My first video is officially posted! Editing the video was actually very fun, and I will definitely be able to post the rest in time for the Fellows' Fair. I would like to first and foremost thank my mentors, Ms Brickman, Dr Andrew Buchheim, and Dr Joshua Smith, for their help in my research and for helping me figure out the scope of my project. I would like to thank my parents for giving me entire days and nights off to finish my scripts, even when it meant locking myself in my room for hours on end. Thank you to Ms Das, for always answering any question I had with a smile even when I felt frantic. Thank you to Ethan Cooke, who was for some reason always there during the lowest moments of my project, and who helped me stay sane. Thank you to all of the Fellows for creating such a special family. I will miss Academia, I will miss the program, but most of all, I will miss you. 

The past few weeks have been extremely productive. With writing and filming done, I have thrown myself into the editing and producing process. The first thing I did was reach out to Michael Levy, a scholar determined to bring back ancient Greek music, to discuss the use of his songs in my series. He informed me that his music is free and available to use, so that was one major concern of mine taken care of. I even found a clip from one of his pieces to use as a theme song, which fit the tone of my series better than the highly produced jingle I had made. Other than that, all of my free time has been spent jumping between editing clips together, tweaking audio and video levels, and finding images to overlay on my videos. I have spent so many hours going through thousands of museum catalogues, all of which I carefully vet to make sure they meet the museums' fair use requirements. Things are coming along so well, in fact, that I anticipate that I will publish my first video by the end of the week! I am very pleased with how well this final phase of my project has come together, and I have already begun thinking about the form my final written report will take! 

Thankfully, after a disheartening update last month, the past few weeks have been extremely productive. Not only have I filmed a number of videos, but I have even put together several of these clips into full length videos. This process was not only quick, but quite fun. For each clip, I would pull up the accompanying script to make sure I did not accidentally cut out each sentence. I would begin by comparing each of the takes of the first sentence and select the best one. I would watch through this clip until some aspect of the video felt imperfect, at which point I returned to the other takes to find a replacement. By the end, I had edited an hours worth of footage into an eight minute video. The only issue I have experienced with my new setup is that my camera dies quickly, which has led to me being unable to finish some of my videos in one filming. In order to maintain continuity, these takes had to be scrapped. Luckily, I have gotten to the point where each video takes comfortably under an hour to film. The videos are still not ready to be published, as I still have effects I want to add. Still, I am certainly on schedule to finish filming by the end of the month.
​

I have a bit of a story time. As I have previously discussed, I am using multiple input sources for filming my videos: my phone camera and my microphone. In order to avoid having to sync these two sources later, I connected both of these inputs to my computer. I then used the photobooth app to access both of these sources. At first, this solution seemed to work—clicking through my videos, the quality and flow seemed great, so I moved forward with filming my videos. In France, though, when I tried to begin editing my first video, I noticed that the footage froze approximately every 30 seconds. The audio was fine, it was just the video that froze. The issue is relatively minor, and I could probably edit around these freezes using cutaways and multiple takes. Still, that seems like it will take a lot of time, and there is the unfortunate possibility that one of the freezes will be unavoidable. So, I have decided to rerecord all of my videos. I think this solution will be better in the long run, especially since the amount of time it took me to film each video decreased as I went on. I only just got back home from traveling, so I have not yet begun to refilm my videos. Still, I intend to finish my reshoots within the week. 

Hello from France! The past two weeks have been extremely busy for me, but I have still found time to film most of my videos. The amount of time it took for me to film each video decreased as I went on. I will definitely be done filming by the end of the month, if not by the end of Spring Break. With only three videos left to film, I have moved on to the editing phase of my project! Downloading Adobe Premiere was weirdly difficult, but I eventually figured it out with Tech Help. I am so relieved to be done with the brunt work of my project, and I look forward to figuring out my video identity as I begin to edit!

I have finally filmed my first video! The first step to filming was setting up my video and audio equipment. I decided to just stick to my phone camera for filming, but to use the microphone I already owned for audio. Connecting these inputs was a bit of a challenge, but I eventually figured out how to connect the mic to my laptop and then shoot my segments in photobooth, which also allows for other apple products, such as my iPhone, to act as a camera. I set my computer up right below my phone to act as a monitor, and so that I could display the words of my scripts without having to memorize my lines. I shot my segments in chunks, usually only reading a paragraph or two at a time. I read each paragraph at least three times, but usually more to make sure that there were no issues in my delivery. I decided to begin with my Plato essay, since it was the first script that I had written to completion, and it was the script with which I had sat the longest. After setup, figuring took about an hour. The plato script is one of my shortest—according to my audio recording, it should run about 7:30 minutes—but it still seems like an hour or an hour and a half is a reasonable time frame in which to film all of my videos. Now that I have filmed one video, I plan to very quickly finish filming, meaning I will move completely into editing my videos well before the end of the month!

