My Digital Media Portfolio
Through my Communication Arts degree as well as my Digital Studies certificate, I have had the privilege of taking numerous courses that provided me with the skills and software to learn how to write, film, edit, and produce various forms of media. I gained experience with Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Audition, Adobe Photoshop, Celtx, and other software in my various script, photo editing, podcast producing, and short film assignments. Here are a few to get a taste of my work!
01
"How to Conquer Your Bully" PSA
During my sophomore year at UW, I was in COMARTS 355: Intro to Media Production, which was one of my most enjoyable classes. One of our initial projects was to create a public service announcement, and I decided to create a satirical piece titled “How to Conquer Your Bully” to serve as a spoof of an Anti-Bullying PSA. This assignment allowed us total creative free rein, beyond the time limit, which I was able to make the most of with the help of my two roommates/actors Cam Ketarkus and Andrew Lewis. Within the two-week process, I wrote an A/V script outlining each of the shots, rented out the necessary equipment to shoot each of these scenes, scripted and recorded the narrative voiceover, and then pieced it all together using the Adobe Premiere editing software. Although this was a low/no budget production that stemmed from the generosity of my roommate’s time to give acting/voice acting a try, it was great practice getting to witness the evolution of my vision through the various stages of the production process.
02
"Life Imitates Art" Short Film
Another project that came from my Introduction to Digital Media Production course was a short film titled "Life Imitates Art" by Georgia Krukar, Brooke Sholem, and myself. This prompt also had very few limitations beyond the length of time, which gave my friends and me the creative liberties to make our vision come to life. The process of producing this film involved drafting and writing out our script, casting and working with our actors, renting out equipment and spaces for the actual filming, and putting all of our footage together in post-production editing. This whole process took many hours over the span of a month. It was an incredibly gratifying experience seeing all of the pieces come together and getting to dip my toe into various aspects of filmmaking. One big challenge we faced was when one of our main actresses wasn’t able to be present for the remainder of filming, so we had to rewrite the script and refilm some of our scenes to ensure our storyline still flowed properly. We saw it as a blessing in disguise in the end because it forced our narrative to be less predictable and more human.
03
"Vogue" Podcast
Another one of my passions is music, so I was overjoyed to get to enroll in COMARTS 313: Music Industries and Pop Culture in the spring of my junior year. Our final project overlapped with a professional pursuit I had always been curious about, which was podcasting. Our task was to create a 10-minute podcast on a song that in some way changed the music industry, for which I wrote, recorded, and edited a piece on the song “Vogue” by Madonna. I was able to use my Gender & Women’s Studies education to back up my argument while utilizing my Digital Studies knowledge to support the production. This task originally felt daunting, as I learned early on in the course that this piece would be ultimate representation of what I has learned in the course, and I had never produced such a long form of media before. Gratefully, the content of the course was a great foundation for articulating the song’s impact, and the editing skills I had gained in the three years prior stuck with me and made the production process go by smoothly. This project took about a month to write, record, edit, and clean, and the end product turned out just as I’d hoped!
04
Media + Gender/Sexuality Research
During the fall of my junior year, I was a Research Assistant within the Communication Arts department for Professor Marie-Louise Mares for her study of media’s role in parents’ opinions and perspectives on their children’s gender and sexuality. For this research, we referred to parenting blogs on Reddit and the British site Mumsnet. For this position, it was my job to scrape posts, some receiving over a thousand replies, and insert them all into spreadsheets for me to later code whether or not they included content relevant to her research. This project was my responsibility for six hours a week for the entirety of the fall semester. I thoroughly enjoyed this position, because the content was a perfect integration of my Communication Arts degree and my Gender & Women’s Studies Minor, and I found the process of scraping and coding to be incredibly gratifying. It was an amazing opportunity to be involved in such research and I would love to pursue similar positions in the future.
