MEJO 121 has arguably been the most valuable class I have taken so far during my time at UNC. This personal portfolio WordPress site is something that I feel confident that I will use for a long time to send to potential employers and keep track of my work. I was really looking forward to this class because I knew it was going to be valuable for me in the future. Throughout the semester, I have been given many opportunities to reflect on what makes for good storytelling in different forms of digital media.
My video project emphasized the importance of b-roll in telling a story, as hardly any of the b-roll that I used in the video is something I shot myself. Most of the shots are clips of videos that are exactly what Zac was talking about, and these are things that I couldn’t have videoed myself in the moment. Having the visual of what he’s talking about as he says it makes for a much more impactful story and helps viewers to understand things that they might have never heard of before. I also just think that jump rope is cool to watch so I wanted to get to highlight what he was talking about as much as possible. I also learned the importance of good audio to a video. My audio was a little blown out from the interview, and unfortunately I couldn’t totally figure out how to fix it. I did spend a good amount of time watching YouTube videos and looking up ways to fix it as best as I could, but you can still tell it’s a little off. If the audio isn’t good, it can be very distracting and take away from the message of the whole video. In the future I will definitely be more mindful of recording sound.
My website showed me the importance of visual hierarchy. When I was organizing all of my pages, the first thing I considered was always what should go at the top. I always put what I thought of as the most important for viewers at the top and then worked my way down to what was least important. Keeping this in mind throughout designing the site was very helpful to make sure that what I really wanted viewers to see would be looked at without having to scroll. I also realized the importance of color, especially with my page on my video project. The pictures that I used in my banner, quote block, and infographic on that page are colored so nicely, and look great with text overlapping them. The contrast between the darkness of the pictures and the white text makes it stand out even more. I’m also just obsessed with how those pictures are colored generally, but I think they do a lot for the page.
I’m going to miss this class a lot next year, and I think it has taught me a lot of valuable things that I will continue to use for my careers in the future. Although I’m sad that it had to become online, I’m still thankful for everything I’ve created and learned from taking this class.