As I begin to film my videos, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my filming set. Most of the set came together over winter break. The desk and chair on which I sit are items we already had in the house. It took some work to move the table from its usual place to its new spot on the wall. The location is not ideal, as it is next to a large window, but I have borrowed a ring light from Ms Maxey that will hopefully help regulate my lighting. The next phase of setting up my set led me to downtown Annapolis with my mom in search of items to put on the desk. We visited several antique stores and ended up finding a set of small, old books to stand up on the desk. My dad found a bust of a Greek head at the Georgetown flea market, and I bought a garland of olive branches from Michaels. We also have several Greek pots from our travels, which decorate the other side of the desk. I still need to figure out which microphone I will use to film, the clip-on I have from my camera or the standup mic we already had, and wether I will use my phone or my camera to film. Either way, everything is in place to begin filming!

The next big milestone on the Fellows calendar is the presentations we will give to the school next Friday. Naturally, since the final product of my project will be a video series, I wanted to have a QR code in my presentation for students to scan if they were interested. I quickly realized that if I wanted students to see my Youtube channel, I should have my channel ready to be looked at. And thus began the mad dash to make my channel presentable. I first found information from some of my favorite Youtube channels. I chose to model my logo and banner after the styles of other documentary/educational channels, like Watcher, Abstract, and Fern. I noticed that these channels typically had their name in the banner with some background image, and a profile picture that was the first letter in their title. Once I had my concept in mind, I found a royalty free photo of a Greek temple that had the right composition, color scheme, and general vibe. I uploaded this photo into my drawing app, found a font I liked for the text, and created a logo. I chose to make my logo resemble a Greek column, which seemed like an easily recognizable symbol for ancient Greece. I also chose to vaguely shape my column like the letter A, the first letter in Academia. I ended up using this logo as my profile picture, and used all of these images to update my Youtube channel. I also updated this blog to better match the identity of my channel. Finally, I added a link to my Youtube channel so that subscribers could find this website easily. I am overall very happy with how everything turned out, and I think it sets the tone for my channel well. 

My project has been coming along smoothly. I had my Winter Work Review this past Wednesday, and in preparation, I put together my approximate timeline for the next few months. For some reason, when I made my slide show, I thought that senior classes ended in April, not May. Luckily, this mistake only gives me more time to accomplish the most time consuming stage of my process, but I'll get to that in a bit. First, I plan to begin filming over the long weekend, and to continue over the months of January and February (if necessary). From past experience, the filming portion shouldn't actually take too long, so I will hopefully have all of my videos recorded within a month. This is made a lot easier by the fact that my set is right in my dining room, giving me easy access. After filming wraps, I will move onto the stage that I predict will be the most time consuming: the editing. I plan to use Adobe Premiere Pro over the months of February, March, and April. All of the videos should be fully edited by the beginning of May, but I should have time if needed to continue editing into May. The last phase of my project will take place in May, when I will upload all of my videos onto Youtube and write the research paper that will synthesize all of the research I have done over the past 6 months. I can't believe this project is already over halfway over, but I am so excited to be creative while I finish making my videos!

As the tedious, research-heavy phase of my project draws to a close, I am finally able to start thinking creatively. Specifically, as I have been giving all of my scripts one last read-through before filming begins in earnest in the new year, I have begun thinking about the production aspects of my videos. Obviously, I have already filmed several scenes for my videos, which include both narrated portions and shots of B-Roll. Still, the videos will need much more production than just those few shots and whatever scenes I end up filming on my set. For example, I have always had the idea to include actual ancient Greek music at the beginning of episode 2, which focuses on the mousike part of Greek elementary education. Over break, though, I finally found the music I intend to use. There is a Youtuber named Michael Levy, who records and licenses both adaptations of ancient music and his own compositions. Since I did not end up buying several of the books I initially wrote into my budget, I plan to use some of my excess money to buy licensing to use one of his songs. In addition, I have been browsing museum websites, such as the British Museum and the Met, for public domain pieces that I can use to accent my videos. One of the best examples I found is a kylix that shows two women carrying writing styluses to school. I have an episode about education for women, but I had never expected to find women as a subject in Greek art. I am just making notes of my ideas for now, but all of these will be very useful during video production and editing!