The Making of “The Pulse”
Students at CDH Collaborate with CHSS Student Services
Posted in: Announcements, News, Projects
The Center for Digital Humanities (CDH) is a collaborative workplace for students with a myriad of different skill sets and focuses. Recently, CDH collaborated with the Student Services at CHSS on their informative and beneficial video project, which is now called “The Pulse: The Heartbeat of the College,” which keeps students and faculty up to date and informed about CHSS news, events, and happenings.
It all started at CDH, where the team brainstormed alongside the Student Services department on a white board. The board contained ideas for “The Pulse” logo, where project members, Gregory Matos took the lead. He and other team members filmed talking head segments, B-roll scenes of various places on campus, as well as other necessary footage. The scenes were filmed in our very own “Quiet Room” with a green backdrop, stands, and fluorescent lights. The initial scenes filmed for this project were rough cuts.
According to our team lead Gregory Matos, “A rough cut is usually the raw pieces of video and audio, edited to tell the story. There’s no color adjustments done or audio adjustments. It’s the most important cut, because once the rough cut is approved, you can set a “Picture Lock” which means the progression of story in the video has been seen as perfect/ready for audience. Now you just polish it with all the good stuff: color correction, color grade, audio mixing and audio mastering.”
The B-roll locations that were planned and filmed were Dickson Hall, School of Business, University Hall, Blanton Hall, Schmitt Hall and the Student Center. In the rough cut of the video, additional B-rb roll was filmed, however, in each video, not all B-roll made it to the final cut of the video.
They also recorded audio for the video. Bridget Dodge aided in the project with video editing software such as Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premiere Pro. Our Communications team, also participated by making motion graphics for the logo and other graphic overlays. The video, in and of itself, is brief, yet informative for all students, especially first year students for what upcoming events CHSS offers and is apart of for the month. Our team members worked hard on this project because it was collaborative from the filming to the graphics to the editing.
Gregory Matos had this to say about working on The Pulse, “Being able to provide engaging content that keeps the college’s student body informed is extremely fulfilling. As a member of the Center for Digital Humanities, I’ve been wanting to apply the skills I’ve developed, since I joined last year. And this ongoing project has been a complex and fun first opportunity to do that.”
The Center for the Digital Humanities has many other exciting video-related projects planned for this year. Stay tuned.
To see the latest “The Pulse” episodes, check out the CDH’s Youtube channel.