May Moqiu Ma
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J7802 Video story: Cruisin' with the 'jazz man'

11/15/2015

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This is a story about a bus driver at the University of Minnesota, who was dubbed "jazz man" by his passengers. Jazz man loves jazz. He is a not only a driver, but also a DJ—he turns the bus he drives into a studio, where he plays more than 400 CDs of jazz music from his collection. When students ride with jazz man, they feel like they are in a music class or a concert that moves.

This video story is about four minutes long, but brought out the personality of "jazz man" perfectly. The story, written and voiced by Boyt Huppert for KARE11, is another heart-warming piece from Huppert's "Land of 10,000 stories." Besides his unique style of writing, the photography is very interesting too. They filmed the story both inside and outside the bus. When they are riding with jazz man, they interviewed students who are on the bus, and with the background music, you can actually feel what it's like to be a passenger on that bus. And there are some nice sequences: actions from jazz man, reactions from students; detail shots such as the CD collection, bus door open and closing, people's foot steps when they get on and off the bus... And the video also included some shots that was shot outside of the bus, but you can see jazz man driving and waving to people, and from that see you just can feel how jazz man is enjoying it, and what the relation is like between the driver and his passengers.

Another thing about the video that helps bring out the character's personality is they filmed jazz man not only at where he works, but also his home—and it turns out jazz man is as interesting when he's at home as he's at work. The narration also briefly mentions his wife passed away a few years ago, and that's when jazz man started to play music in his bus. But the video shows nothing painful or sad, jazz man appears to be cheerful and content, and so passionate about his hobby—jazz.

The video story in a whole is very colorful, even though it only has one major character. It's very nicely paced, and the music is waved nicely in the narration to help tell the story. I'm just wondering how to film on a moving bus, and make sure the shots are still steady, especially when the bus is crowded.
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J7802 Hardest things about doing video

11/8/2015

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Doing video is the most interesting, yet the hardest assignment by far.

When doing video, there are just so many things to consider: light, sound, background, angle, storytelling... Those factors make doing video much more challenging than just taking photos or audios. When filming an interview, I think the most difficult part is to find a quiet place to conduct the interview. When I was doing my video assignment A in a gallery, I interviewed an artist in her studio. Even though there was no customer coming into her studio during the interview, there were people will walk by outside, and we can hear their voices as the studio is an open space, and I couldn't ask her to shut the door. So those background noises are kind of hard to get rid of. 

When taking B rolls, I think the hard thing is to capture the right moment when shooting people's movements. For the assignment B, I when to a dog breeder's place, where has many new born puppies. I followed the five sequences when filming the owner nursing puppies. However, because the position of video camera has to be adjusted when taking different shots, so I sometimes would miss some good actions between those shots. For example, a puppy opened its eyes when the owner was feeding it. It's a moment that can not be duplicated, and once I missed it, I couldn't ask the puppy to do it again, or people to repeat what they did (or it will be making a film?). I guess it's not only a hard thing about doing video, but also about filming animals. But I think with time, as I get more familiar with the video camera and its settings, it will take less time to get the camera ready, and hope one day, I can use it just like using a part of my body.
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    May Moqiu Ma, Mizzou J-school grad student.

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