanks you two! And by the end of my first round of content gathering I was on the descent of that hill; I had photos to edit, a story line to lock-in, and a rush of adrenalin and freedom.

However, at week 4 my project took an interesting twist: I switched editions! Basically, I was prepared to climb up another hill; instead I was jerked left for a loop-d-loop. A couple hours before my interview with Betsy and Briju, I found out that my story would now be in Passage. So not only did I need to shift the storyline of my piece, I also started working with people (senior procedures, producers, and other Passage content creators) who had only a very vague idea of what my story was. However, Kayana, Kate, and Marcus (new senior producers) were all very nice and helpful with my piece. They gave me advice for my interview and also gave me some more shooting tips for the next big hill I went up, again with building anticipation, for my final content gathering opportunities.

Now the ride was supposed to be slowing down, with only a couple of small little bumps along the way; content was gathered, editing was taking place, and production was starting to happen (thanks Annette!). However, the day before my final rough draft was due, I found out that Betsy went into pre-term labor (at 28 weeks) and had been rushed to Columbus! Talk about coming up to a corkscrew without any notice! To make a long story short, the basic storyline that I had in previous rough drafts got completely re-worked that night and a new story was slowly emerging.

After that, the ride slowly started to level out and the exit platform was getting closer. Other than a few technical blips (and the fact that I still have only very minimal skills in Final Cut Pro) and a couple more late nights at Alden, I was able to finish my project with the help of some fellow riders (Annette and Marcus in particular with production).

At this point the ride is now pulling into the gate and the safety bars are lifting up. All I can say is that this experience has overall been hectic, crazy, stressful, exhilarating, fun… and totally worth it!

-Kylie Schafer

P.S.  Betsy and Briju had a boy, Rufus, and he is doing well!