My experience from the Mountain Workshops was exciting. This workshop was hosted in Elizabethtown, KY this year and over fifty people participated in the workshop. I was part of the twenty multimedia students who had to collect video footage and audio to put together a story in a few days. I learned through the little amounts of sleep last week the importance of getting to know your subject, technical things in Final Cut Pro, and producing a short story within a few days.
Like the Eddie Adams Workshop, I learned for a second time, the importance of getting to the know the subject before shooting anything. The story I shot at the Mountain Workshops was about Matthew Pinkham. I went into the story thinking about Matthew as just a child who got lucky with guitar and is making it big. What I found through talking before I even started, Matthew has a bone disease which bound him to a wheelchair in his early childhood. Through his disability, he had time to learn the guitar and become what he is today. He found it fascinating to watch professional country singers perform live on stage and wanted to copy them. After being exposed to the guitar, he continued to practice, eventually landing gigs in the area around him. His mother, Rebecca Pinkham, is very supportive of him. She takes many hours out of her day to drive him to guitar practice, various gigs, and to keep nagging him to practice every once in awhile. I learned from Matthew that life isn’t always what you thought it was going to be and by doing what you love you realize everything will be for the better.
Without further ado, I introduce you to Matthew Pinkham and his story.
In the process of telling Matthew’s story, I found myself learning little things about story-telling and Final Cut Pro. I found out how to professionally set up Final Cut Pro and to use special capture features like ProRes for video. I also learned little things from Chad Stevens (my multimedia coach) like mixing audio, storyboarding, and polishing a piece. The amount of effort I put into this two minute piece shows in the final video. I spent around twenty hours of production time putting together the elements of the story, mixing the interview and ambient sound, and polishing the whole piece. I feel after spending twenty hours of production time, the piece looks better visually and sounds better. Focusing on the little details leaves the viewer to focus on the story and not my own mistakes.
Overall, this workshop taught me things I never learned at RIT and helped me grow into what I am today. I will plan on pursuing more multimedia projects in the near future as the itch for telling stories through multimedia won’t give up anytime soon.
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