Just Call Me Steven Spielberg

...Riiiiiiiiiight. I finished what I will be showing as my project on Thursday. It's frustrating because I'm not fully satisfied with it. I had every intention of having a song I heard in class play during the credits, of having clips of asking random people to try to identify Che Guevara, and of having 5 people's opinions in the movie.

What I am doing, basically, is something called Mi Propio Che, or "my own Che." My Spanish class this semester revolved around Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Argentinian doctor, leader of the Cuban revolution, Communist to the point of fanatic murderer, and icon of revolution. An edited version of the picture shown on this page is one of the most famous pictures ever taken in the last century. His face is now plastered on posters, t-shirts, bags, stickers, etc....irony to the extreme for a man who died fighting Capitalism. For Span4080, we had to do a final project that our teacher named Mi Propio Che, with the guidelines that it was to be a creative project, no limits, and surprise him. That actually makes it harder than easier because we had no parameters within which to work. When the sky's the limit, you have a pretty high standard to achieve. What made this more intimidating is that last week, he pushed back our due date and decided to make this count as the final in addition to the original weight of the project.....so it HAS to be good. I mean, really good. He said he pushed it back so that we could have extra time to make something really great. No pressure, huh? In addition to the project, we have to type up a short paper explaining the project in relation to the class and the literature we've read this semester (doing that tomorrow), and we have to give a 5 minute explanation of our project to the class. Hopefully I won't have to talk much further than explaining the general idea, since it pretty much speaks for itself....

What I decided to do was make a video of people answering different questions about Che. I would ask all the people the same question and have the video show the differences in opinion and level of knowledge about this man (he is a very controversial person). Well, I got in touch with about 10-15 facebook groups devoted to loving, hating, or having some knowledge about Che, and asked if anyone was interested. About 25 people told me they wanted to do it. About 3 did. And one of those 3 said that he would get a couple of his friends to do it as well. This is why I was freaking out a couple posts back. I needed more involvement.

Well, I started work on the project, and it just wasn't coming along....my computer memory was too full, windows movie maker is picky, the videos themselves were too large...it was always something. Finally, today, I packed it in and went to the SLC to use a UGA computer. I knew it would have more memory and be faster and have a person I could ask if I needed help....ends up the poor guy had to help me with computer problems a million times because that computer and that program were both dodgy. It ended up that I got there around 4:00, and I left at midnight and went home for supper. I ended up using one of the first three videos I got, Alejandra's video, and the two videos of friends (Ben and Ange) that were promised to me by one of the original three helpers (Alvin). Although I received 5 peoples' videos total, I had problems with a couple, so I had to cut them out, which is really sad since one is Zac from England and would have added a lot of diversity, and the other is from Alvin, the guy who has given me SO much help...even going as far as to get me his two friend's videos.

Also, since Windows Movie Maker is so picky about having you not remove anything once you start, I had to email myself the song I wanted to use on the credits (and I bought it on Itunes just for this)...then when I opened it on the school computer, it wouldn't let me use it without proof of purchase. Of course, that meant I had to download ITunes and a newer version of Quicktime, and when I had all of that....it wanted me to restart the computer if I was going to finish the installation. Well, I couldn't do that because the school computers automatically wipe off all your work everytime you log out or shut down or restart. Even if I saved the project to disk or thumbdrive, all the original videos would be wiped off the computer, and since windows movie maker has to work with the original source, I would lose ALL of my work. So, basically, I did all of that work and couldn't put in the final touches that would have made it somewhat cool and help me suck up to my teacher. ha. I also didn't have Tom's camera with me, so I couldn't include the guerrilla interviewing I did about Che...I'm thinking about showing it as a separate video though, since I think it could be cool.

I did finish and save the project though, and THAT is a huge weight lifted. Even though editing and cutting clips on Windows Movie Maker makes some of the frames freeze while the audio plays, I'm letting it be that way. There is nothing I can do about it, and I'm over it. I've worked long and hard and done all I can...and I've never done anything like this before, so I'm proud of the work I put into it. You can watch the video on YouTube.

And now I need to go to bed....
~Meghan