Getting Some More Depth

Today was a productive and interesting day because today, I continued to take the process to the next step by starting to finalize my project. I spent a lot of time over these weeks modeling and designing and iterating, but today marks the day where I make a turn into finalizing. Now, all the ideas are already out there. It's up to me now to clean those up into a final product. 

Designing a hotel was very interesting. It was especially interesting because although it is not going to exist in reality, I not only designed it in a real site, but I did actually get to see a good scope of the architectural process. Around the office, it was hard for them to introduce me to some of the concepts that they spent years studying at school, but I still got to experience all that I could around the office. I learned a lot about how they ideate and brainstorm, I learned a lot about how they model and iterate, and now I’m hopefully going to learn a decent amount on how they begin to finalize and clean up their ideas and plans. Overall, I'm happy to see that there is still a next step to my project and there is still more depth I can dive into.

Brandon is a Tough Child

Yesterday and today consisted of a lot more editing and what is great about today is that we are almost done and the documentary is looking great! Once again, talking about editing in this blog is pretty self-explanatory.  So, like Brandon, I will give my best effort to give a step by step description of how today went. I arrived at school at around 8:25 and immediately went into the fishbowl, turned on my computer and began to play, “Good Riddance” by Green Day. This song reminds me of graduation so I almost started tearing up, but that’s beside the point. I texted Brandon that I arrived at school and about 5 minutes later, he erupted through the door with great force, stubbing his toe. He screamed in agony, “SAINT JOSEPH!” I was bewildered by Brandon’s energy and enthusiasm, so much that I jumped up, spun in a circle and sat back down. Brandon sat next to me, both of us stone-faced, got back to work. 

As the editing continued, it was time for some tunes to lighten the mood. Brandon became quite frustrated with me because I kept playing love songs, and we all know Brandon doesn’t like the ooey-gooey emotional stuff. To compensate, I began to play 50 Cent, the opposite of ooey-gooey. Unfortunately, Brandon was not pleased with this either and it seems like I can’t win when it comes to choosing music for the kid. Anyway, it was an extremely productive day and we should be done by the end of the day on Monday. Signing off. 

Hashtags and Collisions

 Our marketing/social media proposal was an utter success!

 Some of the new hashtags promotions that we created will be instrumental in making SWERVE customers aware of its programs and perks. For example, #SWERVEfriend (a promotional hashtag) will remind customers of SWERVE’s referral program. If such hashtags create a trend, or become predominantly associated with SWERVE, business will increase.

#SWERVEjourney, #SWERVEteering, #iSWERVEfor, and #SWERVEfam, are among a few of the other hashtag promotions we envisioned being helpful in promoting SWERVE and its founding principles.

We have further developed the idea of creating a more sociable environment for the studio before and after cycling classes.

In observing the business models of other businesses and companies, Amanda and I observed a collision between product and experience. For example, Starbucks’ high premium is not only due to superior coffee quality, but also because of the social experience sold with the cup. SWERVE already has a social aspect intrinsically part of its business model: the friendly, team competition, which is bred in the darkness and intensity of the spinning studio. In engaging customers after each class, SWERVE’s already one-of-a-kind value proposition will acquire an even more attractive spin.

Perhaps after-spin snacks and drinks at SWERVE’s smoothie bar could act as a forum for ‘team’ interacting and socializing. More to come on this idea later.

Written May 26, 2014

originality

We gave our social media proposal to Eric and I think it went really well. We spent almost 4 days creating what we thought was the best way for SWERVE to get more publicity and customers. About half of our information that we gathered was from the research we did on SWERVE competitors. We looked at what Soul Cycle posted such as pictures, hashtags, etc and adapted those for SWERVE instead. Many of those were very popular with Soul so we hope that they will bring the same popularity to SWERVE.

We also tried to think of some original ideas that SWERVE could start as well. One idea that I came up with was that SWERVE should make itself into more of a social scene. Because a huge majority of their clients are from 21-40 years old, I thought maybe they should open a bar after their last evening class. Everyone could stay after for some drinks and we could combine that with the team dynamic. For example, if green team wins, they could get discounted drinks that day. This would keep people at the studio longer and bring in more attention.

Eric seemed to really like our ideas especially the original ones. He said we touched on ideas they had never thought of. I hope that we were able to make an impact on SWERVE’s success.  

-Amanda and Marshall

Failure & Iteration

It sounds scary and intimidating at first, but failing and making mistakes in a professional setting should be no more or less scary or intimidating than failing and making mistakes and learning in an educational environment. At first, I was cautious during this internship. I think that most people would be. But, pretty quickly I learned that, there too, it was important for the workplace to be a safe place to fail and iterate.

