SERVICE LEARNING PREP #6

Today we looked over our videos that have been added to Dropbox and made sure everything we need is there. We plan on finishing our video tomorrow and burning it to DVDs and sending those out to our participants as we promised. Tomorrow will consist of lots of editing. We will also plan our presentations both to the Senior class and to the rest of the school.

SERVICE LEARNING DAY #4

Today, February 13th, was spent in doors and in a classroom. We have already gathered all the raw footage/pictures we required in order to begin editing. However, we recorded the videos and pictures on our cell phones, so transferring the media to a computer was rather difficult, given we had over 3 gigabytes of material.

While we were waiting for the upload/download process, we added a song to our repertoire, Home by Philip Philips. This song posed a challenge for us for a number of reasons. It was not in Rachel's singing range, so Diego had to determine the key comfortable for Rachel and transpose the song in order to get a better sound. We were successful in doing so.

After the rehearsal/upload/download process, we began editing the film, beginning with the sound of one of our videos. We spliced together interviews from numerous people, and added the songs that we performed to play in the background of the video.

Despite being an indoor day, it was very successful, and we are looking forward to seeing this film come to completion in the next few Service Learning Days.

SERVICE LEARNING PREP #5

Last service learning day, we had planned to work on editing our videos, but unfortunately we ran into some car trouble and were not able to do any work at all. Because of this, we have moved our editing time to tomorrow. We will spend most of the day on campus and utilize the expertise of a fellow service learning group that works with film. Our goal is to get at least half of our film done by the end of the day tomorrow. This period, we are working on uploading our footage to my computer so that it is ready to go for tomorrow.
We would like to mention that we helped a fellow service learning group, Culture Couture, by performing at their art show. We performed one of our old songs, Brown-Eyed Girl, with a new twist for our younger audience. Diego re-wrote the music so that it was in a Bossa Nova style that turned out to suit my voice extremely well. The performance went well.

SERVICE LEARNING PREP #4:

Today, our plan is to go over what we are planning on doing tomorrow. Because we already have an abundance of footage, we thought it would be a good idea to spend the day tomorrow uploadding and editing it. We will spend the day in the practice rooms either editing or choosing new songs to sing in the future. We will consult Mr. Marshall on how best to create a single video of all of our footage. We plan to get all of our visits so far documented and edited by the end of the day.

SERVICE LEARNING DAY #3:

Today we kept with our plan and had only one visit because we were so far ahead of schedule after our last service learning day. We made an appointment for 11:00 with a couple named Steve and Carol Frogue. They were excited to hear us and waited for us at their door. We sat with them in their living room and talked with them for around a half an hour about the concept of our project and they loved what we were doing! We then sang them "Build Me Up Buttercup" after which we talked some more about their school dances and what songs they remembered. Then we sang "Brown-Eyed Girl" which brought a lot of memories to their minds about relationships. They told us the story of how they met and  (with much hesitation) about Steve's previous girlfriends. We had a lot of fun with them and they wished us luck! 

SERVICE LEARNING PREP #3: 
Today, our plan is to make an appointment with one more participant. We would also like to learn one of the song suggestions we received from our last participant. We are excited for tomorrow! We plan to do only one visit tomorrow and spend the rest of the time editing the footage we have taken so far. 

Today was a bit of a surprise. We had an appointment for 1:00 so we learned two new songs for our visit: Ain't No Mountain High Enough and Build Me Up Buttercup. We spent the morning learning the songs and writing on our blog. We finished early and ended up leaving school earlier than anticipated. Instead of going straight to Bobby Johnson's house, we drove to my church (Geneva Presbyterian) to see if anyone in the office wanted to give us a story. The moment we walked through the door we realized we were in the right place. There were four ladies there who were more than enthusiastic to share their stories. We played our songs to them all at once to smiling applause then recorded stories from each of them in turn.
We then drove to Bobby Johnson's house (and got lost on the way). She was waiting with her door open and welcomed us in smiling. She moved us from her office to her beautiful living room and we played our songs to her. She sang along to both of them and listened with her eyes closed. She then shared her stories with us and practically summarized the purpose of our whole project. Her stories were inspiring and interesting and she enjoyed our visit immensely. She gave us three songs that she thought other people from her age group would enjoy most (Racing With the Moon, Stardust, Buttermilk Sky). Overall, it was a very productive day!