Today, I spent some time building, and destroying, and rebuilding different ideas and concepts. I made myself pretty frustrated in doing this. I felt stuck at times. But one thing that my sponsor told me this morning was that I shouldn't be afraid to produce the most ridiculous things. He said I should just get the ideas out there and then deal with them later. Today, by doing this, I was able to take my ideas and iterate pretty quickly. In school, we learn to try and fail and fix our mistakes. In this setting, I was happy to find that coworkers could actually be even more accepting of failure.

A Physically Tasking Day

I'm going to write a blog about every little thing we did other than editing. Every day until the end of this project will be devoted to editing. I will try to make these blogs as fun as possible, because honestly, these will not be the most thrilling days.

I woke up in the morning, ready to go, grabbed my bag, which I had packed the night before because I was so excited for the next day. With a smile on my face I walked out the door and over to Bertha, my car. Calling me, at the same time, was Joey asking where I was and with tears of joy I drove the tasking 2 miles to the upper school. We have been using the Fishbowl room as our editing bay. We are able to utilize the Smart TV as a larger, high quality, display for our documentary and for editing. I arrive and sit down for a little catch up with my good friends Carly, Sindhura, and Ali. After that Joe and I headed to our room. We would emerge from this dungeon 3 hours later, having not eaten, slept, or blinked. We grabbed some snacks and got right back to work. At this point we have around 4 minutes completed and 5 more days to edit. We are on the right track. I look forward to sharing these exciting days with you in the near future.  

Editing is More Exciting Than You Think

Yesterday was our first day of editing, and let me tell you, it is tough! Luckily, Brandon is a really great editor and as he mentioned in his blog, he is a perfectionist, and that will go a long way with editing. The first thing we had to do was sit down and look over our outline that directs what sections go first and which videos to use in those sections. The funny thing is, when we put all of those videos in front of us, the outline didn’t always make a lot of sense. We also noticed how we can film something that we think will be genius in the documentary, but when we put it in the mix with everything else, it doesn’t always work. 

We are at the most grueling process, definitely. As Brandon also alluded to, we have SO much footage and rummaging through all of it to find clips that work in the film is very difficult. Not only that, but on rare occasions, Brandon and I will disagree about music to use, or where to put a clip. However, we usually figure it out and it ends with an aggressive high five, along with a lot of happy shouting. Things are looking up! 

The Beginning of the End!

Today was our first day of official edit days. In the morning we visited Mr. Kwait along with Ms. Maurer coming to visit. We presented what we had completed (footage, voice-overs, etc.) and what our plan is for the six days of project. Mr. Kwait explained to her what he had told us. This included advice and what he has worked on. After leaving we sat down and began the grueling task of sifting through EVERYTHING and putting our first couple scenes together. Our goal is to keep this film under twenty minutes, after about half-a-days work we have just over two done. Keep in mind that this is just the rough, first edit and this one may come up to be around forty minutes. Just in these first couple minutes we have spotted multiple areas of “unnecessary material” that can be removed if we need to cut down. Even just in these first couple minutes my perfectionist attitude came full force and annoyed joey quite a bit. We would start playing it and we would restart it ten times because I’d have to mix I minor detail that an audience would not even notice. All in all this was a great first day; it sets a tone that I’d like to keep for the rest of our project. If we are successful with that then this will be a great film that both Joe and I can stand by proudly.

Having worked with children for almost 2 weeks helped me to figure out how they communicate and build relationships.

On Friday I had the possibility of being part of a different class. The students' interactions clearly showed a different teaching approach by the teachers. A different class environment developed a variety of skills that range from reading, listening and speaking. Also playing has a crucial role in the children's mental and behavioral development. 

Music lessons help children to learn to express themselves not just verbally but also physically. Playing and singing with music and arts are another way to communicate. 

In a 5 years old class where children already learned basic skills the focus is not anymore on relationships but on personal learning. Acquiring ground level knowledge is the goal of the teachers in pre-k classes.

I hope that in the remaining time I can come out with new significant facts that will help me to answer my essential question. At the end I am really happy of how my project is going.

Thanks readers,

Zaira

Ready to Edit!

Friday was our final day of tasks before editing. These included filming, gathering footage (archival and trailers), and completing voiceovers. On Tuesday we will begin the editing process. This will first consist of organizing our footage and material. I have been doing it a little as we went but it’s not great yet, still somewhat of a mess. We have an estimated hour or so of material, which we will eventually get down to about 20 minutes. Mr. Kwait told us that for a feature length film, around 90 minutes; he has around 100 hours of footage. His first edit goes to about four or five hours. We expect our first “rough cut” to be around 40 minutes. One of the harder things we will have to do is sacrifice footage and material that we worked hard to get in order to shorten the film and keep audiences attention. After we get all the visual footage into place, soundtrack and voice-overs placement will come. We found a few songs for the background, but many documentaries consist of narration. Joey and I will both do some narration only to equally divide the work, because most documentaries have a single narrator. We will see what we decide to do. The rest of our project will be behind a computer finalizing our product.